What a Week

So I know it has been a while since I updated, so I thought I would sit down and let you guys know what has been going on. I had my last doctors appointment on May 14th and it went really well. They did the 20 week sonogram and said that everything looks really good. They baby seems to be growing the way it is supposed to and they said it didn't look like the baby had any kind of defects (as far as they can tell from what they saw). They also confirmed that it is for sure with out a doubt a girl. As far as the actual doctors appointment went I still have not gained any weight, which is AWESOME!!! My blood pressure was also fantastic, it was 110/74. The doctor was very happy that it was down, unfortunately he didn't seem very optimistic that it would stay down. He said that at about the 20 week mark is when every pregnant woman's blood pressure is at its lowest, so he is anticipating that it will be going back up and that bed rest in inevitable it is just a matter of when. Kaylin and Jon went with me to my doctors appointment and Kaylin got to see the baby during the sonogram, which she was excited about for like 1 minute and then she lost interest. All in all it was a pretty good appointment. He also said that I didn't have to come back for another 4 weeks instead of the 2 weeks that we had been doing.

As far as the rest of the week went it kind of stunk. My great grandmother passed away on Tuesday night (May 13th), they said she went in her sleep so it wasn't like she was in pain or anything like that which was nice to know. We had her visitation here in Arlington at Moore funeral home on Friday and her funeral was in Amarillo on Saturday. It was a sad week but it was also a happy week.

Getting Better

So I went to the doctors office on Tuesday. My blood pressure was okay, not great but it is definitely getting better! It was 126/90, like I said not great but getting better. The doctor did ask me if there was anyway that my job could put me in a position to where I would be sitting instead of standing all day. I told him that I didn't think that was possible and he said that may be something we will have to look more closely at in the coming weeks. My weight has been an interesting subject this time. When I was pregnant with Kaylin, I was gaining weight like no other. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't keep from gaining weight. Well this time I have not gained any weight, I have actually lost weight. And it seems like I will be all baby this time which will be AWESOME!!! I am feeling the baby move now which is fantastic, now it just needs to get a little bigger so that Kaylin and Jon can feel it move. I go back to the doctor in two weeks and they will do a sonogram/check-up and we will see if my doctor thinks it is a girl. I am holding out hope that maybe it is a boy. A girl can dream can't she. Jon's not as optomistic as I am which is out of the ordinary for us, usually he is the optomistic one. We will keep everyone updated though as soon as we find out anymore information.

Oh NO!

On Monday at my doctors appointment things did not go so well. I was feeling fantastic however my blood pressure was up, it was 158/102. So the doctor increased my blood pressure medication and told me that I would have to come back to visit him in two weeks. So my next appointment is going to be on April 29th and if my blood pressure is still high then they will be changing my blood pressure medication. Dr. Atkins is really wanting to get my blood pressure under control before I start the second half of my pregnancy. He is trying to prevent me from having to go on bed rest and hopefully it will work. Jon and I are trying to be optimistic but it is hard when we have already been through this before.

The Specialist

So today I had my doctors appointment with my high risk specialist. The doctor talked to me about why they are worried about my blood pressure being so high. He also explained to me what numbers were okay when it came to blood pressure. He didn't actually check my blood pressure since I am going to the doctors office on Monday. He did do a sonogram and said that the baby looked good and that the baby was the size that it is supposed to be, it looked to be about six ounces. They gave me a couple of pictures, that I will try to get on this blog as soon as I can find the wires that go to our scanner. So now the question that people keep asking me and are dying to know......Did we find out what we are having? Yes we did and........


It's a GIRL!

That's right another girl. Kaylin is going to have a little sister. So now for the next question what will her name be... well after a lot of condsideration I have decided to let Jon be the one to pick out her name. We were both hoping for a boy and I had told Jon that if it was a boy that he would be able to pick out the baby bedding and the baby name. So now that we have found out its a girl Jon will be naming her and I will be picking out her bedding. Now there is always a chance that the doctor could have been wrong and it could end up being a boy but the baby's legs were spread wide open and the doctor said it's a girl, there is nothing in between those legs. So my next sonogram will be around 18/20 weeks and we will see at that point if they still think its a girl. So here is what Jon has decided out new little girls name is going to be...



Lauren James Anderson

Now if for some reason we find out in a couple of weeks that the specialist was wrong and that it is a boy his name will be Graham Riley Anderson. The names we picked weren't necessarily the most popular out of the ones that we had everyone vote on but these were the ones that we liked. Now I know some of you are wondering why in the world we would pick the name James to be a girls middle name, here's why. James is a family name both for the Anderson's and the Armstrong's. I had a great-grandfather who died my second year of college who I absolutely adored his name was James, my grandfather who I also love dearly is named James. Jon's grandfather who is very ill at the moment is named James and it is also one of my brother in-laws middle names. Like I said it is a family name that we would like to pass down to our child. So we want to thank everyone for their prayers and ask that you continue to pray for us as we prepare for our new little one.

NOT SO GOOD

Okay, so I had my doctors appointment and it didn't go very well. They took my blood pressure and it was 180/110. YIKES! It ended up going down but only to 160/100. So, they have decided to send me to a high risk pregnancy specialist. I will still go to my regular OB but I will also see the new doctor too. They have also put me on some medication as well. So now for the good news (I guess), the doctor thinks that my blood pressure issue may be something that is not pregnancy related. He said that when you have pregnancy induced hypertension (fancy words for high blood pressure), it usually doesn't effect your blood pressure until later on it the pregnancy. He thinks that I have an underlying blood pressure issue that I have had all along that has just not been diagnosed. So hopefully we will get it under control and I won't have to go through the months of bed rest again. My next appointment is April 9 with the specialist and April 14 with my OB. Kaylin went with me to the doctors office and she did pretty good until they got out the little machine to listen to the baby's heart beat. She started crying and telling the doctor not to hurt mommies baby. It was very sweet. The doctor and I were laughing at her because she really thought that he was going to hurt me and the baby. Needless to say she won't be going back to the doctor with me for a while. The baby's heart beat was 169. I would like to ask that you all please keep us in your prayers. If we have to go through all the stuff we went through with Kaylin it will be a long and hard pregnancy, and most definitely the last. Thanks.

My Goal

Okay my goal for this pregnancy is to keep everyone up to speed on this website. So I am going to try to blog every time I go to the doctor and let everyone know what happened at my appointments and such. So here we go:

My first appointment was on February 12, they did a sonogram and found out that I was 7 weeks and 3 days, so not quite 8 weeks. They told me that my due date would be September 27th. I know another September birthday for the Anderson/Armstrong families, as if we didn't already have enough. For those of you who aren't family members we have 6 (one of those is Jon's best friend, so he's not blood family but family still), and we are adding in number 7.

I will pause here to add, before I had gone to the doctor I had been having dreams that I was having twins, and Kaylin kept insisting that mommy was having two babies not one. The sonogram technician said that there was only one baby in there, praise God, I don't think I could handle two newborns and a 3 year old.

So the sonogram technician said everything appeared to be okay and she was able to let me listen to the heartbeat and is was 152. It didn't really look like a baby, it was more or less a little blob. After my sonogram I went back to the doctors area and they checked my weight (and no I don't know what it was, I didn't want to know what it was, I think if I start gaining too much weight the doctor will politely say something but he didn't seem to have an issue with where I was starting out at) and they also checked my blood pressure. My BP was 116/70 which was fantastic! Then I went into his office and we had a little chat about my pregnancy with Kaylin and the issue I had with her. He told me that since I had BP problems last time that started around 20 weeks that we would start doing appointments every two weeks once I hit the 20 week mark, unless I have issues before then. He also told me that if I have BP problems then we would automatically do a C-section again but, if I don't have BP problems then I could possibly deliver naturally.

Now let me pause again to say that, a part of me would love to deliver naturally just to have the experience but...I will be doing another c-section. With Jon and I both working full time and having Kaylin it is just easier for us to know exactly what day this baby will be here. Plus, as my mother-in-law so wonderfully put it, people don't win awards for going through labor and to me it just seems like it would be easier to just do the c-section to begin with and not go through the laboring (like I did last time) and then end up having to doing an emergency c-section.

So after my little chat with Dr. Atkins, he did the rest of my exam and said everything seemed to be going well. I went and had my blood work done and went home feeling fantastic (aside from the nausea and vomiting). Unfortunately that didn't last....I had to go back to the doctor two days later because I was bleeding and cramping.

Come to find out I am Rh negative, which in the back of my mind I knew I had negative blood but at the same time kind of forgot. They did another exam and sonogram and everything looked great. The baby's heartbeat was 159 and I wasn't showing any signs of miscarriage (which is what I was worried about). The just gave me a shot and put me on some restrictions, which I've done pretty good with. So my next appointment is tomorrow March 10 and I will let you all know what the doctor says. Kaylin is going with me to my appointment so she can hear the baby's heartbeat and I hope she does okay and doesn't freak out.

By the way overall, this pregnancy has gone better than it did with Kaylin. I have been sick but not as sick, if you asked Jon he would say it is just as bad but what do men know. I have been extremely exhausted which I don't remember from last time but I also wasn't working 40 hours a week at a job where I stood all the time and I didn't have a two year old to take care of on top of that. All in all, I must say that this has been a somewhat pleasant experience up to this point and I hope it continues to go that way. And for all of you who are wondering what Jon and I are hoping for, we really would like to have a boy but seeing as we don't really get a say in it we will be happy with whatever God has chosen to give us.

BIG NEWS!!!

So as some of you have already heard we are going to be having another baby!!! I am 8 weeks and 2 days today. The baby will be coming in September. We are very excited that we are finally able to tell everyone that we are expecting again. It has been a rough year of trying and some loss but we know God has everything under control and that he has a plan and a purpose for everything.

Kaylin is doing really well so far with the idea of there being a new baby. Everyday she askes if she can see the baby and she doesn't understand that she can't see it right now. I told her that mommy would bring home a picture for her to see on Tuesday after I have my appointment. Our biggest concern about having another baby was having Kaylin potty trained before the new baby came and that is one less thing we have to worry about. Yes that is correct our two and half year old is fully potty trained. She sleeps in her underwear at night with no problem and it has happened soon enough into this pregnancy that I don't think there will be any backstepping when the baby comes. She is pretty funny when it comes to talking about baby stuff. Before we found out that I was pregnant I was talking to Kaylin and asked her if she wanted mommy to have another baby and she said yes, so then I asked her if she wanted mommy to have a baby boy or a baby girl and she said "No baby turtle!". I thought that was just the cutest thing!

Also, we were in the car on our way home from eating dinner on Friday night and we asked Kaylin what she wanted to name the baby and she just said "Um....., booger". Jon and I started laughing and said you want to name the baby in mommy's tummy booger and she said "No the baby in Kaylins tummy...Booger." It's amazing how since mommy has a baby in her tummy now she thinks she has one in her tummy too. She told me the other day that her tummy hurt and I asked her if she felt sick and she said " No baby in tummy!" It has been very cute so far and we can't wait to see how everything goes for the next 7 months.

Keep tuning in regularly and we will try to keep you updated with every appointment we have!