Baby on the Way: 1st and 2nd Trimester

I was looking back at old blog posts and realized pretty quickly that I have not blogged much about this pregnancy!  When I was pregnant with Owen, I had so much time to write and think about being pregnant.  I guess that is normal when you have no other children you are chasing.  This time around, I still spend a good amount of time thinking about this precious little boy that is growing so quickly, but I unfortunately do not have nearly as much time to write about it.  Since I am on a mission to catch up on the blog before Owen turns 2, I thought now was a great time to sit down and share some of the memories from this pregnancy before it is over!
When we found out we were pregnant again, we were thrilled!  We had been praying and hoping for this little one since before Owen turned one, and we were so excited that they would be just two years apart. Both Luke and I have siblings two years younger than us, and we do enjoy that age spread.  Now that we are nearing the reality of having two little ones so close in age, I must admit that I am a little more nervous about having such small little ones to look after at the same time.  Owen is so incredibly active right now, and as I watch my good friend balance her toddler and newborn, I am reminded that newborns require so much hands on attention between nursing, naps, and diaper changing, not to mention the lack of sleep.  Regardless, we are still excited, even if my head is spinning a little at the start. 
The first trimester of this pregnancy was a bit rough.  I was extremely sick, just as I was with Owen, and by the time we went to my first midwife appointment (at 8 weeks), I was ready for some relief.  When I was pregnant with Owen, I lost a good 10-15 lbs during my first trimester and my sickness lasted until I was 23 weeks.  I decided during that pregnancy to forgo any medication to help with the throwing up and nausea, because I thought it would end around the 12 week mark.  Little did I know, that I my morning sickness likes to continue at least 1/2 way through the second trimester as well.  At just 8 weeks, I could already tell that this pregnancy was going to be quite similar, and I was struggling with the thought of being sick and throwing up several times a day for 5 solid months.  The midwife remembered how sick I was last time and decided to go ahead and prescribe some medication even though I hadn't really lost weight yet.  It was enough to take off the edge and reduce how often I threw up, but it didn't completely take away the morning sickness.  Fortunately, it was just what I needed to help me keep up with my active toddler and feel a little bit more normal.
When the second trimester rolled around, I realized pretty quickly that the morning sickness was going to last.  However, despite that difficulty, I was so excited to feel the little flutters and kicks of this precious baby at 14 weeks.  It was the perfect distraction from how sick I felt.  I also started showing pretty early with this pregnancy which everyone said is pretty normal the second time around.  By the time I hit 14 weeks I was mostly wearing my maternity clothes.  As I mentioned earlier, my morning sickness decided to stick around well into my 23rd week again, and I remember wondering around week 20 if it was ever going to end!  Fortunately, I am feeling pretty well now, other than the fact that I feel like the size of a whale.  The best part of this stage is that our little boy has become incredibly active!  After the issues we had with Owen's reduced fetal movement and his complications at delivery, I am so thankful for his kicks and squirms, even if they keep me awake at night.  It is a blessed reminder that our baby boy is growing and strong.
We found out we were expecting a boy during my 21st week.  Leading up to the ultrasound I felt like it was going to be a girl, and most everyone we knew thought the same.  Luke was the sole holdout for a boy.  Since Luke had a congenital heart defect as a child (that has since been healed), we have an echo ultrasound with each pregnancy between 20-24 weeks.  This time around we had our echo before our big gender reveal appointment.  We were a little surprised when the tech told us at our echo that she could tell us the gender a little early if we wanted to find out.  Of course we said yes, and within a few moments she revealed that we were indeed expecting a baby boy!  When she first said the word boy, I was a little stunned.  I had been picturing Owen with a baby sister that he could dote on and protect.  However, it was only a few moments before I was imagining life with two little boys.  Owen was going to have a brother, and I was quickly becoming excited.  My house will definitely be filled with days of rough housing, wrestling, running, and sports, and I am going to love it.  As we have been talking about this baby boy, I can't wait for Owen and him to meet and grow up together.  Owen does talk about baby brother often, and has lately decided it is time for him to get out of mommy's tummy and play.  We have since had the gender confirmed at two other appointments so we are quite sure this little one is no doubt a boy.

Here is our sweet boy at 21 weeks

Here is our boy at 27.5 weeks

San Diego: Our last day

We had one objective for our last day in San Diego: keep Owen awake until we boarded the plane at 3:00 pm!  After our crazy flight down, we were hoping to get him to sleep for the entire flight home.  His usual nap starts around 2:00 and while we were in San Diego he often fell asleep by 12:30.  We knew it would be tough keeping him awake, but we were determined.
After we were all packed up, we decided to load the car and head to Seaport Village with our remaining time.  It was a great way to spend an hour or so.  We strolled around, looked at the aircraft carrier, and statues, and then walked around near the shops before we bought a lemonade and left.  We had just enough time to drop Bekah back at her house, get gas, and turn in the rental car.  I got hungry before we dropped off the car and we decided to grab something quick for me to eat.  While I was grabbing some food, I left Owen and Luke in the car with strict instructions to keep him awake.  By the time I got back out, Luke was looking up directions to Alamo on my phone, and Owen was passed out in the backseat.  We went ahead and woke him up, and then listened to him cry for the rest of the drive.  We managed to keep him awake while we waited for the plane and then boarded without any trouble.  Just as we were about to take off, Owen crashed in my arms.  He slept the ENTIRE way to Seattle and woke up as we taxied to the gate.  It was glorious!  Here are the last few pictures we took with my phone from our trip.  It was hard to say goodbye to Bekah, but we are definitely excited for when we get to take two little boys down for our next visit!

This is what we returned home to!

San Diego: La Jolla and Tommy's

Since we had such a late night on Saturday, we decided to keep Sunday pretty low key. Luke and Bekah let me sleep in while they got up with Owen. Then I took a turn with Owen while Luke took a quick nap. Bekah is pretty hard core and didn't take a nap at all. I can only hope she caught up on sleep after we left.

We had left the ER the night before with a prescription in hand, and it was decided that Luke and I would venture out to run the errands (my phone was also out of commission), while Bekah hung out at home with Owen and got ready for a scholarship interview she had later that day. I dropped Luke at the Verizon store with my phone so he could figure out what was wrong with it (I am not a fan of technology), and I took his phone and left to find the pharmacy.
I tried Target first, because they were the closest, only to find out they didn't carry the medicine the Dr. had prescribed at all. They directed me towards a Walgreens. When I got there, the pharmacist said not only do they not carry it, he was pretty sure that prescription was discontinued for kids a little while back. He said the last time he had a customer looking for it he was able to find some at CVS. The pharmacist graciously called over to the CVS and the clerk said they did have some in stock.  Yay!  I drove over to CVS, told them I had just come from Walgreens, and handed over my prescription. To my surprise the pharmacist said they didn't carry that medicine any longer. The clerk who had answered the phone overhead us talking and apologized. She had the medicine confused with something else.
Fortunately all three pharmacies were within a mile of each other so I hadn't gone to far out of my way hunting down medicine that didn't exist, but I was still a little frustrated that I couldn't get what I needed to help my baby with his rash. The pharmacist said to keep up with the Benadryl and call my pediatrician when I got home to see if they wanted to prescribe something else. Since we were leaving the next day, it didn't make sense to try and special order anything. I went back to Verizon to pick up Luke, only to find out he was still dealing with my phone issue. What was supposed to be a quick 30-45 minutes of errands had turned into an hour and half.  Bekah had to leave for her interview shortly, so I left Luke there to figure things out and went back to pick up Owen.

Needless to say, the running around ate up most of our day, and when Bekah got home, it was already after three. We decided to make a quick trip to La Jolla so we could see the seals resting on the rocks, and then we were going to head over to Tommy's for a yummy burrito. La Jolla was a perfect way to end our day. We took a nice walk along the coast, got some great pictures, and saw the beginning of the sunset. We then drove over to Tommy's picked up dinner and went back to Bekah's to eat.  Overall, Sunday turned out to be a pretty quiet day, despite all the craziness with my phone and the prescription.

* For those who are wondering, we did touch base with our pediatrician when we got back home. Since it had been a couple days since our ER visit, and Owen appeared to be improving, he decided to just have us continue with Benadryl until the major symptoms were gone. 

Here are the pictures from our trip to La Jolla.

ER Visit

While in San Diego, we made our first trip to the ER with Owen. During our trip to Seaworld on Thursday, we noticed that the back of his neck had started to get a little pink since we forgot to apply sunscreen to that area. We loaded him up with some sunscreen on that spot, which seemed to prevent the burn from getting any worse. Then, while we were at the beach on Friday, I started to notice that he was getting some little bumps over the small sunburn. We kept reapplying sunscreen hoping to stay on top of it, which in turn caused the sand to really stick to that part of his skin. By the end of our time at the beach the bumps seemed to be spreading down his back a little, but still mostly staying near where he had been burned. After we got home and gave him a bath, we decided to take a closer look to see if there was something more to the redness and bumps. Since we had come from 30 degrees and snowing, the weather seemed quite warm at 75, and we decided that it was probably just heat rash.
On Saturday while we were at the zoo we loaded him back up with sunscreen and tried to keep an eye on the rash.   We noticed that the rash had spread to his arms, chest, and most of his back. We were a little surprised, but thought maybe we had dressed him too warmly for bed the night before.  By the end of our time at the zoo, the rash and moved had to his legs and seemed to be getting worse.  We decided to keep him dressed lightly for bed still thinking the warm sun had caused the rash to get worse. However, by 10:30 he was awake and screaming.  After trying to get him to calm down for about 30 minutes, we started to realize that this was more than a bad dream (he has had night terrors in that past) and that his skin was really sensitive to the touch. When we got his pj's off, we noticed that the rash had spread to almost his entire body, minus his diaper area, and had even started spreading to his ears and face. It was at that point we decided a trip to the ER was in order.
Although, we had been somewhat calm while we were trying to figure out what was going on, I started to get a little bit overwhelmed at the thought that this was more than heat rash, and I didn't know what was wrong with my baby. Needless to say, I wanted to get loaded up in the car and on our way as fast as possible.  Unfortunately in my haste to get out the door, I headed to ER with my pjs and loaded Owen into his carseat in just his diaper with a blanket draped over him and his pj's stashed in my purse.   Luke and Bekah and their wits about them to put on actual clothes.
When we were finally ready to leave, we realized that none of us knew where a hospital was. Rather than head back inside, and ask Bekah's roommate's boyfriend (who is a firefighter) where to go, we decided to go ahead and call 911. Bekah made it very clear we were able to drive him to the ER ourselves, and that we simply needed directions. Owen was still crying pretty hard and definitely uncomfortable so when it came time to making a decision about going to the Children's hospital (which we didn't quite know how to get to) or going to the closest ER right off the freeway, we chose the latter.
When we got to the ER and up to the front desk, I couldn't answer the receptionist's questions and suddenly felt a rush of tears and heat run to my face. I looked at Luke hoping he would see my inability to talk, and just explain everything for me. I remember muttering a few phrases and then after being unable to provide Owen's social security number (reminder that I need to memorize it), we went ahead and took a seat.
We discovered that an ER on a Saturday night is quite an interesting place to be. One man had been in a bar fight, and was still clearly unable to feel the cuts and bruises on his face since he was still numb from the alcohol he had consumed.  His buddies ordered pizza to be delivered to the ER during the wait and while he was in the back triage area he continually wandered around and went back to the lobby to chat with his friends, eat, and flirt with girls.  The nurses tried to get him to stay in one place since they were hoping to take him back for a CAT scan.
Another huge family that had been at a fiesta were ALL there because Grandma had fallen and broken her hip while at the party. When we arrived, I thought we would be waiting till morning since the ER was packed with people.  Fortunately, we realized that half of the people in the room were from this one group all waiting on Grandma.  At one point while Bekah was waiting for us, she was completely surrounded by the family and didn't quite know what to do. 
After two hours of waiting in the lobby, we were finally called back to triage. At this point Owen had fallen back asleep. We were asked a couple questions by the same person from intake and then we proceeded to wait for about another hour. Finally the Dr. and nurse came in to see us. The Dr. took one look at Owen, heard our story, and promptly told us it was not heat rash but rather an allergic reaction to something. After asking us a ton of questions about what we had done over the past three days, we decided it was probably the spray-on sunscreen we had been applying to help him with his "heat rash".
Talk about a MAJOR parenting fail! I felt terrible. We had been making his rash worse for two and half days. Owen was such a trooper through it all. We decided he must have a pretty decent pain tolerance since he didn't really get irritable or lose it until the rash was covering about 90% of his body.
The Dr. ordered a shot of prednisone and benadryl, which took another 30-40 minutes to get, and then we were finally on our way. It was quite the night! Oh, and I forgot to mention this all took place on daylight savings so we lost an additional hour of sleep on top of the ER visit.  By the time we made it back home we were exhausted and desperately needing sleep. However, Owen had slept for a good portion of our time at the ER so at 8 am he was up and ready for the day. 

Here is a picture from our time in triage.  It was taken after the first visit from the Dr.  It is hard to actually see how bad his rash really was. 

San Diego: Zoo and Hodad's

We decided to spend our entire Saturday at the San Diego Zoo. We have a membership to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, and we go there fairly frequently. Since I knew very little about the San Diego Zoo, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend a day there when we could easily go to the zoo back home. Luke, however, had heard from several coworkers that the zoo is completely worth the visit, and he was right! The zoo was amazing, and I am so glad we took the time to go.
We started our trip at the zoo with a bus tour. The tour was a 40 min bus ride all over the zoo grounds, and we were able to get some great views of the animals that would have been difficult to see from the regular exhibit area. The line to get on the bus was a bit of a wait, and by the end Owen was very anxious for his turn on the "big bus". He cheered quite loudly when he saw we were actually boarding. Unfortunately, he was pretty tired and fell asleep 10 min into the bus ride and missed most of the sights.

After our bus tour, we wandered around some of the exhibits and quickly realized this zoo was huge! We decided we needed to make a priority list for that day and make plans to come back on another trip to San Diego. We started with the gorillas and monkeys because Owen had been talking about them all morning. Sadly though, he fell back asleep in the stroller and only saw a few monkeys at the end.
However, he did wake up in time to see the hippos which was one of our favorite exhibits of the day. Not only can you view the hippos while they are on land, but they also have an underwater viewing area. The tank included a mama and baby hippo, and we loved watching the mom push the baby around and help it get to where it wanted to go.
From here we moved over to the panda exhibit since this is something we can't see in Seattle. It was quite busy and we had to wait in a short line in order to walk on a small walkway in front of the panda. We saw a couple pandas and then it was over. I am glad we went through the exhibit, but we did feel a little rushed.
After the pandas, we went to see some elephants and lions. The lions were a little difficult to see because they were hiding near the back of the exhibit. However, Owen really enjoyed playing on the elephant statues. He certainly could have stayed there for awhile.
Our final stop of the day was to the Polar Bears. They also had an underwater viewing area, and the bears were spending a good portion of time swimming around and playing in the water. Owen's favorite part of this stop was actually not the Polar bears, but rather the helicopter they had for kids play in. He waited so patiently for his turn, and then loved getting to play with the controls and sit in the cockpit. He is really becoming a planes, trains, and trucks fan!
Since we had to climb uphill to get to the Polar Bears, we decided to finish off our day by riding the skytram back to the entrance. Owen had been eying this flying device above us all day, and was excited for the trip. However, being the nervous mommy I can be, I held on tight and really didn't want him to close to the edge. Overall, the day at the zoo was wonderful, and we will certainly go back on our next trip to SD.

After we got home from the zoo, we decided to head down to Hodad's for dinner in Ocean Beach. We had heard from Bekah and her parents about their monstrous burgers and amazing shakes. It is a tiny little place with a line out the door, but really fun experience. The burgers were great, but definitely unhealthy. The four of us shared a shake which was also amazing. It had a huge scoop of ice cream on top. It was a fun way to finish off a great day.

Zoo Pictures (a bit out of order)

Sunset at Ocean Beach

Dinner at Hodad's

San Diego: Cafe 222, Mission Beach, and Old Town

Owen's sleeping schedule was just a bit off in San Diego. He decided to move his bedtime up to 7:30 pm and his wake up time to 5:30 am. Needless to say, we were all wide awake at a ridiculously early time on Friday morning. Bekah recommended we load into the car and head downtown to try out Cafe 222. Luke's Dad went to high school with the owner, and Bekah said the food was amazing. We heartily agree! I had some delicious french toast, Luke ordered banana bread french toast, and Bekah had an egg and spinach dish with potatoes on the side. Since Owen had already eaten breakfast at Bekah's house (he doesn't like to wait long after waking up to eat), we just ordered him a strawberry banana muffin. If you are planning a trip to San Diego, we would highly recommend a breakfast stop at Cafe 222. The prices were great and the food was wonderful. It might have to become tradition every time we visit Bekah.
After our filling breakfast, we got ready for the day, packed some lunch, beach toys, and chairs, and drove over to Mission Beach for the afternoon. The weather was just perfect for lounging around on the beach. Owen loved playing in the sand and building mini sand castles with Bekah. He also loved destroying said sandcastles over and over again. Next to us was a group of college guys who were throwing a football around. Owen was so incredibly jealous of their ball and desperately wanted to join in on the big boy fun. After we ate lunch, Luke took him up to the vendors to buy his very own football, which Owen loves and still plays with daily now that we are home. Despite all the fun in the sand, Owen was completely fearful of the water. The small waves that rolled in made him nervous and he really didn't like how cold it was. After a little coercing, we finally got him to touch his toes in the water for a brief moment. We wrapped up our day on the beach with a walk up the boardwalk and quick stop for ice cream.
That evening we met up with Bekah's friend Jen for dinner in old town. We tried out a Mexican restaurant we had found online online that bragged about their warm tortillas. The meal was good, but not really great. When we left we weren't completely convinced it was the best Mexican food around. Maybe next time we will have to try out a different spot in Old Town.

Owen playing in the sand

Owen has spotted the football!

Still jealous . . . Finally, success!

Owen's adventure into the water

He didn't want to be near it, but at the same time felt he needed to keep an eye on it just in case it crept up on him again.

So scared of the ocean

Time to head to higher ground

This was baby's first trip to Mission Beach as well (20 week bump)

The product of a fun day at the beach: one very sandy little boy!