Big Sister Class, 27 week ultrasound and 28 week visit

Kaitlyn recently attended sibling class at the hospital to learn what to expect as a "Big Sister". The instructors taught Kaitlyn and another sibling that attended the class about why the baby cries, how to support the baby's head, and they even got to go to the nursery and see a newborn. The instructors gave Kaitlyn a baby doll and had her change the diaper. She did quite well at changing the diaper. She removed the dirty diaper and wiped the baby and even got the clean diaper on correctly, then she flipped the baby doll onto its forehead so she could fasten the sides of the diaper. Up until that point we were pretty impressed with her diaper changing skills! When the instructor talked to her about supporting the baby's head she picked up her baby and cradled it in her arms and sang "Rock a Bye Baby" to her baby doll, then proudly announced "My mommy taught me that".  She also informed them that "We have a dog, her name is Emma but we call her Emma Bean and she is my big sister and we are both going to be Collin's big sisters!"

Her are a few pictures of the proud "big sister" before her sibling class.

I don't know where she gets these poses from!

I had my 27 week ultrasound on Dec 15th to check the position of the placenta. Nothing has changed so it looks like we are still on for a c-section in mid-late February. Also, Collin is now breech, not that it matters since I am already having a c-section. There is a possibility he can flip around still since he is not "engaged" but it really doesn't matter at this point since it is pretty much a guarantee that I will have a scheduled c-section. I was able to get a few more pictures of Collin from the ultrasound.

You can see his little hand resting on his head in this profile picture.

And this picture of his feet leads me to believe he is going to have big feet like his sister!

We saw Dr. Olemacher on Dec 22nd (one of Dr. Jurney's partners) for our 28 week visit since Dr. Jurney is out on maternity leave.  When they tried to check Collin's heartbeart with the doppler you could see him moving all around in my stomach. Chris could see it from where he was sitting. It was cute. His heartbeat was a strong 156. At this point he should now weigh around 2 and 1/4 lbs and should be around 14 inches long, I don't know how accurate that is, but that is what my weekly newsletter from Babyzone says :-).

I asked the Dr. what a typical birth weight would be around the time I will deliver at 36-37 weeks. She said probably around 6-7 lbs, I have to say I think she has some high expectations on that one because Kaitlyn was only 5 days early and weighed a whopping 6 lbs 3 oz at 39 weeks and 2 days! Chris and I took her to the Dr. this week and at just a month shy of her 5th birthday she now only weighs 34.8 lbs! I also had the blood test to check for gestational diabetes this week and the results were normal.

Speaking of Kaitlyn' s birthday...we are going to have her party this year at a place called "Sweet & Sassy". I played dress up with her the other day and had Chris take pictures so we could use them for her birthday invites. It is going to be a small "girls only" party this year with her friends from school. They are going to have makeovers and get dressed up and then they turn on the dance music and let the girls go out on the runway and perform. I will definitely have to upload video of this occassion but here are some of the pictures from our dress up session the other day at home. She has on the necklace I wore on our wedding day and the hair comb from my veil!

And last but not least, here are some of my most recent belly pictures! I am now officially 7 months so I am in my third trimester! Collin will be here in approximately 8-9 weeks!

26 weeks

27 weeks

I go back to the Dr. on January 13th. Stay tuned for more updates!

24 week appointment

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving was our 24 week appointment with Dr. Jurney. I had an ultrasound immediately before the appointment with her to check the position of the placenta. Not much has changed in that regard since the last visit. The placenta is still covering my cervix and has not moved much at all so it looks like having a c-section is still in my future. Dr. Jurney said that she wants to do another ultrasound at the 28 week appointment, which will be Dec 22nd. At that visit I will see Dr. Olemacher because Dr. Jurney will be out on maternity leave herself.

Dr. Jurney will return in mid-January and when I see her for my regular appointment we will pick a firm date for the c-section...

So it seems as though Collin will be arriving mid-late February rather than March. Being that he will be delivered 3-4 weeks early we only have about 12 more weeks until we get to meet our baby boy!

Since we had an ultrasound again this time we were able to get a few more pictures of him.

Collin's Hand

Collin's Foot

Collin's Profile

We also toured the hospital over the Thanksgiving holiday, although most of the tour didn't pertain to our situation since I won't be laboring and delivering...I have to say I won't miss that part!

I figure the c-section will also make the "how did Collin get out of your tummy talk" with Kaitlyn go much easier! If she ever asks how Collin got in my tummy or out the answer will be very simple "The Dr. put him in and the Dr. took him out." :-) See IVF does have it's advantages it makes the birds and the bees very simple to explain!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We have so much to be thankful for this year!

Family, Friends, a healthy beautiful little girl, a little boy on the way and much more.

We have finally given the baby a name! His name will be Collin Andrew Barry, so we can finally stop referring to him as "the baby".

Collin's room looks so cute, Chris painted it and we have put together his crib and we dragged some of the stuff out of the attic to see what we have and what we still need. We still have to decorate a little more, hang the curtains and hang stuff on the walls, etc.

Here are some of the before, during and after pictures.

Before

  During

Notice the beer in the picture!

 Me choosing between 2 different shades of blue

After

Since Collin now has Kaitlyn's old furniture she got to get new big girl furniture. Her new big girl bed and furniture came in so Chris and I spent the day yesterday organizing her room and cleaning out her closet (what torture that was). We are still waiting on her new bedding so we have not taken pictures of her room yet. She had to sleep in Collin's room on Tuesday night because we had Stanley Steemer come clean the carpet in her room and it was still wet that night so we couldn't move her bed back in there.

When we were baby proofing Collin's room Chris found a child proof doorknob cover (so kids can't open doors they are not supposed to open) and put it on his door just joking around. We tried using this wonderful device one time when Kaitlyn was younger and I was in her room with her patting her back to get her to go to sleep, when I got ready to tip toe out of the room undetected, I couldn't even let myself out of the room which lead to frustration and some choice words, so needless to say we don't use it anymore. When Chris tried to take it off of Collin's door it wouldn't come off we just left it on there for now.

When we setup Kaitlyn's bed in Collin's room that night we realized that Kaitlyn wouldn't be able to open the door that night because of the doorknob cover and, therefore; would have to stay in bed, something she seems incapable of doing most nights :-). We had a good laugh about that before we put her to bed and warned her about the doorknob cover so that she would know why the door wouldn't open. So at about at 9:30 that night I am sitting at the dining room table working on my computer and I hear Kaitlyn on that monitor in the kitchen moving around in Collin's room, then I hear her picking up the monitor and putting her mouth right up to the monitor and saying in a very deep voice "I have to go to the bathroom". Chris went and opened the door for her so she could go to the bathroom.

Later that night, about 3:00 AM, Chris and I are sleeping and we could hear Kaitlyn over the monitor in our bedroom, picking up the monitor yet again and in a raspy sleepy voice she says "Mommy and Daddy I want Emma to sleep with me". We couldn't help but laugh, it was so funny that she suddenly has decided that since she can't open the door she would use the monitor as her own personal walkie talkie to communicate with us.

The next morning as soon as the sun came up, we heard Kaitlyn go over and pick up the monitor put it up to her mouth and say "Mommy and Daddy it's time to wake up!"

She is so funny and keeps us laughing with all the crazy things she does.

Here is another Kaitlyn story for your entertainment...

Since staying in bed at night has been a challenge for her lately I made a deal with her. If she stays in bed 20 for nights, not consecutively of course because that would be nothing short of a miracle; I will get her a "Fur Real Pet" or as Kaitlyn likes to call it a "Real Fur Pet". We are now on night 12 so and this has been going on since mid October so by Christmas she should have her "Real Fur Pet" :-). Every morning when she wakes up she gets to put a sticker on her High School Musical calendar if she stays in bed all night to track her progress. It seems like a combination of the "big girl bed" and Emma (our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) are contributing to her success lately. Since getting her big girl bed Kaitlyn now wants Emma to sleep with her every night. Emma helps keep Kaitlyn in bed because if Kaitlyn starts moving around too much Emma will get up and leave; however, if we put Emma in the bed with Kaitlyn before Kaitlyn is asleep she torments poor Emma and we hear her yelp and have to go to her rescue. Our new tactic has been to tell Kaitlyn that we will bring Emma in before we go to bed. This seems to work out better for both because Emma doesn't get tormented and Kaitlyn falls asleep faster because she is not up tormenting the poor dog :-). We will see how long this strategy works.

It got so bad at one point I called the pediatrician's office they gave me some print outs on tips to help with "bedtime resistance". I find most of them pretty comical, as if we had not tried these and everything else under the sun prior to calling them.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Establish a rule that your child can't leave the bedroom at night.

(Does that actually work for anyone and did they really think we had not tried that?)

Close the door if your child is leaving the bedroom.

(Does the child they are referring to not know how to turn doorknobs because ours sure does!)

Despite all of our bedtime challenges, we fell so fortunate to be blessed with such a sweet little girl! I will close for now with some fall pictures of our little angel taken at her school.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Family Pictures

It's that time again. We took our annual family pictures two weekends ago and these will be our last pictures as a family of 3!

We were in Austin that weekend for Amy & John's wedding and we drove back on Sunday and took pictures that evening. We got home at around 3 pm on Sunday quickly changed clothes and then headed out the door to drive to Kingwood for pictures. Kaitlyn of course fell asleep about 15 minutes before we arrived in Kingwood and that was the only nap she had that day. Needless to say she was a little wild, which actually worked out okay because Mackenzie was able to get some great shots in between Kaitlyn's wild antics. You can see the wildness coming out in some of the pictures though; especially the one where she was supposed to hug Chris but it turned into more of a death grip on him than a hug and the one where she is throwing her head back doing her evil laugh. Mackenzie said that at least you can tell Kaitlyn has a personality from the pictures. :-)

It's a...

BOY!

We had our 20 week ultrasound on Friday, October 23rd. The tech asked us if we wanted to know the sex and we of course said yes. It was the first thing she saw when she started the ultrasound and she said "It's a Boy!"

His heart rate was 136 bpm which the tech said was great. We also got some great profile pictures of him and a great picture of his foot.

The tech looked at my cervix via the ultrasound and said that my placenta is lying right on top of my cervix and this is called placenta previa. She said there is a possibility that it could move when my uterus stretches as I get further along.

On Tuesday, October 27th, we had our appointment with Dr. Jurney. She said that although she doesn't think that I have a "complete" previa, meaning that it is covering the entire cervix, she said that it is covering more than 50% of my cervix and is on the back wall of my uterus, and therefore unlikely to move. She said to prepare myself to have a c-section and that since they can't let me go into labor that I would most likely have the baby via c-section at 36-37 weeks. We also got to hear the baby's heartbeat again and it was 139 bpm. Our next appointment is on November 24th and I will have another ultrasound then to determine if the placenta has moved or if I will definitely need a c-section.

On another note...Kaitlyn has decided that she wants to name her baby brother Adam. She got the name from the "Snow Buddies" movie that she loves to watch. The little boy in the movie is named Adam. We have tried to explain to her that we have some other names that we are considering but she is bound and determined to name him Adam.

On Monday I walked into her school to pick her up and Miss Tanya at the front desk said "I heard you're having a baby boy and naming him Adam". I told her "Well you got the first part right". She then told me that Kaitlyn had been telling all the teachers that she is having a baby brother and his name is going to be Adam. At the dinner table on Tuesday night she was talking out loud to her baby brother and she said "Mommy and Daddy said I can't name you Adam so I think I am just going to call you (long pause while she is thinking)... ADAM!" So Kaitlyn remains unconvinced that his name will be anything other than Adam.

Chris has been hard at work this week cleaning out the guest bedroom and moving everything into storage so we now have a clean empty room just waiting for the crib. We are planning on buying Kaitlyn new furniture for her room so once we have that we will just move her crib etc. into the baby's room.

And last but not least....here is my latest belly picture. This was taken at 19 weeks.

16 weeks and counting

I had my 16 week visit on Sept 29th, 2009. Chris and I were anticipating leaving the Dr's office knowing whether we would be having a boy or a girl, little did we know the baby had other plans :-).

June, the nurse practitioner, did the ultrasound and in the first picture we saw the baby lying face down, facing my back. We had never seen it lay in this position in previous ultrasounds.

Picture of the baby face down

Head is on the right, spine at top of picture

The next sneak peak of the baby took the nurse practitioner by suprise so she just had to take a picture of it. The baby was laying on its back with its little hand over its crotch area. You can see the arm bones and then the bones of the hand right over its crotch! Did I mention it also had the umbilical cord between its legs further preventing the determination of the sex? You can't see the umbilical cord in the picture below but trust me it was there and that was pretty much the only thing you could see in that region!

Head is on the right but cannot be seen in the picture

Left arm at the bottom of the picture

Look for the bones of the arm and follow them across the picture (R to L) to the hand

And last but not least....our first Halloween picture of the baby, at least that is what June called it.  The baby is looking right at the screen in this picture and you can see eye sockets. Kindof scary looking! We have a picture of Kaitlyn that is similiar to this only she had her mouth completely open in the ultrasound picture we have of her like this. It looked like the mask used in the "Scream" horror movie.

Baby's head is on the left

Look for the eye sockets looking straight at you

And finally...here is my first belly pic! This was taken at 16 weeks (4 months).

And last weekend there was a new development. I felt the baby move for the first time last Sunday, Oct 12th. I wasn't sure at first that was what I was feeling but it has become more obvious as the baby has started to move around more. I can't wait until Chris and Kaitlyn can feel it too! Kaitlyn has told me that she thinks the baby is going to kick her hand when she puts it on my stomach.

More to come soon! When Chris gets home I will have him take another belly picture.

We have our anatomy ultrasound scheduled next Friday, Oct 23rd! The ultrasound machine they will use will have a higher resolution than the machine they normally use and they should definitely be able to determine sex as long as we have a cooperative baby! Keep your fingers crossed for a willing participant this time :-).

11 week and 12 weeks

I had an ultrasound, as part of the Ultrascreen test which screens for Down's Syndrome, on Aug 29th. The test is two parts, an ultrasound and a blood test. The great news is that all results were normal!

I had told Kaitlyn that she could go with me to one of my Dr's appointments so that she could see the baby and hear the heartbeat so she and Mom went with me to this ultrasound.

They ultrasound tech put us in a room with a flat screen TV on the wall and the ultrasound was projected on the TV screen so Mom and Kaitlyn were able to see the baby really well. We were able to see both arms, legs, and feet and hear the heartbeat. The heart rate was 158 this time.

We also saw the baby wiggling around and at one point it had its arm drapped across its forehead just like Kaitlyn did in one of the ultrasounds I had with her.

Here are some pictures from the ultrasound. I was 11 weeks and 3 days but the baby was measuring at 12 weeks in the ultrasound.

The ultrasound tech asked if I wanted to know what she thought the sex was and I said "Yes!". Even though it is really early to determine sex she said she thought it was a BOY and was able to show us what looked like a boy part on the ultrasound.

I then had my regular 12 week visit with Dr. Journey on Tuesday, Sept 2nd. She did another ultrasound as part of the visit but she was not able to confirm the sex during that ultrasound because her machine was not as high resolution as the machine the tech used at the 11 week ultrasound...so we will have to wait until the 16 week visit on Sept 29th to confirm the sex.

12 weeks

The proud Big Sister

Kaitlyn is so excited about "her baby" as she calls it. She tells everyone we see, from the lady at Luby's yesterday to the pizza man who delivered our pizza last night and our friends at church "My Mommy has a baby in her tummy!"

She has so many plans for her and "her baby". She has told me it is going to sleep in her bed and share her princess pillow with her.

Here are some pictures of the proud big sister in her big sister shirt.

6 weeks, 8 weeks, and beyond

Alot has happened since my last post. We had our 6 week appointment and 8 week appointment with Dr. McKenzie and our first visit with the OB/GYN's office.

At the 6 week ultrasound there wasn't much to see. The ultrasound tech told us that there was a 50/50 chance that we would be able to see and hear the heartbeat because all they are really looking for a 6 weeks is the egg sac and the fetal pole. Luckily we were able to see and hear the heartbeat! The heartbeat was 103. The ultrasound tech told us that anything over 100 was good.

Here is a picture from the 6 week visit.

Two weeks later at our 8 week visit.

At the 8 week visit we could actually see the head and body starting to form. The small circle near the feet is the yolk sac that provides the nutrition for the baby. We were also able to see and hear the heartbeat again. This time the heartbeat was a strong 160.

And finally at 9 weeks.

This was our first visit to the OB/GYN's office. We saw the Nurse Practioner, June, on this visit. June said everything looked great and that the baby was measuring at 9 weeks. We were able to see the baby's head, arm and leg buds, and the yolk sac. You can also see from this ultrasound that the baby has changed positions and is now lying on its back, head is on the right side of the picture and feet on the left.

My official due date is March 17, 2010, St . Patrick's Day!

Our next visit will be with the OB, Dr. Journey, on Sept 1st and at that point I will be 12 weeks. I will have an ultrasound every visit up to 20 weeks and after the 12 week visit we will only see the Dr. every 4 weeks.

I will continue to post updates from our Dr's appointments so stay tuned!

Coming March 2010...

Baby Barry!

We got fantastic news when I went in for my pregnancy test on July 8th, it was POSITIVE!

I had been waiting on pins and needles all morning long waiting for that phone call and when it finally came I was really nervous. Chris was convinced that I was pregnant but I knew that the odds were not in our favor so I was trying not to get my hopes up. Luckily all those fears were erased when Judy said "I have good news, you're pregnant!"

Judy, Dr. McKenzie's nurse, said that my HCG level was 119 and that was a good result because they were looking for an HCG level over 50. I had to go back in that Friday, July 10th for more blood work to verify that my HCG level had doubled. Ideally it should double about every 2 days during early pregnancy.

On Friday, my HCG level had risen to 360 and my estrogen level was 919 which meant I was able to stop wearing one of the two estrogen patches I had been wearing. They told me to come back on Tuesday for additonal blood work to check my estrogen level again.

On Tuesday, my estrogen level had risen to 1018 which meant I was able to remove the last estrogen patch and just continue my daily progesterone injections. I will be on progesterone in oil shots until my 10th week of pregnancy.

Chris has to give me the daily injections of progesterone. He is becoming quite good at intramuscular injections!

We have our first ultrasound appointment July 22nd at which point I will be 6 weeks pregnant.

We are so excited!

The transfer is complete!

The embryo transfer took place on Monday and everything went well.


The Dr. called us Monday around 11 am to give us an update on the embryos so that we would not have to wait until our 1:30 appointment to find out. She said that we had 2 embryos that we could potentially transfer. One was Stage 1 blasocyst in development and the other was a Stage 2 on its way to a Stage 3. She also said that we had several others that they would continue to watch over the next day as they might develop to the point where we could freeze them.


When we got to the office that afternoon we met with Dr. McKenzie to decide how many embryos to transfer (1 or 2). After talking with Dr. McKenzie we felt that transferring 1 embryo was the best decision because transferring 2 would have given us a 40% chance of twins. Transferring two has its benefits though because it basically doubles your chance of success, but we felt that after weighing the risks vs. the benefits it was better to transfer just one.


When the embryologist came into the room with the incubator he gave us a printout of what the 2 embryos look like under the microscope. Since 8 am that morning the embryos had both grown to Stage 3 so they were now both the same size and stage of development. Chris asked him how they were going to decide which one to transfer since we were only transferring one. The embryologist was not yet aware that we were only transferring one so he had to take the incubator back out of the room and look at them under the microscope again to determine which one was the best.


We got to watch the entire procedure on the ultrasound. It was all a very surreal experience. Now we just have to pray that it worked!

Tomorrow is a big day!

We celebrate 7 years of marriage tomorrow.

It seems like yesterday; well maybe not yesterday, but it doesn't seem all that long ago that we were living in Arlington planning our wedding.

When the day finally came it seemed like it went by so fast but we enjoyed every minute of it. Luckily, one of the best things we did was hire a fantastic videographer who captured everything from us getting ready for the ceremony up to us leaving the reception in the limo. We occasionally watch the DVD and show it to Kaitlyn which is always fun because she always wants to know where she was during the wedding. Hmmm, how to explain that to a 4 yr old...

Anyway, 7 years later I finally have all of our pictures from the wedding scanned onto a DVD and ready to be made into an album. That's right, we still don't have a wedding album. We have all the pictures and the copyrights and I know exactly what I want in an album and who I want to make it, now it is just a matter of making the investment and getting it done.

There is one thing that is worse than not having your album done after 7 years of marriage...not having your dress heirloomed yet. I still have it hanging in the pink plastic bag it was hanging in on the wedding day. I am making sort of a mid-year resolution that I have got to get my dress heirloomed this year. I guess that is something I can research while I am in bed for two days straight :-).

Tomorrow is also the day I will have the embryo transfer.

We were scheduled for Saturday but it was postponed until tomorrow.

Saturday morning Mom came over to watch Kaitlyn for us while so that we could go to the Dr. We were pretty sure it wasn't going to happen on Saturday, but as of 8:15 we still hadn't received a phone call telling us not to come, so we headed towards Dr. McKenzie's office since our apptmt was at 9:00 in the Memorial City area.

As we were driving down Cullen and I was chugging bottles of water (per the Dr's instructions) because they want you to have a full bladder when they do the transfer, the phone rang. It was the nurse saying that we needed to wait until Monday. As of Saturday, which was 3 days after the retrieval, we had 12 embryos with 7-9 cells and a 3+ rating and since they were so close in size they couldn't differentiate the best from the rest. There were also 4 smaller embryos that only had 4-5 cells so those will probably degenerate.

Here is a picture of an 8 cell embryo, I imagine ours look similar to this :-).

I don't understand that much yet about how they "grade" the embryos but here is some information I found on the internet.

Embryos should be at least 2 to 4 cells at 48 hours after egg retrieval and preferably about 7 to 10 cells by 72 hours. The cells in an embryo are also referred to as "blastomeres".

From reading this information it sounds like the 12 embryos that are 7-9 cells are right on target. The nurse said that this is a very good result. We will get to sit down with Dr. McKenzie tomorrow before the transfer and she will review the grading with us and give us all the details on our embryos.

I was actually a little relieved that we weren't doing the transfer on Saturday, I wasn't sure that I was ready to be on bed rest just yet and I had forgotten to put my bottles of water in the refrigerator to drink. I know, I know, it's a little crazy but anyone that knows me knows I can't stand to drink room temperature water, especially not when I have to chug it because I have to have a full bladder for the procedure. That is why we always have half empty bottles of water in our refrigerator because as soon as it gets warm I put it back in the refrigerator. This is something about me that after 7 years of marriage still drives Chris crazy.

So now the transfer will take place tomorrow at 1:30 PM and this time we are prepared...

the water is already in the refrigerator, I have 3 movies to watch while I am on bed rest and Kaitlyn is going to Mee Mee's house after breakfast in the morning and we are excited that the day is finally here!


One last story and then I am off to bed...
Chris and Kaitlyn were talking earlier and I guess Chris must have asked Kaitlyn if she wanted a little brother and she said something funny so Chris brought her to the kitchen to tell me why she didn't want a little brother and she said
“because they eat meatballs with their hands and they are grossy posey”

I just died laughing.

It is moments like that when I know that going through all of this to have another baby is definitely going to be worth it!