Happy Easter!

This Easter we are thrilled to introduce our second little GIRL!!! Dylan Stevelt-Mitchell!

Look how long her legs are! The technician claims they will get nice and chubby and then they won't appear so long, but still - they go clear up to her butt!
We got to peek in on our sweet Baby-Roo again this Friday, and while she didn't want to look at the ultrasonographer and kept hiding her face in my back, she did pose for lots of nice butt shots to tell us that she is indeed a little girl! Grandma McMillan (Mimi) and my Mom (Grandma) went to this ultrasound with me, and it was lots of fun to have them along, especially since Mimi had never seen an ultrasound before. Our tech, Gwenna, was extra nice and spent lots of time pointing out cute little feet, cute little arms which she had curled up by her head, all FOUR chambers of her heart, and watching her roll & move. Her heart rate was 146 bpm this time, and she is still measuring big (which is quite different from her big sister who was always a little peanut.) We have decided to name her Dylan, though I imagine she will mostly be called Dyl-pickle or Pickle, as Daddy has already dubbed her. :) I've now felt her kick 4 times, each time getting closer and closer together, so I'm hoping that soon it will be a daily and then many-times-daily event!

We are hosting Easter dinner at our house tomorrow for my family, it will be our first big Holiday dinner we've done, so wish us luck! I've never made a ham before, so though it's going against my rule of 'never make something you haven't made before for company', I'm hoping for the best!

Happy Easter to all of you, from all of us! ~Kristy, Chadmo, Haley-Bug, Dylan, Ruby, Bianca, Tucker-momo, Farrah, & Forrest <3

The last week of our first trimester!

Here are some new Baby-Roo pictures from today, at 13 weeks & 1 day pregnant. The picture on the last post was from OSU High Risk Maternal Fetal Medicine, and these two are from my regular OB/GYN, Dr. Copeland's, office. They don't have as fancy of ultrasound machines as the high risk place, so these are a little fuzzier & smaller, but it was so much fun to get to peek in at Baby-Roo again today and watch her (?) acrobatics! She/he was kicking, wiggling, and rolling around - much to Mommy & Daddy's delight. :)

The wave form you see underneath Baby-Roo in this picture is her/his heartbeat! 144 bpm today, nice and loud and strong. It's the best sound in the world.

All good news at Dr. C's again today - they're mostly keeping an eye on my pesky polyp which still likes to bleed a little bit on occasion. The polyp has stayed the same size for the last 13 weeks, it's about 4-4.5 cm in diameter. Also, Dr. C is very nice and I think he realizes that I'm a worry-wart, so he keeps doing ultrasounds frequently to check on the baby, though he reassures me that actually after our excellent Ultrascreen results we are no higher risk than anyone else. But he also admits that that's a very difficult idea to grasp after Haley-Bug, so I think he's just as happy to check in on this little Roo more frequently too. We will head back to him for another ultrasound on 4/22 (16 weeks). Our next 2 appointments at OSU are for: our Level 2 ultrasound on 5/6 (18 weeks), and our fetal echocardiogram with Dr. Wheller (Haley's cardiologist) at OSU on 6/14 (22 weeks).

The most exciting development that I can think of is that I would SWEAR I felt the baby kick last night for the first time! I asked Dr. Copeland if that was possible and he says it is, particularly with 2nd pregnancies when you know what you're feeling. I was just reading in bed after Chadmo had fallen asleep, and there was a very distinct *boink* from inside the right side of my uterus (wow, that doesn't sound cozy at all - lets say womb instead.) I was so excited I stayed up later than I meant to, hoping it would happen again. No luck of course, but hopefully in a week or two it'll be happening all the time! I attribute this early kicking to the fact that the ultrasonographer noted today that the baby has long legs - a quality she/he must have gotten from the Mitchell genetics! No one's ever accused a Stevelt or a McMillan of being long-legged, and it's certainly nothing Haley was ever accused of! ;) Maybe if this baby's a girl, she will be tall like her Aunt Melissa?

I couldn't resist asking this ultrasonographer if she would take a guess at the baby's gender too (we didn't tell her what OSU had predicted), and she also said girl - so we'll see! Somehow I feel slightly more convinced having that be the opinion of 2 people at this stage than just 1, but I don't think I'll really trust it till our 18 week ultrasound and getting to see actual 'bits'. ;)