30 Weeks 4 Days

I had my 30 week OB appointment today. It went well. I measured where I should this time (yay!), it looks like I have gained 2 more pounds (up a total of 3 pounds from my 10 week appointment), and Charlie's heartrate was good! I asked my doctor about delivering given my pelvic fractures 4 years ago and she wanted me to call the ortho doc to get their approval. My ortho doc is gone now, but I called a friend (my IV nurse who works in the same area where I was admitted when we had the car accident), and she talked to one of the docs, they pulled up my records (with my permission) and x-rays and he said I should be fine to deliver the good old-fashioned way. Sounds good to me.

My uncle is a high risk OB, and we saw him over the weekend. I had asked him what he thought about the possibility of reinjuring my pelvis, and he said it's not likely, that whether the baby's head would fit through the pelvis is another story. No one is going to know that until I'm pushing and we see if he will fit. If he won't, I'll end up having a c-section emergently which will suck because I will have gone through however long in labor and tried to push for however long it takes for us to determine he's not coming out, but c-sections don't scare me otherwise. My biggest concern is that if I can't push him out and he gets stressed, the risk of him stooling in utero and then possible meconium aspiration. Or decels from his head getting mashed into my pelvis but not being able to fit through. Funny, c-sections don't worry me, but I really will not be on board with a vacuum or forceps delivery. Guess it goes back to knowing too much.

My next OB appointment is in 2 weeks!!!! So excited, these more frequent appointments mean that the end is in sight and we will finally get to meet this little boy we've waited and tried for 3 years for again!

Other things that are on my mind-Thanksgiving. Seriously-I'm doing that 30 days of Thanksgiving thing on Face.book and I had already posted this morning about being thankful for the internet so I can shop for the baby without going to a million places looking for that one particular thing. Otherwise, I would have been thankful for the times I haven't thrown up in public this pregnancy (yes, it was in the privacy of my own home this morning), for the fact that this pregnancy has gone more smoothly (so far) than my pregnancy with Jack. Thankful to whoever thought of making pantiliners so I only had to change my shirt this morning and not all of my clothes (damn stress incontinence). And thankful for the easy and sweet child God blessed us with almost 5 years ago after our first IVF cycle. That little boy is going to make some woman very happy some day. He really will. He compliments all the time, he encourages when it's needed, he goes running to get me paper towels or a bucket to throw up in when I need it and his dad isn't around, and today while I was laying on the table in the OB office and she was measuring me, he came over, put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a sweet kiss.

I know the first part of my thanksgiving topic was sort of humorous, but seriously, I have so much to be thankful for. We both have jobs while we have friends who are finding themselves in tough situations with only one working at the moment, or neither working at all and looking for work. We have a loving family who cares about us, helps us, and are actively involved in Jack's life and will be in Charlie's as well. I can't even begin to tell you how important that is to me. That Jack is making memories with both sets of grandparents that will last a lifetime. He got to know his great-grandmother some and will remember that, and he sees my grandfather (on my mom's side) and his wife a couple of times a year too. I wish we were closer to my husband's brother and his family, but his neice and nephew are in high school, and it's hard no doubt between their schedules and the difference in ages for them to really get on Jack's level, but he does know them and sees them a couple of times a year. I wish my sister lived closer so he could have a closer relationship with her. Jack talks to her on the phone, and I'm waiting for her to download the Tango app so they can see each other and talk by phone (skype caused problems with my computer so I uninstalled it). And she plans on coming out when Charlie is born to get to know him and to spend time with Jack, so there is that. We see her every couple of years, sometimes more often, just depends on what's going on with everyone.

Another thing I can't stop thinking about is tomorrow!!! I know, you're thinking, um, it's Friday which is great and all, but so what? We have our 4D ultrasound tomorrow! It's the little things, come on! We didn't have one done with Jack (we wanted to, but the only places I could find near us were about $400 and we were pretty strapped), but we had lots of pictures of his profile, hands, legs, feet, boy parts, etc., from his 20 week ultrasound. With Charlie, we got his profile and his face...that's it. And we have all the furniture and baby gear (for the most part) that we need for Charlie, so we want to do this, and it's MUCH cheaper now than it was then for the ultrasound. My mom and my in-laws are going with us and I'm so happy for that too. We didn't invite them to any ultrasounds with Jack and until this point, also hadn't invited them for any of Charlie's. Kind of like with Jack's delivery we wanted it to be our last moments together as a couple before we welcomed our little boy into the world and became a family of 3. My mom really wanted to be in the delivery room with Jack, and I probably would have let her stay, but I wasn't willing to hurt feelings and make my mother-in-law go out of the room and my mom stay. I wasn't as close to my in-laws at that point as I am now, and I think alot of that has to do with Jack being here and it just bringing us all together more. For the record, my father-in-law was in the waiting room while I labored and delivered (our mom's were in the room for the later part of labor, and outside the door during delivery) because he had the flu. He didn't get to meet Jack until he was a week old.

This time we've said my mom and his mom can be in the delivery room, but they have to stay up by my head. And if things hit the fan and the baby has problems or I have problems, they need to stay cool-Archie will need it, and I will need all of it. My father-in-law gets Jack duty. They are allowed to stay in the room while I labor so long as I'm comfortable. Jack's really sensitive, and I don't want him to be traumatized by watching me be in pain, so when things start to get going more, they will go to the waiting room. I'm hoping that I won't have worked all night and then go into labor like I did with Jack. I'd like to not be witchy like I was when we went to the hospital for my water breaking. I was fine through triage, and then we went to our L&D room and the first thing Archie did after putting down our bags was start to pull out the recliner. I was in back labor. Those two things weren't going together and if I wasn't going to be sleeping after working a 12 hour shift, he sure as heck wasn't going to be either. My attitude didn't get better until 2 hours later when I finally asked for the epidural at a whole...2cm dilated, LOL. Yeah, I'm serious, the back labor was ridiculous and I was contracting 1.5 minutes apart, and I was exhausted from working all night. I got the epidural and then my contractions spaced out and I ended up needing pitocin. I was more relaxed after the epidural which is good because my mom kept calling to see if she should leave work, or leave her work's holiday lunch yet, LOL. She was so excited.

I think my in-laws were happy to be invited to come to the ultrasound tomorrow. We're all going to lunch afterwards. We weren't sure if Jack was going to go with us or not since Friday is a normal school day for him, but complicating matters is that his school is having their Thanksgiving Feast tomorrow. I really didn't want him to miss that, and to be honest, I didn't realize that school would be doing that until two weeks ago, and I made the ultrasound appointment two months ago. I secretly wanted him to come to the ultrasound, but I wasn't going to force him to do one over the other. I looked into it, and I can get a DVD made of the ultrasound session, so I told him that we were going to see Charlie on the TV again, and that if he wanted to go he could, but if he didn't that was ok. I told him that he was having a Thanksgiving Feast at school at the same time, and wouldn't be able to do both. I assured him he wouldn't be missing anything if he decided to go to school and enjoy the festivities with his friends, and we would bring home a video of Charlie for him to watch on our TV after school. For the better part of last week he was going to go to school which was fine. But yesterday he told us he wants to go see Charlie. I again told him I could bring him home the movie of Charlie to watch on our TV if he wants to go to school, but he is insistent that he wants to see Charlie. I have to admit that I'm kind of happy!

I will try to post pictures from our ultrasound tomorrow, but with the appointment being at 10:30am, and going to lunch afterwards and the place being almost an hour from us, it's not likely. I have to work tomorrow night and will have to nap when I get home, but if I'm all fired up with excitement when we come home, I'll do it before I lay down!