We've decided to do a quad blood screening test at 16 weeks & it came back normal. The best part about entering the 2nd trimester was to finally feel the baby move! It happened at around 15 weeks & I was experienced enough to know it wasn't a muscle twitch or gas bubbles. Now the baby moves all the time & even surprises me at times (especially when I am sitting at a meeting at work & expect it the least). We were going to wait until birth to find out the baby's sex, but we can hardly wait. So we are doing a complete OB ultrasound on July 5th. I have a feeling it's a little girl (maybe because I want Sophia to have a sister?) & I'll be really surprised if it's a boy. I am counting the days!
My husband at first was ambivalent about me having a home birth, but he's slowly getting used to the idea. He even bought me the La Bassine birthing pool & a home birth midwife kit through an ad he saw at work. He did it just in time as the FDA has been seizing all birth pool inventory as unregistered medical equipment. The traditional medical establishment has always classified home birth as dangerous & try to interfere in any way they can. Crazy!
My midwife gave me a mixture of dry herbs to drink daily for the rest of my pregnancy. I had ITP, or idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, with both of my pregnancies. In lay terms, it means my platelet number decreases & the cause is unknown. When platelets drop too low, it may cause hard-to-control post-partum hemorrhage. So needless to say, if I hope to have my dream home birth, my platelets must stay in a healthy range. My midwife advised drinking a nettle tea for this purpose. However, the herbal pregnancy blend I received from her also included red raspberry leaf, alfalfa & oatstraw.
Nettle is a powerful adrenal tonic & improves immune system function. It reduces anemia, increases muscle response time & reduces incidences of post-partum hemorrhage. It also improves skin elasticity thus preventing vaginal tissue tearing during birth & helps to relieve water retention & promotes breast milk production.
Red raspberry leaf tones smooth muscles in the body & improves contractibility of uterus. It nourishes the ovaries & reduces morning sickness & intestinal discomfort caused by excessive progesterone.
Alfalfa is a restorative tonic & promotes pituitary gland function. It contains enzymes which enable food to be assimilated properly & has antifungal properties.
Oatstraw is rich in calcium & improves muscle tone throughout the body, reducing leg cramps & improving digestion. Improved muscle tone allows the cardiovascular system to function more vigorously improving circulation to the uterus & placenta. Oatstraw is invaluable in building bones & tooth enamel.
Rosemary Gladstar's Family Herbal - A Guide to Living Life with Energy, Health & Vitality is one of my favorite herbal guides & a good place to start for someone desiring to learn more about using herbs.
Camping in Sophia's crib
Snuggling on the couch
Many changes are happening with Gerritt & Sophia as well. Gerritt understands that there is a baby in my belly, but not Sophia. They've become really close & it warms my heart. They can easily entertain each other & need me less. Sophia is going through language explosion & speaks in 5 to 6-word sentences, so I can often hear them talking back & forth. She can already sing the ABC song from the beginning to end. Sophia follows Gerritt everywhere & he's happy to share, most of the time. Their favorite thing to do is hiding under the covers & playing with the android tablet. Gerritt uses it to play all kinds of educational games & watch fairy tales, & Sophia enjoys just sitting next to him & observing. Amazingly, Gerritt mastered all of the tablet's buttons & can perform many functions with ease (just like he can now use the TV remote control almost independently - not that it's a good thing. I am still in charge of how much TV he can watch daily).
Siblings who potty train together, stay together?
Playing games under the covers
Gerritt looks more like me where Sophia looks more like my husband. Actually, Gerritt really takes after my father. He has full lips & a high forehead. Many of Gerritt's facial expressions I've seen many times while growing up - they are just like my Dad's! Gerritt & I are also very similar in personality. I wouldn't say he is my favorite child (I find something unique & special about each one of my kids), but it's easier for Gerritt & I to get along since we are so much alike.
Sophia amazes me with her strength & perseverance. She has become VERY independent & refuses any help with most of the tasks. For example, unbuttoning & taking off her coat, taking off her pants & diaper to sit on the potty chair, eating (I can only sit patiently & watch while she drops half of her meal on the floor while trying to use her fork/spoon), undressing before taking a bath, etc. If one of us attempts to sing along while she recites her ABC song, she gets upset & then starts over, "Let me do it!" She has recently began to take off her wet & dirty diapers, so we've had several unpleasant instances of cleaning up poop from her crib, the living room carpet & couch. When Sophia takes her nap, her nanny or I have to check her hourly to make sure she doesn't wake up, poop, & then undress herself (she can do all this in complete silence, I must add - I've learned it the hard way). Sophia can even climb out of her crib now. I found her on my husband's bed bext to the crib twice over the past month. She is definitely a little troublemaker & a handful - more so than Gerritt was at this age. :-)
Gerritt taking his puppy for a walk
Gerritt is in his Curious George phase now & one of his favorite books is Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Factory by Margret & H. A. Rey's. He even requested to visit a real chocolate factory & I found our local Theo Chocolate Factory available for tours. However, the factory has loud & hot equipment & tours are not advised for kids younger than 7. Gerritt's other favorite book this week was Big Bug Surprise by Julia Gran. Thanks to reading it, we learned that insects always have 6 legs, but spiders have 8; dragonflies are the fastest insects; & bees can't see someone covered in white & they don't sting what they don't see.
Some of the amazing photos I can take with my camera!
Unfortunately, we had a tragic event happen on Memorial Day. Our beloved toy poodle Spike was hit by a car & died 2 days later despite best medical interventions. The whole thing happened in a split second while my husband was getting the kids out of the car. We were so depressed & heartbroken it was difficult to function. The house became unbearably quiet & our whole family felt the loss of Spike acutely. We've always been dog people & loosing Spike was as painful as loosing a family member. Dogs bring such positive & vibrant energy into the house, we simply couldn't imagine not having one. Our friends felt sorry for us & gave us one of their two Maltese dogs to help us heal emotionally over the next few weeks. Little did we know that they were also looking to adopt Sammy out, so after a week they just offered us to keep him forever. Sammy has been with us for a little over 2 weeks now & he is a joy to have around.
Thanks to him, I have an exercise buddy again & have been walking every morning & night for the past 2 weeks! While Spike had clear preference for my husband, Sammy loves me more than anyone in the family. So he follows me everywhere & even sleeps next to Gerritt & I. My husband misses sleeping next to a dog, so he's been alternating between bringing home Dingo & John from his Mom's house. We have a house full of dogs again!
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