Boy, oh boy!

So... we are officially having a sweet baby boy! I am over the moon excited and already hopelessly in love. The kids are also very excited to be having a baby brother. None of them have ever had a baby brother since Lucas is the oldest. Molly is a little unsure, in fact she cried. I promised she would love him when he gets here and that was all the consolation she needed. She is now of the opinion that we should name the baby spaghetti and meatballs! Oh, Molly! The baby is now affectionately referred to as "meatball".

Due to an anti-body that I currently have (probably from one of my miscarriages) my pregnancy is considered high-risk. Since the beginning of this pregnancy my doctor has been checking my anti-body levels monthly. The last 2 months my levels have doubled and then doubled again. Now that my anti-body levels are a little higher I have to go to the perinatologist at the hospital every 1-2 weeks to have MCA scans to check the baby for signs of anemia. It sounds kind of intimidating but, it is a level 2 ultrasound where they measure how fast the baby's blood is flowing in his brain. Too fast would be showing signs of anemia which would be cause for intervention. At that point we would need to go to a hospital in either Chicago or Milwaukee to do an intra-uterine blood transfusion. It's not likely that it will get to that point, but not impossible. If at some point the baby's anemia becomes life threatening they will deliver the baby early and treat his anemia and related issues from the outside. We have every reason to be hopeful. The plan is to keep checking the baby with the MCA scan every week or two and go from there.

I had my first scan today and everything was perfectly healthy and normal. I continue to hope and pray for continuing good news. So, I have A LOT of doctor appointments in my future but it will be great to see our sweet boy and watch him growing every week on all those scans. Here are 2 pictures of our boy from today!

Goodbye facebook, hello old friend...

So I have officially been done with facebook for about 2 weeks now. What a relief! I don't miss it. I don't miss the drama and the annoyance and I certainly don't miss the compulsion to check it all the time either. Nothing happened. I am not offended or mad at anyone. It was just time for me to be done and I am happy with my decision.

My poor blog has been severely neglected during my love/hate affair with facebook. My plan is too spend more time here and document all these precious things in my life that are flying by way too fast. That and I promised my Aunt Karen that I would blog if I wasn't going to be on facebook anymore. Look at me keeping my promise!

We have had a crazy busy summer and school is going to be starting in just another month. We are busy and that is just life with 4 kids. I hope I can keep up with 5. We will soon find out...

It's true! We are expecting a new sweet baby in our home January 24th!!! Everyone is very excited and everyone is chanting boy vibes under their breath too. Please be a boy! Not that 4 girls in 7 years wouldn't be fun, but oh, we all want it to be a boy. I would love having my two sweet boys as bookends to our family. I am about 15 weeks and still feeling sick. Part of me is done with being sick but another part of me is happy for those pregnancy symptoms. It means I am still pregnant. Having suffered too many losses in the last year, I am grateful to be sick. I am just counting my blessings and trying to enjoy this pregnancy.

I have lots of pictures from summer that I want to post and a belly picture in the works too. Way more than I can catch up on but I will work on a summer highlight reel for you Aunt Karen!