Today's post is brought to you by the letter....

I am sure you have figured it out by now, name game clue # 3- one of the names contains this letter! This is a pic of my attempt to be crafty! I say attempt because if you know me well, you know my patience level is not that of a crafty person. I always think things like this will be easy, but they never are! Each one of these blocks has a letter of his name on it and no, I am not telling you if all the letters are present in this picture....

Now, on to the serious stuff. We have officially made it past the 23 week 2 day point in our pregnancy!! As always, the anticipation was so much worse than the actual day. Although, I did keep myself just busy enough to not have too much time to sit around and think about what happened at this point last year. I started off my day with an OB appt in order to calm my nerves. I then went to my prenatal yoga class, bought some herbs for my garden at the farmers market, got a massage and spent some time hanging on the deck with one of my favorite babies, Lo! All in all, it was a great day. I felt relaxed and at peace. Now we just need to make it to Saturday when we can say we are 23 weeks 5 days and that we are more pregnant than we have ever been. Until then, I am going to enjoy the rest of my week off of work and hopefully get to the beach today and then pamper myself again at the spa tomorrow. Thanks for all your cards and prayers for this day- I couldn't have gotten through it as easily as I did without your support!

Test

June 10, 2008- For those of you that have not been following my blog since the beginning, this was the day that we experienced the great storm of 2008. We were out with friends when suddenly the skies opened up and dropped 6 inches of rain on our town. We came home to water in our basement. We spent the next few weeks tearing up the carpet, getting rid of damaged items, rearranging all of the saved items to the nursery upstairs, cleaning the mess and attempting to fix it. Our house was a mess. I felt very disorganized and was extremely distraught over losing half of our house, including the nursery that I was so excited to start decorating. And then at 23 weeks, my water broke and everything we knew had changed. We came home from the hospital to a house that was still in disarray. The nursery that should have had beautiful girls sleeping in their cribs was still full of furniture from the basement. We then spent the next couple weeks and months fixing the basement so it hopefully would not do this again. I always commented that the flooding was what started our summer from hell and I associated everything bad that happened to that stupid flood.

June 19, 2009- We heard that a pretty bad storm was coming. We thought it might be good to roll up our carpets in the basement, put the furniture up and make sure everything was off the floor --just in case. I am so glad that we did! The great storm rolled in and dumped somewhere between 7-9 inches of rain on our little town. Our basement held out for a while, but then suddenly, it gave up its fight and it was covered in water. So, here we are again- heading into the dreaded 23rd week of pregnancy and reliving this horrible moment from last summer that started everything. I was a mess. It was like I had stepped back in time- even the air felt like it did last year. J did a fabulous job of keeping me calm and reminding me that the only important thing in this situation was the baby boy that was kicking in my belly. By the end of the night, I was angry. I couldn't believe that we were going through all of this again and I was mad. It was then that I wondered if this was a test from God. He knows I have trust issues. Was this a test to see if I could make it through this flood and trust that He was taking care of this baby? That just because our basement flooded again, it did not mean that life was going to repeat itself?

We had plans to go shopping for our crib early the next day because I had a really good coupon (yes, I am dutch!). I debated whether or not we should go with the recent flooding. I finally looked at J and told him to get ready to get up early because we were going, I was not going to let this take me down and ruin my exciting day of picking out a crib for my baby boy. And, that is exactly what we did, we let the water come in, we went to bed, got up early and bought our son a crib. I didn't like this test at all and I hoping that this was the only one we will endure, but I know better, this will be one of many. I just hope I pass those ones like I did this one!

This picture gives you a glimpse into how much water we got- this truck is driving in front of our house and the water was so high, it was over the sidewalk and was coming into our driveway....

And, this is the crib that we bought! We ordered it in white so it will take 6-10 weeks for it to come in, which is perfect because I wasn't sure if I was quite ready to have a crib in that room yet!

Mighty God help me understand that I have been called by You to walk by FAITH and not by sight. 2 Cor. 5:7

Quick update

I had my second to last MFM appointment this morning. Everything went well. My cervix hasn't changed which is such a blessing to know heading into this week! It was kinda funny at the end of the appt because the dr talked about how we only had one more appt with them and then they were releasing me to just my OB for care. J made some comment about it being kinda sad and the dr looked at him like he was crazy! What this dr doesn't understand is that we call him "Dr Feelgood" because every two weeks, we go there and we leave feeling confident about this pregnancy and we just feel good. Not that we would ever choose to have to see a high risk dr, but we do feel very blessed to be able to see our little guy every two weeks and to be able to leave with that good feeling.

Thanks so much for all of your thoughts, prayers and comments after my last post. This week is going to be rough. I will not kid myself or hide from it anymore, but I know with all of your prayers and support, I will get through it!

Tired

The last few weeks have been go, go, go for us. I suppose I subconsciously arranged a busy schedule thinking that a busy mind is better than a mind full of anxiety. Boy was I naive! Now, not only am I finding myself having mini breakdowns, I am also extremely exhausted and just plain tired. I didn't realize it until yesterday when it seemed like one thing after another was going wrong. These were minor issues in the scheme of things, but I just totally fell apart. It was then that I realized that I couldn't hide anymore from my anxiety. It was showing its ugly face and reminding me that stuffing it and making myself busy was only making it worse because now it was sneaking up on me. One week from today, we will be 23 weeks and 2 days pregnant. That is how pregnant I was the day that my water broke with the girls. And, coincidentally, it falls on a Wednesday again. And then in one month, we will be going through this all again when July 16 hits- 1 year from the day my water broke.

With the advice of my fabulous OB, I have taken Wed- Fri off next week for a mental vacation and I have planned a pamper session consisting of a massage, yoga, facial, or pedicure for each day. Somehow, I feel like if I pamper myself into relaxing that the memories, flashbacks and anxiety of that moment will just fade away.... again, silly me.

So, I am once again in need of prayers. Prayers that I make it through this week and next without too many emotional breakdowns. Prayers that I will be constantly reminded to keep my eyes on God and TRUST (my biggest issue) that He will take care of the little one growing inside me. Prayers that we will see this baby boys beautiful face in October and not anytime sooner. Prayers for J as he deals with his own anxiety on top of taking care of me. Prayers for June 27 when we can officially say we are more pregnant than we have ever been before. I think that should keep you busy for a while!

21 weeks belly

We have had a few crazy busy weeks around here. It has been a fabulous distraction for my mind, but has not been so great for getting things done! And the belly pic just happened to be one of those things that got passed over for sleep! So, please accept my apologies for taking so long to get this posted!

Name Game Clue #2

First off, I want to aplogize to all the people that haven't been able to leave comments on the blog. I am not that technologically savvy and have no idea what the issue is, but I thank you for contacting us through email and FB to make sure we get your guesses! If you would like to guess and are unable to comment, feel free to email me at kschrtnbr@yahoo. Please put Name Game in the subject line because if I don't recognize your name, I might think you are spam and delete the email. I also want to thank everyone for participating and warn you that the clues are going to be given at random times and will not be given on a weekly or bi-monthly basis. With having 19 weeks to go, we don't want to make the name too obvious!

This next clue is for all of the people out there (and there are quite a bit of you) that think we are crafty enough to choose names that go together or are in a sequence. That has never been our thing, and the fact that we chose Alexcyn and Brooke was completely random, so with that said, clue # 2 is.... the name does not start with a C!

He is so cute!!!!!

Ok, now I am not one to brag, but how can you not when you see this adorable baby!

He was slinging his umbilical cord around his shoulder during the ultrasound which freaked me out having it so close to his neck, but they reassured me it was normal and nothing to worry about.

We were blessed with a wonderful appointment again today. This ultrasound was a lot more detailed than the past ones because it was our anatomy ultrasound where they were checking for abnormalities. Praise God, nothing was found to be abnormal with our little guy. I had my cervix checked again and another praise God, it hasn't changed since the first scan I had at 16 weeks. So, things seem to be going really well. I always love appt days because my confidence level rises and I dare to think about the future with this baby. I usually also take advantage of these days by shopping for him when the anxiety is at bay- so watch out credit card! Just kidding, J=)!


The ultrasound tech commented on how big his feet were!

You know what that means......

Baby boy currently wieghs 13 ounces- more than Brooke and Alexcyn did when they were born at 23 weeks. Knowing that he is growing so big so fast puts my mind at ease a little when I think of possible pre-term labor. I also noticed on the computer screen that the measurements had my due date at October 19 (the date I have changed my EDD to!) but, the drs did not mention it at all- so I will just have to continue to go on my own beliefs on this one!

Thank you everyone for all of your prayers for this appt. We can't tell you how blessed we feel for each day we have with baby boy and for each good appointment we experience.

I will leave you today with the awesome picture below which gives me chills every time I look at it.... Look to the left of baby boy- it looks like a large hand is hovering over him, protecting him.