Stress Test

She passed it with flying colors so we are still in the holding pattern waiting till Friday! It seems like it is so far away yet it is just around the corner!! We will make sure something gets posted when something happens!!

Check Up News...

So, it looks like a lot of folks were wrong... she is late late late late!!!

We went off to the doctor's again today and little miss is still not doing anything. She is a happy little clam in there! She is still growing by tummy measurements and I am shrinking... I lost 3 pounds this week!!! There is always the chance that I will go into labor on my own but since the placenta will start to break down after so many days, they will only let you go so long. That said, if she is not here by Monday, I will have a fetal stress test done just to check and make sure she is still doing well in there... If she is not, they will take her on Monday. If she is doing well, they will let me go till Friday, May 2. My favorite doctor would be the one to deliver her if we go all the way to the 2nd so I am not heartbroken over it. I was a little down last night going to bed because she isn't here but all in all, I know that I won't be pregnant forever... the most we have left is 9 days!!!

That said, for those of you that we know that work at the hospital (and there are lots of you!) please understand when we ask that you let this be a family matter. We have been through a lot to get to this point and would like the chance to tell our families about her arrival before we tell others so please don't look us up in the computer system to see if we are there or if little miss CNB is a new arrival... For the rest of you, we promise that we will call (or the phone tree will get to you!!) when she gets here and we are ready for visitors! With everything that we have gone through, I am pretty certain that this will be a very emotional time for us so please understand when we ask for just a little space with the delivery part... once that is over we would love for you to come see us! We are so grateful for the continued prayers and the support we have gotten... they will always be remembered. Next time we post, hopefully it will be with some news about the arrival of our little one!!

Still Waiting....

Well, we are down to just 5 days till she is supposed to be here but she is giving no signs of coming out. So, we wait!! And plan another trip to the doctor's office for next week!! We have spent the last taken several years trying to get a little one here so a few more days won't hurt us I am sure! Her heart beat today at the doctor's office was around 130 and I did not gain any weight over the last week... still holding at 16 pounds. My edema seems to have stabilized out some, or else I have just gotten used to elephant feet!! I am still working but only 8 hour shifts now and yes, I am still rotating between the day and night shifts... trying to save my time up so that I can spend my days with the princess whenever she gets here!!! Anyhow, till next week...

What is your thought?

If she is born this month, little miss C.N. will have diamonds as her birthstone. If she comes in May, her birthstone will be an Emerald. At my first ultra sound, the due date was April 25... Duke moved me to April 22 after my first ultra sound there and she has measured April 22 for every ultra sound since. Dr. B. told me yesterday that she would have left me at April 21 based off of my conception window... hummmm, when will she actually get here? Her Uncle H, who is also an April baby, thinks that she should be born on his birthday so he only has to remember one day! Check out the survey over to the right and let us know what you think... early, late, or on time!

Updates...

First, let me say that if you remember praying for or reading about Nate, Tricia, and Gwyneth over the last few months, say another prayer for them... this is the family that had the micro-preemie back in January due to Tricia having Cystic Fibrosis. Tricia underwent a double lung transplant yesterday and is out of surgery but needs to stay infection free and her body needs to accept the new lungs. If you want to read more, their blog is over to the right under The Lawrenson Family. On a different note here, please also pray for the family that donated the organs and lost a loved one...

On our end, we ventured off to the doctors again today. I am up another pound, putting me at 14 pounds for this pregnancy. I have not seen Dr. B in about 4 months and she was cracking up laughing at my stomach. She said my belly is alllll baby and should "deflate" at delivery!!! Baby girl had a great heart beat today, around 135 and it was confirmed today that she is head down and ready to go! And, Nathan was correct last week when he told me that she was low, apparently she has already engaged (dropped) so all we are doing is waiting. We should not have to wait too much longer though... I finish week 38 on Monday and have been having contractions for the last two days. Nothing regular and no reason to believe they are the real labor contractions... they come and go at their own leisure! Either way, we are down to just two weeks or so till we meet this little person and we can't wait! This far, the Lord has blessed us with a with a full term healthy pregnancy and we pray that delivery will go just as smoothly when the time comes!!!! Thanks to all of you who have stood by us with unconditional support and love over the last few years on this journey to parenthood.

C.N.B.

Several people have made it their mission to figure out what C.N.B. stands for. As we have said all along, even if you guess it, we are not going to tell you it's right! I will tell you the story that is behind the name though. Nathan and I have always had a hard time trying to pick out names for girls. Boys, no sweat. We have several of those names but a girl, that is another story! When I was pregnant with Hope, her name just fell into place. We had been trying to come up with a girl name for weeks (of course we had a boy name already) but a girl name was so elusive to us. We still had not 100% decided on one when the signs of a healthy pregnancy started leaving us. Every time we went to the doctor, it was always the same thing... I hope this test comes back normal, I hope that they are wrong and the second opinion will be better, I hope her heart defect is not as bad as they think, I hope that the Downs has not had an impact on her organs... Of course for everything that was said, there was always an "I hope" in there. As we pulled into the driveway one night after a long day at Duke Peds, Nathan said "I have called her Hope all day". I simply said, "Me too". And so, Hope had her name. Noelle came from one of my favorite Christmas songs, we just changed the spelling from Noel to Noelle.

This pregnancy has not been nearly as eventful so we did not have a name that just came to us this time. In the end though, it ended up the same way as with Hope... Nathan picked the first name and I picked the middle name. I walked into the den one night with the name book waiting for the Carolina and N.C. State game to start... When we started dating, Nathan did not have a ACC team that he pulled for. Being from the mid west, he had no school loyalty and decided that he was going to pull for UNC instead of State or Duke just to be the odd ball out in the family. My father and brother went to NCSU and I did my undergrad and some of my grad work at NCSU while my mother went to Duke. Needless to say, there was no Carolina blue around us till Nathan and boy oh boy, what a fan he has become. As you can imagine, the games get quite interesting around here when the teams play!! On this particular night, we were waiting for the game to start and I sat down in a chair across from the Christmas tree while Nathan was channel surfing. I was very focused and determined to find a name (at this point we had already found out it was another girl) and only had about 20 minuets before the game started. We had a list of 3 names, Chloe, Lane, and Luca. I already know several Laney's, Nathan wasn't sold on Chloe, and Luca was not something either of us was sold on but was the one we most agreed on at that point. Out of the blue, Nathan says "What about C...?" I tossed it around in my head, not quite sold on it, but I really liked it. As I learned the meaning of the name, I really really liked it. It took me about 10 minuets to figure out that Nathan had found another game on TV for a team that we root pretty hard for... one of their players has this name. Once I figured out where he got the name, I was sold. Double meaning... First, she has a name sake and second, it is SO VERY fitting for our journey these past few years with our dreams to have a child. Once we got the "C" we decided to have the middle name start with an "N" so that she would have our initials... "C" for Christy, "N" for Nathan, and of course the "B" is our last name. The "N" is a name that I have always loved... I fell in love with it when I was watching a Drew Barrymore movie and this was the "name" of the character she played... While both girl's have the "N" as a middle name, they do not share the same name....

Bags are packed!

If you can believe it, we are finished with week 36 and started week 37 today! Nathan doesn't think that we will go all the way to 40 weeks though... time will tell! I had some serious contractions today for about 3 hours and then they went away. Nathan thinks that they were Braxton Hicks, I am not sure what they were but she has not dropped yet so I think that we still have lots of time left. We do have our bags packed so that we will be ready when she lets us know that she is ready to make her grand entrance into this world.

We ventured off last week for another doctor's appointment and things still look good. I actually gained this time, I am up to a whopping 13 pounds now! All in all, doc said that he was pleased with the weight gain. Apparently around 6 pounds of it is all in the placenta due to the extra blood and around 6 to 7 pounds of it is the baby so I can really say all of my weight gain is baby weight! Still crossing my fingers that this means I will weigh less after delivery than I did when I got pregnant... how nice would that be!!!

Baby girl is still very active. She is not kicking so much now, it is more of a roll. She is running out of extra room in there so every time she moves, I can feel it. One of my coworkers told me the other night that I have my own built in toy for entertainment... this was of course after she told my my stomach looked like something off of the movie "Aliens"!!!!