The results are in!

So... funny thing happened to me last Tuesday; I was suddenly pregnant. I know, I know, I've been pregnant for more than 4 months. What I mean is, I suddenly felt SO pregnant. It just happened so fast. Monday my stomach was flat and I was wondering when I was ever going to start showing. I still hadn't gotten my weight up to what it was before the pregnancy because of all the morning sickness. But then BOOM! on Tuesday my pants are more than an inch from buttoning. When I bent over to grab my shoes off the floor there was something stopping me, an avocado sized baby. I just couldn't bend normally.

It just kept going that way. On Wednesday night while I was singing with my band I felt the first little flutters of baby Politoed inside! It felt like popcorn started popping in my uterus.

17 weeks

5 weeks

And with my new found baby bump came a new found appetite. Just in time for Thanksgiving I was able to start eating normal amounts of food! (sometimes even more than normal amounts).

I was supposed to be getting a 20 week ultrasound in December, before Christmas, but the ultrasound department at the hospital is booked solid until late January, and I'm not a very patient woman. Luckily Danny's parents, who were in town visiting for Thanksgiving, didn't want to wait to find out little Politoed's sex either. On Monday, the 28th, they took us to an ultrasound studio called That's My Baby and we got to see our baby squirming and dancing around. The tech, who knew I was on the phone with my mom, put the device on my belly and said "Do you want to send your mom a picture of his penis?". It was so fast, i was just shocked. I think i stammered something like, "what? boy? you mean it's a boy?"

"Mama, it's a boy!"

The ultrasound tech was great. She showed us everything, we saw the heart beating away, we saw his little face, his spine, his feet and his hands. She took pictures of everything. She said he looks great and he has long fingers. All the better to play the piano with, I say.

Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma

We are so excited to be having a little boy, even though we only had a girls name picked out. Go figure. I have 3 brothers and no sisters and when my little brother Joseph was born I looked up at my dad and said "I still get to be the pwincess!". After the ultrasound on Monday my mom texted me said 'You know what this means? You STILL get to be the princess.'

So now the name game begins. Danny and I have know our girl's name for years now, but we never really talked about boys names too much. We have a stack of about 20 index cards with different names we like, but nothing is really jumping out at us. It's hard to find something that works for a boy as a baby and as a grown man, and harder still trying to find a name we like that's not on the current top 100 list. If you have any ideas feel free to send them our way. I know we have almost 5 months left, but I like planning ahead...

We've started planning the nursery and decided on a Star Wars theme! Yeah, we're nerds, get used to it. Our baby boy is registered at  Babies"R"Us - Baby Registry and at Amazon.com Baby Registry

Here are the ultrasound photos! Such a huge change from the last pictures we got:

Look that that precious face!

He's waving to us.

Update from the ER

I'm sitting in the ER again waiting for the okay to leave, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to update this blog. I know it's been a while.

Before you get too worried you should know that everything is okay. I came in around noon because I had a little spotting after I peed. Any sign of bleeding is a red flag for me (no pun intended), so I drive down to the ER. Well, first I checked the babies heartbeat with the at home Doppler a friend gave me, and though I was happy to see a rate around 140 I still thought I should head to the hospital. At my 16 week OB appointment yesterday the heartbeat was above 160.

Honestly, by the time I got myself into the waiting room I was pretty much panicking. Danny came down from work to be with me though, which was awesome.

I got some blood drawn and a pelvic exam, but I'm still waiting to get the lab results. I also got some fluids, and they did an ultrasound. They said there was no sign of bleeding, my cervix is completely closed, and on the ultrasound the baby was moving around and looked really good. Danny even saw the face! He said it looked like every other baby.

Unfortunately the Dr couldn't tell us the sex, but I think it might be a girl because I didn't see anything! Maybe it's just wishful thinking. The good news is that next week Danny's parents are taking us to an ultrasound studio to get a gender screening done. Look for an update on Monday, we should know the sex at that point!

I'm really hungry, but I can't leave the ER yet because my blood pressure is too low. 80 something over 50 something. I might need some more fluids. It looks like I'm still not hydrated enough. Also; I'm still waiting on those lab results....

-Rachel (Sent from my iPhone)

UPDATE:
Lab results were all normal, my blood pressure went back to normal. They sent me up to the real OB who did a vaginal ultrasound to check and see if my cervix had opened or thinned out at all. She said it all looked good, cervix was closed and about 4cm thick. They want it to be at least 3cm, so mine was awesome! Still couldn't tell us the gender though.