carrots

This is Andrea and I making carrot juice.

I'm trying to be more healthy. Carrot juice is so sweet and yummy and an easier way to eat lots of vegetables.

I'm feeling wide.

I feel wider every day!

Zion, i love you

We went to Zions

One of my favorite places to camp.

I can't get enough of it!!

How lucky to live so close to this amazing place.

The food taste better, the air smells better, the sun shines warmer!

This is a wild turkey. We also saw tons of deer.

This was a beautiful time of year to go. We saw water falls that we had never seen before because of all the snow melt off. All the walls of the canyon had wet streaks down them.

Andrea is a great hiker!

The trail was sooo muddy and fun!

I wish this picture was right side up. There is a bridge in the back with the river under it.

This was Lydia's best hike by far. She is getting the hang of it.

Two happy campers.

We hiked all the emerald pools. It was lots of fun.

The girls completed the junior ranger program and got little badges.
Every national park does a junior ranger program and best of all-its free!

It was fun to have my mom camp with us for one night. I can't believe I don't have any more pictures with her in it and then I remember that most of the time I was using her camera. I'll have to get the pics from her.

The Visit

Naked babies are the cutest!

We took a nice little drive to Sunny St. George to an appointment with a periontologist.

Since my third baby was born 6 weeks early at 34 weeks for no "apparent" reason, they want me to take these progesterone shots weekly to help prevent pre-term labor. So in order to get the shots I had to visit the specialist. Wade and I walk in and the ultrasoundographer starts the ultrasound. We happily relax as we watch on the big flat screen the beautiful little baby move around. I am 16 weeks at this first visit. We see all her little parts; the hand and fingers, the little frog legs kicking around, the heart beating, we see all the chambers of the heart and the valves opening and closing, the long spine, the brain with all its parts (thankfully!). She tells us that although it is early it looks like a girl.


She gets done with the measurements and leaves the room to come back with the periontologist. We have our introductions and then he gets to business taking the ultra sound to where he wants and says, "okay here it is. What we have here is a choroid plexus cyst."


I'm a little confused. "What does that mean?" I ask.


He says, "right now it means absolutely nothing or imminent death."


My head starts spinning.


He explains, "There is a link with between a cyst on the brain and the fatal disease called Trisome 18. Babies normally with Trisome 18 have a clef pallet, webbed hands, and clubbed feet."


"But my baby doesn't have those things" I say.


"Yes that is true" he says, "However there is still a link that babies that have a choroid plexus cyst can be a Trisome 18. If the baby is a Trisome the baby will die either before birth or shortly after. If it isn't Trisome then the cyst will go away by 26 weeks and the baby will be fine"


I am listening to the doctor and thinking to myself, this cannot be happening! I can't believe he is telling me this!


"How high is the risk?" I ask.


He said that the risk was low since my baby didn't have any other defects but that the risk was still there. He said that there are some tests we can do to see if the baby has the Trisome 18. One of the procedures has a miscarriage rate of 1 in 300.


That to me was out of the question. He recommended that we get some blood work done to check the hormone levels and determine the odds. Babies with the Trisome 18 have abnormal levels of certain hormones. We would know in a week the odds after taking my blood. They took my blood right then to get it to the lab. Why find out for sure? What difference would it make? The doctor said that, by knowing gives us time to prepare for the worst.





Wade and I are quiet as we walk through the parking lot to our vehicle holding hands. We start driving and I finally break down and the rolls of sobs come spilling out. I cried hard. That was not the news I was expecting. Wade holds my hand and comforts me with positive words.


He says that the chances appear to be very low that our baby has this Trisome since the rest of the baby is healthy.


I agree to that. But to wonder, will my baby die inside of me? or soon after birth?


We talk about how there is always a chance that anything could go wrong between now and delivery. A million things could happen. And this doctor is scaring us to death over something that may turn out to be nothing. A little confusing.


We decide not to tell anyone about this until after we get the blood work results back in a week. Meanwhile two days later we get more bad news of job denials. It was not a good week to say the least. I kept just tried not to think about it and push it from my mind as much as I could. I felt a lot of peace, yet uneasy. I just wanted to get the results to confirm the feelings Wade and I already felt....that our baby is healthy.





The next visit to St. George a week later to get the results was the fastest visit I've ever had. We met with the geneticist and she said good news. The results were 1 in 30,000 that our baby has the Trisome. And that number 30,000 could be higher because that is as high as the computer program goes. We went through all the hormone levels and left with a skip in our step. We celebrated by getting a frozen custard.





I feel annoyed. Annoyed that because technology is so advanced that doctors can scare us with any remote possibilities of something being wrong. I felt that it was unnecessary to even mention this, this early in the pregnancy. I think that he could have said yes your baby has this cyst but everything else looks good and we will keep an eye on it because the chances are very high that it will go away by 26 weeks.





We went back 5 weeks later at 21 weeks and sure enough....all cyst were completely gone. No problem whatsoever. And...still looks like a girl! I was hoping for a boy for no good reason except for convenience and less emotions in the house. But I am now very excited and feel that she will be a sweetheart. I love her already. I am enjoying feeling my baby move around. I am so grateful and happy to be a mother. I feel so blessed.