Baby #2 Update

Monday morning (March 14^th) we went into the specialist to do the first trimester screening.  Given my age and the fact that Alexa was healthy, I had absolutely no concerns going into it.  Mostly I decided to have it done so I could have the opportunity to see our little one.  The ultrasound was great!  Compared to the first one I had at about 8 weeks, the baby had grown so much!  You could now make out the body of a baby, head, arms, and all!  The baby was fairly cooperative and it only took the sonographer 20 minutes or so to get the picture she needed.  She mentioned that while it was early (12 weeks) she would check the anatomy as well.  This was definitely a surprise for me since normally you don’t find out until 20 weeks.  Of course we wanted to know!  Luckily the baby was cooperative again and she was able to clearly see that it was a BOY!  While she wouldn’t commit 100%, it was pretty obvious that there was a little something there.  Neither of us had strong feelings either way, so long as it was healthy…

Thursday morning (today) I received a message that they had the results of the screening and to call back.  I thought nothing of it since the nurse told me they wouldn’t leave the results on a message.  So I called back fully expecting to hear that we were low risk.  She started off by telling me the risk of down syndrome (trisomy 21) based on my age, 1 in 762.  Then the heartbreaking news that the risk after the blood work had increased to 1 in 306, a huge jump and also above the cut-off for what would be considered low risk (1 in 310).  While we are just barely above the cut-off, we are still at high risk that he might have down syndrome, which no mother wants to hear.  I barely managed to keep it together on the phone (at work) and pretty much tuned out every word she said to me afterwards.  After I hung up the phone I frantically tried to pull up something on the Internet that would reassure me although I don’t think my mind was in the right state.  My next instinct was to call Brian and let him know.  I could barely get the words out but eventually managed to.  Being the optimist that he is, he didn’t seem concerned at all, simply saying that we’d deal with whatever happened.  Well, that wasn’t the reassurance I was looking for! 

I managed to pull myself together to go back into work (although I contemplated leaving and drowning myself in my sorrows the rest of the day).  I continued to do more research online and it has seemed to give me some reassurance.  I’ve found that there is a high percentage of false positive results for the first trimester screening.  Plus if you flip those odds around, we also have a 305 out of 306 chance that he doesn’t have down syndrome.  I also did some research on the risk based on age and the 1 in 762 figure they gave me seems to be a little low.  Everything I’ve seen for a 28 year old is more in the 1 in 1,100 range, so now I’m questioning the accuracy of the entire test.  I’ve also been reading some pretty inspiring stories of mothers of babies with down syndrome and I’m seeing that it may be one of the greatest things to ever happen to us.

I have a high level or level 2 ultrasound scheduled for mid April at which time they’ll look for other indicators that he might have down syndrome (flattened face, shorter limbs, hole in the wall of the heart, etc.).  This is again just a screening test and if we want to know for absolute certain whether he does or doesn’t have it, we’d have to do an amniocentesis.  We have both agreed that regardless, we will love him with all of our hearts so having this procedure won’t be necessary.  Not to mention that it carries a risk (while small) of miscarriage.  

I have gone through so many emotions today, shock, sadness, anger, blame, worry, but ultimately I think I’m finally starting to reach acceptance.  Acceptance that whatever happens is meant to be and that as Brian said, we’ll deal with it.  There’s nothing that I can do to change things now so there’s no point dwelling on it.  We can only pray for the best, whatever that may be. 

Alexa Update

With the move to Morton Alexa also had to change daycares.  While I still work in Peoria, it just made more sense for her to be in Morton so Brian could help with the pickups/drop-offs.  There aren’t a whole lot of choices in Morton but everyone recommend the Pumpkin Place.  I visited and it seemed nice, although it’s very hard to compare her old daycare since I thought they did such a great job!  She made the switch on March 10^th.  She was supposed to move over earlier that week but she ended up getting an ear and eye infection (her first).  So far she seems to be doing pretty well.  They moved her to the two year old room so she’s the youngest.  She tends to favor older kids rather than those her age so I think that works out for the better.  We haven’t received any “incident reports” yet like we did at the old daycare in which she was ‘cited’ for scratching and/or hitting kids.  It’s only been a week though so we’ll see ;-)  She seems to like it so far although dropping her off in the mornings is still rough every once in awhile.  I think it’s going to work out but a part of me still misses her old place!

Last weekend my cousin visited with her 10 month little girl Addie.  It was so good to see them since we hadn’t visited since Thanksgiving.  Lexi did such a great job with Addie.  She’s going to be the best big sister!  When Addie got upset Lexi would pat her on the back and tell her shhh, it’s okay, just like Mommy used to do for her.  She also tried to feed her a bottle, which was hilarious since it was at the same time Lexi was watching her favorite channel, Sprout.  She kept her eyes glued to the TV while she held the bottle in Addie’s mouth and every couple minutes would turn to look at Addie.  They left on Sunday and Lexi misses them!  She keeps going into the guest room where they stayed saying “Baby? Baby?” in a concerned voice.

Just this week we officially stopped using the pacifier.  Since before she was one she only got the pacifier at naptime and bedtime.  Over the past month or so I noticed that she wouldn’t wake up with her pacifier and sometimes she’d take it out as soon as I’d give it to her.  I mentioned to the daycare they might try her nap without it and they said she did good.  So two nights ago we put her to bed without it and no problems at all.  She hasn’t asked for it (provided it’s not in her sight) so hopefully she has forgotten all about it!

Alexa has been using words for quite a few months now but right around 20 months is when her vocabulary just took off!  She can pronounce words much better now and repeats almost everything you say, which can be dangerous!  Some of her favorite words are Oscar, help, up, Mama, Daddy, baby, please, outside, no, yes, popsicle, and yogurt. 

February

New House - In late fall we decided to put our house on the market.  We’d lived there for a little over five years and with Brian working from home and knowing that we wanted to expand our family we had quickly outgrown the three bedrooms.  I was naïve in thinking that it would be a quick process.  We had a lot of interest at first, which was great, but that also meant keeping the house spic and span, which is extremely difficult with a one year old and a dog.  Then as the holidays approached the activity slowed and came to a virtual stop around December.  We had given up hope at that point thinking it would be spring before we got any good offers.  Then all of the sudden early January activity picked up again and we accepted an offer.  Most people would be worried accepting an offer, which would require them to move in 4 weeks without having picked out a new home to live in.  Luckily for us, we had looked at a few houses already (online at least) and had a pretty good idea of the location we wanted, which was Morton.  There were several reasons for moving to Morton including that Brian’s parents live there (babysitters!), easy access to the highway (for Brian’s job), and closer to Bloomington where a lot of our friends/family are.  Another reason I wasn’t too worried about finding another house is that I’m pretty decisive.  So within a week of us accepting an offer on our old house we had picked out and made an offer on a new house in Morton…oh did I mention it was 4 houses down from Brian’s parents!  The 4 weeks to moving date flew by and before we knew it we were moving out and into our new house (February 21^st).  I am so in love with our new house!  We have so much room but I’m mostly excited about the kitchen.  I have working space and every appliance has its own spot! Brian would probably say the basement is his favorite thing about the house. 

New Bed – Against the advice of some of my friends I decided I would go ahead and move Alexa into a big girl (toddler) bed when we made the move.  I realized it would be a lot of change for her but the daycare had informed me that she was already using a cot so I figured why not give it a try.  I had ordered a bed and had it all assembled for her and ready to go the first night she stayed in the new house.  We had the crib ready to go too just in case!  But it turned out we didn’t need it.  Surprisingly she did great.  We did her normal bedtime routine and I put her in the bed without a fuss or trying to break out.  She slept the whole night through but did wake up a little earlier the next day by walking into our room.  Since then she’s had a couple of nights where she’s woken up but for the most part she’s been adjusting quite well.  She of course takes advantage of her new found freedom and wanders into Mommy and Daddy’s room first thing in the morning, but it’s actually a really cute site to wake up to.  She always has Mr. Bear or Sid (the monkey) in tow and it’s so funny to hear and watch her open our bedroom door.  Hopefully we won’t need to go back to the crib since we’ll be needing it in a few months.  

January

January 9^th Sunday – For the few days preceding Sunday I had an intuition that I might be pregnant.  I didn’t want to get my hopes up though since we had been trying for a few months and if you’ve ever taken a pregnancy test hoping it to be positive only to get a negative result, you know how disappointing that feeling is.  This time I was pretty sure though.  The telltale sign for me was that my boobs hurt.  Same reason I had a suspicion last time.  I decided I’d take a test Sunday morning, since the HCG level is supposed to be at its peak in the morning.  If it was positive I wanted to surprise Brian.  I had a stock of pregnancy tests so luckily I didn’t have to make a special trip to the store.  I got up and first thing I took the test.  I waited two or three minutes and I could see the second line appear, though faintly.  Yay!  I thought.  But I was wishing I had a digital test on hand to tell me for certain.  I’d have to get one later, but in the meantime I couldn’t keep the surprise from Brian.  I sent him off to make breakfast while I dressed Lexi upstairs in a personalized Big Sister shirt I had ordered for her a couple months back.  We came downstairs and into the kitchen with Lexi dressed in her shirt and holding the pee stick.  If it weren’t for the pee stick Brian probably wouldn’t have caught on.  In fact, I think he had to take it out of Lexi’s hand to see what it was (he thought it was a thermometer).  Brian’s not much for showing emotions but he seemed to be happy.  Unfortunately Lexi’s too little to have any idea what’s going on but we used her to make the announcement to the rest of our family and friends.  Later that day I took two more digital tests, both showing “Pregnant”. 

18 month stats – Alexa went in for her 18 month check up on January 10^th.  No shots this time, so it was pretty easy.  Here are her 18 month stats:

Height:  31 3/4 inches (50%)

Weight:  24 lbs (50%)

Head: 18 1/2 (55%)

December

Christmas - This was Lexi’s second Christmas and it was way more fun than her first!  She was actually able to enjoy opening her presents and we got to see the excitement in her face.  Her favorite toy was a $12 baby doll we bought for her and a stroller to go with it.  She couldn’t wait for us to open the box with the baby.  Why do they make those things so darn difficult to open?!?  She got lots of other great gifts too but most of them we had to pack away until we moved since we didn’t want clutter everywhere!

Finally an update!

Okay, so I know I've been really bad about updating the blog.  This is supposed to be Lexi's baby book and I've been doing a really terrible job lately!  I got so busy with work and the million other things going on in our life that blogging was the last thing I had time for.  But now things have started to slow down and I finally have some time.  So let's see...I've got about 3 months to catch up on!  I'll take it month by month and try to remember as much as I can!