these are the days of our lives.

We have had quite an eventful past couple of weeks so I thought I would post an update to fill you all in...



First a trip to Wichita to attend my baby sister's wedding shower. It was a lovely ladies-who-lunch type of affair in which Annie received some of her crystal and china. (I don't think we could be much different in terms of the gifts we like to receive, but I can't wait to attend a fancy dinner at her place). Here are some pictures from the shower:

Mom, me and Annie

Annie and my Grandma, who we call Duck

Annie's China and Crystal patterns along with her engagement picture (that's David, my future brother in law).

A really cute cupcake display that was delicious, well the cupcakes were delicious, I didn't actually taste the display.

another fantastic ultrasound...

Here she is, Miss McGill! We were very excited to learn that our little lady is doing great and is right on schedule to be joining us in August. The ultrasound was wonderful, we had a student technician learning so it took twice as long (which might have annoyed some people, but I loved it because it means that we got to spend twice as long watching our little princess dance around). And dance she did! She seems to have some of the tendencies of her older canine brother Harvey because she did not appear to enjoy being bothered while she was trying to rest. Her little fist kept jabbing at wherever the sensor was. It was pretty cute. Also, we learned that she is quite a modest little lady because it took several minutes for her to show her lady parts, which made her dad and her Aunt Karoline very proud. All in all, it was a great ultrasound and we continue to be both excited and terrified.

p.s. Oh yeah, I almost forgot...we are having a girl.

Wonderful news!

A while back I blogged about a sweet woman who had a very similar experience as I did losing a baby boy, Henry, at 30 weeks. I have never actually met her but feel like I know her because of our shared experience. She had earlier lost another precious baby to miscarriage. She is a talented writer and I enjoy reading her blog because she is able to state more eloquently a lot of the things I have thought. Anyway, she welcomed a beautiful baby girl yesterday and I am so thankful for the safe arrival of this little miracle. This pregnancy has been nervewracking for her and I can really relate to that. Stop by and wish her family well. http://rooneyslittlemusings.blogspot.com/

16 weeks and kicking, well not yet but hopefully soon!

So things with Baby McGill are progressing pretty smoothly. I had an appointment with Dr. Bedia today (my regular OB) and everything looked good. It took the nurse a little while to find the heartbeat with the microphone (which caused excessive panic for Mike and I) but once she found it it came in at a strong 160 beats per minute. I've had a long talk with the baby and requested that at future appointments it would be great if he/she would get into prime heartbeat listening position so that we don't have to panic.
The only problem I've been having is pretty frequent headaches which Dr. Bedia said is partially a symptom of pregnancy but could be made worse by stress. He said if it is bad enough he could arrange for me to see a neurologist, but at this point I think I will just try Tylenol and to be a little less whiny.
We have our next appointment on March 10 which will be an ultrasound with Dr. Drake (the high risk perinatologist). We should be able to find out the sex that day, yeah!

all you ever wanted to know...

So here is some info about baby and pregnancy. After William died this summer I had massive amounts of blood drawn (well maybe not massive, but it felt like a lot!), and they determined that I have what is called antiphospholipid syndrome (click here to learn more). They believe that this was probably the reason for losing William, but they can't be completely sure because the hospital accidently threw away the placenta before it was examined. The good news is that the treatment for antiphospholipid syndrome is successful at eliminating fetal loss. The bad news is that there could be something else that caused the baby to die. So, the course of action we are taking is to treat the antiphospholipid syndrome with twice daily injections of a blood thinner called Lovenox and frequent visits to a high risk perinatologist to monitor the baby's growth and development. We have already had two ultrasounds and gotten to hear the heartbeat 3 times. So far everything looks great. We have been really blessed to have a great team of doctors that are so understanding of our anxieties and fears. And we continue to be grateful to all of our family and friends who are so supportive.

I'll end this post with a funny picture of Harvey. I have been having some pretty bad neck/shoulder aches lately that the doctor thinks is related to stress and nerves (imagine that!) and so I've had the heating pad out. I got up to go to the bathroom the other evening and Harvey discovered the heating pad. He thinks it is great and gets annoyed when I take it from him for my own selfish use. Finally, something to get him through these cold Iowa winters.

Until next time...
Mags

big news...

That's right, a baby is on the way! I have had lots of time to process this news since we found out the week of Thanksgiving and the best way to describe my feelings is to say that I am cautiously excited. The due date is August 10 and we are welcoming all prayers.

The night that changed my life...

Okay so Gymnastics Superstars. It was awesome, life changing really. I was up close to Shawn, Nastia, and most importantly all of the men from the team, including Blaine Wilson. Those men look small and funny in their unitards on TV, but in real life and wearing nothing but cargo shorts and rippling muscles, doing all of their tricks...life changing (or at least drool inspiring.) The men did all of their routines together, which was cool because at one point there were 4 of them on one pommel horse. It was amazing. The girls did their routines individually and when Nastia was on the bars she was literally like 10 feet away from where my Grandma and I sat. It was really cool. Now for the bad news, my camera battery died about 20 minutes into the show and cameras were allowed so I could have gotten some great pictures. I only got two and the one of Shawn on the beam wasn't very good because the beam was the farthest from our seats.
It was awesome and I had a great time with my grandma, although we were both complaining about the band (they were called KSM) that played in between routines. It was composed of 5 girls under the age of 17 who all thought they were Avril Lavigne. It was absolutely horrific (my Grandma complained that the bass and strobe lights were giving her heart palpitations)! If any of you with young daughters get wind of this band I would recommend banning them from your home. It was really that bad.