Nesting via Skype

This week was the first of a few times this summer that Kevin made the trip to Bakersfield to check on the house and tend to some necessities. He left San Diego on Monday and will be returning to San Diego Thursday at some point.
During this trip, he took all Karsie's newly acquired belongings back to Bakersfield with the assignment of putting them away! Michelle laid out specific instructions on where each item was to be put and sent those along with Kevin as well. Like a wonderful and very supportive husband, Kevin obliged. He took all the loot into her room, opened up the computer and gave Michelle a call via Skype so she could be a part of the nesting! He did a fantastic job putting everything away and he really even seemed to understand what was what and the purpose of all the items. There were a couple little set-backs, like figuring out what the spit-rags were and understanding how to hang a dress with coordinating panties. He was a trooper and did a really great job. He even hung a branch with little birdies (a decoration from the shower) from the celing for Karsie!
He really helped Michelle nest and get the room ready, even if she was sitting in San Diego watching through a computer screen!

San Diego Shower

Satuday was Karsie's second shower. Some friends in San Diego threw an amazing shower for Michelle and Karsie and the turnout was great! Thanks to Lisa, Kelli and Megan (and Lindsay, who couldn't be there)! They did such a lovely job!

Karsie was given some really special gifts... like this journal from Aunt Chrissy and Uncle Todd. Kevin was especially fond of this gift! He was ready to start filling it out right away!

This is a prayer quilt from the nurses at Michelle's mom's hospital. Each knot tied on the quilt represents a prayer said for Karsie Gene. What a blessing!

One of the flower arrangements with little birdies (made by Kelli and Lindsay). There were little birdies and beautiful flowers everywhere! The little birdies are flying to Bakersfield to make their nest in Karsie's room!

A special "thank you" to everyone who helped with the shower and to all who came. It was a perfect shower and we are so thankful for our friends and family in San Diego!

Our Daughter Turns 30 Today!!

30 weeks that is.  It's hard to believe we have passed 75% of the pregnancy already.  

Our goal is to keep Karsie in until around 39 weeks, which is about August 15 or so.  Any way you look at it, we're coming down the home stretch! (horse racing analogy for Kevin).  A while ago, we mentioned that our safety zone was about 34 weeks, so we're getting close.  However, if you have been participating in praying for Karsie, that is just the first benchmark.  We are hoping for 5 weeks later than that.  

Lots of Love.

Diabetes Appointment

Bad news: Michelle is technically diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

Good news: She tested so marginally that it is managable with diet and exercise. We sat down with the counselor and she gave us the lowdown with diet, but we also got a little finger pricking kit. Lucky Michelle! No real news other than that on the diabetes side.

We were able to snag our doctor and ask him about the negative test results from yesterday. Basically, we will be closely monitoring Karsie to make sure she is staying put but other than that everything looks okay. What the test says is tha Karsie won't be coming this week, but other than that we don't know.

Check back for updates.

Negative!

It's a good thing that our doctors know that news like this consumes their patients because they decided to call us before we came in for our appointment.  Long story short...actually, it's not a long story at all...the results are negative.  This means that Karsie is almost definitely NOT coming in the next 7 days, which is good news obviously.  

We are also happy for the good news early because we think Michelle has been having sympathy contractions lately.  We think she had two last night (1:11 am, 2:42 am) but Karsie could have just been pulling.  

Thank you all so much for the prayer blitz!  You have no idea how comforted that made us to know that we have such great support.  We still need prayer as the news is good for 7 days, but we are still cautious of the contractions.  We will keep you posted...more to come around noon or so today.

Prayer Request

If you think of us around 11:00 tomorrow keep Karsie in your prayers.  We went to the doctor today and came out feeling sorry for ourselves and slightly concerned.  It might be nothing, but given everything we seem to be going through all at once, we can't help but feel that life sometimes isn't fair.  We've accepted the fact that our baby will have special conditions that we will need to deal with when she is born, but we're never prepared for news that comes unexpectedly.

We went into the appointment knowing that Michelle quite possibly has gestational diabetes. The reason that this is possible is of the many tests that Michelle took, only one came back positive. However, one positive is still positive.  Therefore, there will need to be some fixing of  her blood sugar.  This could be as simple as changing her diet (which is not really simple for a pregnant woman) or it could be something that causes her to have to give herself insulin shots regularly.  In any case, she will need to be monitoring her blood sugar.  While this is a pain for a few months, the real concern is that this can cause premature labor, which for our case is the last thing we want to be a side effect.  We are meeting a diabetes counselor tomorrow at 11:00 to go over the specifics and we will update you as soon as we can.

Even more concerning is the news that we learned next.  Michelle has been having what we thought was round ligament pain for a long time.  It still may be just normal aches and pains every woman goes through, but when we described them to Dr. Cousins he seemed to be a bit more concerned than we thought he would be.  He said that it could just be the ligament pain, but it could also be contractions.  While Braxton Hicks contractions are normal, any contractions for us are something to be concerned about.  Cousins did a test that will also be ready tomorrow that tests the possibility of giving birth within the next week.  If it comes out negative we are safe.  If it comes out positive, it doesn't mean a definite labor sentence, but there is a chance Michelle will go into labor within 7 days.  To make matters worse, Michelle felt a very tight stomach this evening and that has her very paranoid.  We are about to week 30 and given our situation, Karsie coming now would be a very bad thing.  So, please pray for us tomorrow if you think about it.  

We will be sure to update here as soon as we can tomorrow...   

Settling in San Diego

We made it!  We're here for the final weeks of our pregnancy.  We just wanted to give you all a brief update of our schedule and things happening soon.  

We have a doctor's appointment tomorrow in the morning that will probably come with a bit of news.  We will try and update as soon as possible.  Our appointments will be every other week for a couple of weeks and then it will be gradually upgraded to living at the hospital.

We have some pregnancy classes to go to very soon.  That will be loads of fun especially for Kevin. We're not quite sure how that is going to work out given we are not having a natural birth.

Last night was amazing.  Karsie was dragging her foot or hand or something across Michelle's belly and it looked like a fish swimming around.  She kicked Kevin in the face!

Michelle is experiencing some pretty annoying pain that we will ask about tomorrow, but it seems to be what every mother goes through during this point in the pregnancy.  Any testimonies?

Last Night

So, tonight is the last night we will have in Bakersfield, together, until we bring Karsie home (hopefully sometime in the early fall).  We have been frantically packing and getting everything in order so the house does not float away while we are gone.  Michelle has managed to get most of the packing done without any anxiety attacks (which is great news if you know anything about Michelle and her feelings towards packing).  The dogs are aware something is going on too... but they are not aware that they are coming with us and will reside in San Diego for a few months.  They have gotten caught up on their shots and today they got baths.  They probably think this is just some kind of mean torture before we leave on vacation.  Karsie has her own little duffle bag full of clothes and accessories that will be ready for her when she gets to leave the hospital.  We are realizing that we are looking at a whole lot of "lasts" and looking forward to a whole lot of "firsts."  Things are about to change in a really big way, and we are trying to appreciate the together time we have left before baby!  We are really looking forward to having Karsie finally come, but we want to make sure to enjoy the few weeks we have together before we become parents.  

To our Bakersfield friends and family... make sure you plan your San Diego trips to see us!  We will miss you all terribly and cannot wait to come home with Baby Karsie and get back to "normal."  

To our San Diego friends and family... here we come!!!  We will be seeing you all very very soon :) 

Human Pin-Cushion

Yesterday, Michelle had to take the dreaded 3-hour Glucose Tolerance Test.  Her 1-hour test results came back 9 points too high... which could have been the result of a number of things (sugar-free gum, poor timing, or a large piece of cake she ate in the morning).  Regardless, when your 1-hour comes back high, you are asked to take the 3-hour test to rule out gestational diabetes.  

So, like a trooper, she headed in to the lab around 8:00.  She had to give a urine and blood sample as a baseline (after fasting for 12+ hours).  Then, she got to drink a big bottle of what she describes as melted orange otter pop syrup.  She then, over the next three hours, gave 4 more urine and blood samples.  She has some great bruises to prove she took the test, but overall she had no problems with the morning.  The hope is that none of the levels are high, but if two of her tests come back high, she is then diagnosed with gestational diabetes.  Depending on how high the levels are, and the recommendation of her doctors, she will treat it with diet and exercise and possibly medicine.   Gestational diabetes can increase the risk of premature labor, and we are working hard to lower that risk! 

We should know by the end of the week the results of the test... but in the mean time, think happy thoughts and pray for good results.  

Thank You SNC

We want to thank our brothers and sisters at SNC for the "send off" yesterday.  After the sermon was finished (awesome job by the way, Jason!) we were called up by Pastor Joe and prayed over by the whole church.  We're pretty sure that anyone who was not aware of our special situation thought that we were just going down to San Diego for kicks and probably thought we wanted prayer because we were going to miss SNC (which we are), but we still are very appreciative of the prayer.  Karsie was too as she kicked everyone that touched Michelle's belly during the prayer.  We'll see you guys in a few months!  

Kick Count

We have been instructed to start counting Karsie's kicks at some point during the day, usually after dinner.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with kick counts, Michelle is to monitor Karsie's movement for an hour and make sure she feels her 10 times during that hour.  If she doesn't feel her 10 times in that hour we are to go immediately to the doctor's office.  This sounds a little rash, until we give you the times for our first two days:

Day 1 - 10 kicks in 35 seconds

Day 2 - 10 kicks in under 2 min.

So far - not so hard.  (just during the time writing this post, Karsie has kicked 8 times)

My Daughter and Metallica

Kevin here - As a proud father to be, I have to share a very exciting experience with all of you on our way home from San Diego today.  I struck up a few songs of Metallica's new CD and Karsie immediately went to kicking and rolling around so much so that Michelle could not deny Karsie's enthusiasm. She really seemed to kick around the guitar solo parts, so we have a little rocker inside.  But, she also used both hands and feet, so she might be a little drummer (a la Karen Carpenter).  I can't wait to let her listen to some of the old Metallica material.  How old is it appropriate to take her to a concert? 

Post Appointment

First of all, we love Dr. Cousins.  He has the best bedside manner of any doctor we have seen so far (and many have had good bedside manner) and seemed to know exactly where we were in our stage of this process.  The first thing he did was go through our situation as it stands to make sure he had all the information right.  Then, he did a quite thorough investigation of Michelle herself. He has been the first doctor to do that.  Then he did a quick sonogram just to check some of the basics.  Finally, he sat down and answered many, many questions.  Here is what we know so far:

-Michelle will indeed have a C-Section

-Our goal is to go as close to term as possible (38-39 weeks).  That puts us around August 10-15.

-There are no physical limitations at this point for Michelle

-Bob will most likely not shrink, but the good news is that it probably won't grow either

-There will not be anything genetic that will pop up

-We will need to meet with our pediatric surgeon soon to get some of our questions regarding the process after birth.  Cousins will deliver Karsie and then pass Karsie on to the surgeon.

-At 32 weeks Michelle will start stress tests which she will go in two times a week to measure the progress of the pregnancy in order to anticipate premature labor.  That's in about 4 weeks or so.  Thank goodness we have the summer off!

-At week 37 or 38 we will have another amnio test to see how Karsie's lungs are developing.  

-Michelle is starting kick counts this week.  She needs to count every night to make sure Karsie is kicking at least 10 times in a span of an hour.  She started tonight.  It took about 35 seconds 

to feel 10 kicks.  

All seems to be going well.  We have another appointment in about 2 weeks.  Michelle will be moving to San Diego next weekend.  We will continue to keep all of you posted on our progress.  

Could be Feast, Could be Famine

We are in the waiting room...again...waiting for a meeting with our perinatologist. We believe that this will be a brief question and answer session and nothing more, but we may be surprised. We'll let you know.

This could answer a ton of questions or it could be the famous "we'll have to wait and see" answer. Here's hoping that's not the case...

No Hole

Sorry about the previous post.  Kevin had written a lengthy post on his phone from the doctor's office and it was accidentally erased and left with a "no" on there.  We decided to just leave it rather than type it all out again on the phone from the road.  

In any case, the doctor did come back and say that he is making a decision that there is no hole. He did say however that it was a tough decision and it does look like thin muscle, which would give off the "hole" impression, but he is saying there isn't one.  He continued by saying that even if it turns out he is wrong (which we would know after Karsie is born) it is unlikely it would be anything serious enough to have surgery for.  

Thank you all for your continued prayers.  We will have more information by at least Friday.  We may post a pic or two before then.

schedule Changing and More Appts

Currently we are in the waiting room at the cardiologists office waiting to get Karsie's heart tested to see if she has a hole.

For those of you who have not been religiously following our blog (as enthralling as it is) this is a change of original plan. We got a call this morning from Dr. Cousins's office saying one of the other doctors had to have emergency back surgery and Cousins has to take his patients, so we have been kicked out and rescheduled for this Friday.

However, the good news is that we were able to schedule the cardiologist at the same time Dr. Cousins's appointment was supposed to happen.

We will update as soon as possible...

Further Update

Here are the subjects that have been covered:

1.  Hole in the heart - At this point the doctor said that he does not believe that it is a hole, but just to play it safe we have been referred to a heart specialist for another fetal echo.  If it is a hole, it was so small that nothing will probably need to be done.  Even if something needs to be done, it is not a huge problem to correct.  

2.  Omphalocele - Bob hasn't changed much since the last sonogram, but he seems to be growing at a normal rate.  We think there is either a cyst growing next to Bob or part of the umbilical cord making another sac filled with fluid.  There is a more concerning possibility that was discussed earlier that the sac could be part of Karsie's bowel, but the doctor did not seem to think that was the case.  He also said that the size of Bob was moderate, which is decent news to us.

3.  Inflamed vessels - The doctor did say that some of the vessels in the heart were slightly inflamed, but he thought that was due to the blood having to get to Bob.  

4.  Week 34 - To play it safe, this is the new week we are shooting for.  Kevin asked when Karsie would be okay to be born since premature birth is our biggest concern at this point.  The doctor said normally he would say week 32, but because of our case and to play it safe he said week 34, which would put us around July 12 (our anniversary).  We will probably have to have another amnio to start checking the lungs.  

5.  Birth - We did also talk about what the birth will be like.  The doctor said that it is pretty certain that a cesarian section is going to happen and that Karsie will have to go into surgery. He concluded by saying that she will stay in the hospital probably for a while.  He said that a month is not uncommon.  However, the longer she brews before birth and the bigger she gets will make it less likely she will stay for an extended amount of time.  

We have another appointment on Tuesday and possibly a phantom appointment soon (as the cardiologist will need to get back to us on an available appointment).  We will keep you guys posted.  Thoughts and prayers are appreciated.  

Quick Update

Ultrasound is done. We are currently waiting for the doc to explain everything.

The tech said evrything looked good but she might have found a tiny hole in the heart. It was so small she said that it might not even be a hole, but we will have that followed up on. Even if it is a hole, she said that is one of the most common defects and might not even need treating.

While it's a small issue we're still kind of bummed. More when we hear from the doctor.

Appointment #2

We are in San Diego waiting for our second appointment in our version of the triple crown. This jewel will feature an ultrasound on what we believe will be a fetal echo, which is the heart ultrasound.

We will probably not meet our doctor today, but maybe he will make a guest appearance. News to follow.....

Appointment # 1

Not much happened. We met with doctor Owens for a routine checkup. He listened to Karsie's heart which read as completely normal. Karsie was again rolling around and kicking everything in sight.

Owens also said that while Michelle's sugar was technically high it was barely above the level they do a second check on.

Next appointment is this Friday.

First in a Slew of Appointments

Hello all. We are currently waiting for the first appointment of three happening in less than a week. This first appointment will probably be our last in Bakersfield until Karsie arrives. We will have two more in San Diego over the weekend. We don't know exactly what the appointments are for other than meeting the docs, but we will update you all when we find out.

In less than happy news Michelle's sugar levels were higher than expected and will need to go back in to take a longer test to see if she has gestational diabetes. Unfortunately if she does that is yet another risk of premature labor. We are praying she does not.

News to follow...

Growth and Showers

So, we have made it to the six month mark here.  As you can see... Michelle's belly button is looking like it could pop out at any given moment!!  Karsie continues to amaze mom and dad with her strength!  She is approximately 14 inches long and weighs a little over a pound.  She is making good growth progress.

Michelle had her first baby shower yesterday too!  Karsie was spoiled by all her Bakersfield aunties and friends.  Michelle's mom and grandma were able to be there too which made the day very special.  Thank you to all our friends who helped plan the shower and to everyone who attended and were so generous with your gifts.  
A special message onsie for our little "gut" baby!  

Two More Weeks...

We are two weeks away from hitting the magic 28 weeks!  As far as Karsie's well-being, the 28th week is typically the "safety age" for most babies.  In other words, she can be born any time after that and will probably make it.  This is, of course, a rule of thumb age and we obviously want to go to term, but it's a prayer that we have been praying for a while and it's right around the corner. 

Happy Mother's Day!

We would like to make a special Mother's Day shoutout today.  Michelle is enjoying her first "sort of" Mother's Day while sharing it with Kevin's mom and sister.  Hope the rest of the day goes well for the rest of you.