I haven’t forgotten about my blog. I have just been a busy bee. Reid and I had an appointment on Tuesday, July 24th and she is rapidly growing as she measures 2 weeks ahead to 25 weeks and has a heart rate of 140 bpm. She has for sure made herself visible over the past month…as I have ballooned. I’ve gained 18lbs total (by 23 weeks) which I am super ok about because I gained 400,000 lbs with Hill. Old black ladies are always around to let me know, “Oh girl! You sure are showing now, it happened over night! But it’s only in your stomach and your butt!” Truth hurts, truth hurts.
Reid, who was not as active in utero as early on as Hill was, has totally made up for lost time. She must have dewclaws of a dragon because as she does her alligator spins she manages to scrape my lower lady parts. It’s not that fun. I can sit on the couch and Chip and Hill can see her flip and poke and watch her disfigure my stomach to look like a hunch stomach… she spends most of her time on my right upper side. I attribute this to having more space on my right side as I don’t have a gallbladder. I know that is ridiculous to say but when I got my gallbladder removed in 1999 I’ve always felt like I have had empty space there (even though I know my organs shifted and filled in that gap). So Reid has now taken comfort in my gallbladder gap.
We go back to Dr. North on August 17th and will have the 3D or 4D sonogram – the one where you can see their alien-istic features. We are looking for cleft lip and if she opens her mouth, like the alligator she is, then maybe we can check out the palate. Pray for palate viewing! I’ve read that statistically just cleft palate is more prominent in girls. Cleft lip and palate is more prominent in boys. But you can’t believe 63% of all the statistics you read so I just stress over the worst case scenario….because that’s just what I do. I’m a spastic mom. I fear that we get over the worry and all being well then she comes out and her palate is cleft meaning a multitude of scenarios in this tiny brain of mine that processes bad things at lightning speed. If she has a cleft palate then she has to use the haberman bottle which is a special feeding bottle. Which milk will come out her nose, which daycare can’t handle special needs children, which I’d have to quit my job. She wouldn’t have her first surgery until 9 months then potentially multiple surgeries and speech therapy for years to follow.
I know that it would be new territory / obstacle, but when we found out Hill had a cleft I hashed out any and every scenario to anyone that would listen….even to my blog readers who actually chose to listen. A local friend of mine has a daughter that was born with a cleft palate and I remember her being so nonchalant about the whole thing. She said something along the lines of, it’s just something you learn to live with and it doesn’t change anything. She’s fine now and had to have another surgery a year or two ago and she’s in grade school. I remember being like??? I know she worried for her daughter but after having Hill and going through surgeries I understand now what she meant and how she was so nonchalant. It's a big deal, one of the hardest most emotional times of my life. It seemed so intangible to be this grounded once finding out that your child has a deformity. So, I know that should Reid have something wrong we will cope with it and it will be as if we didn’t know any different. I just like to panic and make up nonexistent scenarios.
So as if that wasn’t mentally stressful enough…I will have my glucose test on the 17th. I will never forget when I had my glucose test with Hill. I drank the flat Sunkist orange drink and started geeking out like 30 minutes afterwards. I was driving and Chip was with me. I remember being at the turn signal to turn into the doctors’ office and telling Chip he should probably drive. Chip was like, “What? Why? Are you serious, you can’t make it 10 feet?” I really didn’t know that I could…but I did... only to not seem ridiculous to Chip. I felt like Shelby, Julia Roberts’ character in Steel Magnolias, needing orange juice to prevent a diabetic coma. I will be sure to take a snack this go round for afterwards to absorb all my geeked-out-ness. So pray for no gestational diabetes. Mostly pray for no cleft lip or cleft palate, but a big no to gestational diabetes would be nice too if you find the time. Thanks.
Why have I been so busy you ask? Well I got into this crazy pregnant state of mind where in my nesting preplanning I couldn’t figure out what to do with the stuff that’s currently in Reid’s room. I decided that I needed a bigger house. One with a play room so I didn’t have to clean up toys EVERY day. One with more space so I can put stuff…not sure what kind of stuff, just stuff. One that had an extra bedroom for the 4 times a year that guests come spend the night. Chip jumped on my bandwagon and so we went online to see what was for sale in the Land of Koz. We’d found a house we liked but since we LOVE LOVE LOVE our house - - we didn’t feel like we wanted to just be silly and have to renovate this potential new bigger house to meet our requirements….because that is more costly and not financially savvy. The realtor was at a loss because she usually has her customers call me to work out what is financially best for them. Myself as an analyst and my husband as a financial planner can make positive decisions all day long for others but seem to second guess ourselves when it comes to our own actions. Ridiculous I know. We just wanted someone to tell us what to do, we over analyzed the entire thing.
Chip’s qualm with the bigger house was the kitchen. We currently have commercial grade ovens and stoves in our kitchen and he’s the cook so I give him full rein to make those decisions. He decided in order to make it work in the bigger house he’d have to add a gas range and an outdoor kitchen. My hold up was the bathrooms. There were 4 bathrooms but only one bathtub. The bathtub was in the master bathroom but there were 2 problems with that. A) It’s a garden tub in the master…no shower. Weird, so no shower in master won’t work for us we’d have to renovate. B) have you ever tried to bathe a baby in a garden tub that’s elevated? It’s impossible unless you get in there with them or have go go gadet arms. Then there were petty little things here and there that I’d want to change, so by the end of everything and the seller being super nice and working with us in every way…we walked away from their final counter offer. I will say that we looked forward to potentially living in that specific neighborhood with such special neighbors, but really I have zero regrets. My only regret was the stress I put on Reid, and my marriage, that caused contractions so horrendous that while I tried to relax in a hot bath that I thought I was going to have a water birth right then and there at 22 weeks. This, if we did buy the bigger house having doctors next door on each side of me could have been beneficial in that scenario.
It’s been a week now since we decided against the house and just last night Hill told me he didn’t want to move. He likes his toys. When we’d look at the house he really liked that there were tons of stairs in the bigger house, but when I asked him which room he wanted he said he wanted to keep his room at home. I think he thought he’d have to move into someone else’s room without his stuff. Poor noggin’. I know we’ve made the right decision. There are a few tweaks we may make to our house but we absolutely LOVE our house – like a ton. Yet should another “bigger house” come available now Chip and I know exactly what we would require to make it happen. I do have to say one thing…. I am one hell of a negotiator.
Sweet Hill had his open house on Thursday the 26th. His teachers will be Mrs. Lisa and Mrs. Trista. Since Hill started daycare in June of 2010, Trista has been an assistant teacher through 4 of his 6 classes. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Mrs. Lisa so we are super stoked for like 10,000 reasons. Mostly because he has good teachers, but mainly that in this new class he will have lesson units and learn new stuff each day, they get to color every day and have story book time where the teacher reads. Ugh, it’s like a huge fabulous wonderful transition. The one I’ve been waiting for since June 2010. Hill is a big nerd like his mama and daddy. He gets home from school and wants to play flashcards and do ABC things and count and learn new words and read books and help us cook…he needs stimulation and wants to be a big helper in all he does. He doesn’t much care to play 24-7 unless it’s educational and I can’t argue with that! Last year he did have Ms. Shonda and she was the epitome of wonderful and really worked with Hill in colors and arts and abc’s and potty training, she recognized his need for stimulation. This year it’s like school where they will have lesson plans taught to them, so I’m anxious to see how it pans out. He has a good group of kiddos in his class. One of them being Baylie who has a new baby sister too.
I took Baylie’s family dinner the other day and I could not believe how sweet and tiny little Laney is. I always say when I see tiny babies that “Hill was never this small!” - - and he wasn’t! He came out a whopper of 9lbs 1 oz and Laney was 6lbs something. Three pounds is a lot when you are dealing with little people. I hope Hill is as good a big brother as Baylie is a good big sister. This weekend Hill told me he wanted to hold his baby. His baby Reid. It was absolutely adorable comment and I wanted to take Reid out and hand her over to him. Sickeningly weird mental visual, but over-all precious precious thought. I hope he loves her when she gets here. He’s such a mama’s boy and I just want us to be one big happy Hawkins. He sure knows how to get me. All he has to do is tell me he wants to snuggle “nuggle” and I drop everything…every time…nuggling is my weakness, my kryptonite. Or he just has to ask me in his happy tiny person voice “Eww want to pay whit me?” (you want to play with me?) or “Eww lay whit me in my big boy bed?” or “Eww come check on me in a minute?” or pretty much any words that come out of his mouth get me. He’s so independent and hilarious that anytime he wants me to do something I ask him how high he wants me to jump while doing it. I just want to eat him up all the time. I’m no “pom pom mom”, but I do think I would do most anything for him….at age 2, at least. Ask me again in a couple years.
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