Ollie Ollie Oxen-Free!

So, my little munchkin butt is already causing his mommy stress! On the day that I went for my sugar test to see if I had gestational diabetes, a test all pregnant women are unfortunately but understandably put through, my OB found that our little growing angel has an arrhythmia, or simply put a condition in which the heart beats with an irregular or abnormal rhythm. The doctor said that she felt that he was ok but since she cannot practice medicine on her gut feelings she was sending us for an ultrasound of Oliver's heart to see what the next step was going to be.

Thursday we went for the ultrasound and they were able to see the arrhythmia (and see that yes, he really is a boy- sorry Heather, I know you were still holding out hope) and let us know that they believe it is something called Premature Atrial Contractions, or PAC's and that alone they are pretty common and harmless and usually go away by birth BUT since they could be caused by an underlying condition they were sending us for a fetal heart echo to see if they can see any congenital heart defects.

Yesterday we got to see one of Karlee's doctors who checked his heart and said that his heart looks great, all the pieces are there and from what he can see it is perfectly healthy. Seeing as there are always chances of problems that can't be seen before birth he did let us know that if he were to have a minor hole in his heart or something like that, generally easy to treat or fix, he could't say 100% but from what he can see he is confident that it was PAC. He explained this diagnosis in the following way:

Everyone's heart has a certain group of cells that sends out an electrical like impulse that tells the heart to contract and this makes it beat and Oliver's heart has this group that sends out it's impulse a healthy 155 times each minute. Oliver has a second group of cells that every once in a while sends out an impulse throwing the rhythm off for a moment or two.  The doctor explained that even though Oliver is having these extra impulses fairly often it isn't harmful and the group of cells sending the impulse will more than likely burn itself out by birth and if they don't Oliver will probably get another echo just to re-confirm PAC's but still they are not harmful. Even if his heart started to get the extra impulse every other beat at this point he should be fine. 

All that being said there are some things that need to be done differently to make sure he stays fine. While caffeine is already limited for pregnant women, I have to do my best to avoid it even more so since it can exacerbate his arrhythmia. I also have to go in about once a week to have the OB listen to Oliver's heart rate as the one danger we do have to keep an eye out for is for his heart rate to jump into the 200 and up range meaning that that extra group of cells is just constantly firing and he would be getting tachycardia (meaning his heart is beating abnormally fast) which could cause his heart to wear out which is no good! They don't have an exact percentage of the chances of this but they said it is fairly rare and don't believe it will happen but want to keep an eye out so that if it happens we can treat him as needed without letting his heart overwork for over a week.

Another potential issue we have learned about is that I have a slightly abnormal placenta called a Circumvallate placenta, what does this mean? This is a placental disease in which the fetal membranes (chorion and amnion) "double back" on the fetal side around the edge of the placenta. After delivery, a circumvallate placenta has a thick ring of membranes on its fetal surface. Our OB has let us know that it isn't something to be too concerned about because it usually doesn't cause a problem but to make sure that the placenta continues to do it's job they will be checking the baby via ultrasound about every 4 weeks until Oliver is born.  

All together Oliver should be fine but that doesn't mean that this mommy to be hasn't been super stressed lately over all of this. We have our follow up with our regular OB office on Monday to discuss all these fun tests.

Oliver hasn't been phased too much by the tests except for pushing back when they push on him. He moves around like crazy and has been rolling around which is super weird to feel! Today he has been kicking ALL DAY. It is crazy that I looked down today and felt like my belly grew overnight! There are about 87 days left until Oliver's estimated due date and in a week we will be starting our birthing classes! Next month will be our final beach trip before baby and our BABY SHOWER! So excited!

Some things I have been asked regarding being pregnant:
Cravings? Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing- I swear I could drink the stuff!
Appetite? I feel like a bottomless pit and am ALWAYS hungry!
Are you aware that Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas got married the same weekend you did and then named their recently born son Oliver? Yes, they are totally copying us...

I think that is all for now!

310 days left!! Anxiety!

The other day I was watching TLC with my  mom and "Say Yes to the Dress," was on. On the show, Randy  said something that I found to be very true: "every bride that comes in here has one thing in common, anxiety." That might sound horrible at first, but if you think of all of the details, all of the decisions, and the fact that, if wedding shows like Four Weddings can teach us anything it is that you WILL be judged by all of your guests and you cannot please everyone!

Anxiety is something that unfortunately plays a big role in my life in the past few years and I know it is becoming more and more common for people in general. In my line of work, I can understand why because I do not deal with the most pleasant people and it is mostly trivial, meaningless things that people decide to call in and complain about and in the process they do their best to beat you down like you are the dirt on the bottom of their shoe. Since there really isn't a way to fix all of THEM, I am glad that I have an amazing fiancee that, although he does get overwhelmed sometimes himself, is there to try and calm me down and turn the world right side up again. And this is just life in general, now enter a wedding.

In my experience, the wedding planning has been a little stressful but with our fairly long engagement our motto has been, "plan until you stress then we put it away for another day," and that has worked out great for us. Admittedly, I have been the only one to stress so far and we are more than halfway through our planning. If I am remembering correctly, the things that caused the most stress have been selecting the wedding party, having to pick a lot more detail than I ever thought necessary, and the money.

The wedding party. For as long as I can remember I have discussed who I would have as my bridesmaids with all of my close girl friends. The list always changed and was typically long because I never wanted to leave anyone out. A personality test I took at work told me in my top 5 strengths that I was an "includer" which the evidence does seem to support. While looking into our budget while deciding our wedding party it changed a lot. There were times where we had 8 people each and times when we had 1 person each. In the end we decided on 3 people on each side...which a week later changed to officially 4 people on each side. Was the decision easy? NO. Did I hurt other people's feelings? YES. Will they eventually understand? Hopefully. Dusty keeps reminding me that it is our wedding, the only people we have to please is us, and that  information sometimes slips my mind.

Details. There is SOOO much you have to decide for your wedding. Some things you expect: wedding party, cake decor, THE dress, themes... Some things I never saw coming. Did you realize how many decisions have to go in to planning the reception with your DJ? They literally handed me a book for us to fill in to select not only the songs for our first dance, the dad dance, the mom dance, but for the cake, for the bouquet toss, songs you want played in general, songs you do not want played, songs to play during the ceremony, songs to play while people are eating...IT IS INSANE. As a person who is into books more than music it was overwhelming. This was something that took a few planning sessions to tackle and it is still not complete. Other details that can be stressful: the wording of your invites, the seating plan, the picture shot list, and the timing schedule.

The money, need I say more? It feels like money is always an issue. For us, I am not ashamed to say, the issue is there never seems to be enough and because of this, there have been countless times of panic as to if poor decisions were made, if we should back track and if we should just run to a court house and get married by ourselves with no one else around. My parents were kind enough to offer to let us live with them at a lower rent than we were planning on paying in a house or apartment so the majority of our money can go into savings. A lot of this money will end up paying our wedding bills but hopefully we will still have a good start to a future down payment, if not, at least we will not be up to our ears in debt thanks to this one special day. Does this mean we are skimping on everything? NO, we actually decided to go all out on a lot of things like our honeymoon. Does that mean we are going all out on everything? NO, but I can tell you it will be a unique experience.

So if you are wondering why I flip my lid when you complain about one of the details about our wedding, please understand that we have put our heart and soul into this wedding and have spend hours, days, weeks going over our options and have made the decisions that we needed to to arrive at our goal.

On a side note: a while back I entered David's Bridal's Mom Moments sweepstakes and won my mom a FREE mother of the bride dress and hanger, a $200 gift card, a pearl bracelet, and a memory box. Awesome right?

FMH