9w appt.

We had our 9w appt with the midwife yesterday, it was our 1st appt with her, so Chuck came with to meet her. It really was a simple, quick appt. Saw the nurse first, did the customary pee in a cup, blood pressure and weight check. The midwife J came in. She is wonderful! I think we are really going to enjoy working with her! She has a daughter just a few weeks older than Em, so we shared some 2 year old stories while getting acquainted. She then went through our medical history, said everything sounded great and then my favorite part.....checking for the heartbeat :) I was worried they wouldn't attempt, since before 10w it can be hit or miss, but she said she always makes the attempt. Lucky for us, we found it very quickly...170s. It sounded great and I'm pretty sure I could have listened to it all day long! Next appt in 4 weeks (Nov. 22nd). Hopefully nothing exciting between now and then!

Fall Happenings...

We have been busy, busy this fall...enjoying the amazing weather that has come with it! We have been fortunate to have beautiful weekends to go out and play and have all sorts of adventures. We have been to the pumpkin patch...Em loved pretty much every minute of it. Her favorite was the cow train, she also thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in the corn maze and looking for the perfect pumpkin in the patch.

Gma took Em on a walk by the canal, the highlight of this trip was throwing walnuts into the water and watching them splash. They ended up walking over 2 miles and Em was not even close to ready to being done!!

Last weekend we spent at Lake Williamson at YAR (Youth Annual Retreat) with loads of jr. high kiddos. Em loves every minute of this, hanging out with the big kids, running around outside and seeing all of our friends we don't see often enough! She also spent a good chunk of time playing with Ben and Jack, the other 2 small people that were there. Her and Ben thought "I get you" was by far the best game in the world!

Next weekend we are headed to St. Louis to see Martha and Nick. The big girls are spending Sat. wedding dress shopping, Em will get to hang out with Papa for the day, which I am sure will be great fun!

And now...the pictures--

Grow baby grow!

To start--a picture....this is Ninja Blasty at 7w1d old.




Ninja is the little gray blob in the right hand corner of the big black circle (my uterus). Dana my most fav. u/s tech did our u/s for us and everything looked absolutely perfect. We saw Ninja's heart beat...146bpm....something I could have stared at forever and ever. Ninja measured exactly 7w1d so right on track. After the u/s we met briefly with Nurse Wendy, who said we were good to go, she would send our records on to the ob's office. We were to continue PIO until 8w, but at that point there is no need to check levels or anything, so we were to just stop. This was a little nerve wracking to me, being the control freak that I am, but I did as was told, and so far everything seems fine.
We are now 9w2d and see the midwife on Monday. I am hopeful to hear the h/b or better yet, get an u/s to check on ninja, but being a new office, I'm not sure what to expect. I've been feeling good for the most part. The worst so far is the extreme exhaustion, I am in bed most nights by 9...which is making it difficult to keep up with housework and such, but it is what it is. I also have had lovely "morning" sickness, except in my case it seems to be afternoon-evening sickness. It usually sets in at about 2-3p.m and lasts until I go to bed. So far just feeling icky, which I can deal with. Suppers have kind of been pathetic because of it, but such is life. So that is where we are at...hopefully I can be a better blogger, but I'm kind of thinking lack of blogs, means boring pregnancy, which is a good thing!

Best laid plans....

This week is the week of appts. and I thought I had it all figured out. Boy was I wrong!

I had my family dr. yearly appt yesterday--where I was planning on getting a pap and not a flu shot. I ended up with no pap and a flu shot!
She said she wanted to leave the pap for the ob because she wasn't sure what all they cultured for now, and didn't want me to have to have 2, which I much appreciated! I told her I was leaning towards waiting till 2nd tri for the flu shot, and she said it was perfectly safe to get it now, and that the protection in this flu shot is supposed to last a full year and not just 6 months, so the sooner I got it the better. When it came down to it, she said if it were her she would get it now, which convinced me to go ahead with it.

Today was my nurse visit at my ob--and I am super duper excited about how that worked out! I decided to switch ob's because I didn't love the majority of the nursing staff there. There was 1 nurse I loved (we actually went to h.s together) but she had gone on maternity leave a few months before Em was born and I didn't think she had come back. So I switched to a very highly recommended ob elsewhere. While he is very highly recommended I was still nervous that he wouldn't "work" for me, or that the nurses would be worse than office 1. Imagine my surprise when I walk in and the nurse I loved from my last practice is there!! We had a nice chat about why I switched ob's and why she left the other office...it sounded like it was very similar reasons, which made me feel really good about my decision! There is both an ob and a midwife there--we will see the midwife for the majority of our 1st and 2nd tri visits and then will alternate between the 2 so we are comfortable with both for delivery. Oh and she said I don't even have to get a pap because I have had more than 3 without any problems, so I can wait 2 more years before getting one! Glad I waited on that one!

Now we just have to get through the u/s at the RE on Friday and officially graduate!