Follow Your Dreams

Some people have said that Porter is/was articulate for his age and pretty easy to understand, I really dont know because every mother can understand their own kids. From the time he could talk we would have conversations in the car and I think that is why he talks well. I love talking with my kids in the car, or even just listening to them talk to each other. The things kids come up with are hilarious.

Today we were talking about Porter's cousin Parker who is only 7 months older than him but probably 12 inches taller because the kid looks like a 7-8 year old. Anyway our conversation went like this:
Porter: "Whenever I see Parker he always says 'Hey Little Buddy'."
Me: "Do you think Parker is taller than you? or are you two the same?"
Porter: "Parker is really tall."
Me: "Do you think Parker will play basketball?"
Porter: "Maybe. He might be a police officer." He paused and than with complete confidence he finished, "You gotta follow your dreams."

I agree Porter you gotta follow your dreams! What a funny kid, I love that little man, I just hope he doesn't grow up too fast and start following his dreams. His Dad wants him to be an ultimate fighter or whatever they are called but he told me the other day that he wanted to be a firefighter. I personally dont care what he wants to do/be as long as he is a respectful, polite, and caring person who follows his dreams. I will have to check back in 16 years and remember this when he is trying to decide what do do with his life.

Baby No Name Strikes Again

Just when my placenta moved and I was feeling like the end of this pregnancy would be normal and the next 8.5 weeks would fly then Baby No Name decides to show us he is the boss around here. I went to the Dr. and as soon as he checked the heart rate he said "I dont like that." Okay so I started to get nervous and he said he wanted to send me to Labor & Delivery to be monitored. I started to ask him about something else and he told me just go to L&D.

I started calling Sam, who mostly always answers his phone, no answer. Text Sam 911 to call, no response. Got hooked up to machines and the L&D nurses watched the heart rate and said thats weird. Called Sam, parent's house, Mom, Lacy, Trisha, Sam's parents house, and Sam's Mom's cell, no answer from ANYONE. Luckily my friend was waiting to see the Dr. and came to hang out with me so I didn't freak out too much.

Finally got ahold of Sam and he rushed to the hospital and we hung out with the best ultrasound tech ever from my previous post did a 30-40 min bio physical ultrasound. L&D released me and told me to go to my Dr. office because he needed to talk to me. Dr. said I needed to go to St. George to see perinatologist and they had made me an appt in a couple of hours. I got some blood drawn and Sam went home to get the kids and pack up them up to send them to their grandparents while we figured out what was going on.

We waited and got two more ultrasounds at the perinatologist and the Dr. told us this:
-the baby has a benign cardiac arrhythmia
-no structural cardiac problems
-no signs of heart failure
-his ultrasound ruled out 90% of heart problems
-baby should be fine but I now get to be friends with the perinatologist (weekly non-stress tests and appts in St. G every two weeks)

Really that news was the best possible outcome but doesn't mean I wont be stressing out. We also got the option of driving to SLC to see a pediatric cardiologist to rule out the other 10% of problems and since Sam drives to Layton once a month we decided to do it and are working on getting an appt in April.

I now get to wait it out and see how it goes. Hoping to get to have the baby here but may have to go to St. G and worst case will have to have him in SLC. Thx to Keri for watching my kids for over 3 hrs when I should have only been gone less than 1 hr. Thx to all my family and friends for worrying about us all day!!!

Baby No Name Ranting

Sam and I are having a hard time coming up with a name for this little boy. I still have 8.5 weeks so I am not too worried but we need to start finding a few names that we like. I am extremely picky about names and I just havent felt like I have loved any names so far. I like old normal names that aren't popular anymore, like Ruby (even though I have heard its coming back) not contemporary names. I dont like any names that people have to figure out how to pronounce but I do not want them to be one of 10 with that name at their school. For boys I like rough/tough, manly, cowboy, strong, or gunfighter sounding names like Porter (Rockwell).

So with all those catergories why can't I find a name? I think classic boy names stay strong and dont really fade like girl names do because the names that do fade become girl names (like Carol, Tracey, Cary....)

We are taking suggestions. Sam and I like Byron, but I am sure in a moment of rushing he will get called By, which I dont like. My sister Carri had Remington on her list. We both like it (Sam likes it because its a gun) but its too long, imagine a poor 4 year old having to spell that on his preschool papers. I like Oliver and we almost named Porter that but this time around Sam doesn't like it. Sam likes Joshua but that is way too normal and boring for me.

I look at baby name websites and just get frustrated and give up, but I can't keep giving up because at some point this baby will need a name! I am hoping that one day it will just come to me and I will know it is right, but I only have 60 days left for it to magically appear!!!

Ultrasound

Well I dont have any cute pictures to add to this blog update because Baby No Name was head down. I was really bummed not to get any new pictures because it has been fun getting to see how this baby is growing, oh well the technician tried her best.

So my appointment was at 9am and my Mom was planning on visiting for the holiday weekend and made it here late late Thursday night so she could go with us to the appointment. As a side note she also got to go to my first ultrasound at my dr. office after THE BLEED.

This was my third ultrasound technician at my hospital (technicially 4th if you count the early ultrasound when I thought I was dying of liver cancer but ended up just being pregnant but they checked my liver anyway). So I have had one really sweet girl who let me watch the entire thing once she checked for a heartbeat eventhough it was only a week after bleeding and a huge question of whether or not the baby would survive. The second technician was grouchy. She wouldn't turn on the screen but yet Sam could see her monitor the whole time and Sam even saw her check the gender and he knew we were having a boy before I did (she knew that Sam had seen and put her finger to her lips to shush him so he wouldn't tell me until she was ready to turn on the screen).

I was really nervous because some technicians are so tight lipped and I really wanted to know if the placenta had moved. We went to the appointment and I had made sure Sam could go because he is getting pretty good at reading ultrasounds and I wanted him to watch the monitor. We got a technician I had never met before and I was hopeful she would be nice. I also decided to win her over with kindness so I went in chattin' it up. I laid down she started the ultrasound and we were waiting for her to be mean and she said out of no where "It moved. I looked at your previous films and it's nowhere near where it was." We were shocked but overjoyed! She double checked that he really is a boy because Ruby is still holding out that he might just be a girl, no such luck! She showed us the placenta and my cervix and how far away they are from each other. She tried to get a face shot or profile but he was head down and backwards so it wasn't meant to be. The technician really was the best and if I ever have an ultrasound again I am going to request her.

We went home and waited for my dr. to call with the OFFICIAL results. I thought he would call late it in the day but before noon he called. He asked if the technician had told me the results and I said that she just said it looked good (I didn't want to get the girl in trouble). He said "Sorry but they lied" WHAT?!?! My heart sank for a minute but than he said "Just Kidding! It moved and you are good to go." I knew this was his last day before a week vacation in Hawaii so I should have figured he was in a good mood and would joke around.

So now that I dont have placenta previa I am allowed to go for walks and lift things and shop, yeah!!! I can go to St. George and not worry about any complications! So excited to try to resume a normal life. Well whatever "normal" is now because since the last time I could really go shopping I have gained a ton of weight, grown a large belly, my center of balance is off, and I wobble when I walk.

Christmas Morning

The kids woke up and were excited to see that Santa had found us!


Next year I will do Ruby's hair before I take pictures. She got a Silver Mist dress, a baby with a diaper bag and accessories, a flashlight and lots of candy.


Porter was happy that he got two Bakugans, a fully automatic Nerf gun, and lots of candy.

As a family we got this fun Monkey game and a Nerf gun to fight back against Porter's big gun. We played the game a few times and spent most of the day running from Porter because his gun was brutal. The worst was actually when Ruby would get a hold of the gun because she doesn't really understand the rules and would chase us down. We got to the point were we would hear the noise the gun makes when you turn it on and we would run.

Christmas night we put the kids in the car and drove around trying to find houses with really cool lights. We found a few good houses but we really need a street of people to get it together and make an awesome display. I really don't understand why so many people don't care about Christmas lights anymore, I love them and was so glad that Sam got ours up while my Dad was here to help him, and before the snowstorm.

Christmas Eve

What's a family with no Christmas decorations and no Christmas presents to do on cold wintry Christmas Eve? Go swimming of course!
I got a text Christmas Eve morning from a friend asking if we wanted to go swimming. I was really perplexed because where do you go swimming in winter. She said they were watching their sister-in-laws house while their family was away for Christmas and they had an indoor swimming pool. We packed up the swimsuits and got on our jackets and coats, except for Sam he scrapped the ice off the windshield in a t-shirt, swim trunks, and flip flops.
The indoor pool was so much fun and I loved that there was a two story wall of windows that let the warmth of the sun shine right in. In the direct sun it was actually too hot and I had to move to a shaded area. It was as close to CA as I was going to get. I was so happy because when I found out I couldn't go to CA all I could think about was sitting with my Grandma on her porch swing and having the sun burning my back, I didn't have my Grandma but at least I had the heat. The warmth of the sun and the humidity of the pool made it a perfect greenhouse too and they had an avocado tree and citrus trees. I told Sam that if I had an indoor pool/greenhouse that I wouldn't mind staying in UT forever.
It was great to get to spend some time with friends, have something for our kids to do, having fun, and getting the kiddos tired so they would go to bed on time. Thank you Kim & Devon!
We stayed for a few hours but had to leave because we still didn't have any presents. Sam went to Walmart and we hoped they hadn't run out of toys. He got food for our Christmas feast and found toys that the kids would love!!!

Grounded

We were planning on leaving for CA on Dec 23rd and staying through the 27th. My Mom had graciously gotten most of my kids presents for me since I couldn't go shopping and the rest I had mailed to her house.
Sam had been bugging me for a couple days that I should check with my Dr. to see if it was okay for me to travel, after all my first bleed was while we were on vacation. I procrastinated calling but finally remembered on the morning of the 22nd but wasn't able to get ahold of him because it was a surgery day. So I had did laundry and packed for the trip all day.
The next morning I noticed I had missed a call from my Dr. office and called them back since we were leaving in a few hours. I told the nurse why I was calling and she said "Oh yeah I am pretty sure you are grounded. I was in shock because I really did not believe I wouldn't be able to sit in a car."
"We are just driving not flying" I said in hopes that she had misunderstood.
She replied "I will ask the Dr but I am pretty sure that includes driving."
She talked to the Dr. and he confirmed it NO TRAVELLING!

So as the news started to sink in I started to cry because we didn't have a Christmas! It was December 23rd we were planning on leaving in a few hours, I was mostly packed and ready to go. We didn't have a Christmas tree because there would have been one at my parents house. We barely had one or two Christmas decorations and now we had to get ready for Santa!?!?! What the heck were we going to do?

I called back the Dr. office (FYI- I apologize every time I go in to the office because I know I am one of those patients that is a pain.) and asked that my Dr. call me about the travelling restrictions so I could understand why. He did call and said that travelling is hard on any pregnant woman and if you have any pregnancy complications it may make them worse. But why? The altitude change, the stress on the body of sitting in one position for extended periods of time, the STRESS of packing, basically it is all really stressful.

I tried to get my family to come to me but with the short notice it just wasn't possible. I had to get over it and try to figure out what we were going to do for Christmas. Luckily I have Sam!