21 weeks

Moving along... The holidays are here and time is going by so fast. Here I am at 5 months and I feel so very big. A patient actually told me that I look bigger than I should look for 5 months! We had a prenatal appointment last week and we had good news. The placenta has moved out of the way and is no longer below the baby. They said it won't move back to where it was so we don't have to worry about that anymore. We were so happy to hear that. The baby is growing normally and is moving so much that all the pictures were blurry! I can feel him move practically all day long... well, he picks up at night and really starts kicking as i'm lying in bed. Then I feel him kicking as I'm waking up in the morning. Greg and the kids can watch my belly shake and move as he moves around. I am having some pain in my pelvis and legs from the pressure (already), and already have pitting edema. Oh yeah, lovely. And we are only half way through! I think that once your body has 2 babies, it's got to be a greater stress for it to have more. The doctor advised me to sit down more. Ha!

We're leaving in 2 days to drive to Georgia to spend Christmas with my dad and family. We're very excited. We just had a big snow storm and its still snowing 24 hours later. It's been beautiful and the kids are having fun. But we are really looking forward to the trip. It will be Greg's first official trip to the south (not counting Nashville when we drove Noah there this summer). The family moved to Savannah, Georgia a couple of years ago and we still haven't been there to see their new home. I know that I won't want to come back once I step foot in Savannah. I miss it more than I ever thought I would. We will meet Jamin and Rachel in Savannah and they will take Noah back to Nashville for New Years. About this time, we are also missing Portland. I know it's hard for Greg to be away at the holidays. It's also Greg's birthday on the 23rd, so I hope he has a great time.

Mirabel's hospital stay

This is Mirabel doing much better, eating a burger at her request. I don't usually let her dive into a gut bomb like this for her little body, but by this time we were just happy she wanted to eat. She spend a very long weekend in the hospital with pneumonia and asthma. On friday morning I noticed she took a turn for the worse from her cold, and was lethargic and had difficulty breathing. I took her in and she was admitted immediately into the hospital after her oxygen sats were in the low to mid 80's. She spent 48 hours on oxygen and had to take continuous albuterol nebulizers as well as some other yucky drugs that caused her to jump out of her skin. When awake, her body was frantic, and when asleep, she would jump a mile every couple of minutes and try to pull the mask and IV off. The albuterol and steroids caused her to literally shake and wail and scream, behaving in ways that were very unlike her. Between the drugs, the IV, blooddraws, and hospital environment, Mirabel wasn't anywhere near herself for some time. She came home sunday and was becoming more normal by tuesday. She is still wheezing and needs treatments, although she is getting better. It is so nice to see the kids chasing each other in the house again. Now we are just facing the challenge of how to handle her asthma, in order to keep it managed so that we don't end up in the hospital again. I am so worried because I know what my childhood was like, spending so much time in the hospital for asthma. I am so upset that she has it too, but determined to have her asthma managed better than mine was. We're so grateful for her to be home again, and happy for the health that we have. There are so many children in the hospital that don't get to go home for so long, I just can't imagine what they and their parents have to go through. When your child is in pain or distress, time just stops. For us, it has picked up again, thankfully.