Updates

Monday was an intense day.

I got a phone call from a good friend in the afternoon who told me she's pregnant! Yay! And then I talked to another person I'm close with that night who told me she's pregnant as well! I'm so excited and happy for both of them. (Sorry for being a bit vague...it's not my announcement to make, and I think both parties are trying to keep it mum for a bit.)

And then I got a phone call from my Mom at 10:30 that night. Grandpa was in the hospital, and they'd found a crazy huge mass of cancer under his ribs. The details are slowly trickling in as tests are done and they are finally getting to talk to oncologists, but it seems that he has lymphoma. The giant mass is about 12 inches in diameter, and it has many fingers spreading into other areas of his body. He went to the hospital on Monday because he was in a lot of pain, and it seems that the pain is caused by the cancer being wrapped around nerves and also around his aorta, tightly enough that it is cutting off circulation to his legs. The good news in all of this though is that lymphoma tends to be highly treatable, and the doctor even used the word curable today. They still have to do a biopsy to determine exactly what variation he has, but it does appear that there is reason to be hopeful.

Even though in times like this life feels as if it should stand still, that is not what happens. I called Grandpa, and he wants us to wait to come up; so we're waiting. And during the waiting we met with a nutritionist about Annabella. Jason and I are still concerned about her weight. We have many reasons to believe that she is perfectly healthy, but we'd feel a lot better if we could at least get her up over the 5th percentile. (As an aside, I'm tired of telling people my kid is small only to hear that their kid is small too, only to find out their definition of small is the 25th percentile. If Annabella hit the 25th percentile, I think we'd throw a party to celebrate we'd be so excited.) But the meeting with the nutritionist went well. She thinks Annabella is eating enough calories, and seemed to be happy in general with the types and quantities of food she's eating too. She gave us a few suggestions to try to boost the overall nutrition of her meals, but we left the appointment feeling pretty good. The next step is to see an allergist, just to make sure we're not overlooking possible food allergies that would keep Annabella from absorbing nutrients properly.

Then today I had an appointment to screen for a couple possible genetic problems with the pregnancy. It's not at all the same screening we did last time, which caused us so much stress. And this one is supposed to give less false "positives". Also, this one comes with an ultrasound which dated the pregnancy. And the ultrasound was awesome. We got to see the sonographer (Dorette) who did most of our ultrasounds with Annabella, which was really nice. And the baby looks perfect. We saw little arms and legs and feet and his/her little nose. Dorette measured some space as part of the screening, and the measurement came back perfect; so that gave us some confidence that everything with this screening will be good. Dorette also verified that everything looks ok, no cysts or anything that could be problematic. And she showed us a trick that is somewhat predictive of sex. She said not to go out and buy paint yet, but she thinks we're having another little girl! I'll try to get the pictures scanned in soon to post. I can't believe there's a real little baby in there!