A comparison

I'm now 29 weeks along, which means only 11 more to go (more or less). After a round of steroids, my back is a little better, and I'm able to tolerate sitting and/or standing for longer periods of time. I'm not ready to do cartwheels or anything, but I"m thankful to have a little more function back. The physical therapist told me that it may not be until after the baby is born, possibly not until after I'm finished breast feeding, that I actually feel fully recovered. But I can at least sit through a meal now without having to choose between laying down for some relief and getting enough food in my belly.

One side effect of the back issue is that I waddle a little more than a normal pregnant woman, apparently causing the woman at Sam's last week to ask me if I was due on Thursday. Uh, no, I have 3 more months to go. She responded that I must be having twins then. Uh, no, there is only one. She told me she thought one might be hiding in there. Gee, thanks a lot! But I wondered whether I seem to be smaller, bigger, or the same size this pregnancy as with Peyton. So I pulled out a picture from 29 weeks with Peyton (left) and took another picture today to compare (right).




















I don't know...maybe I was bigger with Peyt? I will say that I don't think I've gained as much weight this pregnancy. However, today I was measuring 30 weeks, which is about a week ahead of schedule. According to my 32 week post with Peyton, I was measuring 32 weeks....who knows. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how big this little girl is .....in 11 weeks!

Halloween!

Halloween was a little quieter this year. Unfortunately, no trip to the pumpkin patch :( But next year, we'll go back and have a great time! These days, our activities are limited to things where I can find a place to lay down so we strategize before we do anything. I was feeling up to going to Trunk or Treat, though, so we did get to have a little fun. Families decorate the trunks of their cars and kids go around and collect candy. I knew some friends of ours would have their trunk decorated so I would be able to sit in their car for little breaks. There was also a little green space where the kids were running around so I was able to lay down in the grass. Because I'm now visibly pregnant, it seems to be slightly more socially acceptable for me to lay down in strange public places.

Several months ago, I asked Peyton what he wanted to be for Halloween. We discussed several possibilities but he seemed to settle on being an astronaut. I'm not really sure where he came up with the idea or why that was what he wanted to be, but I was happy to honor his request. A little shopping on amazon later, I found a few for him to choose from and he picked the one he wanted. As soon as it arrived, he wanted to put it on. He even posed in front of the fireplace for a picture. (He's not too much into taking pictures these days).

We usually like to do some kind of family theme, so Patrick and I thought about how we could complement Peyton's costume for the Trunk or Treat event. I settled on being "outer space" and Patrick was an alien. We managed to get a family picture, although certain participants were not willing to look at the camera.

Trunk or Treat was a week before Halloween, but I assumed Peyton would be an astronaut for Halloween as well. The day before Halloween, a friend asked Peyton what he was going to go dressed as for Halloween. I fully expected his response to be an astronaut since that's what we talked about for months. Nope. A pirate. I reminded him that he was going to be an astronaut. Nope. He was an astronaut last week for Trunk or Treat. He needed to wear a different costume. Like he's 16 and can't wear the same dress to a second prom, even though no one was going to see him twice in the same costume -there's totally different crowd in our neighborhood!
I know my son well enough to know that when he has an idea in his head, there really isn't any changing his mind. Luckily, I had a pirate costume in the closet from a kindergarten teacher friend that had a bunch of extra dress up costumes that she passed on to me. I'm not sure I could have pulled off buying a pirate costume with less than 24h notice.

It poured down rain in the early evening on Halloween, but it finally stopped long enough for us to walk around our neighborhood and gather some candy from a few houses. There aren't many kids in our subdivision, so we only saw two other families out and about, but Peyton still had a fun time. And I was happy to get to see him run around in his pirate costume gathering candy that I would subsequently get to steal and eat myself.

23 Weeks and Counting!

I figured I haven't compared my growing baby to any fruits or vegetables yet during this pregnancy, so I'm way overdue! I'm at 23 weeks and at this point, an average baby is about 11 inches long and weighs about a pound, about the weight of a mango. But then again, I don't have average sized babies, apparently, so who knows how accurate this is.

The other night, Peyton put his ear up to my belly to see if he could hear the baby. Whatever he heard, he thought it was the most hilarious thing he'd ever heard. We caught a little of it on video.




I'm still living life confined to the floor, unfortunately. The consensus is that I have a herniated disk in the L4-L5 region of my spine. Because I can't have any imaging done while I'm pregnant, its unclear how bad it is. But at this point, imaging won't tell us anything that would change the course of treatment of a pregnant lady. There are a few more options once I have the baby if its still a problem. But for now, chiropractic care, physical therapy, and depending on how much longer this goes on and whether anyone will write me a prescription, possibly steroids to help reduce the inflammation of the disk. Its still unclear to me whether this will get better anytime soon. When I initially started seeing the chiropractor, she said it would take about a week and a half to help me feel better. I'm three weeks in to the chiropractic care, and I would say I'm only marginally better. And a lot of that may be that I've really given up on trying to have any kind of a life and I pretty much just stay off of my feet. I will start seeing a new physical therapist on Tuesday, one of only 2 in the area that has a special training in spine health. I guess as long as there are options and possibilities on the horizon, I should remain optimistic. But I'm 6 weeks into the back pain and everyone thought I would be better by now. I'll continue with the combination of PT and chiropractic care for now, and see where that takes me. I'm managing to get myself back and forth to work everyday, sometimes driving myself, other times depending on the generosity of my hubby and my fantastic coworkers. I have a mat and a pillow on the floor of my office, so I'm able to stay comfortable most of the day. The students that I meet with sit at a table and we discuss the task at hand with me on the floor. They're all pretty used to it and don't find it odd at all anymore. Some days are better than others, but here's to hoping there are more better days than bad days to come.

As for our house, we didn't have any luck selling it. The market is especially slow this time of year in our neighborhood. The time to sell here is March - June. We just felt like it wasn't worth continuing to lower our price, so we've decided to take it off the market. We had already decided not to build a house in Apex, as we had planned earlier this year. Patrick's new job in its new location didn't warrant such a long commute for both of us. But we still have our hearts set on living in a bigger house, both for our expanding family and to accommodate guests and visitors. With me on the floor and another little one on the way, we especially need our family's help now, so we'll need a place for them to stay! We've decided to put our house up for rent and hope that this will be a much quicker process than selling it. We'll go ahead and rent a bigger house for now as we consider school districts and ponder trying to sell our house again in the coming years.

Stay tuned for exciting updates from the Harrell household...

The Name Game

I guess I'm about 20 weeks now and that means we're halfway there! I had a great pregnancy with Peyton, but I can't say I'm having as much fun this time around. I'm typing this sideways with one hand while lying down because I'm having so much trouble with my back that I can't sit or stand comfortably for more than 15 minutes. Its a problem that started about 4 weeks ago and has gotten progressively worse. Its hard to know exactly what is causing the issue since I can't have any imaging done, but it could be anything from my scoliosis, sacral instability or a bulging disk that is causing it. My physical therapist is banging her head against the wall, as is Aunt Di who has spent a lot of time on the phone with me trying to talk through what might be going on. Patrick is being so awesome, I couldn't ask for a better husband, but he's really having to do everything around the house and with Peyton because I can't do much of anything. Quite frustrating. Peyton is being such a sweet boy, it makes me very proud. He asks how I'm doing and gets ice packs for me and "checks everything out" while I'm laying on the floor. He's being quite caring and sweet. I just hope I get some relief soon and I don't have to spend the next 4.5 months on the floor.

Onto more fun topics, we're in the process of choosing a name. We're going to keep this one a secret like we did last time. Thats for a number of reasons. 1. Its just fun to keep everyone in suspense. But more importantly, 2. We want to reserve the right to change the name and 3. We don't want to be influenced once we've decided.
That being said, we're taking suggestions. Here are our loose criteria:
1. We don't want it to be the most popular name out there - that automatically discards the Olivias, Sophias, and Isabellas.
2. We would like for it to have some kind of family connection. Peyton Christopher has a lot of family meaning to it - Peyton is a variant of Patrick and Christopher is a family name from my mom's side of the family. So if any of you family members have some good names in the family tree, let us know.
3. It has to work well with "Harrell". That means no Hannah Harrell or Laurel Harrell.
4. We don't want the name to subject our daughter to years of teasing on the playground.
5. We don't want the name to remind us of people we'd rather forget.

Our baby name book is somewhere in a box in storage so that won't be any help, so let us know in the comments if you have some suggestions!

The Big Gender Reveal!

So, here we are; almost mid-way through the pregnancy. And I wish I had more time to update the blog. But life just gets in the way sometimes. Peyton certainly keeps us busy!

We had our big ultrasound the other day. I was around 18 or 19 weeks, so it was time to find out the gender! Something inside of me told me this one was a girl. I don't know what it was. Something very similar inside of me told me Peyton was a boy, so I kind of hoped my instincts were right. I thought it will be totally awesome to have one of each. But statistically, those Harrells like to make boys so I questioned whether my instincts were right.

Here is an updated picture of the baby:



And this picture apparently shows that its a girl! (But I had to take the US tech's word for it.) What I do know is that I couldn't see anything that indicated that it was a boy:



As part of what is becoming a tradition with some girlfriends from graduate school, we all got together for a big gender reveal. I bought both pink and blue balloons and the idea was that Peyton would present the right color at the right time.

This isn't the best video because my finger kind of covered the lens (oops), but Peyton tripped as he was coming into the kitchen for the reveal, which kind of dampened the fun as we worried more about whether he was ok rather than what color balloon he was carrying. But most of my friends were surprised as many of them had guessed it would be a boy.




It was at this point that we explained to Peyton that the baby in Mommy's tummy was a girl. He had been telling everyone that it was a boy. I wondered if he had some kind of connection that I didn't know about. But my friend Rebecca caught a later conversation on film where we were still trying to convince him that it was in fact a girl in my tummy.




The good news is that he seems to have come around and will admit that the baby is a girl if you ask him now. He tells everyone its his baby. So I'm happy that he has taken the news well and is excited about the new addition to the family.

My Mommy is a Teacher!

Explaining what I do is a little complicated. I don't teach courses anymore; instead, I work more in an administrative role with our Biological and Biomedical graduate students at UNC. I still teach workshops from time to time, but for the most part I work one-on-one with graduate students enrolled in our program that need to improve their critical analysis, or their writing and oral presentation skills - skills that are important for becoming a successful research scientist. I like my job at lot - unlike teaching 200 students, I get to know my students very well and I'm really proud of their accomplishments as they improve throughout their time working with me.

Anyway, I had never really had a conversation with Peyton about what I do, but I guess in a sense I would still consider myself a "teacher". That seems to be the simplest way to explain it to him, as opposed to the 100 words or so it usually takes me to describe what I do. He has come down with strep throat (poor little guy), which means Patrick and I have to juggle our schedules so that one of us can be at home with him. Today I happened to be teaching a couple of workshops to our incoming graduate students, as this is orientation week, one of our busiest times. So, I went to work in the morning to teach the workshops and came home at lunch so that Patrick could go to work. When I came home, Peyton asked me "Where you went?" I told him I had been at work. "What you do at work?" was his next question (I'm always prepared for a series of them). Hmmm...."Well, I'm a teacher". "A Teacher?! NO way! .....Daddy, is Mommy a teacher?" Yes. "Whoa!" Suddenly, I had become really cool in the eyes of my three year old. "Well, what you did at school today, Mommy?" Funny, I ask him this question everyday. His usual reply is, "I don't know". Again, wanting to keep it simple, I told him that I taught some students some math. "You taught your friends?" "No, students" "You mean friends?" "Yes, yes, that's what I meant." I guess in his mind, friends are the people that go to school and sometimes its just easier to agree than to explain. "Did you go outside to play, Mommy?" This was my favorite question. Ahhhh....to be 3 again where I could just go outside to play for awhile as a necessary and integral part of my day. I didn't have the heart to break the news to him that he will eventually outgrow the recess part of his day.

The strep throat came on pretty quickly, starting with severe stomach pains and eventually progressing into a fever and sore throat. We caught it relatively early and got him started on antibiotics. He's feeling a lot better already, and claimed the ice cream that Mrs. Lauren and Amelia brought him to help him feel better (aren't they sweet?!) made his throat feel better and made all of the germs go away.

Someone Wants to Say Hi!

We have hopefully made the rounds in announcing our big news to mostly everyone. But for those of you that may have missed it: We're preggars!

We're very excited, and are happy to have made it through the first trimester. Things have been going well so far, and all the memories of being pregnant with Peyton are coming back.
Things like:
I find Patrick's jokes way more funny when I'm pregnant. (Why? I have no idea.)
My emotions have the ability to swing one way or the other at a moment's notice. And they swing big.
Food is a very central component of my day. All day. Every day.

I had forgotten a thing or two about being pregnant. I have been very, very, very tired during the first trimester. I really don't remember being this tired with Peyton. Patrick says he remembers that I was. And apparently, my labor wasn't so fun. I obviously don't remember it being all that bad because I've signed up to do it again.

I do remember that I had a large baby. Indications so far point to another big baby. I started getting a belly at 5 weeks and quickly had to abandon my normal clothes. Hiding it until I was ready to tell people was a challenge. Not to mention that the ultrasound tech told me yesterday that the baby is measuring a full week bigger than it should be at this point. Yep, sounds about right.

We haven't explained the situation to Peyton yet. No need for him to worry for 28 more weeks about all of the attention he will be deprived of with the addition of a new baby in the house. Patrick did teach him to tell me that I have a big fat belly, so perhaps he will start questioning the reason behind my enlarged abdomen soon. So far, he's content to just laugh along with his daddy.

As I mentioned, I had an ultrasound done yesterday. This was part of a screening they do for trisomy defects when you're around 12 weeks. It was a little too soon to tell the gender, but here are some pictures that were taken. The baby waved several times and the tech was able to get some great shots.

The head is on the right here and the baby is on its stomach:




He/she flipped onto its back:


A good closeup of the arm:


He/She looked at the camera and waved!


The heartbeat. A solid 165bpm (For those of you keeping score, I looked up Peyton's heartrate around this time period and it was 178bpm). These days, no one believes there is a correlation between heart rate and gender.