What does a donkey say?

Say Cheese!!

Today was our 24 week appointment and our follow up ultrasound. In true Ninja fashion he was still not interested in having his picture taken. We did get the pictures that we needed to for our follow up and a few for us to take home. Also, we were able to confirm that he is a boy and he was not shy about sharing that with us.

I was able to scan one in before the scanner decided to take a vacation so I will share this one for now and a couple more when I find a computer guy to help me :)

Other than that everything was perfect for our appointment! One more month and then we will switch to having appointments every two weeks instead of every 4. Crazy!

We have the best neighbors ever!

We recently discovered that our snow blower didn't work. This was luckily :) right before we received like 12 inches of snow that blew into 3 foot drifts. After we attempted to do some manual snow removal with the shovel we decided that it wasn't a very good idea. We called our wonderful neighbors across the street to see if we could borrow their snow blower. They not only said we could, but that he would actually do it for us!! If that wasn't enough, a little while after he got done cleaning our driveway his wife dropped off a little winter coat that she made for Merv. Aren't we the luckiest neighbors ever?

Doesn't Merv totally look like he's in the holiday spirit now?

Trivia 40 - Here's Looking at You, Kid

As many of you are probably aware, each year Jason and I participate in the World's Largest Trivia contest.

As part of the Radiothon weekend which is today and tomorrow they announced the theme for next year: Trivia 40 - Here's Looking at You, Kid. This is notable as our due date is extremely close to the Trivia dates for next year, April 17,18, and 19. It is very ironic timing and to me a very ironic name.

So, here's looking at you, Baby Smith!

Ultrasound Picture

It occurred to me that we never posted the Ultrasound picture from our 20 week scan. At long last...here it is :)



Don't feel bad if you don't know what you're looking at, Jason had to explain it to me. He has quite the keen eye for reading Ultrasounds.

This is a view of the side/back of baby's head and then you can see his back and a little bit of arm and leg. If you look carefully he looks like he's holding a baseball!

20 week check-up

Yesterday, we met with our doctor for our 20 weeks check-up. The doctor said everything looks great and his heartbeat was 160. The doctor also reviewed the radiology report and said that everything looked “unremarkable”, however because he was moving around so much, they were unable to capture an image of his face and abdomen. We will go back for another ultrasound on December 22.

Well, I have a date with a bird and an oven. Happy Thanksgiving!

20 weeks on my 29th

Woohoo! Halfway there! What a great birthday present to be at the halfway point. Everyone warns me that the 2nd half goes much faster than the first...yikes! Here we go :)

We also wanted to add a funny tidbit about when we went to the doctor for our anatomy scan. When we pulled into the hospital at Aspirus we saw that the helicopter was just getting ready to take off. It's no secret that all things aviation are very popular with Jason and this experience was no exception. If you have seen the move Finding Nemo there is a scene where the rubber strap from the goggles smacks Dori in the nose and a single drop of blood goes from her into the nose of the shark, which activated it to do what sharks do....Jason did the same thing when he caught the smell of the jet exhaust! He was practically skipping into the hospital, it was like people catnip to him, I said Oh Boy, that has to be a sign that this is a boy. :)

We got right into the our appointment at our scheduled time and got to see our little ninja. Through the whole thing she just kept repeating, it's so active as soon as I go to capture a picture it moves. The whole thing was supposed to take an hour but someone(Baby Smith) was making that difficult. Eventually, we came to the point where she was going to try and determine the gender. I had just made reference to the fact that I thought it must be a girl and she said, "actually, it's a boy". I asked her if she was 100% and she said they could never been 100%. Okee dokee. So, we continue on fighting for every single picture we needed take and she kept re-visiting the gender area. She indicated that she never says anything unless she's sure...but that she was concerned that the umbilical cord was right there too. So, maybe we will all be in for a big surprise. Luckily, with the two rooms we picked out the boy room could easily be made into a girl room, but there is no chance a the girl room could be a boy room.

Airplanes!!!

It's a Boy!

Rain delay

Thank you for stopping by. Every thing is fine. We are still driving home. Please check back at 630. Thanks!

Butterflies or Airplanes???

19 weeks can you believe it? I can :) The waiting has been too much for me. However, in just 4 short days we get to see Baby Smith again. This appointment is for the anatomy scan in which they can tell us(if someone cooperates)if we have a Ninja or a Ninjette.

We have determined that it seems fitting to post our news on here on Thursday after we get back from the appointment. Our appt. is at 3 on Thursday, so we figure that we will be able to post it at 6p.m. This allows time for us to enjoy a leisurely dinner savoring the new information that only the three of us know (Jas, I and Ninja)!! I have doubters though who think I will slip up and accidentally tell someone ahead of time...we shall see, sounds like a challenge.

So what do Butterflies and Airplanes mean? There are two nursery sets that have caught our eye. They both have "wings" get it, wings? as in aviation? The girl nursery has butterflies and obviously the boy nursery has airplanes.

Helpful myth answers to help you vote:
Carrying high or carrying low: Low = BOY
Sugar or Sour: Sour =BOY
Chinese Lunar Calendar: GIRL
Statistically Moms-to-be correctly guessed
the sex of their baby 71% of the time =GIRL

Real helpful huh?

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Are we having a Boy or Girl?

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Funny website

This morning I was playing on the internet and I found the funniest site. It's called MakeMeBabies.com. In it you can upload pictures of you and anyone else and it will show you what your baby would look like. I tried this several times and there were 2 consistent things, 1. Even on random it was always a boy and 2. They ALL had red hair. :)

Monthly Check up

We had our monthly check up with our doctor today. Everything was perfect! We even got to hear the heartbeat. Click here to hear the heartbeat!

Note: At about 8 seconds you can hear a kind of clunk noise. The doctor said that is the baby moving. Silly Ninja!

Where are we today?

According to most calculations we are calling today 14 weeks! How am I feeling? Fine, I still don't really feel a thing. There are times that I can tell I get a little tired faster at night, but last night I stayed up until a little past 10! I have gained just over a pound since we began this adventure, which is perfect. However, my clothes do fit me a little differently now. I haven't moved on to maternity pants full time, just when I want to be super comfortable. Jason calls my jeans denim sweatpants :). I haven't had any real cravings either. I think I am more drawn to carby things (which isn't that unusual) my focus is on cereal and mashed potatoes right now. The next question we often get is if we will find out the gender of our baby. They answer is YES! We hope to be able to know in the appointment after our next one, which should be around November 24th. We do not have any real preference as to which we would want. I think if I HAD to choose I would pick a boy, but I'm sort of feeling (if that means anything) that it may be a girl. We shall see, just a little over a month more to wait.

Secret is out!

Keeping this secret from so many people was incredibly difficult. Although we did share our news pretty early with some of our closest friends, it was always on the tip of my tongue whenever I talked to anyone. Since we have finally let the cat out of the bag...let me bring you up to speed.

Since then we have:
1. Had one appointment with just a nurse at our chosen doctors office. In that appointment they helped us figure out our due date, which was at first April 7th based off of LMP (Google it). However, based off of a different calculation and the ultrasound date they changed it to April 12, Easter Sunday. In this appointment I also mentioned this strange phenomenon I experience. Before I took a pregnancy test, I had tons of symptoms, remember swollen ankles, heart burn, etc. after i took the test, they all went away. I had expressed my concern to her that I didn't feel anything and she offered to do an ultrasound to calm me. They brought in what I call the low rent district ultrasound machine(not fancy like the kind that can print pictures) and tried to find our baby. Eventually they called in someone with more experience and she was able to find it for us and show us the heart beat. So it is real, I just can't believe it.

2. The spotting continued for 3 weeks. It was a very, very, very long three weeks. In that time I had also called to the doctors nurse because I just didn't know how long was normal for the SCH to bleed. She said they could order an Ultrasound so that we could check on the status again. We did that and we also go to see our baby. That was on September 4th and they said at the time that they SCH was "very small", the spotting stopped September 8th, our anniversary :)

3. We finally got to meet with our Dr. on September 22nd. He seems very nice and we are happy that we have chosen him. At this appointment there was some confusion with our due date. Based off of the fact that at our last ultrasound they told us the baby was 8 weeks and 4 days, we "assumed" that 3 weeks later would be 11 weeks and 4 days, however the Dr was finding it to be 10 weeks and 4 days. I know it doesn't matter because most babies aren't born on their due date anyway, I just like to read the day by day thing and I had already read all of week 10's information. Oh well, we say some time in April. In this appointment we were supposed to be able to hear the heartbeat, because the Dr. calculated the due date to be earlier we did an ultrasound first because the thought it may be early to actually be able to hear the heart beat and by doing an ultrasound first it would stop any freak-outs before they happen cause we would have already seen it and not be worried. The girl appeared to be a little inexperienced because she put the monitor on my belly and kind of found what we assume to be the back, she was basically like I think this is the back and there is a little flashing that's probably the heart beat, I think my exact words were, "I don't think probably is good enough for me". Eventually she called in the woman who was able to find it for us the first time and she instantly got a super clear picture. We could see eyes, nose, chin, legs and arms. It was so active too. The baby has gotten a nickname as a result of this experience, we lovingly call it the ninja because it would like seriously wave it's hands in the air in a ninja type fashion, then just stop. Silly ninja. We could also very clearly see our little ninja's heart just a beating away, it was so clear and it look just like a little bitty finger beating in it's chest. Amazing!

The last weekend of family reunions

By now we were pretty excited to share our news with our last set of Grandparents. We traveled to Kenosha again on August 23rd for Jason's Dad's family reunion. When we arrived at their house we noticed they had some company. So although we were completely busting at the seams to tell everyone we tricked them into "showing us their new car in the garage". Once we were alone in the garage we told them and they were so excited. Our little one is so blessed to have so many grandparents who are anxious to meet him/her!

Doctors orders

I did follow the Doctors orders and took the following day off. Jason's mom was coming up to meet us for lunch so we knew we had to tell her our news too. As soon as she walked into the house she noticed that I wasn't at work. Jason said she had to take a day off, doctors orders. When she inquired why, Jason said, "Because she's pregnant!" She was so excited :)

Happy Ending, Scary Story

On Sunday when we were driving home I had noticed that the spotting seemed a little bit worse. We talked about it and decided the best thing to do for peace of mind is to go to the Urgent Care. So, we dropped Merv off at home and headed up to the hospital. I know now that this type of procedure cannot be handled in an Urgent Care visit, apparently this fit into the category of Emergency visit. Which was, looking back kind of nice because we got to get right in to see the Dr. They went through the traditional things and gave us a bunch of scary facts then sent us off to get an Ultrasound. We sat in a dark room with a lady who couldn't give us any kind of information. I couldn't seen anything from my vantage point but Jason could see a little bit. However, his untrained eye had no idea what any of it meant. Since we have done research since then we do know that he was able to see our baby, though it was mostly just a blob at that time. Once the lady finished up she wheeled us back to the Emergency Room. On the way there though she said this, "I'll take you back to the E.R where he will give you some news." News? what kind of news? Bad news? Good news? Is it twins???? The ride to my room took FOREVER and the wait for the Doc was about the same. Eventually, he came in and confirmed what we knew...we were pregnant! He said that we appeared to be 5.5 weeks along and that they were able to see a heartbeat! He did mention that it was a little slow but that is not uncommon since it had really just started beating. He also mentioned that they found a Subchorionic Hematoma or SCH. Most websites I've looked at has kind of equate this to a bruise in your uterus. He said that the SCH was not necessarily a bad thing but to take it easy for a little while. Sure, I'll just go home and relax now...right.

I just can't believe it...still

As I mentioned in the last post we had a three hour trek to my parents house ahead of us. No matter what we talked about though the conversation kept going back to the same thing...I just can't believe it. We had sort of "decided" that we might try to keep it a secret. Since we ourselves hadn't even known for 24 hours and because I was spotting. I kept it a secret the whole first night when we got there. Can you believe it??? On Saturday morning, my mom asked me if my ankles had been swollen again, then I sang like a canary. I just kind of blurted it out, my ankles are swollen because I got a positive pregnancy test. Then the secret was out :) It wasn't exactly the creative way I always envisioned sharing that kind of news with my parents, but my mom says it was perfect. My mom then shared the news with my dad.

We went to the family reunion and had another fun time. Who doesn't love BINGO, seriously? However, I promised myself and Jason we wouldn't tell anyone else and it was extremely hard. There were so many times that I could have interjected this new piece of information, but I just sat there with a brain full of disbelief. I know that we were at the reunion and I know we had a good time, but I was definitely in another place.

How did I tell Jason?

I decided as soon as I saw the plus sign I would wait until I got home from work to tell him. His hope was to sleep in that day and I knew this kind of news might waken him in a flash. I thought about it all day, how was I going to tell him? Do I just blurt it out? Show him the test? Hmmm... I decided that since we are both kinda computer geeks (who am I kidding, just computer geeks...no kinda about it) I would send him an e-mail. The only problem was the picture I had was on my digital camera, which is in the stone ages because I can't even email from it...seriously, how old is this thing :). Obviously, I could have uploaded the picture onto our computer and then emailed it that way, but I only had a few minutes because we were getting ready for family reunion number 2 and had to drive to my parents house. I decided I would take the picture with my cell phone and e-mail it to Jason that way. I snap the picture, e-mail it and then wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Seriously, this is not the time for e-mail problems. Eventually, he just suggests I just show him the e-mail from my phone, which I reluctantly do. He looks at the picture and says, "Is that a plus sign?". Yes it is, do you believe it?

I just can't believe it!

On Friday, August 15th at 5:00 a.m. I made a decision. I just hadn't been feeling "normal" so I decided I would take a pregnancy test. We hadn't been as they call it, "trying" to have a baby, just not opposed to the idea...so it really seemed like the least likely thing in the world.

The process went like this:
1. I wake up and make this decision.
2. Take the test and assume I'm going to have to sit and wait the 2 minutes or whatever it needed to process.
3. Whoa was I wrong, it was INSTANTLY a plus sign. Seriously, I think it happened as soon as I stood close to it.
4. I put the test back into the package and hid it in the closet(just in case Jason woke up at 5:00 a.m. on his day off, lol).
5. Went and checked my e-mail.
6. Went back to look at the test, still positive.
7. Did some more stuff to get ready.
8. Went back to look at the test, still positive.
9. Went into the living room and told Mervyn, "I think you're going to get a baby brother or sister", he didn't seem amused.
10.Went back to look at the test, still postive. I just can't believe it. I take my handy digital camera and I take a picture of the test. I just can't believe it.
11. I go to work.

Luckily, that particular day I got to leave a little early...however at least 10 times during the day I had to look at this picture on my camera. I just can't believe it.

What is going on?

The week that followed had more swollen ankles so I just kind of equated it all to weird hormone problems (though I still had no idea, that it really was). Oh and the heartburn, it was practically unbearable. At any rate, on Tuesday(8/12) I had reason to believe that the event that could happen to a woman had happened and then there was some logic to my weird symptoms, I was just a girl. Dang hormones.

The first signs

August 9th started out like every other Saturday in August, we had a family reunion to attend. This reunion was for Jason's mom's side in Kenosha. We drove down early (well, early for Jason :) ) Saturday Morning. We had a great time being with family and playing Farkle. However, something was different that day. I had swollen ankles! I had never in my entire life had swollen ankles so I just kind of thought it was a fluke. I mentioned it to my mom on our drive home and then I took her suggestion and slept with my feet elevated. Weird.

My first blog entry

Hard to believe but I have never actually posted anything in a blog. So here goes nothing. My name is Nancy, I'd like to tell you my story...