Oh Sydney...

The other night Sydney was supposed to be in her room doing "reading time" before bed and I heard her say, "MOMMY, MOMMY - I NEED SOME MORE NEMO CHAPSTICK!!" So, I went in her room and said, why do you need more chapstick? She holds up an empty tube and says, "Mine's all gone"
-"Why is yours all gone?"
-"'Cause I put it on my aminals"
-"Why did you put it on your animals?"
-"'Cause they like it."
-"Sydney, we DON'T put chapstick on animals, we put it on little girls. "(James laughing from the living room)
-"Why?"
-"Because animals don't need it."
-'Yes they do."
-"No they don't"
-"Yes they do Mommy"
-"Can you show me where it all is?"
-"Look - on their mouths"
-"Sydney, you did do a good job just getting it on their mouths but don't put chapstick on animals again..."
-"Okay mommy, can I have more Nemo chapstick?"
-"NO - go to sleep!"

You cannot see it really well but the chapstick was around all of the mouths of ALL of her animals.

And just because Syd has really been fun lately I'm putting a picture of her in her dancing outfit - this is becoming a daily routine

Not a Great Appointment Today

We had our appointment with the high-risk doctor this morning. It really did not go very well at all. We had an ultrasound and everything looks great with the baby so far but then we met with the doctor to ask questions and go over stuff for this pregnancy. Because of his answers (or lack thereof) I cried throughout the entire meeting. He had nothing positive to say. Pretty much if I start to have the same symptoms as with the boys (bleeding, fever, etc) there is nothing they can do. He was not willing to do baseline blood tests or vaginal tests. He would have given me the same antibiotic that did not work with Hudson. Luckily our infertility doctor had listened to us and changed to antibiotic to something that will work to take care of the specific bacteria that they found in my blood after the baby was born. He told me my immunine system must be weak but that is typical during a pregnancy but that there was NOTHING I could do to help have a better immunine system (something I do not believe is true). Anyway, he is doing nothing proactive except I get ultrasounds frequently which will tell us nothing - the baby is always fine, cervical lenght always fine. He knows this but is doing this for our peace of mind. He seemed to think there was NOTHING we could do to prevent infection either - again, something I have a hard time believing. So, we will stay on our course of action, doing things (or not doing things) to prevent infections. We will just have to rely on prayer to help us through this one. I sometimes wonder how Sydney was ever born healthy. I really believe that if we can prevent infection, things may be okay. Our due date is April 22 so if we can make it to April we would be so excited. Please pray for our situation. We are very frusterated. We really do not want to go through what we have been through again.

Graduated

We graduated (again) from the infertility doctor!! Our ultrasound today went well. We have one healthy baby - he (or she) was moving arms and legs quite a bit already - fun to watch. Our doctor wants us to meet with the high-risk doctor in the next couple of weeks and wants us to be monitored pretty closely the entire time. Our infertility doctor told us that he wants us to keep him updated and if we are not feeling like we are getting the attention we need that we need to call him and he will make sure stuff gets done for us. We have been very impressed and really appreciate all that he has done for us with this baby and all of the previous ones as well. We hope we never have to go back to see him though :) I am still on lots of different meds and I will continue to be throughout the pregnancy. Hopefully the ones I am on will work this time. We are still praying for proactive, not reactive, doctors and no infections of any kind.

One - kind of...

We had our appointment with our doctor early this afternoon and we have one little baby with a very tiny little heartbeat. Everything looks good with the baby so far and our due date is April 22. There was another baby but there was no visible heartbeat (which should be there by now). So, we are very excited about having one but it would have been great to have had 2! Our doctor said there is about a 5 % chance that the other baby might still be okay. We go back in 2 weeks so we should know for sure.

Postponed...

I got a call from the doctor's office this morning and my appointment that was supposed to be tomorrow is postponed until Sunday morning. So, we have a few more days of waiting. We still have not told the girls yet - we wanted to make sure everything looks normal before we tell them...we'll know more Sunday.

Oh, and I finally got a new camera - it was going to cost more to send in our old one to get fixed than it is to buy a better camera - so, the battery is being charged and maybe we can start taking pictues again - truthfully, on our little vacation last week it was really nice to not have to even worry about taking pictures but it will be nice to be able to have pictues of Raleigh's first day of school next week.

Pregnant for number 5!!

I just heard from the doctor's office and my second set of bloodwork numbers came back fine - so...we are pregnant with baby number 5. My numbers were 77 on Tuesday and 197 today - they want the numbers to double so that is good. We will have an ultrasound in a couple of weeks and hopefully see a little heartbeat. My doctor is putting me on antibiotics 3 times a day - this is a different antibiotic than I was on for Sydney and Hudson. The one I will be on is the same one they gave me after Hudson was born in order to take care of the peptostreptococcus that they cultured from my blood. Hopefully this will take care of any problems before they become big problems. We are praying for:
1) A healthy pregnancy with NO INFECTIONS
2) Wisdom for my doctors (our infertility doctor, my OB, & the high-risk doctor) so they will be able to prevent infections and treat infections quickly if they come.
3) Peace for us - this pregnancy will be a constant worry that something may go wrong

Thank you for your prayers - We are sure God has a plan for our family even after all that we have been through.

LaBarge Party

We spent yesterday afternoon and evening at the annual LaBarge beach party at Uncle Jim's cottage on Lake Michigan. The water was super warm and the girls had a great time. James remembered to bring the kites - it was a perfect day for that too...

Raleigh and Sydney took turns jumping in the waves with Daddy - Raleigh said the big ones were the best.
The girls had so much sand in their hair - even after their baths!

The water was so warm that Raleigh said she was "so cold" when she got out of the water.
It was fun day - Becky was in town too so Raleigh got to hold Melodie - one of her favorite things to do!