a very cute little visitor...

Last week my cousin Amy and her adorable little girl, Ava, stopped in Boise for an afternoon visit (Hi Amy!). I was so happy to see them because we have never met little Ava. Charlie is usually the shy one so I was expecting him to hide behind me the whole time, but not on this day. We met them at the door and I don't think he stopped talking for the rest of the visit. He showed them his room and read his favorite story and they played silly games.

Look at how cute these two are...
Thank-you guys for stopping in to say hi! Hopefully it won't be so long until we see you again. :)

28 weeks!!

We are so happy to be hitting the 28 week mark with the little one today! Cannot believe that I would be having an emergency c-section today if this was my pregnancy with Charlie. Every day we have now is one more than I had last time! Yeah!

We had an ultrasound this morning to check for growth/progress. The bloodflow and amniotic fluid level was good and my blood pressure and urine tests came back good. The baby has shown some growth but is still very small. The u/s estimated his weight at 2 pounds and his measurements put him in the 7th percentile. So, we are still plugging along. My doctor seemed very happy that we have hit the 28 week mark and our next goal now is to make it to 32 weeks. Now that I am seeing the specialist every week I am going to stop seeing my regular OB, at least for now. As much as I love my OB, I am happy about this because it really did seem like a waste of time to be seeing both. That is the latest. Thanks again for all your prayers, they are working like we knew they would! - please keep them coming! :)

storytime with charlie...

Featuring Mouses First Halloween, Charlie's very favorite book at the moment.

mbr day 8....

Well I have not posted much, because as you can imagine life on bed rest is BORING! Charlie is still trying to figure out what is going on and keeps asking me "Is the baby feeling better yet?" and "Can you get up and play with me now?" I have been trying to get creative with things that we can do together that are pretty low energy on the couch and that seems to be helping. I am also very fortunate that we have been getting a TON of help from our parents. My mom and dad took him all last weekend and he had a great time with them! They get to spend some quality time together and I feel better knowing that he is not stuck at home with boring ol' mom.

We had an ultrasound today to see how things are going. The did not measure growth because they only do that every 2 weeks, but they did look at the bloodflow through the umbilical cord and measured the amniotic fluid. Everything looked good today! They have pretty much concluded that he is definitely going to be a very small baby til the end, but as long as the bloodflow and amniotic fluid is good and he continues to show growth, we can keep plugging along. The doctors don't say too much because I think they don't want to get our hopes up, but Eric asked her what she thought we were looking at....just a few more weeks or maybe more? She said with the info we have now, she thinks we have at least a few more weeks and probably more, but she is very quick to say that it could change overnight. Eric and I were both very comforted to hear this and we are just continuing to pray that we will have many more weeks! I am exactly 27 weeks today - this was the day that I was admitted to the hospital when I was pregnant with Charlie...we can remember that day like it was yesterday and are so thankful that we are not going through that today.

I want to say thank-you to all our friends and family that have reached out to us this past week with your thoughts and prayers. We are so blessed to have you all in our lives. Thank-you from the bottom of our hearts.

modified bed rest day one...

We had an ultrasound this morning to check on the little guy. The news was not so great. While the doctor said that he is holding his own, they are still very concerned by his size. He is now falling right along the 10th percentile - anything under the 10th percentile is categorized as IUGR (Intrauterine Growth Restriction). The frustrating part of all of this is that they cannot identify what is causing him to be so small. My blood pressure is still okay, the placenta looks good and the blood flow is looking good. Charlie had IUGR and it was assumed that it came from the preeclampsia. This time there does not seem to be any explanation. So, now I am officially on modified bedrest which means I have to cut all daily activity in half. Uggghhh, definitely going to be challenging with a three year old! But I am so lucky that I have a ton of support in Eric and our parents. I will also start doing fetal stress tests and extra blood/urine testing in addition to the bi-weekly ultrasounds. Really all the doctors could say was they think we can definitely buy ourselves a few more weeks and see how the baby is responding then. Please keep us in your prayers if you think about it :)

Charlie is pretty much over his cold now. He was actually pretty great through it, but he did end up getting Eric sick. He is starting AWANAs at church tonight. He will be a little Cubbie - I remember doing AWANAs when I was younger, but I started later so I was a Sparky. Anyway, I hope he loves it. Eric and I volunteered to help with Children's Ministry on Wednesday nights, but due to my bedrest, Eric is doing it without me tonight. I am bummed I cannot help out. I keep reminding myself that I will be able to do that stuff once this baby is here safe and sound. :)

under the weather...

This little guy is not feeling so hot today... I am not sure why de decided to smile once I pulled out the camera, because I have not seen a smile otherwise all day. He has actually been a pretty needy little stinker today. So here starts my love/hate relationship with him starting school. When he was going to a small at-home preschool last winter has was getting sick ALL the time. He has not been sick once since he stopped going in February. Now, he has been back to school for one week and he already has a cold. He keeps telling me "Mom, I am not feeling so hot today. I have the sniffles." So, there is lots of cartoon watching, pajama wearing and orange juice drinking going on at the Smith household today. And I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to avoid it - nothing worse than being sick while pregnant!! Ughgggh.