Preparing to grow our family!

Well summer is here. We've been keeping busy getting ready for the newest addition to our family. Our little boy should be here sometime in June or at the latest, July 1 (our set induction date). Meg has been having lots of contractions and was put on bedrest (kind of). The baby is doing well, the doctors just want to keep the baby in there as long as possible so that its full term. Meghan is very much ready for our little boy to come out, yet we need to hang on to July 1 if possible (for insurance reasons). In the end, I think he'll be out sooner and we'll just make due with the expensive delivery.

We are very much excited to meet our little boy though!! We still don't have his name picked out...we are close but just can't get past the final two, maybe we'll just wait until he comes out and see which one he looks like! :-) Addison is transitioning to being a "big girl" very well. She has her new big girl bed which she loves. We had it in her room for a week or two to let her get used to it but now she's been sleeping in it for about a week and is doing SO well. There have been a few occasions where we've moved her to her crib but each day is better and better!

I've been busy working on our basement. I have a goal of finishing it before our little boy gets here. Last weekend I had a few friends over to put up drywall on our walls. It was a long day but its done and I even have the bedroom taped and mudded (with the first coat). I think I'll finish the rest tonight and then start sanding Thursday or Friday night to get ready for coat #2. I think I am still on track with the project unless the little guy comes early! I can't wait to have the basement finished though. I feel like I can never find anything down there cause its all crammed in two little storage rooms. I am also really excited to have a 4th bedroom in the house. I'll get some pictures to post soon!

With all of this going on, its keeping us pretty busy. We've found time to see a couple Twins games at the new stadium though...it was a real treat! What a great place...baseball should ALWAYS be outdoors!! Two of our friends, the Roelofs and Normans, have had their second kids...both boys. That means all four couples (Roelofs, Normans, Hidlebaughs and Rasmussens) will have their first child in the same year, their second child in the same year and each will have 1 boy and 1 girl...you couldn't plan it any better! haha Our kids should be really close I think.

I wish I was better about blogging consistently but I'll try to do better. I love the comments though, it helps to know that people are actually reading the blogs!

Addison is going to be a naughty girl I think...

Addison has been quite the active baby in utero. So yesterday afternoon around 2 when she had not made much movement all day (even after eating lunch and lying on my left side for a while), I got a bit concerned and called my OB to see if I should be seen. I got an appointment to be seen 40 minutes later.

The heartbeat was normal using the fetal stethoscope. (I am certain there is a medical term for this, but surprisingly it is one that I do not know, so I'm calling it a fetal stethoscope.) I was then hooked up to a monitor for a fetal nonstress test (or NST). In order to pass that test, Addison was to have two spikes in her heartbeat along with uterine movement concomitantly in a 20 minute time period. She only had one of those such spikes.

So I was sent to St. Johns to labor and delivery to be hooked up to the NST monitor again until I could be seen for a biophysical profile (or BPP, which is an ultrasound to detect certain movements and measure amnoitic fluid). My OB told me that if I scored an 8/8 I was good to go home, a 6/8 would most likely mean daily monitoring, and anything less than that "we'd have to have a talk," meaning possible induction STAT. Well thankfully when I was hooked up for the NST in the hospital, Addison decided to wake up and move about like nothing had ever happened. Why she couldn't do that a few hours previous is beyond me! My OB still wanted me to have the BPP anyway just to ensure Addison wasn't being asphyxiated in anyway. I, or rather Addison, scored an 8/8, and we were good to go home.

After the incident, Trevor and I decided we needed to get our butts in gear and pack those overnight hospital bags that were supposed to be packed a few weeks ago. So we went to Target, spent over $160, and came home and crashed. We can now say that, except for the car seat not being in the car yet, we are now as ready as we can get for whenever Addison does join us. We are hoping sooner rather than later at this point.

Lessons learned:
1. Addison is a very sleepy girl. She takes after her mommy.
2. Addison is a very naughty girl for scaring us like that. She takes after her daddy.
3. If you need confirmation of the gender, just tell your OB you haven't felt the baby to get another ultrasound. Addison is indeed a girl.

Extra information:
On a side note, I was dilated to 1 cm at my regularly scheduled appointment on Monday.

ADDENDUM--POLL:
Since the two people closest to me (my husband and Beth) seem to disagree with which parent is the naughtiest, we are going to have a poll. Please see the upper right hand corner of our blog and vote accordingly. Thank you.

She's a comin...

Just a quick note to update on Addison's journey. She has dropped significantly. Though I am not dilated yet, her head is sitting right on my cervix. Makes for an abundance of trips to the bathroom each night! I'm down to weekly appointments now, so the time is getting near. It sounds as though I am right on schedule with my due date (but we all know how that goes--plus I have a feeling I'm going to be late--it's just the luck I have). I've had three wonderful baby showers so far (one more to go), and we have been blessed with such wonderful gifts from our friends and family. Addison is very spoiled already. I feel ready about as ready as I can...well I guess I will after our birthing class this weekend. The nursery/office/my mom's library/Trevor's closet (yes, it's a multipurpose room) is ready for her, and we can't wait to meet her.

Uh oh! Is it really a girl? Or is that little thing between our baby's legs an extra appendage?

The first picture that you are going to look at is just the plain ultrasound. In the second picture you are going to see "drawings" that Trevor "drew" (via PDF) that indicate what the ultrasound tech pointed out to us. The little circle that Trev drew above our baby's butt is what we think to be that extra little appendage that girls do not possess. So this has turned into a poll. Is it a boy or is it a girl? Keep in mind our ultrasound tech (we were told) has never been wrong. Though I am no expert, I think it's a boy, and I think what the ultrasound tech pointed out to us as the baby's vagina might be his/her feet.

How Could I Forget??

We are going to Grand Cayman sometime at the beginning of next year. Since winter is not exactly the season to buy summer clothes for newborns, we thought we should get a few outfits for Addison for the trip. I could not help but post them since they are the first ones :) Tell me that our little girl isn't going to be the cutest thing in the world?

Babies and the 4th

Last Friday at our 22 week baby check-up we had our fetal survey ultrasound. Everything looks good, and our little baby is going to be here before we know it. I knew from day 1 that I would find out the gender as soon as I could. I hate surprises and need to plan. Between those little legs instead of an extra appendange were three little lines, indicating it's a girl! Our little girl's name is Addison Marie. It's a good thing it was a girl because we had no boys names picked out. I know we have a while, but we just wanted our baby to have a name right away.

On Friday since we didn't have to work and we were not traveling, we decided that we would go to Babies R Us to register. What a long and exhausting experience! We have registered before being that we just got married last year, but registering for a baby is a whole nother adventure. What kind of bottles do you register for? Glass or plastic? Without BPA? What about pacifiers? Why do there have to be so many different kinds and shapes and sizes? Then there's the bedroom. I think we are still at square 1 there. We registered for a crib and changing station with some drawers, but we could not believe the prices! $600 for both! We came home and looked online at Craigslist and found a used set in Hugo that includes crib, mattress, changing station, dresser, and glider with ottoman for $400. We decided to be thrifty and take off the way-to-much-to-spend-on-a-baby crib and changing station from our registry and buy a nice-looking used set. Now we just have to decide on room colors and decor. We did not want to register for a bedding set because (1) we're not going to have a bumper around the crib (which is thought to sometimes attribute to increased SIDS deaths) and (2) we are not going to have blankets as the new thing now is a SleepSack (also a safety feature to elimiate loose blankets in cribs, help prevent over heating, and also help prevent SIDS). So as you can imagine, our heads were spinning after our multiple hours at Babies R Us.

Since there are limited Babies R Us in Wisconsin (i.e. none in or anywhere near Appleton where Trevor's family is from), we decided that we had to register at Target too. We hate Target's return policy, and if gift receipts are not included in purchases, we may end up with multiple of the same items that we are not able to return. So if you ever buy anything for anyone off a registry whether it be for a wedding or for a baby, please remember to include a gift receipt. It just makes for a much more pleasant experience if you get multiple of the same items, which does happen all the time. So we resentfully registered at Target keeping in mind that we may as well register for what we need and want rather than getting a million pink outfits. (Pink isn't bad in itself, we just like a bit of variety too.) That was our Saturday afternoon.

Saturday evening we went over to Trevor's aunt and uncle's house in McHenry for their annual neighborhood cookout and fireworks. They live in a weathly neighborhood where a bunch of the neighbors pitch in $100 for fireworks and they have their own display. We were there until midnight! I coudn't believe how time flies when you're having fun. I haven't stayed up that late in ages! My normal pregnancy bedtime is between 10 and 10:30. I do miss my nightowl days, but those may be long gone now that I'm in the new pre-baby and soon-to-be post-baby era. Hope everyone else had a great 4th and long weekend!