Sinking in...

I think I am still in shock that it's a girl.

For everyone who couldn't see anything...I made a labeled picture.

The ultrasound tech said that she is fairly certain it's a girl since we saw 3 lines and no sign of a penis anywhere.

Obviously in the little circle on the ultrasound photo there is not a penis poking up!

Since we only got a glimpse of it though, we are going back the day after Thanksgiving. Hopefully the baby will be in a different position and we can get a better look at all of her parts, especially in between the legs!

I'm so excited about having two little girls! They will have so much fun together. Rosie will love having someone to argue with, and play dress up and dolls with, and when she gets older she will have a sister close in age to go through life with.

We do have a couple names in mind, but I don't think I want to share them anytime soon.

Last time we made the mistake of sharing Rosie's name with family because we were excited.

MIL insisted that Rose Mae sounded like a stripper's name. She also said that Rosie would hate us because she was named after Rosie O'Donnell and all the kids would make fun of her.

Yeah, sure.

Actually she's named after my great-grandma who I loved dearly. And Tyler chose the name!

Then once Rosie was born they all came to the hospital and wouldn't leave...they stayed for the entire day after Rosie was born and never let me hold her or gave me a second alone to nurse her or get up out of bed and pee...It was horrible. I had lost a lot of blood and felt too weak to insist that they leave or to insist they give me my baby back, and Tyler kept thinking if he ignored them and fell asleep they would take a hint and leave. But really...they don't take hints.

And of course while they were there they kept reminding us since we had yet to sign the birth certificate it wasn't too late to pick a better name.

Seriously, who has the balls to say that??

It's not as if we were naming her Orangello or something.

I can't even describe how rude and inconsiderate it felt.

So, based on that, we are terrified to share any name choices.

MIL asks about it in a sing-song voice all the time. She already tried to grill Rosie on the baby's name more than once. Tyler's Granny has already made numerous suggestions. She thinks we should name the baby Katie Jordan, and she continues to suggest it over and over.

Um...no thanks.

I'm so thankful that my family doesn't care. If we name the baby the strangest name in the world they would still go along with it.

We can't seem to find any name we love that goes well with our last name. Amos doesn't sound good with ANYTHING! There is either an A sound or an S sound messing up the flow of the name. So I have given up. I'm not going to worry about the first and last name sounding good together...it's ruining the names Tyler and I want to use! And my daughter will probably get married one day and change her last name anyway...

I will give you a hint and tell you that her initials *might* be AMA.

Maybe.

Mhm.

Tyler wants to name her after his Grandma, but her first name is Frieda and...I just can't do it. It doesn't feel like this baby's name. So we are using her middle name for the baby's middle name. It's not a name I would have ever considered, but I do love his grandma and I like the idea that Rosie is named for my great-grandma and this baby would carry the memory of Tyler's Grandma.(His Grandma is not the same person as his Granny, just to be clear...)

Rosie loves it when we use the iMac to take pictures of my belly. The Mac photos are a reflection just like when you take a picture in the bathroom mirror.

She wanted to take pictures yesterday. So I guess these are 18 week pictures!

We're home from the ultrasound and...

We're home after eating lunch out.

My baby is cute.

<3

Head and a hand:

Sucking the thumb:

Profile with the mouth open:

Top of the head and face, arms on the sides. You can see stuff floating in the amniotic fluid.

The baby was just relaxing in there and waving fingers up and down.

Still shots from the short video:

That thing on the left side of the face is the umbilical cord.

Here is a shot of in between the legs:

What do you see?

Well apparently all you see is a big fat umbilical cord!

The cord is wrapped around the knee and looped down in front of the crotch area, then it goes upwards across the face to the placenta located above baby's head.

Yep.

My baby has an umbilical cord.

So finally the baby kicked the cord off of the leg...

And put a hand over the crotch.

And held it there.

For a very, very, very long time.

A very long time.

I got up and moved, squished my belly around, jumped up and down, etc.

Then we checked again.

This is what we saw:

A baby!

Not just any baby, but my stubborn baby laying so that from no angle possible you can see between the legs.

But...

Then the baby rolled over for one split second and there was a flash of...

This.

An odd angle. You can't see the legs, there are just nubs where the legs should be due to the ultrasound angle.

So do you see it?

Yes? No? Maybe so?

Well if not...

Here's the same picture with a little clarification!

!!!!!!!!!!

11/13/09

Two things.

1) I finally met the new neighbors. (Well they've been here quite a few months now, I guess technically they aren't exactly new anymore. But they aren't the old neighbors, so they are new.)

Downside: I haven't showered in eternity, I look like I have a huge beer belly, and I was wearing glasses and no makeup. Oh and I have horrifying pimples. The neighbor is around my age, which makes it a bit more embarrassing.

Upside: He is extremely friendly. He thinks the chickens are funny and said not to worry if they hop into his yard. Told him about the anonymous complainer and he said it definitely is not them and they think the chickens are interesting and like them. His dog is named Rosie. And he volunteers at the local animal shelter and loves all kinds of animals, he's especially passionate about rescuing dogs. He asked me a lot of questions about my rescued dogs! He is the type of person I would click with and spend time chatting and hanging out with.

So this made my day.

Now thing #2.

Ultrasound is tomorrow morning. I have butterflies of nerves and excitement! I'm not going to be able to sleep.

The ultrasound is at 11 in the morning. Rosie and Tyler are going.

I can't announce the sex of the baby though, because Tyler wants to wait until Thanksgiving to tell his relatives. We'll see if we can make it to Thanksgiving without it slipping out. I'll announce it on my blog after Thanksgiving.

I'm telling my family right away.

Can you believe it's TOMORROW.

Surreal, I keep telling you.

Not only is it a real live baby, but it has a beating heart. And now it kicks. Next thing you know it's going to have sex organs. Then it will have a name, and a personality, and and and...

It will be REAL.

Wow.

I'm going to lay in bed and watch Food Inc. It finally came from Netflix yesterday, I'm excited to see it. Hopefully it will be distracting.

Mhm.

I'm so thrilling lately. I have nothing of interest to write about, but at the same time I like to write just for myself so that when I look back a few years from now I can remember how I was feeling and what was going on. Even though right now nothing seems significant, you never know how it will all piece together and turn out in the end.

Mhm.

I made major progress on the trashed house front today. Don't get me wrong--it's still a disaster. But I organized the mountain of dirty laundry! That took a long time. I now have blue jeans, bright colors/Rosie's clothes, solid white things that I am going to bleach to death because Tyler has stained them with mud (dog feet) and god knows what else...have to resort to bleach because I can't afford to throw them away and just buy new ones. Sorry environment...? And I also have a pile of dark clothes. This totals about 943 million loads. Today I folded and put away two huge loads and there are clothes in the wash right now and clothes in the dryer.

I also cleaned out Rosie's room and our bedroom. It's horrifying how trash can collect when I am not picking it up everyday. I've been sick for almost four months now.

Then I vacuumed, because well...the Feline Pine cat litter did not work out as planned. It's like saw dust. Saw dust that sticks to cat fur. My ENTIRE house (all hardwood) has been coated in pine shavings.

*sigh*

I got a great measure of satisfaction sucking that all up with the vacuum cleaner hose.

(See how thrilling my life is? I told you.)

Tomorrow my goals are to take a shower, do more laundry, and call the OB's office and request a copy of my records so that I can go over them with the (homebirth) midwife on the 18th. I also need to get my hospital records and Rosie's hospital records from her birth. I keep forgetting to call and ask them!

I am having major chicken issues. They have all taught each other how to climb the fence.

So frustrated.

Very, very, very pregnant hormonally angry and frustrated.

Tyler is refusing to help me fix their pen or their coop, or help me clip their wings. Of course.

I am considering hiring someone to build a walk in pen with a roof. I'm not sure how much it would cost, but I know it wouldn't be hard to build. Tyler could build it if he really wanted to help me. I might consider trying it myself (we have the tools!) but I can see about 10,000 ways that I would injure my pregnant body constructing a frame of 6.5 foot tall wooden posts using a circular saw and a nail gun and a staple gun.

Let's be honest here. I am accident prone on a good day. I've come to terms with it.

I'm thinking of how wonderful a walk-in pen would be..basically like a gigantic screened in rectangle with a screen door and their coops inside of it. They could never escape. Hawks could never swoop down and eat them. My stupid dogs would stop sneaking in and eating the chicken poop and their feed and then getting horrifying diarrhea. (I'm sure you didn't want to know that, but it has been a real problem recently. Pregnant+gagging+liquid dog poo randomly shooting out of a 65 pound dog on your kitchen floor=bad, bad start to the morning. Trust me.)

I've seen walk-in pens at farms we've visited, but they were on a smaller scale. Mine would need to be something like 20x30 feet in perimeter and 6.5 feet tall. I might call a handy man tomorrow and see if he can do something like that for fairly cheap. I think the wood will be what costs the most...why is wood so expensive?? There are some scrap lumber yards around here but I need it to look decent and not like a piece of shit gigantic cage randomly erected in my yard. Hah. If I lived in the country I wouldn't care and would be using all the scrap wood I could get, but since I have neighbors....yeah.

This is what I have in mind, only a bit larger as it would need to contain two 4x4 foot coops and all of their roaming space...I hope this is logical.

I think a handy man could build that fairly easily, don't you? To be larger it might need support posts in the middle or something, or possibly I could just use light weight nylon screen across the top...but maybe that would sag...and this is why I am not building it myself....

You know, if it is high enough for the birds to not fly out of it maybe it doesn't need a top. The hawks can still swoop but that's no different from how it is now and we're surviving ok.

Yeah.

So I'm going to eat some cookie dough and go to bed.

Oh by the way, something crazy happened.

Remember, I just took the picture on the left a few days ago. The one on the right is from tonight.

I'm telling you all, this is a difference of what, like five days? I need to go back and look at the date from the picture on the left.

No wonder my belly muscles are throbbing!

(PS: Please to ignore hysterically over tired child on the right.)

Almost 17 Weeks Belly.

Almost 17 weeks!

I look like a fat kid who ate too much cake. Except I can feel my "cake" kicking around in there every time I lay down.

Nine days until the big SNEAK PEEK!

Ok, so I just like to make tickers.

I scheduled the ultrasound! A friend pointed out that we could just go to one of those 3d/4d ultrasound places and get it done on the weekend or after hours.

Why didn't I think of that?

I just scheduled a regular 2d ultrasound for Saturday November 14th at 11 in the morning.

Squeeeeee!

I decided to do 2d because it's only $99, which is similar to what we would pay with co-pay and insurance at the OB's office.

Babies look kind of scary in 3d/4d at 17 weeks. Google some pictures....creepy. I don't really want to see my baby without the chubby fat. You can't tell anything besides bones in the 2d ultrasound, for the most part.

I'll only be 17.5 weeks. Hopefully that is far along enough! They said to schedule it any time after 16 weeks and they have 99% accuracy.

I googled 17 weeks gender ultrasound photos and they look clear to me. Every penis I saw looked big enough to be obvious, and the vagina shows as 3 lines by 17 weeks...

I'm so nervous and excited! I'll be shocked if this baby is a girl, but I will be thrilled for Rosie to have a girl sibling close in age to play girlie games with.

I feel ok getting it done at only 17 weeks because I might be getting another ultrasound later and that could confirm the sex. I have to make one appointment to see my midwife's backup doctor and they might do an anatomy scan there. If it's too far along for a full anatomy scan, then just one to check placental location and all that. I'm going to schedule backup doctor appointment for closer to the middle of 20 weeks, or maybe for around 30 weeks. I haven't thought that far ahead yet really.

So in 9 days I'll know that a) the baby is alive and normal looking, and b) if it's a boy or a girl!!

I can't believe it.

I still feel like this pregnancy is a dream, like it's unreal.

The only things that makes it real are the baby kicks I feel when I'm laying in bed. That, and the overall sick that I am *still* suffering from. I can't believe that hasn't disappeared yet.

Not this weekend, but the next weekend...only one week to wait until the ultrasound!

Aaaaah!

Baby, I hope you are being immodest! If not, they let you come back again for free and check another day...but I don't want to keep frying my poor baby with multiple ultrasound and doppler waves.

Anyway.

Only nine days!!!!!

Heartbeat!

These are videos from early last week...sorry these are super crappy cell phone videos.

Baby's heartbeat!

And this is the heartbeat, but in the middle of the video you can hear the baby kicking.

Rosie has decided it's no longer a baby brother.

Then she wanted to sing the ABC's for me.