Tobi the Japanese Spitz

I stole this photo from Hubby’s Vox. (Yes, Hubby has a blog, but it’s only open to his Vox “neighborhood”.) He took this photo with his camera phone. The clever title is his, too.

Every time I look at this picture it just makes me smile. I just wanted to share.

When you’re pregnant, the last thing you want to see on your cute cotton panties is red.

Last night, just before retiring to bed, I discovered that I had started bleeding for no apparent reason. Immediately, thoughts of complications, months of bed rest, or even worse: miscarriage, flooded my mind. I headed straight for my “What to Expect…” book and turned to the “when there’s a problem” section on bleeding. From the reading, I determined that since the bleeding wasn’t heavy and wasn’t accompanied by pain, that I could wait until the morning to call the doctor. In the hours that followed, it was difficult not to let the what-ifs plague my thoughts. I fell asleep with my hands on my tummy, lifting silent, yet tearful prayers for Baby Champuru.

This morning, I called the doctor’s office as soon as they opened and they squeezed me into the schedule.

The nurse took my weight and recorded in my chart. “Wow, you gained a lot of weight,” she remarked. Pregnancy is the only time it is acceptable to make comments about a woman’s weight. I didn’t think I had gained much weight at all, but then I remembered that I had also lost a good amount of weight at the beginning of my pregnancy thanks to the travails of morning sickness.

The doctor emerged from an exam room and peered at my chart, making notes. “You gained 8 pounds?!” she exclaimed.

All of a sudden, I felt like I had to justify myself, “Well, I seem to be eating a little better than before and I had lost a lot of weight in the beginning…”

She seemed satisfied with my stammering excuses,“okay, so you’re back to normal then.”

Just yesterday I weighed myself with my bathroom scale and I was 5-pounds less than the reading on the scale at the doctor’s office. Either the shredded mini wheats I had for breakfast were sitting in my stomach like a 5-pound brick or my bathroom scale is wrong. I blame the cereal.

Then she joined me in an examining room with the Doppler. She scanned my abdomen for what seemed like forever and I didn’t hear anything on the monitor. She kept clicking a switch and I started to get worried. Was she having a hard time finding the heartbeat? She must’ve saw the alarmed look on my face because she said, “it’s not you, it’s this machine. I can’t even get it to turn on.” Phew!
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With the help of her nurse who has a way with electronics, she managed to get the Doppler working and quickly found Baby Champuru’s strong heartbeat. “The baby is just fine!” she announced and switched off the monitor.

The doc did an internal check, reviewed my ultrasound results from the specialist, and determined that the bleeding was most likely caused by the placental sac of an embryo that began to form but didn’t make it. (This is the anomaly that they found in my ultrasound that had caused some concern initially.) It was degenerating and was now being expelled. She said that this was actually good news since it’s better for it to be expelled than to back up and “bother” the current pregnancy. Yes, please don’t bother Baby Champuru.

She also reported that the results from my integrated blood screen were excellent. “Baby got an A+ on this test!” doc said. That also means that I don’t need to do an amniocentesis. Thank God!

So, good news all around. Also, doc scheduled me for another ultrasound with the specialist to follow up, which means more pictures of Baby Champuru in a few weeks.

This whole episode made me realize how fragile and precious this pregnancy is. It truly is a gift and a blessing, one that I will not take for granted.

I received this in my e-mail and thought it was totally hilarious. What would you do if you picked up your cake and saw this?

This is how the conversation probably went:

Costco Employee: “Hello dis Costco, I can help you?”
Customer: “I would like to order a cake for a going away party this week.”
Costco Employee: “Wot you like on da cake?”
Customer: “‘Best Wishes Suzanne’” and underneath that, ‘we will miss you.’“

Truth be told, I hate thinking about finances. Budgets, investments, retirement 401k’s, annuities, and college funds, OH MY! It all makes me cringe. I admire folks like Ryan, who are so on top of financial matters!

With Baby Champuru on the way, due to make her grand entrance in just about five months, facing the financial realities of being out on maternity leave without pay is a somewhat frightening prospect. Just getting to the point of being pregnant has taken much more effort and expense than most, having to undergo multiple procedures including surgeries and in vitro, depleting 95% of my paid leave and nearly $6000 in medical expenses. So, those of you who actually got pregnant by accident or with very little effort, be thankful! Some of us are not as fortunate.

By September, I expect to be pretty close to having zero sick/vacation leave hours since I have to take a few hours here and there every time I see the doctor. Some people are fortunate in that they have banked their leave for years and they’re able to take six months off for maternity with a steady paycheck. As for me, I will be on LWOP (leave without pay) and our financial situation will dictate how long I will be able to stay at home with the Snowflake.

Ever since I learned that I was pregnant, we have started paying off bills and saving aggressively. Honestly, I’m a spender by nature, not a saver. Nothing else has been able to motivate me to save with as much zeal as the prospect of bringing a little life into this world.
With the savings I am projecting, I should be able to stay home for over a year if we are extremely frugal. Six months if we want more leeway. I would love to be a stay-at-home mom for as long as possible (until the kid is 18 maybe?), but unless I can find a method of earning a modest income from home, I might find myself back at the office sooner rather than later.

As a result of a twitter comment I just made about working out my post-delivery budget being strained, a couple of friends mentioned TDI (temporary disability insurance). It’s something that I had heard about, but never inquired about. Apparently, TDI will give you up to 58% of your pay for six weeks for a normal delivery (eight weeks if you had a c-section). Every little bit counts and the extra 58% for a month and a half is better than nothing! (Thanks, @Roar and @rsuenaga for the info!)

We’re also thinking about starting a college fund for Baby Champuru. After a cursory search on Google, it looks like my initial thought about opening a Roth for that purpose isn’t the best option. Not a bad option, just not the best. I suppose that means more research will have to be done in the coming months. I just might turn into a financial guru yet! Okay, that might be reaching — but at least I’m trying to get smarter about these things for our family’s future.

Our church sponsored a “Compassion Sunday” today and dedicated the entire service to educating the congregation about the needs of impoverished children around the world. Pastor Tim recently returned from an eye-opening and life-changing trip to the Philippines where he was able to see firsthand the dire conditions that so many families are living under.

“He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done.” (Proverbs 19:17, NIV)

It’s so easy to get caught up in our own comfortable lives, but just across the ocean, there are millions of children in need. It can be an overwhelming thought, but what about making a difference in the life of one child — for a mere $32 a month? Sure, we can all do that.

“He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses.” (Proverbs 28:27, NIV)

For a moment, I wondered if I should pick up a sponsorship packet. After all, Baby Champuru is on the way and I was planning to stay out of work for as long as our finances would allow. It was never our intention to have a baby only to depend completely on my parents or in-laws to raise our child. But yet, the reality of raising a family on a single income in Hawaii is nearly impossible. At the same time, would $32 break our budget? Probably not. But imagine the difference that it could make for the sponsored child: HUGE.

I decided to take the step of faith and I picked up the packet for an eight-year-old boy from the Philippines named Melvin. His mother is raising him as a single parent, and while I don’t know the rest of the story, I know that it must be tough to make ends meet. With our commitment to sponsor Melvin, I know that he’ll have the hope for a brighter future.

If you’re interested in learning more about child sponsorship, visit Compassion International and make a difference in the life of a child for only $32/month.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

(Matthew 25:34-40, NIV)

The day started with a bowl of cereal in front of the computer. I checked my email and perused some blogs as I spooned cereal into my mouth. I almost made it through the entire bowl, then without warning, a violent, involuntary cough overcame me and I ended up spitting a mouthful of Honey Bunches of Oats all over my beautiful 24″ iMac LCD display. Oh, the horror!

Apparently, the cereal must have been a bad idea from the get-go because about 20 minutes later, after I stepped out of the shower, I got hit with a wave of nausea of tsunami proportions and my entire breakfast went down the drain. Quite literally. Oh, the horror!
Washing up after that episode, I gazed at my face under the bright lights of the bathroom mirror and saw tiny red dots all around my eyes. Prior to pregnancy, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve vomited. Since the morning sickness phenomena began, I have experienced the most violent hacking and hurling of my life. As a result, I’ve been getting tiny broken blood vessels around my eyes. The little red dots take 2-3 days to fade. So, in the meantime, if you seeing me walking around with what appears to be a bad eye shadow job, just know it’s not my shoddy makeup skills (in fact, I have none to speak of), blame it on the morning sickness.

I’m nearly 17 weeks pregnant. Isn’t the morning sickness supposed to be getting better? Soon? I hope?

Today was my second appointment with the fetal diagnostic specialist. They did the second blood draw for the integrated screening and took a ton of ultrasound pictures of the Snowflake.

During the ultrasound, they took measurements, checked vital organs (heart, brain, kidneys), and even counted fingers. They also determined the sex today. Make your guess now and I’ll reveal the Snowflake’s gender at the end of this entry. Drop me a comment and let me know if you were correct!

When they were doing the ultrasound, they discovered something that appeared abnormal near the opening of the cervix, something that appeared to be fluid, blood, or perhaps a blockage of tissue. This could mean bad news for me, possibly heavy bleeding later in the pregnancy which may result in a prolonged hospital stay, and most certainly delivery via cesarean section. The doc said that we should take a better look at it, which meant they had to switch to vaginal ultrasound — which after months of IVF, is old hat by now, but never pleasant. They instructed me to empty my bladder and come back for part two of the ultrasound.

With all of the hoops that my body made me jump through to get to this point, I never expected that the pregnancy would be completely smooth sailing. My fertility specialist even told me that he considers me a “high risk pregnancy.” I just hoped that whatever it was, that it wouldn’t be a danger to the baby and that it would be manageable. As I made my way back into the exam room, I lifted up a quick prayer.

When they did the vaginal ultrasound, they discovered that everything looked normal. The doctor said that he didn’t expect me to have any problems at all. I was so relieved that I didn’t even ask them what they thought it was. They took additional pictures, which were much clearer since it was less obstructed than a regular external ultrasound.

All in all, Baby Champuru gets an A+ on her report card. Did you catch that?

We’re having a girl!