6 weeks and counting!

Today is 6 weeks until our due date, according to what the doctors say (I'm sticking with my on-line calculator thingy that said March 6th (not the 7th) was the official due date). It's hard to believe that we're in the final stretch of Baby Project#2!

So far things in preggie land have been good, aside from the normal malady's that strike a woman when she's building a baby. The big watch lately has been my blood pressure - it was an issue with my first, and likely contributed to Ellie being so small at birth (4lbs 11oz, or 2138 grams).

Since Ellie was so small, she was placed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) immediately after birth. They called her a "feeder-grower" in that they just wanted to watch her closely to make sure she gained weight and grew properly. She was short (only 17" tall), so she never looked scrawny like the majority of the NICU babies did, and she soon became the favourite NICU baby to care for. They rated her size as "<<<3rd percentile" - I wondered how many "less than" signs could be put in front of a percentage to make it reduce to the next-smallest number! Though we had excellent care from our nurses and doctors, there was a lot of emotions for us to deal with because we didn't know when we were going to take her home, and thanks to the kindness of my nurses on Post-Partum, I wasn't discharged until Ellie was so we were able to go home as a family the first time.

Very early in this pregnancy, I was on the maternity floor at Rockyview Hospital and walked past the NICU and emotions surfaced from Ellie's birth that really surprised me. Who knew that two years later things would surface that could surprise you! Mark and I started praying that this baby would not be little or need to spend time in the NICU at all - I forget that sometimes when you pray, God answers you quite literally.

So at my ultrasound two weeks ago, when the doctor met with me after to review the results, I burst out laughing when he told me that this baby was rating in the 95th percentile for size. Uh, wow!! Of course I had to explain myself to this kind doctor, so since he found out that our fist baby was a miniature one, he wanted to see me again just to keep an eye on Baby's growth.

I am very thankful that we appear to be having a baby that will not need to spend time in the NICU, and am humbled again by God's sense of humor to our prayers. I guess I'll be tucking away all my preemie-sized baby clothes that I was going to have ready "just in case" we had another miniature baby!!