Finally Getting Caught Up

Well, it's taken several days to get settled enough at work to actually have some time to post a blog. I'm finally back from my vacation and I think I've answered most of the emails I need to by now for work, so here I am!

My vacation was great. I will post mini-blogs about each of our stops. Most of it is not too exciting! I did get pretty exhausted by the whole trip. I think we just tried to squeeze too much into 16 days. But it was worth it. I got to see some pretty amazing stuff!

I had my 16 week appointment yesterday at 16w1d. I went alone because John was out of town, but I was ok with that. All they did was listen to the baby on the doppler (it's still there! 154 bpm) and then measure my stomach. They took my weight and I did gain 3 pounds. My doctor wants me to gain 1 pound a month for 6 months, and then 1 pound a week for the last 3 months. That's only about 18-19 pounds. I thought normal was 25ish if you were of normal weight? I was annoyed that my doctor told me to slow down. I'm not even eating terribly! Oh well. I'm not too concerned about it. I'm not going to diet while I'm pregnant - he'll just have to deal with it.

So the baby is measuring fine (at least my stomach was) and John was glad to hear a confirmation that all is normal. About every day on vacation he would ask me "Is everything still flying in there?" That was his way of asking if the baby was still ok. All I could do was answer "As far as I know!". He admitted he was ready to get another doctor's ok that things were well. I never thought of him as needing those little confirmations too.

I decided against the triple/quad/whatever screening. I decided that no matter what the results were, I would not do an Amnio because of the slight risk of miscarriage. My doctor said that if I felt that way, there was no real reason to do the testing. I'm not sure John totally agreed with me, but he left it ultimately up to me. We don't quite see eye-to-eye on what we would do if there was a problem. But I don't want to talk about that.

Anyway, since I decided against testing, my doctor ordered a Level II u/s so they could get a really good look. I called today to schedule it and it is November 16th - just 19 days away. 19 days and we find out if Pea is a little boy or a little girl! I can't believe it's less than 3 weeks away for that. It's so surreal!

Just for the record, everyone who has ventured to make a guess says they think it's a girl. And I mean EVERYONE. My mom also had my aunt read the tarot cards (not that I believe in that) and they said girl. My gut instinct said at first a girl, but after my boy dream, I've starting doubting my gut instinct. I usually am wrong when it comes to dreams and the sex of babies. I predicted wrong for my best friend - I was convinced it was a boy because of my dreams. So wrong! John won't even give a guess. Party pooper.