Baby Update

Today baby is officially 1 week late!  I don't blame her, it's been incredibly hot here, yesterday at 111 and today a high of 108, I would stay inside as long as I could too! Unfortunately since she hasn't come on her own, we will be going in to be induced this evening.  Although some say it's ok to go up to 42 weeks until being induced, my dr. doesn't like to wait any longer than 41 weeks.  So tonight we're heading into the hospital and they will start to induce at 7pm. We are praying that this process goes smoothly and quickly and that they won't have to end up using pitocin.  They will start me on a suppository and continue every 2-3 hours through the night, this is supposed to help ripen the cervix.  Anyway, that's probably enough detail for everyone, we will keep you posted! Pray for a quick labor and healthy baby for us :)

We made it!

Well, in 4 hours we will have made it to our due date...not sure if that's something to jump up and down about since that means baby is not here yet but woo hoo!  I just wanted to update everyone on my progression.  So far, I'm not dilated and baby is still moving around a lot with a strong heartbeat so we are glad to hear that, however on Friday my blood pressure was elevated slightly and there was a trace of protein in my urine.  For this reason, I have to go back in tomorrow and if my blood pressure has gone up anymore then they will likely induce.  So we will keep you posted on baby's arrival and we are hoping and praying she gets to come on her own!

38 Weeks...

Here I am!  I know you've all been dying to see how big I've gotten so here you go!  Today I am 38 weeks and 3 days and I am ready to go!  I have had a pretty stress free pregnancy and I really can't complain much, but I have to say, I am SO over being pregnant.  This summer has been extremely hot and long, I think it's been at least in the 90s since May, so needless to say I am ready to meet this little girl and shed this baby weight.  I have weekly appointments and at today's appointment I decided that I just didn't want to look at the scale, so I didn't.  My Dr. also told me that my cervix is still closed and up to my throat, so I guess that means no action yet.  I'm staying positive though, that doesn't mean baby girl won't decide she's ready to come out and get things moving as early as...tonight?? One can hope anyway haha.

My newest fun symptom is the carpal tunnel I have developed, it's super fun for all the typing I have to do with work! For real though it's not that bad...the most annoying part is that my hands/fingers are tingling all the time, like the awesome feeling when your hand falls asleep, only it doesn't go away!  I am looking forward to the swelling of my hands/feet going down so I can wear my wedding rings again and wear some of my other shoes! 

My mom comes into town on Wednesday the 17th, so I'm pretty excited about that.  I'm guessing we'll be waiting for baby to get here even after her due date but at least Mom will be here before she is!  Well, I'll make sure to keep everyone posted! Sorry for the long span of no blog posting...can't believe we're almost there!



Baby Dell

Yesterday, some of Alex's coworkers threw us a shower and gave us some really great gifts including, clothes, diapers, baby converse and some wipes and bathing essentials.  My favorite part was the diaper cake that Alex's friend Sandy made for us, she is so sweet and already calling herself aunt Sandy and offering to babysit...I hope she's serious!  I have to say I'm not surprised that all of the women are excited for Alex to have a baby girl...haha.  Everyone was so generous and we feel so blessed that everyone is so excited for our little baby Dell arrival.

41 more days...but who's counting??

The countdown has begun...I am now to the point where people are asking me "How much longer do you have?" instead of "How far along are you?" ...so that has to be a good sign, right?  Alex took this picture of me last Friday, so I was nearing the end of my 33rd week.  These days I am just uncomfortable, swollen and hot, today I am 34 weeks and 2 days I am finally feeling like I'm ready to get this baby out of my belly.

I had my 33 week Dr. appointment last Friday and everything is still going great, I am measuring right on track and weight gain is steady and normal.  I asked my Dr. to feel my belly to see if she could tell the baby's position and after some manipulation she determined that baby is head down, so let's hope she stays that way:)  I can tell that Baby is starting to feel cramped in there because I cannot get comfortable no matter what, sitting, standing or laying down, I've always got something poking me making it hard to breathe :)  The movements have gone from cute little kicks to rolls and twists and pushing unknown body parts up against my belly, it's pretty crazy to watch.

30 weeks...

Alex took this picture for me today...I know what you're thinking...WOW!! That's kind of what I'm thinking at this point and I'm definitely getting sick of the scale moving in the upward direction! Oh well, what can you do!   I haven't been over-indulging too much but I haven't really held myself back if I wanted some ice cream or some salt and vinegar chips :) 

I don't have too many new symptoms to report yet, I am starting to notice my feet swelling up ( I know they are already so attractive anyway) and my hands are swelling so I have officially retired my engagement ring for the remainder of the pregnancy, as only my band is comfortable since it's sized a little bigger.

Baby is moving like crazy, its really hard to describe but now instead of cute little kicks, I can feel twists/turns and what sometimes feels like somersaults in there...so bizarre!  She's also gotten the hiccups a few times and tends to move around the most in the morning and at night.  Speaking of, sleeping is getting more difficult too, last night I woke up like every hour tossing and turning, luckily Tuesday's and Thursday's are my work from home days so it's nice to sleep in a little.

Other than that, we're just busy getting things ready and trying to enjoy this crazy hot spring/summer before baby gets here...yay for all 100's in the 10 day forecast! 

Baby Shower!

As many of you know, some of my great friends and in-laws hosted a fabulous shower for me and baby this past weekend, they all thought it would be funny to take a picture touching my belly...yup all of their hands fit on there...with room to spare even!   The shower was great and friends/family were very generous, baby is already very spoiled!  We had some snacks and punch and played some games and opened gifts, games included measuring my belly, guess the flavor of baby food and another game that involved scooping cotton balls into a bowl blindfolded haha.  I have to say, Meredith apparently thinks I'm looking huge these days because her guess measurement for my belly was almost twice as big as my belly actually is ;).  It was so nice having Mere here for the weekend, and she wasn't our only out of town guest, Tori (Alex's sister) drove up from Oklahoma and....

Mom even flew in for the weekend to surprise me, Alex did such a good job keeping it secret from me, as that's not easy to do! 

27 weeks and growing...

Here I am!  Tomorrow I'll be 27 weeks, I can't believe how quickly this is all happening!  Today we had our hospital tour, which definitely made things seem more real and even scared me a little bit.  I've seen it all on TV but I've never been to a hospital for a birth of any family or friends, so this was all new to me.  Alex didn't seem to be freaked out and he's actually pretty excited and keeps telling me to hurry up and get baby out so he can play with her.

Now that I'm at the end of my 2nd trimester (week 28 starts the 3rd trimester), I am starting to get tired more easily, for instance last night I couldn't keep my eyes open after 8:30pm.  Baby is moving around a lot and the movements feel stronger everyday.  One night last week we balanced the remote on my belly and just watched it for about a half an hour as she moved around and it kept tipping back and forth....yes you'd be surprised the weird things you think of when you're preggo :)

Another pregnancy symptom/side effect I haven't told you guys about yet is my forgetfulness and absentmindedness.  I remember when I first read about this being a possible symptom and I thought to myself, yeah right!  However, if you asked Alex about it, I'm sure he'd go on and on about how I have hard time focusing and finishing my thoughts.  When I was in Tucson and one afternoon my sister and I were having lunch, there was actually a point in our conversation when we both had to stop and ask "wait, what were we talking about?" "I don't remember" "Me either".

Speaking of my sister, she is finally nearing her delivery date, so be thinking of her and praying for her on Friday as she will be going in to deliver baby boy von Scheliha :)

Sister Bumps!

I spent last weekend in Tucson with my Sister and her family and as always it was so great seeing them.  It was fun to get together before her little guy gets here, she is ready to go, healthy as can be and the little man is scheduled to be delivered on May 27th.  My Sis looks great, she is all belly and is obviously a beautiful preggo Mama-to-be!  It was fun to go maternity clothes shopping with her and we got pedicures and hung out a lot with the kiddos.  We had lunch one day and the cashier asked us "Are you guys sisters? And you're both pregnant? That's so cute!"  It was pretty funny. 


I forgot to mention what we did on Friday afternoon.  I'm sure a lot of you remember how much my sis loved Gymboree (especially when she had Emma) and fortunately, she saved all of it and kept it all really nice. Being the lucky sister having a girl, I got to go through the multiple tubs of clothes with her and pick out what I'd like!  That's right, I filled up a whole duffel bag :).  They are all very cute and I feel so fortunate that she's being so generous! 


It's really amazing how everyone wants to help with things when they find out you're pregnant.  My sister in law has also generously given me some cute stuff for baby and some maternity hand me downs too!  And not only have I received things but of course all the women that work with Alex love him and have given us things like a bumbo and baby bjorn!  Someday I'm hoping to return pay it forward!


Overall it was a great trip and I'll keep everyone posted on Lori's progress :)
Here's a picture of me and her cute kiddos:

Nursery beginnings...

Last weekend we finally started on the nursery.  Alex, Lanna (Alex's sister) and I spent about 6 or 7 hours painting, it was actually pretty fun and turned out pretty cute.  The tan line of paint in the middle will be covered with a white chair rail to match the existing woodwork in the room.  The picture you're seeing is just a corner of the room by the closet where you can really see the contrast between the two pinks.  We're glad that we had an extra hand to help out, especially with Momma and Baby needed to take a nap :). 

Something in the water....

Every Tuesday night Alex and I meet with a bunch of couples from our church for fellowship and bible study.  We joined this group right after we had found out we were pregnant and at that point, there were already  4 other women that were pregnant.  Since then, two babies have been born and 3 others have joined the pregnancy club.  We all joke that there must be something in the water since our group seems to be so reproductive. 

We're all spread out with due dates ranging from beginning of June to the end of September.  So there's a total of 6 of us that are pregnant right now and this picture was taken at a dinner/diaper shower this past week.  It's actually been really nice to have other girls to relate to and talk to about all of the fun experiences that come along with being pregnant.  Tuesday nights usually turn into hour long chats about Dr. appointments, food cravings and weight gain...it's fun though!

23 weeks and counting....



So tomorrow is actually the start of my 24th week, this picture was taken this past Thursday.  Definitely getting bigger! I don't mind the bump so much, it's nice now that I'm obviously pregnant, however, WOW some of my other areas are growing more than I'd prefer...I won't elaborate!  Seriously though, as if my rear-end really needed to grow.  Haha.  Anyway, I'm feeling great and everything seems to be going well according to my Dr.  Baby's heartbeat is about 148 (normal) and she seems to be growing right on track.  They measured my belly this time and told me that my uterus should measure the same number in centimeters as the number of weeks I am pregnant, so far, so good!

I can still fit into some of my longer shirts and stretchy pants (neither in this picture are maternity) but most of the stuff I've been wearing lately is maternity.  There are definitely a lot of options out there, however it definitely adds up so I've been trying to keep the purchases spread out and be strategic about it.

21 Weeks...

I am now into my 21st week, officially past the halfway point!  It's gone so fast already, I am growing by the day!  Unfortunately, I still don't feel like I'm completely out of the awkward stage though.  In some outfits, people that don't know me may just think that I have a beer gut, so I've been trying to wear tighter shirts that show off my bump. I haven't bought a ton of maternity clothes yet as some of them would still be too big.  Actually I only have 1 pair of jeans (maternity) that fit me right now so that's really fun wearing those like everyday, I plan on doing some shopping while the hubby is out of town this weekend though :)

Anyway, the 2nd trimester has been really great, no morning sickness and I've had a lot more energy.  This week has been rough as we are still a little jet lagged from Japan, but I'll make it!  Another exciting thing about this week is that our first piece of baby furniture came in for the nursery, so I am pretty excited to get that going! I know Alex is really pumped to paint the nursery pink ;)

It's a GIRL!

I'm thrilled to announce that Baby VerHeul is a girl!  We had our Dr. appt on Thursday before we left for Japan and although she wasn't cooperative at first, we were finally able to get her to move so that we could see what we were having.  It was funny actually, they always tell me to drink some water before my ultrasound and this time apparently I drank too much and my bladder was so full that they actually asked me to go pee and come back so that she would have more space to move around. 

Baby V weighs about 11 ounces (probably more now as this was almost 2 weeks ago).  She has a healthy heartbeat of 152 and is now 9-10 inches long!  I can feel lots of movement and my Mom was even able to feel some movement from the outside when we were in Japan.  Such a crazy feeling, I wish y'all were here to feel my tummy!

In other news...

I thought this deserved a post of it's own....yet another baby is being added to the Schreurs extended family..that's right...Joe and Emily are pregnant :)  Current due date is September 27th!  We have actually known for a bit but wanted to keep it on the DL while they told all of their friends/family.  We had planned to video chat with them and when we broke the news of our Baby V, my brother held up a picture of an ultrasound and said "your baby is going to be older than ours" haha, it was awesome!

We feel so blessed and so excited about the "triplets" as my Mom calls them!  It's been fun being able to talk to Lori and Emily about preggo stuff! 

We are actually getting ready to head to Japan on Friday morning, we'll be meeting my parents there as well! I am not feeling too excited about the 13 hr flight however I do feel pretty good about being safe over there and especially that I will be in the same boat as Emily while everyone is eating sushi and drinking beer :)

We have movement!

I am now into my 19th week and feeling great!  It feels like I'm growing by the minute and this isn't even my most current photo as this was taken Wednesday last week.  I am now feeling some movement in there, it's pretty hard to describe, just little flutters that I've definitely never felt before.  They seem to get stronger everyday and more noticeable, in fact Alex was able to hear/feel them when he put his ear up to my belly for awhile before we went to sleep last night. 

Thursday is the big day this week!! We will have our 2nd ultrasound of the pregnancy and hopefully find out whether we're having a baby Rachel or baby Alex :)  It's been more than 10 weeks since we saw the first ultrasound so we are excited to see how much Baby V has grown!

.....Week 16

I'm nearing the end of my 16th week, Monday will be day 1 of week 17.   We had our Dr. appointment today and got to hear the heartbeat again and even got to hear little Baby V squirming around in there...so crazy!  My weigh in was success this time, I actually gained weight instead of losing it from being sick!  I think they were supposed to measure my "belly" but they forgot and so did I so we'll have to wait until next time.  So far, no new fun pregnancy symptoms to discuss....well at least that you'd like to hear about :)

Our next appointment will be right before we leave for our Japan trip in 3 weeks.  This will be the big one! Should be able to find out the sex of the baby and see the growing progress baby has made.  It seems like everyone already knows what we're having except for us so I'm excited to find out for real.  It's funny though, Alex wanted to wait to find out and have it be a surprise, but I told him that either way it will be a surprise...now or in another 5 months!

The Awkward Stage

I text my sister a lot about my symptoms or to ask her questions and recently I texted her to tell her that my jeans were getting really tight and my shirts weren't looking so good on me anymore.  To that she replied "Welcome to the awkward stage!".  I'll be 16 weeks on Monday and have only gained a couple lbs.  I have actually been trying to gain a little weight since at my 12 week appointment I had lost about 6lbs from being sick and I felt kinda bad about that.  It's actually kind of hard to figure out how much you should be eating although they say you should take in an additional 300 calories a day, it's just that you don't want to get gaining too much weight but then you feel bad if you lose weight.  They say I should gain 1-2lbs every week now, we'll see how that goes.

So the picture above Alex took for me, to me it seems pretty drastic but I'm guessing to you it doesn't appear to be that drastic yet.  At work, I've been wearing loose fitting tops with cardigans over them because I haven't told many people yet in the office.  Today while I was sitting at my desk I had my first button undone...kinda like Berner (Murphy) does after she eats a lot...right Em?  Luckily most of my stretchy jeans are still working but I'm guessing it won't be long until I have to start looking for things with a belly band. 

So basically the awkward stage means that to most people, you don't really look pregnant, just that you've got a little belly and if you're lucky, a sizable increase in breast size.  To add to the awkward stage for me...I think all my acne from sophomore year of high school has come back in full force, awesome. They say women are "glowing" in pregnancy...well they actually say that because your hormones can make your skin super oily, thus giving you that lovely glow.

1st Trimester Recap

Well, I've officially made it through the first trimester and I am very thankful for that! I guess I shouldn't leave Alex out, he made it through the first trimester too :)  It wasn't easy for him either, he was very helpful with housework and put up with a lot of my complaining about my stomach being upset.

It was really smooth sailing up until week 6 when the morning sickness really started to kick in.  We were visiting my Sister and fam in Tucson over new years and unfortunately I was miserable.  It wasn't just the sick feeling in the morning, it was all day long and the smell of just about everything made me want to throw up.

At about week 12 I started feeling much better, slowly getting my normal appetite back.  I had managed to make it through the first 11 weeks of pregnancy without having to take a day off work and then I got a nasty stomach bug and ended up having to take a day off.  My 12 week appointment went pretty well other than having lost a little weight from being sick. My Dr. said everything seemed good and we were able to hear baby's heart beat again.

That brings us to the present. I am 15 weeks and 3 days and I feel great!  My energy is back, I'm not tired all of the time and I am really happy to have my appetite back! :)

Knocked Up

On December 16th, we took a pregnancy test and it was positive.  Girls, let me tell you, if there are two lines but one is really faint, you are definitely knocked up! After a cruise in the Caribbean and a road trip to Tucson, we finally had our first visit to the Dr. where we got to hear Baby's heartbeat for the first time. 

Baby VerHeul is due August 22nd and we couldn't be more excited.  Baby V will arrive about 3 months after his/her cousin is born..due June 3rd to the von Scheliha's.  It is such an exciting time and I am very excited that my sister and I are pregnant together :)