Pregnancy Update

Well, I am now nearly 29 weeks along and due to some requests, I thought I'd post a couple belly pictures and record a little pregnancy update for my own records.

Pictures are courtesy of Cash.  He did pretty good really - he cut my head off on the one below but what you really want to see is that big belly anyway right? :).  I'm 27 weeks here.

We have had an interesting pregnancy so far...again. Early on (end of July/beginning of August) I began feeling pelvic/cervical pain and pressure and was told to try to take things easy (which isn't so easy to do with little ones around right?) as we kept a close eye on things throughout the pregnancy. At that time, I also started receiving weekly hydroxyprgesterone shots in hopes of helping reduce the likelyhood of pre-term cervical shortening and pre-term labor (we dealt with these issues in my pregnancy with Vanna).

As time continued, so did the pain and pressure but I was consistently surprised to find that ultrasounds showed no cervical shortening. However, come about the 25th week mark, I began to just feel different and really started looking forward to my next ultrasound where I was sure we'd find things had changed (but hoping we wouldn't).

Well, I had another ultrasound on Thursday and found that my intuition, in this regard, was dead on. I had thinned and my cervix measured half the size it's supposed to at this point in a normal pregnancy (at this point anything below 3 cm is too short and I measure at a 1.5 cm - with Vanna's pregnancy, we discovered problems when I was 30 weeks along and I measured in at 1.8).

From the beginning, we knew I was at a higher risk of this type of thing happening again, obviously for the simple reason that it had happened before but we kept hoping somehow that we might be able to avoid these problems.  Now that is happening again, we are certain the diagnosis of an "incompetent cervix" is accurate. Up to this point, we just kept hoping we could prevent the same thing from happening and that perhaps our experience with Vanna was a one-time thing darn it.

 I'm 28 weeks here.  My mother-in-law gave me this fun shirt and I love it.  Each time I put it on though, the kids always make a comment about my wearing a turtle shirt.  I'm sure I'll look more and more like a turtle in it as my "shell" continus to grow. :)

Anyway, we are now on bedrest and trying to figure out what we are going to do over the next two months to help keep the kids happy and entertained, allow Ty to keep working the way he needs to, and keep me down with my feet up the way I need to.  Even though we have no family around we are blessed with their willingness to come up here to help and to take the kids to stay with them for different time intervals.  We are also blessed with amazing friends here who are always so willing to help as well.  We are truly so grateful for such blessings!

So...we are hoping to make it at least to 37 weeks (eight weeks away from now) to give our little girl a healthy start and hope to be able to avoid additional problems or a stay in the NICU (again, like we did with Vanna, although it would be much more difficult to figure out here, as the closest NICU is in Boise where I'd want to stay with the baby but hate to be away from my family, especially so close to the holidays).  I lay awake at night thinking and thinking about what may or may not happen, how to be best prepared, etc.  but it's just a waiting and hoping game.  We continue to hope and pray for the best and know that things will work out, we simply need to be faithful and accepting of the Lord's plan. 

Wish us and our little girl luck in the coming weeks!