Graduation!

Last night we had our 11 week ultrasound and officially graduated from the RE! It was a very bittersweet moment--words could not express our gratitude as we said our goodbyes. Our RE is also an OB/GYN so we technically could have stuck with him for prenatal care but his office is quite a drive from where we live. However, he was very supportive of the decision to go with the midwife clinic, wished us well and asked us to send him baby pictures. He's such a great guy and we will miss him!

The first thing I asked the nurse when I got there was if the ultrasound was going to be internal or external. I was so happy to find out that I could keep my pants on for this one! A HUGE milestone in the world of infertility so I made Mike take a picture. Look--no dildo cam in sight!

The baby has grown so much! (My mom attributes this growth spurt to the club sandwich I had the other day-ha!) It was really wiggling around this time and that made it difficult to get a good picture. Dr. actually commented that looking at the picture was like reading tea leaves--a Harry.Potter dork at heart? I'm going to miss him.  The baby's heart rate was 178bmp and I'm measuring four days ahead--a healthy, chubby little baby! My placenta is still over my cervix a little bit but he's confident that it will shift during my pregnancy. I have been having some pain on my left side, very similar to what I have experienced in the past and attributed to my endo. He said that my endo should be suppressed during my pregnancy but since I have adhesions, the pain that I am feeling is probably because things are shifting and pushing against my ovary that is adhered. OUCH! I hope it doesn't get too bad because it hurts! He even measured the nuchal translucency, which I wasn't expecting. Everything looked well within the normal range though and now I guess we don't have to worry about deciding whether or not to have a NT scan done. He explained that our risk of Down's is probably somewhere around 1:2000 now.

I'm so happy and relieved that everything is developing right on track. I'm finally feeling like I can start relaxing and start getting excited about this pregnancy. I'm super excited to meet with the midwife clinic on Monday and to learn more about their philosophy on child birth. I haven't had time to read all of Ina May's Guide to Childbirth so I will be borrowing most of my questions from my good friend Allie--she blogged about her natural birth plan here.  We still haven't started buying any of the big stuff but we probably will in the next several weeks, after we move on post.

Oh, the move! What a nightmare. All of you other military wives can fully appreciate the headache that is the military housing office.  We have been on the waiting list for new housing for seven months and were assured multiple times (by the same person) that we would have a house in February when our lease is up. We've already given notice to our landlord and hadn't heard anything from housing so I decided to drop an email to the housing coordinator yesterday. She acted like she had no clue we needed a house in February and told me that there are no available homes! ::headdesk:: Mike tried ringing her multiple times yesterday but she never returned his calls, even though she was clearly in her office and responding to my emails within minutes of them being sent.  The bad news is that now it looks like we're not going to get a newer home (so long  wood floors, big kitchen island and enormous laundry room) but the good news is that they DO have other homes available to us--they're just older, smaller and don't have garages. ::sigh:: We will most likely just be getting a car port, I'll have a smaller galley style kitchen and a laundry closet--BOO! The neighborhood itself is much closer to the airfield though, which is a big plus for Mike in the mornings when he's going to have to fight with traffic and because it's an older neighborhood, the trees are well established and beautiful. The newer neighborhood is closer to the freeway (noise) and there are virtually no trees around the houses since the area is only a few years old. It really, really sucks that we got screwed like this but we will try to make the best out of the situation.

Instead of this.....

We'll get something more like this:

Instead of this:

.

I will have to make do with this:

It sucks, but it is what it is. You'd think we'd be used to things not going quite as planned after dealing with the military for eight years, right? Moving on post is still the best plan for us because we spend so much on gas each month with Mike commuting nearly 40 minutes one way. Poor guy showers at the gym and naps in his car after PT because it's too far to drive home--and once I have the baby he can run home at lunch just to say hi! Another positive is that the Army is going to move us so I don't have to worry about packing anything except things like cleaning products. My mom is coming out for a couple weeks to help me clean, organize and unpack too! It will be nice to have her here! I will probably post a bump picture and my 11 week post--we have a FRG (Family Readiness Group--basically the group of spouses from Mike's unit) Bowling Party later today and I'm hoping to get a few good pictures of my growing bump. Have a great weekend, everyone!