Round Two

I imagine that any pregnancy is terrifying in its own way for each individual involved. I also imagine that in general, each pregnancy is easier than the last. You know what to expect and how you handled it the last time. For the mother, she knows how she felt before and has something to compare it to the second time. For the father/partner, they know what worked or didn't work to support the mother. For us, it's got to end up easier than the last one. Needless to say, we are mildly terrified but extremely excited to be pregnant again.

I'm a boy

Today, Christy is 19+4 weeks into this pregnancy. After a previously complicated pregnancy, military healthcare is very diligent with testing, imaging, lab work, and consultations. It's okay though. We like the attention in this case. And just for clarification, they were extremely diligent during our last one. We have no complaints whatsoever with the care we received last time or with the care we're receiving this time. We had our anatomy scan yesterday which showed us we're having another boy. The ultrasound picture shows the round baby bottom on the right, two legs facing the left, and baby boy parts in between the legs. When we had our first ultrasound at 13+3 weeks, we saw what looked liked boy parts on the screen. The ultrasound tech and pediatric cardiologist would neither confirm nor deny what it might be, but they both giggled while they were saying it. They said it was too early to tell. Christy and I knew what it looked like, and the only thing I could think is that I didn't want my baby girl to have what I saw. I'm actually getting fairly decent at recognizing anatomy in ultrasound pictures.

Christy looks longingly
at my margarita

Christy is doing well. Her blood pressure is still nice and low, and she doesn't have any significant sickness. She's taking daily baby aspirin and prenatal vitamins. She gets weekly progesterone shots to prevent pre-term labor, and we're having tons of imaging done along the way. It gives our doctors frequent updates of what's going on with him and gives us plenty of ultrasound pictures to show. She's also done a bit of prenatal yoga at Studio Bamboo. As you can see from the picture on the right, she's quite sad that she can't have a refreshing margarita.

She had some coupon codes for Gymboree which allowed her to get 300 dollars worth of baby clothes for 150 dollars. The plan is to go with a sailboat themed nursery which was the plan last time. We already have some sailor/sailboat stuff, so we figured we'd keep with that theme. Maybe it will help in my efforts to convince her that we should buy a boat in the future.

Four heart chambers

The doctors and the ultrasound technician said they didn't think ToF would be an issue in the pregnancy based on what they saw yesterday. The anatomy scan from the last pregnancy was where they initially noticed that something wasn't quite right with Lawrence's heart. We'll have a fetal echocardiogram done within the next few weeks to give us a better confirmation that nothing is wrong. The lab work that was sent a few weeks ago came back negative for things like Down's Syndrome, Trisomy 18, anencephaly, and spina bifida. We did a more detailed test this time around, so the chances of not having these are even higher than before.

Much like Kate and William yesterday, we're still deciding on names. We have a couple in mind. We may take a nick name vote like we did last time. Hopefully, the vote can take place someplace besides the white board in Christy's hospital room. While it was fun to have people come in and place their vote, no one wants to be in the hospital for two months.

Thank you for your support as Christy, Lawrence Bear, Tricksy, and I embark on another attempt at expanding our family. We'll keep you updated as things progress.