Baby bump

Here I am at 18 weeks. I've finally started showing!

Don't strike your mother!

I've been feeling the little one kicking, and it's just getting harder every day! It's pretty amazing to feel the presence of a living, growing person inside me. Most days it's still so hard to believe that we're having a child. It's nice to be reminded that he's in there and he's considering soccer as a pastime. I prefer baseball, but we'll work on that after he gets here! 

It's a ...

We're having a boy! The appointment went really well. The doctor said the baby is growing as he should be and that's a really good sign. The cystic hygroma is still there, but it's not gotten any bigger over the past 4 weeks. We're scheduled to go for an echocardiogram to check the baby's heart on November 12. We'll have another ultrasound later that day. 

We've decided to keep the name a secret until the baby is born. It's going to be hard, but it will be fun to surprise everyone. Here are a couple pictures of the little one. 

The New Place

Here are some pictures of the new house! It's still a work in progress but we've gotten a lot done in a month. 

This is our den upstairs.
The dining room.
The kitchen. 
This is the living room downstairs with our really comfortable new couch!

This Friday

Things have been going well with baby Roberts. We went last week to our regular doctor for a check-up. The heartbeat is still strong -- 150 bpm. We met with a new doctor in the group, and he was so encouraging. He told us that he had seen these cystic hygromas before with some of his other patients. The hygroma resolved and the baby was perfectly healthy. His attitude was such a relief after spending the past month trying to overcome the specialist's negativity. 

One of the good things about having a high-risk pregnancy is that we get to "check in" on the baby more often. Because of that, we'll be finding out the sex this Friday when we go for our next ultrasound. We're both very excited; I'm still convinced it's a boy. I think CJay is just waiting to see if I'm right. If it isn't a boy, we'll be working hard to find a girl's name we can agree on. (And I'll be asking friends and family to limit the amount of pink gifts.) 

Right now, we'd like everyone to keep praying that this child is healthy when he or she arrives in March. 

Cystic Hygro-what?

I've delayed writing this for a while simply because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. I've decided to stick with the facts and leave it at that for now. We went 2 weeks ago for a routine ultrasound and found out the baby has a cystic hygroma, which is basically increased fluid and cysts on the back of the neck. It can be an indicator of chromosomal abnormalities, most commonly Turner's syndrome. We met with a specialist last week who confirmed the diagnosis. Here's what we know: there's a 50% chance that this child could be born with a genetic syndrome. There's also a chance this baby could develop fluid around the heart and experience heart failure. There's a chance the baby might not make it to term. And there's a chance the baby will be fine. 

We're pretty sure we won't be having an amniocentesis to check for genetic problems, so we'll just be monitoring the baby every 3-4 weeks with ultrasounds to check for fluid around the heart. Right now everything else appears to be fine and the baby's growth is on track. During the ultrasound last week, we watched the baby bounce around and even drink the amniotic fluid. We could see his/her little chin moving back and forth. Despite the grim statistics and negative information the specialist insisted on reiterating, this little baby is a gift from God and we're trusting him, regardless of the outcome.