Belly Pics and Pregnancy

This go 'round I was not as consistent about taking baby bump pictures.  Something about this being the third baby....  I did take quite a few pictures towards the end, usually when an out of town sister or friend requested that I send them one...I apologize in advance that most of the pictures were taken in the bathroom at work.

June 30 - 16 Weeks

August 6 - 22 Weeks

September 10 - 27 Weeks

October 23 - 33 Weeks

November 13 - 36 Weeks

November 23 - 37 Weeks

Last photo as a family of 4 - Thanksgiving - 38 weeks

Arriving at the hospital for my c-section!!  39 Weeks!

Overall I had a really great pregnancy.  I had a lot of the normal complaints early on: nausea and exhaustion, but that got better in my second trimester.  Towards the end I had regular acid reflux and occasional sciatic nerve pain, but no major complaints.  If you ask Jason he may tell you that I was a little more moody than normal towards the end there too...

I had a lot of ultrasounds this pregnancy.  My doctor always does an ultrasound at every visit, but it's more playing around to try to get cute pictures of baby.  We didn't get many great ones, but here are a couple:

16 weeks - 7/2/15

Back view of spine and head

He uses an ultrasound technician for the 20 week ultrasound and then if there are any issues.  Unfortunately, at my 20 week ultrasound, they noticed the baby's left kidney was dilated.  At the time, they said it's likely to "work itself out" before my next visit, so I was scheduled for a follow-up ultrasound with the technician a month later.  Sadly, the kidney was still dilated.  Still they weren't overly concerned but Jason and I were - no one wants to hear something is wrong with their baby!!  We did a lot of research and found that it's a pretty common thing that quite often corrects itself.  When it doesn't, it could require antibiotics to prevent infection and eventually surgery when baby is a little older (closer to a year old).  We had a couple more technical ultrasounds for the remainder of the pregnancy and the answer was always the same: left kidney was still dilated.  Because the fluid around the baby was normal and the right kidney and all other anatomy scans were normal, the plan was to just wait until baby was born and do an ultrasound and follow-ups with the pediatrician.  Not the answer we wanted, but it could've been a lot worse!

The one thing we did notice in our research was that MANY of the people talking about this online were talking about their SON having the issue.  That, combined with the fact that my pregnancies felt so similar, had me convinced that baby #3 was going to be a boy.  The baby was also SUPER active, which I figured was a boy attribute as well.  The baby's heartbeat bounced back and forth between being a "dude" and a "chick" per my doctor, but at the last few check-ups, it was on the high end (164, 150, 157), which according to old wives tales means girl.

In November, my coworkers completely surprised me with a little shower - I really had no idea they would do anything!  It was so sweet.  They had a cake, big brother t-shirts for the boys and an Amazon.com gift card.

Overall a great third pregnancy!!