20 Weeks Down, 20 To Go!

How am I already halfway there??? It seemed like 40 weeks was going to take forever, but I can tell March will be here before we know it.

We had our 20 week appointment this morning. We started off in the official sonogram office for the full anatomy scan. This was a 30-40 minute sonogram to look at every single part of Bean. They measured all of her bones, looked closely at her face, checked out the blood flow to / from her heart, and more. And she looked just as beautiful as ever <3

She had her arms up above her head for a while, so was basically just dancing in my tummy :)

We also got to see a yawn! It was so cute how her mouth slowly opened wide, and then shut quick - just like the rest of us. The sonographer snapped a picture mid-yawn, so you can see her mouth is open in the picture below. She's being a little more dramatic with her hand on her forehead in the second one ;)

She was positioned with her head up towards my chest and legs down towards mine, but we have plenty of time for her to turn. I also learned that I have an anterior placenta, which means my placenta is at the front. This is why I haven't really felt her kicking or anything; it acts as a sort of cushion. Once she's a little bigger, I'll be able to feel through it. But until then, I just feel some sporadic movements internally that kind of feel like gas....

It was so fun seeing her and how much she's changed, and I'll definitely miss all these pictures over the next 16 weeks since I don't get another sonogram until week 36 to check her positioning :( Until then, I'll just be listening to her heartbeat each night before bed with my at-home doppler <3

After the sonogram, we waited for what seemed like forever for Dr. Cowan. It's not that it was taking him forever; they were waiting for the images to come over from the sonogram office. And poor Nelson was exhausted from the last night of his roadtrip (aka: sleeping in the airport), so he took that opportunity to take a quick nap. Unfortunately, the nurse kept popping in to apologize and interrupting his beauty sleep.

Dr. Cowan came in and said everything looked good. They did find one small thing, but he started off by assuring me that our baby is healthy and normal. Basically, for reasons they don't know, a small piece of her heart muscle has calcified, so she has what's called an Echogenic Intracardiac Focus, found in about 3-4% of normal babies. They'll check to see if it's still there at 36 weeks because they often times go away during the third trimester. If it went away, cool. If it didn't go away, no biggie. It's just something she'll have. It won't disrupt her heart growth or rate, and it won't hinder her in any way in the future. Dr. Cowan said it's something to tell her pediatrician, but more than likely they won't do anything. He mentioned that it can be found in babies with Down Syndrome, but not all babies that have it have Down Syndrome. And the results of my Harmony test were all great at 12 weeks (no chromosome abnormalities) and her other features measured normal, so she's just an isolated case, part of that 3-4%. I obviously started crying because you just want to hear "everything is ok!" and I didn't, but I did some research when I got to work that reassured me it's all ok. Plus text messages from both Audrey and Leanne helped to reinforce that she's ok and everything is good. In the end, you want your baby to be perfect; and the truth is, she was perfect the day she was made, and there's nothing that can change that.

As for how I'm looking these days, I'm definitely pregnant. I've had multiple people now, including men (which I feel like they're more cautious), ask me if I'm pregnant or just flat our say, "Congratulations!" I'm also at the point where the belly band isn't cutting it anymore. It's literally starting to cut into my lower abdomen when I'm sitting, which isn't comfy for obvious reasons. My wardrobe is a little more limited, so I'll probably be doing a second round of maternity clothes shopping this weekend. Oh yeah, I also had to get a new bra because these girls cannot be contained in my old one anymore!

Mom's Take at Week 20: I'm feeling good! I'm still working out, back into running, going to some spinning classes, and hoping to start swimming, again. Besides the obvious body changes, everything just feels good :) I have to admit that I admire my growing belly whenever I see a mirror; I can't help but watch myself as I walk by. And I'm kind of becoming fascinated with how it looks in general - the skin is just so smooth looking. Weird, I know, so let's blame it on the hormones. I haven't had any weird cravings or anymore aversions (yet), so life is kind of like it used to be.... except not. Being the planner that I am, I've already signed for our newborn photographer. It seems everyone I know is pregnant, so I didn't want a good one to get booked since they can only take so many appointments each month. I'm excited about that! I've started to research pediatricians - not nearly as fun. We also pretty much completed the registry. Nelson was such a good sport about that. I'm starting to work on my baby shower lists, and I've become sort of a Pinterest monster as I figure out what her room will look like. It's so much harder since I don't have a physical room to look out as I put it together, but Pinterest has really helped me determine what I like and how it should look, and Nelson is very happy about this because it's saving him a lot of money (like when I realize I don't want the $900 Pottery Barn Kids crib anymore, and actually want a $200 one from Target). The only other thing to note is I have been so emotional! Poor Nelson has been there both times, but I'm glad it's just him and not someone I'd be embarrassed in front of. The two stories that come to mind:

• When Emily and I were in Scottsdale, we were treated to a delicious four-course crepe lunch at The Fairmont Princess. They had set-up a little "kitchen" station with portable burners and the chef prepared it right there in front of us. He was an older guy, maybe 40's or 50's, and was good looking. He was really nice, too, and would sometimes participate in our conversation with the sales girl. Well I also noticed he had a glass eye because it didn't move as he looked around. Later that weekend, when Nelson and I were in line at Starbucks, I was telling him about this guy. And for whatever reason, I just started thinking about how nice he was and his glass eye and wondered if he was lonely - and I started crying. I told Nelson, "I just hope he's happy and he's found love," to which Nelson replied, "God Almighty, Holly, I'm sure he's fine." Ha! (Sidenote: I told Emily this story the following Monday, and he response was, "He had a glass eye?" Geez....)
• A few weeks later, we were seeing a movie at the mall after work and grabbed dinner at Chick-fil-A before it started. We had an old guy take our order, he was maybe 60's. And he was really sweet, too. While we stood off to the side waiting for our food, Nelson commented on how he was really nice and I just started crying, again, because he was SO nice! And I just wanted him to be happy and ok! Nelson was like, "There's nothing wrong with him!" because it's not like he had a glass eye, but I just couldn't help but cry because he was just too sweet. (And if you're thinking, "Wow, you talked to the Chick-fil-A guy for a while to get all this," you're wrong. No, we didn't, it was just your normal ordering of food; but sometimes you just get an impression of someone with very little interaction.)

Dad's Take at Week 20: I think he's just ready for me to stop being emotional, but I don't know if that will ever happen, even after she's born - haha! Other than that, he's been a great support, listens to my opinions on nursery stuff (when I know he doesn't really have one himself), and is slowly getting more excited (I think) about her actually being here. That's not to say he isn't still extremely stressed about the normal stuff that give him ulcers (finances, the house, his job, etc.), but it's becoming a reality, especially as he sees me growing, and he's definitely taking it all with great strides. He's also more interested in figuring out a name, and will randomly call her by one that we're considering to see how it sounds. That's fun to hear <3

Single Mom Week

This past week / weekend, I was basically a single mom. Nelson went on a road trip with Lawrence and another friend (pics from that later) for 6 days, so it was just me and Bean to fend for ourselves. I said goodbye to Nelson at the airport at 5:30am on Monday morning, and was officially on my own.

Because I'd been traveling the past week and we went to Southlake that weekend, it was a low-key Monday night, followed by dinner with my mom on Tuesday. Wednesday after work, I picked up dinner for Anna and Amer (and baby Amelia) and took it over to them. It was great to see Anna - she looked so good! She ended up having an emergency c-section at 33 weeks due to pre-eclampsia. She was actually ok and could have been on bed-rest for a couple weeks, but Amelia was in distress and the doctors estimated she hadn't been growing for the past week. Everyone was healthy, except poor Amelia couldn't regulate her blood sugar, so she had to be in the NICU for 4 weeks. She is absolutely precious!

Amelia was clearly over pictures:

Thursday night I got together with our Missional Community, and then Friday was another low-key night - in other words, I was in bed by 8:30pm. I felt like a winner. But Saturday was extremely busy! I ran with Vania, saw Erin and Adrian at Pumpkinhead, got a pedicure with Meagan (!!!), met Sarah for ice cream, made cookies, and had dinner at my mom's, again. I had gotten up at 5:30am, so when my head finally hit the pillow at 10:00pm, it was lights out. Going to sleep last night, I thought, "Just one more night without Nelson" because I was picking him up the next morning!!!

When I was taking a shower before going to get Nelson at the airport, I actually teared up thinking about it. Lindsay had mentioned crying when Ben came home from a trip to Ireland not too long ago, and I thought, "Really?" But I totally get it now. I'm usually the one that's gone; not him. And 6 days is a long time! Plus we never talked. We'd text here and there, but I wanted him to have "guy time" because we could talk when he got back. And I guess I didn't realize how I'd feel towards the end of that. Luckily I didn't cry when I actually got him ;) But he was exhausted from sleeping in the airport the night before (#cheapestvacationever), so we grabbed lunch at Maudie's so he could nap before our MC Fall party at Jenni and Trevor's.

We took the cookie's I'd made to the party tonight, and Jenni and Trevor had picked up BBQ. It was fun seeing everyone and re-connecting. Since we've been meeting Sunday mornings, we've only been 1 time. We're always out of town, it seems. So it was hearing about Malachi's first birthday and swimming lessons, playing with Packer the puppy, and celebrating the (hopefully soon!) end of David and Val's adoption journey.

This picture was prompted by a discussion on, "What color is my hair?" And Allison and I realized our hair is pretty much the same color - neither blonde nor brunette!

Since I mentioned Nelson and I would text, I thought I'd share some of the pictures he sent me. I know they don't do justice to the real thing, but they were still pretty! He was sure to let me know when I would've been a "crying mess" - I just can't handle heights anymore and it scares me to the point of crying. Terrible, I know.

Arches National Park

The infamous Forrest Gump scene where he stops running.

Antelope Canyon

Horseshoe Bend

Angels Landing

Zion National Park (he said the water was 54 degrees or something!)

When he sent me this picture and I zoomed in, I could see the chain railing and I immediately started sweating. So glad I wasn't there because there's no way I would've been able to go across that thing.

They made a stop in Las Vegas, so he sent me pictures of PawPaw Jack <3

And they ended the trip with free tickets to the Arizona versus Cal football game. Lawrence's friend's dad is the equipment manager (or something?) so they got hooked up with lots of clothes.

Including $100 Texans football tickets, the rental car, gas, lodging, and food, the 6 day trip cost him about $450. These guys would get free breakfast at the hotel each morning (the hotel being ones like Econo Lodge), then put some extra in their backpacks for lunch. To say this was a thrifty trip would be an understatement.

I'm so glad to have Nelson back. And don't worry, he still heard every story I had to tell him over the course of the week because I wrote them all down so I wouldn't forget ;)

Life with the Liggetts

The past week has been full of travel. I had to go to San Francisco for a conference. My colleague, Amber, and I got there early Saturday morning to set-up the booth, and everything started on Sunday. It was a long conference for sure, with the exhibit hall open from 8am - 7pm, so I was exhausted at the end of each day. I got home super late (read: 1am) on Wednesday night. Amber went with me so that I could train her on how to set everything up since the other big conference we sponsor is the first week of February. I had originally thought I would be ok to still go, but after last week, no way. I can't imagine doing that at 30+ weeks pregnant. My boss, Emily, said that it would also reflect poorly on the company having a big, pregnant woman working the booth haha :)

One interesting thing from the conference: I officially look pregnant. I think it was the shirt I was wearing (non-maternity, by the way) with a fitted, high waist, but I had three people that I didn't know tell me congratulations. In other words, they were confident enough I was pregnant, and not just really full, to actually say something to me. I was caught off guard the first couple times, being like, "Huh?" because I'm not exactly used to it. But lucky for them I actual am pregnant!

On Friday, Nelson and I met our builder at the homesite. He was a super friendly guy and he seems very trustworthy. Hopefully he meets all of Nelson's high expectations and we don't annoy him with our little idiosyncrasies. From there, we went home to pack and then headed up to Dallas to see Lindsay and the boys! I don't really try to get there on Friday before they go to sleep because 1. that means leaving so much earlier and 2. Jackson gets super pumped and excited and has so much energy he doesn't know what to do!!!! And then bedtime is rough. So now we get in after they've gone to sleep and spend the evening catching up with Lindsay and Ben.

Sidenote: While I was in San Francisco, I decided I definitely wanted a fetal heart rate monitor, and I made Nelson order this one. Of course he thought it was silly because "[I] see the doctor every 4 weeks already!" (insert eye roll here) But I think he's enjoyed hearing it more than he thought he would. I've caught him smiling, and it's a cool way for him to bond with her since he doesn't actually have her growing inside of him. I brought it with me to Dallas to Lindsay could hear, and I thought Jackson might enjoy it, too.

Weekends at their house are full of playing, pool time, and more playing. We played in the game room, we played downstairs, we watched part of "Zootopia," and we swam in the hot tub. I was still exhausted from the conference, so I took an afternoon nap with the boys while Lindsay met up with some of her Austin StrollerStrides friends who were in town.

Leaving Sunday was hard. Jackson didn't want to hug us goodbye because he was sad we were leaving. Cue the waterworks from me. So many things just break my heart lately, and seeing his precious face sad that we were leaving made me fall apart. Before Nelson and I even pulled off their street, I had already looked at the calendar and confirmed with him when we could go visit, again.

When you're playing that much, you leave your phone on the bedside table. When you leave your phone on the bedside table, you don't take any pictures. And this is the only one I got all weekend: Dean laughing at Jackson in the hot tub on Saturday night <3

So many friends, So little time

This past weekend was a busy one, to say the least. When Nelson got home from work on Friday, we drove down to Will and Carol's (new) house in San Antonio. Stephen was coming down from Chicago (sans Michelle + 1) for the weekend, so it was going to be an impromptu get-together. Dan also ended up driving down from Austin. It was fun seeing their new (huge) house and catching up. I stayed up until 2am, probably the latest I've stayed up in a LONG time. Nelson didn't get much sleep as he stayed in the living room with them talking, going in and out of sleep. The next morning, we had breakfast and talked even more. They decided to go to Fiesta Texas that day, but Nelson and I had to get back home to get ready for Katie Reidy's wedding that night - whew!

We got home just in time to shower, get dressed, and head back out. She got married at Old Glory Ranch in Wimberly. It was a beautiful venue, and the weather couldn't have been more perfect.

I feel like this one shows you just how pretty everything was :)

The whole "crew" was there, including significant others. It was fun seeing some of them so soon after the lake weekend, so we felt like we didn't have to do nearly as much, "So what have you been up to the past year?" conversations.

Unfortunately, I'm in the awkward middle spot with both arms by my side :\

With the beautiful bride, Katie, and bridesmaid, Erin!

Luckily we slept in a little before group on Sunday morning, and then ran errands the rest of the afternoon. It was such a tiring weekend, but well worth it seeing so many faces we don't get to see nearly enough!

16 Weeks Down, 24 To Go!

We had the 16 week appointment this morning. It was just a quick check. Most doctors only do a fetal doppler and listen to the baby's heartbeat, but Dr. Cowan is amazing enough that he likes to do a "fun" sonogram. He theory is: you can't really feel the baby yet, so you should get to see it! (Reason # 8765156 why I love him.) The nurse did the sonogram, and it wasn't super long and detailed. She took some fun images versus your typical profile views. In fact, I think we only briefly saw her profile? It could be the way Bean was laying, but we mostly saw face shots.

For example, we saw these unique pictures of her face. You can even see her right eye in the left picture - wow! The nurse said, "This is what I call 'Halloween babies' haha." And I can see why.... And I think you can see little teeth buds in the right picture.

In this picture, we're looking at her back and can see her left arm and shoulder.

This is a top view of her skull, and you can see the details of her brain! Based on what the nurse said, I think the white puffy area to her left is my placenta. Pretty cool, huh?

Here's her little foot with precious toes <3

At the end of the month, we'll go back for my 20 week appointment. This will entail a full anatomy scan at the sonogram office (they said it would be 30-40 minutes long) and then a check-in with the doctor. I'm looking forward to that one for sure! Dr. Cowan said if everything checks out during that one, it's all downhill from there. But he went ahead and warned me that we won't be getting another sonogram until week 36. They spoil us at the beginning, that's for sure.

And I feel like I've popped. It's really only been this past week, but there's no sucking in this belly. It's also feeling a lot more tight and crampy feeling? Hard to explain, but that's her!

Mom's Take at Week 16: I'm still feeling great! I've slowly gotten back into working out, but I'm making sure to ease into it. I do find myself getting out of breath more easily and originally attributed that to not working out as much. But the nurse at the appointment this morning said it's due to having twice as much blood in my body than usual. I'm also back to eating my normal foods. Although, I'm really loving Annie's Mac & Cheese right now, so I eat a box (my defense: it's only 2.5 servings per box) with dinner most nights. But other than that, I'm adding all the veggies and fruits back into my diet. My body's changing and that's really interesting. I've been wearing the belly band pretty much with all shorts and jeans. Even though I can still button the jeans because they're stretchy, it's just not comfortable. And I think I've decided I'll be wearing the belly band for the rest of my life because it's just THAT comfortable. Why don't we all wear them??? There are some other interesting body changes happening that I won't go into detail about, but let's just say it happens so quickly that I'll walk into the bathroom in the morning to take a shower and audibly go, "Oh shit" when I see what happened overnight. Luckily I have Lindsay to explain it all to me :)

Dad's Take at Week 16: Since Nelson isn't providing this, I'll do it for him. He always seems really "impressed" when he sees my body changing. Sometimes it's joined by a face or comment, which I usually point out is rude, but he seems to be intrigued by it all. He's mostly interested to see just how big I'm going to get. So nice, Nelson.... Since my app says she can hear us, he'll often times yell things at my stomach. Thus far, they've mostly been words of encouragement. Again, so nice. He's also thinking about everything financially, so we've starting those amazing discussions. Anything I can do to help!

Non-Baby Update

Everything isn't always baby-related, even though it mostly is. We've been pretty busy with work, house stuff, and some travelling. Lindsay and the boys came to Austin for the whole week two weeks ago because Ben had a conference in Galveston, so he dropped them off on his way. They had a wedding (he was a groomsman) that weekend here, so it made sense since he was coming back. It was a lot of fun - and exhausting - spending every day after work with them :) Our routine was always playing, eating dinner and ice cream, bath time, and then bed time.

My mom has an Amazon Echo, and Jackson knows how to use it (probably) better than the rest of us. He'll run over to her and yell, "ALEXA! TURN ON 'GOIN DOWN FOR REAL'!" Because it's Amazon and she doesn't have the rights to the song, she plays about 30 seconds of a karaoke version - while we all dance. We rotated between that, "Everything Is Awesome" from The Lego Movie, and "the Batman song" (which ends up just being the old Batman theme song).

Lindsay also got Baby Girl some new clothes, including a special one just from her <3

It was sad seeing them leave on Sunday, but we quickly turned the mood around as we started talking about the new baby. And I had sweet nostalgia when I was at Nordstrom that afternoon and they were playing "GDFR" at the MAC counter <3

They've also started on the foundation for our house. They've framed for it and brought some sand in, so nothing major, but it's exciting to finally see where exactly we'll be living!

And then last week my boss, Emily, and I went to Scottsdale to scout out a hotel for our 2017 conference. Long story short, we already have one, but the leadership team is willing to cancel it because they didn't think it would be able to follow the high-class Fontainebleau. So Emily and I had to rough it in AZ with a seven course dinner...

Two breakfasts in one day... a deluxe spa treatment (OMG!)... baby gifts...

And of course having to take in the views from each resort we visited...

We ate so much while we were there, I definitely felt bigger when I got home, and the proof is in the photo!

We wrapped up a long week with registering (eek!) on Saturday. I was so proud of Nelson for spending 2.5 hours with me at Buy Buy Baby, and he did fabulously. I think we did well with our decisions (it's so hard because there's so much junk out there!!!) and I know I'm looking forward to actually start getting some of the stuff :)

And now we just wait for our 16 week appointment on Thursday. YAY!!!