Happy Days

A few pics from Carter's birthday party:

Watching Thomas drive on the track.

And I'll huff and I'll puff...

Very happy birthday boy

His prized present, James (another Thomas character)

Checking out the bug barn Grandpa Don made (it now houses a moth).

Apparently Carter's decided he likes birthdays. Here's our conversation on the way home from preschool the day after:

Carter: I can’t wait to have another birthday!

Mom: Really? Why? Did you have fun on your birthday?

Carter: Yeah. How much days until I have another birthday?

Mom: It’s a whole year before you have another birthday.

Carter: How much days is that?

Mom: 364 days

Carter: Whatever.

Baby update:

I went back to Dr. Richey on Friday and got a report that's about as good as it could have been.

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Placenta: Although the placenta still has that "fold over", baby has squished it up against the side of the uterus, which is good (less prone to tear away). Baby has tugged on his cord at some point and caused a little area of bleeding, but in Dr. Richey's words, "it hasnt' bothered him" and I saw no signs of bleeding. She also said that because he's already head down and will start to move less and less as he gets bigger, the likelihood of him pulling on his cord and causing additional bleeding will continue to decrease. She also said that the cord attachment looked MUCH BETTER than previously; it had been attached very closely to the edge, which isn't good if those edges had started to peel away. Now it has migrated away from the edge as the placenta has gotten larger. There's also good blood flow between the placenta and uterus. She told me she doesn't see placentas like this improve with time; they either stay the same or usually get worse.

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Heart: Here was another finding that Dr. Richey wasn't expecting. That "extra wall" that was stretching across a majority of one of the atriums has almost entirely disappeared. She was hoping to find that it just had not attached to the other side, but there's only a small portion of it left along the side, which will not affect his heart function in any way. I got to see the pulmonary veins and the aorta, both of which Dr. Richey described as "perfect" and "beautiful."

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Prognosis: I still have my lifting restrictions, etc. but I don't have to see Dr. Richey again unless some bleeding or other complication arises. She said I'm still a good candidate for a VBAC as long as my status doesn't change. As I said, baby's already vertex (Logan turned head down a week before he was born; Carter never did) and my cervix has started to thin, but not dangerously so. It's not thin enough to worry about pre-term labor or anything. She said it's probably thinning out because his head is "VERY DOWN THERE." He currently weighs 2 lbs, 11 oz, which puts him on track to be an 8-8 1/2 pound baby.

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Personality: Apparently, he's a bit shy. He snuggles his little face into the placenta, hugs a part of his umbilical cord under his chin with one hand and hides one side of his face with the other. It was pretty hard to get enough fluid in front of his face to get a good picture, but this is the best one I got.

For those that have trouble figuring out what's what, I'll try to describe it. The white structure on the far right is the placenta. The next white structure is part of his arm and hand, covering up his left cheek and eye. The largest white structure (on the far left) is the right side of his face with some curled up cord under his chin.

So, I went shopping afterwards and got a little Yankees cap and thanksgiving day bib. We are definitely planning on a Thanksgiving baby! Thank you, God, for being so good to me when I have not been so good to you.