What am I thankful for?

This. :)



For having these two amazing guys in my life!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

A pound of flesh

That is how much baby June weighs now! I went in for a routine 22wk check-up earlier today, and Dr. B could not find the fetal heartbeat with the Doppler. Luckily, I had my hands full with a cranky Lincoln, so I didn't have more than a moment to think about what this could mean. Dr. B went out to get their portable ultrasound machine, saying that she thinks everything is fine, but she is gonna do a quick scan just to make sure. She puts the wand on my belly and immediately lets out a huge sigh of relief saying, "There is the heartbeat!" Apparently, she was actually very worried. She said that she was surprised that she was even more worried than I was. And she said "I just couldn't do that today." I interpreted the "that" as breaking the news that my baby had died in the womb the day before Thanksgiving. She went on to say that doctors get a little jumpy when dealing with someone who has a "history" (meaning a child with a genetic condition and 2 miscarriages, I guess), I kinda laughed and told her that she wasn't the only nervous one...


I then went on to express some of my concerns about baby June's measurements in the past, and some of her profile shots which seemed a little odd looking. So she said that while she had the ultrasound machine, she would just go ahead and do a full scan. Everything looked good. She was measuring exactly where she should be based on my ovulation date (with an EDD of 4/2/09). So I am thinking that we will begin using that as my estimated due date again. I asked her (a couple of times) if it was okay that she was a couple of days behind, and Dr. B said that as long as she is consistent then everything is fine. The measurements can be off a week in either direction. Her measurements were; femur length; 21wks 6days, humerus length; 21wks 5days, tummy circ; 21wks 6days, and head circ; 21wks. She went on to say that since baby June is sitting breach right now, that that always results in small measurements of the head circ. so not to worry about that. And baby June currently tips the virtual estimated scales at exactly 1lb! I can't begin to tell you were the other 13lbs of weight gain have come from...maybe all the sweets cravings I have been having. ;)

Dr. B also got us our first semi-okay profile shot. And there was nothing weird looking there (thank goodness), baby June looks great! See for yourselves!



Our next appointment will be a long ways off due to the holidays. I won't be seeing Dr. B or June again until Jan 13th, 2010! This will be the longest span of time throughout the whole pregnancy that I will go w/o a doctor's checkup of some sort. It makes me kinda nervous, but there is no reason to expect that anything will happen in that amount of time. And I will be busy with visiting our families for the holidays, so I am sure that the time will fly by!

The next appointment will be a busy one. We will be doing another growth ultrasound to check, one last time, on baby June's growth, to make sure that things are looking as they should. We will be doing the first of our cervical length checks to make sure that my cervix is staying long and closed. I will be getting the lab orders to do the glucose screening test to check for gestational diabetes. And after this appointment, I will be about 29 weeks along, so I will start going in to see the doctor every other week! I remember that at that point in my pregnancy with Lincoln, time really picked up and started speeding by. Before we know it, we will be welcoming June into the world! We are so excited (and petrified) by this prospect!

Two years ago

On November 23rd, 2007, the day after Thanksgiving we found out that we were pregnant! We hoped hoped hoped that this pregnancy would result in our first child...





and it did!! Little did we know how scary, and wonderful, that pregnancy would be. Little did we know how scary, and wonderful, our son's infancy would be. Little do we know how scary, and wonderful, each of his days in toddlerhood continue to be.

Ahh...what I would have paid to have been able to look into a crystal ball on that day, two years ago, and see my wonderful son Lincoln asleep in my arms. But this is real life. There are no crystal balls. No sneaking peaks at the future, or going back to change the past. What we have is today, and the hope that the plans we make for the future come true.

So much has happened in the past two years, and part of the magic of that time, was that we could never know how scary, and wonderful, each day would be. Lincoln is our firstborn, our son, our miracle, our snuggle bear, our wiggle bottoms, our cranky-pants, our happy boy, our blond-headed blue-eyed earth angel, the cutest baby in Tucson...and I wouldn't change who he is for anything in the world. He is the love of our lives. And on this date, two years ago, we found out that we had created a miracle. :)

Sixteen months old!

My how you've grown!


November, 2009: 16 months old


November, 2008: 4 months old

Wordless Wednesday...

Newborn Hat

You know those teeny tiny knit blue/pink striped hats that they give you in the hospital? Well at some point during the first day at home with Lincoln his hat disappeared. We looked and looked for it in all the places we thought it could be. I was pretty sad to lose this memento, and his nice cozy head warmer. I was certain that the dryer had eaten it, or that a pack rat had stolen it, or maybe it was folded up inside a pair of too-small pants long since given to Goodwill. I was almost certain that it was not still in the house. I mean, it has been almost 16 months since it disappeared!


Well, I was wrong. Because guess what I found today buried in the couch cushions in his room? His little teeny tiny hat! I was so suprised! I guess I need to dig around in the couch cushions more often to see what other treasures I discover... :)



Ugh. Not sure why it flipped the picture. :(

Chinese Gender Chart

So, there are all of these goofy old wives tales, gender prediction quizzes and gender charts to help people with a baby on the way determine whether they are having a boy or a girl. Well most of these tricks and tools have turned out to be bunk. However, this one Chinese Gender Chart (on thebump.com) has been correct on 3/4 of my pregnancies...we aren't sure about the 4th because the miscarriage was too early to find out the gender (although I have a feeling that it was right that time as well). So here is the chart...


Pregnancy #1: conceived in May when I was 26...chart result: boy...actual sex: boy!
Pregnancy #2: conceived in November when I was 27...chart result: boy...actual sex: boy (Lincoln)!
Pregnancy #3: conceived in April when I was 28...chart result: girl...actual sex: unknown (both Andy and I thought it was a girl).
Pregnancy #4: conceived in July when I was 28...chart result: girl...actual sex: girl (June)!


How cool is that? I guess I should try to plan out my future pregnancies based on this chart! ...just kidding! ;)


So, for all of you who are pregnant or already have children...was the chart correct? Take your age when you conceived on the left, and match that with the month in which conception occurred across the top. Let me know in the comments how it worked for you!

FYI: Pink = Girl, Blue = Boy

Overstock dot com

I love this website. I often go there to purchase household bedding items that are too expensive in stores. In the past I have bought our down comforter, mattress topper for our guest bed, and Lincoln's cowboy crib bedding set. Today I bought a few more things...

Baby June's crib! For $160 when the original price was $312!



Her new gerber daisy bedding set! :)



And a new memory foam mattress for our bed!! On sale from $1,200 all the way down to $420!!

All for $1 shipping charges!!

So excited!! :)

Check out overstock.com if you haven't in the past, they have great deals on all kinds of stuff, not just bedding...

Molars and Illness

These things do not make a good combination.

Yesterday, while Lincoln was cat-napping in my lap, running a fever of 101.5F, and snoring because he was too stuffed up to breathe through his nose, I noticed that he was cutting his first molar on the lower-left side. How miserable this week must be for him...to be teething (with molars no less!) and sick with the flu all at the same time. My poor poor baby. :(

He seems to have come down with the worst sickness he has yet to have in his almost 16 month life. Honestly, he is usually a pretty healthy baby. He has only been sick 2 other times...at 2 months old following his first in-patient hospital visit, and again at 8 months while on the immunosuppressant, ACTH, and a week after my mom had visited and came down with something while here.

I think this illness seems so much worse because before he was mostly still on a liquid diet, so food refusal and vomiting wasn't as big of a deal. For the past 2 days Lincoln has been on a whole milk, jello, pudding and yogurt diet. He can't breathe around anything more solid that these things without choking, and then of course vomiting it all back up. He has managed to keep most of this stuff down, although I just have to say that I am wearing my last pair of clean pants, so we haven't been entirely successful in keeping his food/drink in him either...

I have been pretty lucky so far, and have managed to not really get sick (hopefully that vaccine actually did the trick for me). I had a cough for a couple of days and a bit of a loss of appetite for those days as well. Mostly though, I am feeling fatigue from being on mommy duty day and night since Friday, with little break, and even less sleep.

Hopefully Lincoln is turning the corner now, and will be in much better spirits tomorrow. We will see...

Halfway There!

Today we are exactly halfway to March 31st, 2010 and halfway through this pregnancy (20 out of 40 weeks)! We might be even further than halfway is she decides to show up a few weeks early like her big brother Lincoln did, but we won't know that until she makes her grand entrance! I do know that my OBGYN won't let me go more than a couple of days overdue because the increase in complications make both of us too nervous.

So, to celebrate reaching the halfway point with a (as far as we can tell) healthy baby girl kicking away in my belly, I guess now would be as good a time as any to share her name with all of you. We played the name game about 2 months ago when we learned we were having a girl. But in case something happened to her these past months we have held off sharing the name with very many people because we might have wanted to save the name for another baby girl. However, because I have been thinking of her by name for so long now, I doubt I would be able to name a different baby this same name if something were to happen to this baby girl. And as we approach viability (24 weeks) things are looking better and better for our chances of bringing home a baby girl in about 4 months! Of course...we reserve the right to change our minds up until the name is written on her birth certificate...

Her name will be June.

We haven't agreed on a middle name yet, but the front runner in my mind is Elizabeth.

June Elizabeth Blatchford.

We think it has a nice ring to it. The name itself meets all of our naming criteria...old-fashioned, uncommon, easy to spell and remember, classic, classy, not made-up or weird. No, we did not chose this name to name her after anyone or anything...except the month of June itself. A sunny, warm, happy, joyful, summer month that everyone looks forward to all year long (at least everyone under the age of 18 and living in a non-desert state)! We hope that this is what she will come to mean to us, her extended family and friends, and the rest of the world around her. :)

Hang in there June, we are halfway there, halfway to meeting you face to face!

Swine Flu is Here!

Lincoln and I were lucky enough to get the vaccine at his pedi's office on Oct. 23, or so I thought...

Andy has been very very sick with a flu this past weekend and Monday. This evening he was still running a low grade fever, so will not be going to work tomorrow either. After doing a little internet research this evening on the CDC's website, apparently if you have flu-symptoms as of September, it is 99% likely that you have H1N1. After Andy texted his boss to let him know he thinks he has the "swine flu" he found out that someone who sits one cube over at his office is also home with the swine flu.

Now, this wouldn't be a huge deal, but yesterday and moreso today, Lincoln and I have both developed a sore throat and cough, which has gotten worse throughout the day. Again, this wouldn't be a huge deal...except Lincoln and I are both in the high risk categories. Lincoln is high risk for two reasons; because he is under 2 years old, and has a diagnosed neurological condition and epilepsy. I am high risk because I am pregnant. So now, let the worrying begin...

Tomorrow I will be making a call to both the pedi and OB to see if they want us to get tested for H1N1, or treated with Tamiflu. I just hope that Lincoln and Baby Blatchford come through this okay, whatever type of flu it may be.

Epilepsy Advocates Conference

We got a flyer in the mail about 2 weeks ago inviting us to the Epilepsy Advocates Meeting. For those that don't know, Epilepsy is diagnosed in anyone who has had more than 2 seizures in their lifetime. So, Lincoln definitely qualifies as an Epileptic. Technically, he is a Symptomatic Epileptic, which means that we know what causes his seizures. It was interesting to learn that 70% of all people with epiliepsy are idiopathic, meaning there is no known cause for their seizures. One year, 1 month, and 22 days ago we were desperately hoping that Lincoln fell into that group. But alas, Lincoln's first MRI on 9/17/08, confirmed that there were indeed structural problems in his brain that were causing the seizures. So knowing where we stood with Lincoln on the seizure spectrum...what did we learn from this conference...? Well, not much actually. The whole thing was geared more toward adults and adult's caregivers dealing with epilepsy...not so much anything about children, or children with developmental delays.

The guest speaker, a neurologist, epileptologist, and professor at the U of A was interesting and funny. But one thing that he did present was a slide with a pie chart on it. I don't think I will ever forget it... It showed the people with epilepsy; 50% are controlled with one medication, 11% with 2 meds, and 4% with a variety of different meds. Those that remain are 35%, of all people with epilepsy (in the USA I am assuming), who are pharmacologically resistant. Now at first this seemed to make sense to me. We were still trying to find the one or two meds that really get Linc's seizures under control, right? Well, then the doctor said that when new patients come into the office, they figure out who will be in that 35% group pretty quickly because those inital 50% of people respond to the very first med. they are put on, not just one med, but the very first. Then he went on to say that this only leaves 15% of people who will ever in their lifetimes, get control of their seizures, and the rest will continue having uncontrolled seizures forever. When stated that way, it really leaves us very little hope for controlling Lincoln's seizures in the future...especially with the number of different meds and combinations of meds we have already tried.

Honestly, I wish we hadn't gone to that meeting. Being 19 weeks pregnant, I am way too emotional to hear people's stories about how hard it is to live with epilepsy and all of the meds, and how difficult Linc's life will be, and how we will never truly understand what he is going through. It is heartbreaking to hear those words, and as his parents know that we can't fix this for him. I was in tears several times throughout the night. I doubt that we will be going to another one of those for several years...

November already?

If we hadn't jus had Halloween a few days ago, I wouldn't even believe that is was already November. I think it might have something to do with being a transplanted Northerner in a desert climate. Today it is 80 something degrees outside, and feels like I would think a June day should feel. I guess this is why we have the great influx of snowbirds arriving to the Sonoran desert daily. No one could ever say that the Tucson winter is not beautiful. But, growing up in a place where there is a clear shift between the seasons, and winters are known for rain, snow, ice, and wind...thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas rapidly approaching, does not come easily as I am sitting here dressed in a tank top and shorts with our a/c running in the background. But all of the advertisments on TV and in the stores are daily reminders of the approaching holidays. Thanks to these reminders, Andy and I finalized our X-mas lists for each other, and our families, and are ready to go shopping! I almost always go a little overboard, and ever year I promise myself (and Andy) that I will control myself. I really do mean it this year... ;)

However, as much as I am looking forward to going home to Oregon for the holidays...a trip to the Nothern realm mid-winter required a new wardrobe for Lincoln, and a winter maternity wardrobe for myself. It is amazing how much you can get someone who is almost 3ft tall and 28.5lbs for $160, and how little you can get for someone who is 5'9", heavier than usual (hehe), and pregnant, for $370. However, after spending this much money on maternity clothes, I am thrilled to say that (barring any unforseen circumstances--which we have learned are never to be counted out) I will be sporting these clothes and a nice big baby bump come Christmastime in Oregon!

As most of you know, we had a scare last week at our fetal anatomy scan. Dr. B was worried that the legs were measuring week(s) behind the rest of her. So we had a level II ultrasound this morning, which is a much more in depth look at our little fetus, with better equipment and a more expereinced technician. Today, our tech found that baby girl was measuring, head/body/legs/arms at 18wks to 18wks 4days. This almost perfect matches what I know to be her actual gestational age, based on conception (ovulation) and my 37 day cycle. According to my LMP (last menstral period) she should have been measuring 19wks 4days, with a due date of 3/25/10. But she has only measured that far ahead once, at the CVS scan. All of her other ultrasounds have shown her to measure much closer to my known ovulation date, with a due date of 4/2/10. This however, is the first time that she has measured slightly behind, with a due date of 4/4/10. But at least her entire body is consistent with this date, so that is what we were mainly worried about. We will likely have a follow-up ultrasound at some point in the late 2nd trimester or early 3rd trimester to double check her growth and make sure she is still matching these dates. I am not certain is Dr. B will assign us a April due date, or just leave it alone at 3/31. Who cares, as long as she is healthy!

We got some more pictures of our little lady. Once again she made profile face shots very difficult to capture. We got a few, but they aren't the best, so we still don't have a good idea what she might look like once she is born. Here are the pics we did get...


Girly parts!


Splist screen of both feet. They looked perfect!



Split screen of both hands. On the left it is fisted by her ear. On the right she is giving us a nice high-five!


I think someone forgot to tell baby girl that Halloween was over. Check out her skeletor impression! Split screen of face shots. She is looking right at us...has 2 eyes in those eye sockets, and normal lips/palate!

Profile shot of her arching her back and kicking her foot up.

Profile shot of her head, chest, and pelvis. You can see her hand by her mouth and one of her thighs tucked up.