We're having a healthy baby and...

11 Month Update

We took some pictures in downtown Naperville on the riverwalk when Mamie was in town. Now for the update... I can't believe that my tiny baby boy is going to be 1 year old in a month! The time is going so fast, I wish I could slow it down. He is truly the best thing that has ever happened to me, besides my wonderful husband Rudy of course. Here are some of the fun things Maddox is doing lately:

• He can clap, wave and scrunch up his face when you scrunch up your face.
• He loves to dance and boogies either sitting or standing when you turn on the music or start singing to him.
• He also immediately starts clapping when I sing "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!" It is so cute!
• He yells through a toilet paper or paper towel tube like mama or papa does. This requires explanation I guess. We gave him some tubes to play with and used them like megaphones to talk and sing to him. Yesterday, I gave it to him and he started yelling through the tube! Doubly cute!
• He primarily prefers to feed himself. He gets mad sometimes if we try to feed him, he wants to pick up the food and do it himself darnit! He is a good little eater too, will eat pretty much anything we give him and eats it faster than I can put it down. I have to limit how much I give him at a time because he shoves it all in his mouth as fast as he can and sometimes will gag himself!  He can also drink out of his sippy cup on his own too and loves water.
• He crawls pretty darn fast!
• He can walk around holding on to the furniture, the walls of his playpen, pushing his truck or holding our hands. He can also stand on his own, but when he realizes he's doing it, he gets all nervous and wobbly and falls down or grabs onto something.
• He is SOOOO close to walking! He has taken a step or 2 on his own if something is really close by to grab, but mostly he sits down and starts crawling if he needs to go somewhere. I am not sure I want to really encourage the walking yet, so we haven't pushed him to do it too much. But, I bet soon he will realize he can walk on his own. Yikes!
• He can crawl up the stairs! He just started doing it one day with no warning, we were freaked out! We are trying to teach him how to go down, but it's not working yet. 
• He loves to kiss and hug and sometimes grab and hit you in the face. I am sure it is just a love tap, but sometimes it hurts! 
• He has the goofiest, toothiest grin with the big space in the front still. I hope those front teeth close the gap!
• He is still babbling a lot, says Dada a lot, but hasn't really said Mama much at all. Maybe a few Ma's here and there, but it will be a while before he even knows what those sounds mean. I can't wait to hear Mama!

On another note, I gave him a little haircut. He had some hairs that were a lot longer than the rest, so I just tried to even it out but keep the long shaggy look he's got going. I ended up trimming it a little shorter around the ears than it is in the pics above. I saved the hair for his baby book, sniff sniff.

All in all, he is such a good baby, the best baby boy I could have asked for! He is happy most of the time, sleeps through the night very consistently, eats like a champ and loves to play. We love him to pieces!!

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On another topic, I got my first trimester screening results and they were completely normal. They give you the results in terms of risk of the baby having Downs Syndrome or Trisomy 13/18. They were like 1/3000 and 1/2000 or something like that, I wrote them down somewhere, but left it at home today. Anyway, they put our minds at ease, these results are even better than they were with Maddox, so we feel good that our little baby will be just fine.

I am starting to have a fat belly, although I think I just look fat, not really pregnant yet. It looks like an airline pillow under my shirt, a big fat waist. It is pretty similar to last time, maybe I am showing a couple weeks earlier, but not much. I feel pretty good now though, not as tired, no nausea, no sore back (yet, cross my fingers it never hurts), so I am trying to enjoy feeling good for a while. 

I have a confession to make

I am so tired and hungry! I am nauseous too, but not as much as I was. I am so bloated and gassy (I know, TMI). I have gained like 6 pounds and feel like a fat cow. That's right, I am pregnant. GASP, SHOCK, AWE!!! This has come as a total shock to us given that we thought we were infertile. How did this happen! I don't know, but it did and we are ECSTATIC!! I mean, I have been thinking about having another baby since Maddox was born. As soon as he came out, I knew I wanted another. I thought I would be satisfied with just one, but not really. But, I never thought this would happen. I hoped and prayed and fantasized something like this would happen. Lots of people told me this could happen, but I though "No way. It won't happen to me". But it did, so miracles DO happen! I am still in shock about it and I am almost 12 weeks pregnant. I have been waiting to tell people because 1. I wasn't sure it was going to last and 2. I just started at a new client and didn't want people at work to find out right away. I still haven't told my boss, so keep this under wraps for a few more days please (don't say anything on facebook just yet)!!! Anyway, so like 7 weeks ago or so, I thought, "gee, I think it's been awhile since I had my period. That's kind of weird". But, I didn't really think it was that weird because I had only had 2 or 3 periods anyway since they started back up in December and they were a little irregular, or so I thought. So, I mentioned it to my hubby a couple times and he gave me "that look". He wasn't so keen on having another. He definitely didn't want to go through all the fertility treatments again. I didn't really want to either, but was seriously considering it and trying to figure out how to talk him into it. Anyway, so I started to think, maybe, just maybe, I am pregnant! But, I have to say I doubted it A LOT and kept putting it out of my mind. Then one day, I thought, what the hell, I'll take a test. So, I started rummaging around in my bathroom looking for one lonely prego test, I must have one somewhere! I thought, this is so ridiculous I can't go buy a test, no way. But, I came up empty handed. Well, I did have a bunch of ovulation tests. Then, I remembered that you can use them as pregnancy tests! Well, sort of.  Pregnancy tests test for HCG and ovulation tests test for LH, but they are one molecule apart in chemical makeup. So, if you have HCG in your system, your ovulation test would come up positive. But, it could also mean you are about to ovulate. I took it anyway and it was dark. I had never seen a ovulation test come up that dark when I was ovulating, so I was very suspicious. So, I told my hubby and he said "let's go to walgreens and find out once and for all!!". So we did. The test came up positive, of course, in like 3 seconds. Rudy kept looking at it and was like "give me the instructions - show me what it is supposed to look like if positive or negative". I said "DUH! It is a plus sign, that means positive!!" "OH MY GOD!!!!!" Wow, we were we shocked, flabbergasted, stunned, all that. Rudy said the right thing of course and said he was happy about it. He better be or I would have been devastated!!!

So, that's my confession. I am feeling pretty good, although I have to say I am a thousand times more tired this time than I was last time and really, really hungry. The nausea kicked in earlier this time and lasted a little longer, but it's pretty much gone now. We've seen the little sprinkle on ultrasound twice and saw the heartbeat. Everything is going fine! YAY!!!! We are SO HAPPY! I have to admit, I feel guilty though because it happened so easily. It is amazing how we didn't really try at all and didn't do much of anything and bam, we are pregnant. Especially since last time we tried and tried and tried and I had surgery and many, many shots and meds and side effects and procedures. It really is unfair to be infertile. Getting to experience it now how God intended is so easy, it makes me mad! But, I am grateful and believe me, I know how lucky I am. The OB/GYN said sometimes being pregnant once can fix things. Amazing. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you God!