The Nursery

We moved into our home in 2008.  At the time, we were in a bit of a rush, and we didn't bother to paint.  Thus the guest-bedroom/soon-to-be-nursery was plain old builder beige.

We talked about this a bit and decided to paint it a pale green color.  With LK being a girl, we have a lot of pink stuff: wall hangings, blankets, stuffed animals, even the lamp shade.  With the walls we wanted more of a contrast. 

Like I said, pink all hangings; that's a coat/towel rack that Sarah bought in the summer time when my nieces were coming to visit and would need someplace to hang their wet towels. Most of the other hangings are waiting for the furniture to be in place (we haven't bought the furniture yet); I just put this one up so that we could see how the colors look together.

The drapes and diaper hanger match the bedding (which is in  the bag, still).  It's pink and green with ladybugs and dragonflies.

Much of the actual painting was done by our super-awesome friend Marcoe, who came up the day after Christmas to help out with it.  The fisrst night she was here, I said something like "I'm going to go in after dinner and start taping."  She said "Tape?  Why?" and proceeded to hand-cut around every trim surface in the room: the door, the closet, the window, the baseboard, and the crown molding.  It was inspiring.

Since November

I see that the last post on here is stamped November 8th.  Wow! Time goes by.

Since then, we've had a series of  visits with the doctor.  At first, it was a lot of nothing to report: Sarah and Lynnleigh are both doing well. 

Things started to happen in December.  At our checkup in late December, we scheduled LK's birth by C-section for March 1st.  (Ainsleigh was born by C-section after Sarah had been in labor for 24 hours; she just wouldn't fit.  Between the previous C-section and the reason for it, everyone involved thinks its better to take LK out by section, too.) So while she might come before then, she won't come later.

Also in December, our very dear friend Marcoe came up from Jackson to help me paint the nursery.  More on that in a moment.

After the December checkup, we entered the every-two-weeks prenatal checkup period  So we back to the doc the first week of January.  A separate post on that is coming up, too.

Is This Thing On?

Lots of posts coming up...

For Your Consideration

This is a purely speculative exercise, of course; Lynnleigh's's face is still thin, and doesn't have much the muscle or fat that will give it shape yet. But even wild speculation is fun. Here she is, side by side with her sister:

Named

Baby's name is Lynnleigh Kate.

Follow-Up

We went back to the perinatologist today. Last time everything looked good, but her heart was just the size of a quarter, so they couldn't see all the details they wanted to see. This time they had a closer look at the valves in her heart and the arteries leading into and out of it. The news is all good: everything looks as it should.

Pictures:

With that, we're all done with the perinatologist, and back to just visiting our local OB. That probably means these are the last pictures for a good long while. But that's OK; Sarah can feel the baby move every day now, so we have some constant reassurance that she's still in there and doing well.

Perinatologist

At our last appointment with the fertility doc, he suggested that we look into having a fetal echocardiogram done around Week 18.

Backstory: Our first daughter, Ainsleigh Brynn, was born with a "constellation" of heart defects that ultimately combined to kill her. There's about a 5% recurrence rate for congenital heart defects. That's not a lot, and there's little to be done about it in utero anyway. However, we live in a small town; our hospital doesn't have a NICU and the nearest pediatric cardiologist is at LeBonheur in Memphis. So, the thinking is: find out if there are any problems, so that we can be prepared --- where in this context "prepared" means, crucially, that we'd arrange to have the baby in Memphis at a hospital that can support the baby.

Our OB agreed with the fertility doc, and so referred us to a perinatologist in Memphis. We had that appointment yesterday, October 11th. It went very well.

The ultrasound itself lasted about an hour and a half. The tech told us baby is a girl first thing.

Then she checked out the baby in every dimension.  For instance, she counted all the fingers and toes.

There were lots of other checks, too.  She confirmed that baby has two umbilical arteries (this is the correct number; Ainsleigh only had one), that her kidneys are in place a supplied with blood (she can watch blood flow through the renal arteries), that her spine is properly formed, and more. 

One thing they do is estimate the baby's size.  The tech takes three measures: the circumference of the head, the circumference of the abdomen, and the length of the femur.  Each measurement is used to form an independent estimate of baby's weight.  These estimates are averaged; the average comes to 10 oz.  This figure is looked up on a chart ; it corresponds to the average size of a baby at a gestational age of 19 weeks.  Given that baby was 18 weeks 5 days at the time of the ultrasound, she's right on time.

In addition to the 2-D images taken at a particular depth, they can rapidly scan through depths and use the computer to construct a 3-D portrait of baby:

It's imperfect, of course, but you can see her pretty well here.

As to the purpose of the visit: her heart looks great.  They spend a great deal of time on this.  There are a number of techniques involved.  A simple ultrasound can show the heart moving as it beats, and the valves opening and closing.  The machine can also detect the movement of blood through the major blood vessels as well as between the chambers of the hearts.  Finally, they can zero in on and listen to the various components of the heartbeat: this or that valve opening and closing in rhythm.  The amount of detail that can be gleaned is really impressive, given baby's heart is about the size of a quarter.

Put all these approaches together and you get the result you want: baby is healthy, and her heart is in perfect working order.