An Ethan Update

It's been way too long since I've blogged, but life is a bit crazy right now with a 2 year old and a 2 month old.  Actually, it's not that bad.  Ethan is already sleeping through the night and both of my kids take after their dad (thankfully) and are naturally pretty mellow.  Which is just one more reason to stop while we're ahead.  We've already gotten really lucky twice - I'm pretty sure it's not possible to produce a third kid as low maintenance as the two I already have!

Anyway...we finally took Ethan in for his two-month checkup the other day (our pediatrician has been touring the world as he does every summer on medical missions trips & such, so we had to catch him in between trips).  The little man was a whopping 12 lbs. 8 oz. (41%), his length was 65% and his head was 81%.  I am sure he will start slipping off the charts soon enough.  Poor little Gemma is still hovering around 20 pounds and super short, so her little brother is going to be her "big brother" in no time at all!

Here is Ethan at 1 month old:

 And at 2 months old:

 And here is one of the big smiles that I enjoy getting to see from my happy little guy:

Gemma Turns Two

I'm a little behind on my blogging these days, but I'm finally getting around to tackling Gemma's birthday, which was May 7.  Since her birthday was on a Sunday, we ended up having a party for her the following Saturday, when our families were able to be here to celebrate her special day. 

On Sunday the 6th, we loaded up and headed downtown to the Battery to do a two-year photo shoot of Gemma.  We got some really great pictures of both kids, but these were our favorites:

On Monday, Gemma's actual birthday, we didn't really have anything special planned, but Auntie Rachel and I took the kids to the mall and got Gemma a birthday treat: a cookie from the Great American Cookie Company, which she enjoyed while admiring one of the fountains in the mall.

Then, on Saturday the 14th, we had a bunch of family come down to celebrate Gemma turning two.  Pops, Nana, Grandpa, Grandma, Auntie Rachel, Uncle Mike, Aunt Jean, Uncle Wes, Aunt Kelly, Noah, and Liam were all there. 

We decorated with a purple and pink owl theme:

There was delicious Funfetti cake:

And there were LOTS of presents:

One of Gemma's presents was a tent, which turned out to be tons of fun for all the kids!

Only Ethan missed out on the tent fun, but he had fun sitting on cousin Noah's lap:

The Monday following Gemma's party, we took her in for her two-year checkup.  She was a whopping 20 pounds even (2.5 percentile) and in the 8th percentile for height (they never told me the exact measurement).  She was behind on one of her shots so had to get one shot and a finger prick but she recovered from the trauma very quickly.  And even though she is very small, she is perfectly healthy and doing great!

And in other news, our little man turned 1 month old on May 12.  He is getting SO big already!

So...a belated Happy Two Year Birthday to our sweet Gemma and Happy One-Month "Birthday" to our little man!  We are so blessed to have you both and love you both very much!

Introducing Ethan Cyrus Shealy!

Our little man is finally here!  He made his entrance into our world on Thursday, April 12 and we were so excited to finally meet him!  Here is his story:

When I went to the doctor for my 39 week appointment, I had not made any more progress.  I was still at 1-2 cm. and the baby was still so high up that the doctor ordered another ultrasound to check his position.  We went ahead and scheduled an induction for Thursday, April 12 (two days after my due date) since my doctor was going to be on call that day and night.  Her plan was for me to come in for a checkup on Wednesday the 11th after which she would admit me to the hospital and get me started on some Cervadil overnight and then start Pitocin on Thursday morning.

I was kind of worried about being induced at only 1 cm.  I did not want to have to endure a really long labor with a higher possibility of a C-section at the end.  So I did a lot of praying and a lot of walking and squatting and bouncing on the exercise ball and anything else I could think of.  Something must have worked, because when I went in for my appointment on the 11th I was 4.5 cm. dilated.  The doctor sent me home to get a good night's sleep in my own bed and told me to be at the hospital by 6 am the next morning to get started on some Pitocin.

When I came in, the baby was still really high so the doctor did not want to break my water for fear of problems with the cord.  So she started me on Pitocin and came back to check on me around noon.  I got my epidural right away and slept for a couple of hours.  At noon, I was at 6 cm. but the baby still had not moved down at all so she still could not break my water.  I was starting to get worried.  What if I got all the way to 10 centimeters and he was still really high?  I had only had to push about 20 minutes with Gemma and I was not excited about the thought of pushing for hours. 

Around 4:30, I was starting to think I was going to be laboring through the night.  I started feeling nauseous and lightheaded (possibly because all I had eaten all day was popsicles) and was just getting more and more scared of what was looking to be a longer labor than I had expected.  The nurse decided to go ahead and check me again and I was 9 cm.  I asked her to help me roll to my other side and as she flipped me the pressure broke my water.  Baby was lower but still fairly high, so she had me do a few practice pushes to see if it would even move him.  It seemed to be working, so she called the doctor. 

The doctor showed up and I started pushing.  On my 3rd round of pushing, the doctor suddenly told me to stop.  I was like, Did she really just tell me to stop?  The baby was out and he had the cord wrapped three times around his neck.  I started to panic, but the doctor took care of it immediately.  She hooked her fingers under the cord, clamped it, and went ahead and cut it.  Then they rushed him over to the warmer to make sure everything was okay.

After they made sure he was all right, they handed me my sweet baby boy.  He was 7 lbs., 7 oz. and 20.5 inches long, and perfect.  :)  And even though I had given birth once already, the second time was just as amazing.  We already love our little man SO much!

And now without further ado, here he is.  Ethan Cyrus Shealy, born April 12, 2012 at 5:04 pm:

An Early Morning Mall Adventure

I am about to go crazy waiting for this baby to decide to come out (he is showing no signs of being so inclined and I am scheduled to be induced next Thursday) so I decided to drag Gemma to Target early this morning to try to find some teeny tiny shorts for her.  The ones she was wearing yesterday (size 12 month) kept literally falling all the way off.  I looked at about a hundred pairs of shorts in Target and left the store with one pair in a size 6 month.  I held up the 9 month pair and they looked ginormous and I will actually be surprised if the 6 month is even small enough for her tiny hiney.  And yes, she will be turning 2 next month and is still wearing 6 month sized pants.

But I decided I had to blog about the rest of our mall adventure (although I'm not sure anyone even reads this blog anymore but oh well) because it just ended up being pretty amusing. 

After looking at every pair of baby and toddler shorts in Target I decided I really wanted a spicy chicken biscuit from Chick Fil A.  (Apparently they do not have spicy chicken biscuits at the Chick Fil A at the mall for some reason, only regular chicken biscuits.  Which I thought was really weird but whatever.)  So we walked out toward the food court.

As we're strolling toward the food court, some old lady randomly walks up to me and says something along the lines of:  "You're not neglecting her when you're taking care of your baby."  In my head I'm like, "Huh?  What the heck are you even talking about?"  So she proceeds to elaborate that someone she knows had two kids really close together and the mom felt like she would be neglecting the older one by taking care of the baby but it was fine because the older one can't even remember not having the younger one around.  At which point I'm like, great story, that's ten minutes of my life I did just spend neglecting my daughter while listening to you ramble.  Thanks.  I am sure she meant well, but it was an interruption I didn't need while being hugely pregnant and wrangling a 2-year-old through the mall.  I also love how since I'm pregnant every woman I see thinks they can (and should) just walk up to me and tell me a) all the gory details of their labor stories and b) their vast knowledge of parenting advice.  I'm not complaining about this - I just think it's odd that so many women interpret a large baby belly as an opportunity to share really personal (and unwanted) information with a perfect stranger. 

Moving on...just outside the food court is a platform with a bunch of those cars that you can ride for a quarter (or in this economy, a handful of quarters).  Gemma immediately makes a beeline to look at the cars (screaming "Car! Car!" the whole way) and she climbs on the ice cream truck.  I dig around in my purse and find one quarter and put it in.  Nothing happens and I don't have any more quarters so I try the coin return which of course doesn't work.  So then the ice cream truck starts screaming loudly in this weird high-pitched voice with a Spanish accent: "YOU HAVE TO PUT MORE QUARTERS IN!" It starts yelling this at me like every 10 seconds and scaring the daylights out of Gemma when it does.  I keep trying to get my quarter back just to make the thing shut up but it just keeps yelling at me so I walk over to Chick Fil A and give the girl all the dimes I can find in my wallet in exchange for two more quarters hoping that's enough to shut the ice cream truck up.  (There of course is no sign anywhere indicating how much it actually costs to ride the thing.)  I haul Gemma back across the food court and stick the two quarters in and apparently 3 is the magic number of quarters because the thing starts lurching around.  And Gemma HATES it.  She actually turns pasty white and starts shaking.  I try to get her to sit down and grab the steering wheel and enjoy it but she's terrified and finally starts crying at which point I rescue her from the scary Hispanic-child-of-the-corn-ice-cream-truck and save the day.  In the end, it cost 75 cents to ride the thing for about 10 seconds and Gemma hated every one of those 10 seconds so it was an extreme fail all the way around.  But I had a good laugh about it later.  And hey, it was 10 seconds where I was too distracted to think about how ready I am for this baby to come out!

Almost Full Term!

Well, I barely made it in to my OB appointment this past Friday.  Thursday night around 2am I woke up feeling terrible and end up vomiting off and on for the rest of the night.  I had caught the lovely virus that Gemma had earlier in the week.  I was so nauseous and shaky that I couldn't get up and wasn't sure if I could make it in to the doctor.  However I was starting to worry that I might need an IV with some fluids because I literally couldn't even get anything down at all, even water.  Then I remembered I still had some of my magical Zofran left from the first trimester.  I choked one down and about an hour later I was still feeling terrible but was feeling well enough to start sipping some fluids and throw on some clothes and head to the doctor.  I had called ahead to tell the office what was going on and they said for me to come on in and if needed, they could do an IV in the office itself rather than the hospital.

As it turns out, I had good news all around at the OB on Friday despite how awful I was feeling.  Since the Zofran had helped significantly, the doctor said to keeping taking it for a bit to fend off the nausea and then slowly rehydrate with some gatorade rather than straight water (yay - no IV!).  My blood work had come back and was showing that my iron was back up to 11 (still borderline, but it means that I can just continue to treat the anemia with the supplement and diet rather than having to have an infusion - yay!).  When she did my internal, I was 1 cm. dilated and 50% effaced (not that that means I'll go into labor anytime soon, but at least something is happening!) and the baby was head down.  (I think all of this is due in part to the fact that I have practically walked my legs off since the last appointment in hopes of encouraging baby & body to better prepare themselves for labor!) I still have an ultrasound this Friday to make sure that he's staying head down since he's still quite mobile despite the lack of room.

And tomorrow he'll officially be full-term.  It won't hurt my feelings if he wants to come on out anytime now.  I'm ready.  Let's do this!

Under four weeks to go...

We (the baby and I) are officially at 36 weeks, 1 day today which means we (hopefully) have less than 4 weeks to go!

I went to the OB this past Friday for a checkup and it ended up being an epic all-day long adventure.  The nurse had almost finished putting all my vitals into the computer when Cy showed up and asked if she had checked my hemoglobin.  (I had totally forgotten to bring it up on my own for some reason.)  The nurse was kind of reluctant and didn't seem to think it was necessary but Cy insisted on it so she did.  It had dropped from 10.2 to 9.0 since my last appointment, which was especially disheartening since I have now been taking an iron supplement for over two weeks and eating tons of red meat (which I don't even like) plus other iron-rich foods.  The doctor spoke with us for a while about this.  She said that a finger stick is often not completely accurate so she ordered some more extensive blood work for me.  I had that done yesterday so hopefully we will find out some results this Friday at my next appointment.  She said that if my hemoglobin is in fact that low I will probably need to see a hematologist and have an iron infusion via IV.  I am not excited about this at all of course but I guess I would way rather have an infusion than have to have a transfusion.  I have really been trying to eat even more iron-rich foods since my appointment.  I am really hoping I can boost it enough to avoid any sort of "fusions" but nothing I do seems to be working.  So we will see about that.

I had my first internal exam and no dilation yet but she said it is "very soft" whatever that even means.  While she was doing the exam, she couldn't seem to figure out the position of the baby so she ordered an ultrasound.  We sat for a while and waited for that, then did the ultrasound to discover that the baby is transverse (sideways).  This was totally unexpected as Gemma was head down by at least 33 or 34 weeks if not earlier.  Bummer.  So then we had to go back and talk to the doctor some more about that.

The doctor walked us through all the options.  She said that the baby still has room and time to turn on his own so one option is to just see how things go.  Another option would be to go ahead and have a version (I'm assuming she meant an ECV and not ICV but she did mention I would need an epidural for it which totally freaked me out).  She said that ideally, versions are performed around 36 or 37 weeks when there is still some room to turn the baby.  However, there are risks to the baby (with the cord, placenta, etc.) and there is no guarantee the baby won't just immediately flip back.  Cy and I both thought it was a no-brainer to pass on this.  The doctor agreed and ordered another ultrasound for Fri. Mar. 23 (between 37-38 weeks).  If he is still transverse by 39 weeks, the doctor suggested coming in for a version then and if the version is successful, they will immediately induce labor and if it is not successful they will be prepped for a C-section (which they would want to do at 39 weeks anyway).  This would cut down the risk factor for the baby since he would be coming out immediately after the version one way or another.  Also should mention at this point that the placenta is anterior (directly in front) which will make it harder to turn the baby.  Of course the decision is ultimately up to us and we aren't sure what to do but for now we are just waiting to see if the little guy will flip on his own.

We eventually made it out of the OB's office and now everything is pretty much just a waiting game (which is how pregnancy always is anyway).  :)

In other news, poor sweet little Gemma is sick yet again with another nasty tummy bug.  She has been throwing up off and on for the past couple of days.  I really hope she will be well soon and that she can stay well for a while now.  She needs to get better so that she is healthy and ready to meet her brother!

Leap Day Fun at the SC Aquarium

Yesterday Nana came down for the morning and we headed to the aquarium.  This is only the second time Gemma has been (well, plus a trip to Ripley's in Myrtle Beach) and it has been quite a while so I knew she would enjoy it much more this time now that she is so much more aware of everything.  Also, she is pretty much obsessed with the movie Finding Nemo right now, so I knew she would love getting to see some real fish.  As soon as we walked into the main level, she immediately ran to one of the big tanks and started yelling: "Water! Water!"  She was SO excited!  (She even tried to kiss some of the fish through the glass a couple of times.)

 

We saw tons of really cool fish and birds and LOTS of water (which was apparently very exciting) and Gemma even got to pet a tiny baby alligator!  (I didn't get a great picture of this because she pulled away pretty quickly - she obviously wasn't too sure about the whole alligator-petting-thing.)

I tried to get some cute pictures of Gemma while we were there.  Unfortunately there was this really obnoxious lady who kept cutting in front of people in line and elbowing her way to the front of the exhibits so no one else could see, so wouldn't you just know that the second I have Gemma posed for a super cute picture on the sea turtle, Obnoxious Lady would show up and just plop her kid down right in the picture, totally not caring that she was ruining it?

When we were finished looking at all the water inside the aquarium, we enjoyed looking at a bunch more water in the harbor.  Gemma and I posed for a picture together on a bench next to a large, strange frog.  (I'm trying to love this picture for how cute and sweet Gemma is all cuddled up with me while ignoring how large and gross I look.  I am really not sure I can survive 5+ more weeks of being pregnant - I have already been going nuts for about the past month.)

 

Gemma had so much fun at the aquarium.  I am hoping to get a family membership for us sometime soon although I figured I might as well wait a bit as I really don't see myself hauling Gemma and the newborn around downtown for a while.  But we will see.  Anyway, it was a fun outing for us yesterday, especially since we haven't left the house much lately since we've all been sick off and on for about the past month.