Complications...

Check out this scowly alien baby:

Ok, that's the last time you get to call her that.  We know, this picture is weird looking, but we're hoping that is just the nature of the ultrasound picture and after she has had a little more time to grow she'll come out cute as a button.  Or, as Erik puts it, not all babies are cute, but all babies are precious.  Just for the record, I think she is cute in this picture.  And I think that thing that looks like an eye glaring is not really an open eye, but some weird thing with the ultrasound picture, because if you look below it, it looks like her eyes are closed and she is sleeping.

Well, the purpose of this post was not solely to present Baby Alien Rammelsberg.  Unfortunately, we have discovered some potential complications.  I have been debating about whether to blog about this or not and finally decided we would rather have more people knowing and praying for Baby Girl.  So here's the situation:  At our 20 week ultrasound, the doctor could not confirm the little bambina's great vessels of her heart were developing properly so he scheduled her for another ultrasound at 28 weeks after she had time to get a little bigger.  We were told it was probably nothing and they just could not get a good picture because of her position.  Last Friday, we went in for the 28 week ultrasound and he still could not confirm proper development.  In the scariest conversation I have ever had with a doctor, he explained what could be wrong and referred us to a specialist.  The worst case scenario is that she will have to be born a little early in Seattle and then whisked off to heart surgery right after she is born.  The best case scenario is that there is nothing wrong at all.  He did say that all other signs point to nothing being wrong.  She is growing just fine and has good vitals and all that, and if she had some kind of congenital heard defect she would likely be much smaller than she is now.  And then he left us with this gem of advice: "Don't lose any sleep over this."  Yeah right!

So we are just asking for your prayers that everything turns out to be just fine.  We are doing our best not to worry.  The appointment with the perinatologist is scheduled for next Wednesday, which coincidentally is my birthday.  I am hoping for a really great birthday gift of a bill of clean health for the bambina!  We will keep y'all posted on the results.

Adios Second Trimester!

Today I am 28 weeks!  

According to many websites and my most trusted baby book, that means I am officially saying cheers to the departure of my second trimester.  I think a few words are in order:

Second trimester,

You were pretty good to me.  Thank you for not making me sick like our friend First Trimester.  I also appreciated the extra boosts of energy.  I did not, however, appreciate that you made me huge.  Not only did you leave me with the belly of a 36 weeker, you also left me with love handles and thunder thighs.  Not cool.  I guess you were just trying to get me ready to meet Third Trimester.  So in the spirit of tough love, I forgive you for that and for introducing me to the art of swollen feet and ankles.  You have been my favorite trimester thus far, so, cheers to you Second Trimester.  I have a feeling I am going to miss you!

Now, to celebrate the coming of the Third Trimester here are a slew of shameless belly shots!

 I can now use my belly as a traveling table top!

 26 weeks!

27 weeks!

And not to be outdone...

Baby Daddy also needed to get a belly shot in.  

And because I am in the mood to brag, check out the what I have been doing with my bursts of energy:

Burp rags!  It is kind of hard to see them in detail but, trust me, they are adorable.

Adorable Daddy Alert!

Well, it's settled.  Erik is the cutest Daddy-to-be ever.

Baby Girl's ears are now developed and Erik is desperate for her to know his voice when she is born.  He claims she will be more familiar with his voice than mine.  In fact, every time I tell him she is moving around he stops whatever he is doing, runs to my belly, and starts talking to her.  It is usually nonsense talk, but she seems to be amused by her father's antics.  For example, the other day he was telling her about how she was probably all squished in there but that she would be getting more and more squished (because she will grow faster than my uterus) followed by "one squish to rule them all" (birth).  Every time he said the word "squish" she would kick, so then he was just saying "squish, squish, squish" to her.  (Yes, this is how we spend our time these days, and no, I would not trade it for anything.)  This is a Daddy's Girl if I ever saw one.

Last night he decided it was time to start playing his guitar for her.

It melted my heart.

He came up with two songs for her.  (I would just like to point out that he has only managed to come up with one song for me!)  One of the them is appropriately called "(Baby's secret name)'s Lullaby."  The idea is that she will hear it enough while in the perfect comfort of my belly so that later when she is born she will hear her lullaby and associate it with being calm and comfy.  We'll get back to you on whether this works or not :).

I can't wait until she is born and I can see the two of them meeting for the first time.  I'm sure he will be a mess.  If you don't know Erik, he leans toward the sentimental side.  He gets teary when I bring home things like this:

I wouldn't have it any other way.  

Crave

It's gooey.  It's salty.  It's so smooth.  And pressed between two Wheat Thin crackers it is the most superb, delicious, culinary masterpiece...and it is terrible for me.  What can I say?  The crave wants what the crave wants, and right now that happens to be easy, breezy, beautiful Easy Cheese.  It first hit me on Tuesday on my way to work and on my break I just had to run to Safeway to get a bottle and a box of Wheat Thins. Don't worry, the box isn't totally gone yet!

People have been asking about my cravings and aversions since Baby Ramm's existence became known.  Since I am now in a place where I can talk about food without taking a deep breath and fighting back the wave of nausea, I decided to share the cravings/aversions greatest hits.

We'll start with the worst: Foods I would not touch, let in my home, and tried my darndest not to smell.  (Note- these have all passed so I feel safe talking about them now.)

1. Any dish that was a mixture of tomato sauce with mozzarella.  Lasagna was the worst offender.  At the height of this particularly nasty aversion I had to go to a birthday lunch for a colleague...at the Olive Garden!  I had to breath through my mouth the whole time and try to pretend I was enjoying my soup, salad and breadsticks.

2. Fried food older than 10 seconds.  This one was tricky because it smelled amazing to me as it was cooking (french fries, egg rolls, etc.) but after it had been sitting out for any period of time I wanted nothing to do with it.

3.  Coffee.  This both surprised and delighted me.  I had a pretty serious coffee addiction before I got pregnant and was worried it would be hard to kick the habbit.  Not the case.  I couldn't even stand the smell.  Unfortunately, the crave is coming back.  I indulged in a latte this week (decaf people!) and it was sooo, sooo good.  Like the loving embrace of good friend.

4.  Yakisoba Noodles.  Again, one of my favorite treats in pre-prego days.  I had a bad experience during the dark days (aka, first trimester), and I am still struggling a little with this one.

5.  Beer and wine.  Not that I was attempting to drink either of these, but the smell was awful.  I could not even take the smell of communion at church!  So imagine how awful it was to smell it seeping out of my clients' pores in my little office...the worst.

Now, onto a more fun topic!  The cravings!  These are my puppy love cravings...they burned hot and fast and then I was on to my next relationship:

1.  Cheetos.  Crunchy, not puffed.  Also, not good for me.  Are we detecting a trend here?  I ate these for a mid-morning snack (yes, morning) for a solid two weeks and have not wanted any since.

2.  Crystal Light.  I was particularly fond of Fruit Punch, but I definitely would not have kicked either Raspberry Ice or Raspberry Lemonade out of bed.

3. Blue cheese dressing.  So amazing to my taste buds!  In fact, I started thinking of it as some kind of snooty, gourmet, ingredient that only "us foodies" know about, even though my Grandma has been eating it for years!  I am still quite fond of it, but when I was at the height of the crave I definitely looked down my nose at ranch people.  Ranch is so second class.

4.  Grape juice.  I have never been a huge grape juice person, but one morning I woke up and told Erik, "I HAVE to have some grape juice stat."  So I stopped at the gas station and got a little individual bottle. Not enough.  For the next 3 weeks my day would not start out right unless I was sipping on my grape juice on ice with a straw.

Well that about sums up the hot and dirty history of my craves.  The current ones are Easy Cheese (see above), dark chocolate almond milk (amazing!), apples (yay, a healthy one!), homemade macaroni and cheese (we've had it twice in the past week and a half) and mustard (so good on really anything).  I usually justify the ones that are bad for me by telling myself Baby Girl must need them or I wouldn't want them so much.

All this talk of food has made me hungry.  Excuse me while I waddle to the fridge and grab a nice cold glass of chocolate almond milk with a side of Easy Cheese :).

Sugar and spice and everything nice

Here she is, Baby Girl Rammelsberg!

We had our 20-week ultrasound yesterday and the doctor is 95% sure it's a girl!

Daddy was quite pleased.  Mommy was too :).

I had hoped we would be able to come away with some awesome 3D pics of Baby Girl's face so we would have an idea of what she looks like.  Unfortunately, she had her face pushed up against the placenta, which does not do well with 3D imaging.  On a related note, I now know what my placenta looks like (yuck!).

We are so, so excited to be having a daughter.  We would have been excited either way, but it is just nice knowing.  It makes it more real somehow.  The Grandparents and Aunties are very excited as well.  Have I mentioned this is the first grandbaby on both sides?  Baby Girl doesn't have enough fingers for all the people she has to wrap around them.  What a spoiled girl.

That's all I have for now.  Let the shopping commence!

What's in a name?

Recently, Beyonce and Jay-Z welcomed their new daughter into the world: Blue Ivy Carter.  The internet was in a flurry discussing whether this was a good or bad choice of name, what it means, and even had it wrong in some cases (some were reporting it as Ivy Blue rather than Blue Ivy...the horror!).  All this nonsense just confirmed what I already knew to be true about baby naming: you will be judged no matter what you do!  Luckily for us, unlike Bey and Z, the discussion of our choice in baby name will not be a worldwide trend.  However, no matter what we decide on we will be judged.  I freely admit I am the worst baby name judger of all, so this is probably where my paranoia stems from.  Just for the record, I do not hate the name Blue, but will there be a Blue Rammelsberg in the near future?  Definitely not.

Now that I am on the other end of the naming game (the giver rather than the judger), I have new respect for every person who has ever named a child.  Naming a baby is hard.  It will be a person's name for their whole life.  Do you use a popular name that everyone knows how to pronounce?  Do you go for one-of-a-kind names that will make your child stand out?  Do you stick with family names?  All good questions that I think all parents need to decide for themselves.

Popular names:
My initial thought was "nothing in the top 10."  My name is Jessica, which was apparently the number 1 name in 1985, the year I was born.  I didn't have any classmates with the same name until high school, but they were a dime a dozen in college.  Plus, for whatever reason, people confuse it with Jennifer ALL THE TIME!  I like my name, I just wish it were less common.

Here are the top 10 boys and girls names of 2011:

Girls

1. Sophia
2. Emma
3. Isabella
4. Olivia
5. Ava
6. Lily
7. Chloe
8. Madison
9. Emily
10. Abigail

Boys

1. Aiden
2. Jackson
3. Mason
4. Liam
5. Jacob
6. Jayden
7. Ethan
8. Noah
9. Lucas
10. Logan

Like I said, initially it was top ten, no way.  Since then I read some good information in one of my favorite prego books (The Christian Mama's Guide to Having a Baby by Erin MacPherson - it's great).  She made the point that in the past few years Jacob has been the number one boys name, with 5,500 out of every million babies born being given that name.  That is still less than 1%.  So I guess you could say I am no longer opposed to anything just because it is on the top 10 list.

Unique Names:

I think there is a sliding scale on what qualifies as "unique."  I can get behind different names as long as they are easy to pronounce.  Example: my cousin named her baby Aniiah, which I think is beautiful yet unique.  I do not care for names that make no sense.  Example: a friend of ours told a story of a girl whose name was Le-a (pronounced Ladasha because the "dash" is not silent).  Enough said about unique names.

Family Names:

This is a tricky area.  Initially we were thinking of incorporating a family name into Baby Ramm's middle name.  But then we got to thinking that it might hurt other family members' feelings if the baby were not named after them.  Or it would put pressure on naming the next baby after someone from the other side of the family.  Plus, when it comes to girl names we run into a bit of a problem.  Our grandmothers' names are/were Vera, Juanita, and Ardis.  Perfect for the lovely ladies they belong to, but not great baby names.  (There was also a Helen but we have been informed that name is already taken :).)

So where does that leave us?  Yes, we have picked Baby Ramm's name (we have one boy and one girl name all ready to go!).  So when will it be available for judgment by the court of public opinion?  I guess you'll find out on or around June 6, when the ink is dry on the birth certificate :).

All because two people fell in love...

Today is our 3rd anniversary.  It has been three years since we said "I do," danced to "For Me It's You" by Train in front of our family and friends, and since I became Mrs. Rammelsberg.  Time flies when you're having fun!  This year our celebration is accompanied by excitement as we await the coming of Baby Ramm.  There have been conversations with comments like "can you believe next year at this time we will have a baby?"  Waiting on Baby Ramm has made us grow even closer to each other.  I don't know how to describe it exactly, but we are more patient, more affectionate, and more "together" than before.

In honor of the day I am posting some pics showing the journey that led to us becoming the Fammelsbergs :).  There are some oldies but goodies.

The dating years:

Christmas 2007/New Year's 2008:

The engagement!

Mission trip to Guatemala:

Our first place together in Moscow, Idaho:

Various Halloweens:

The Wedding:

Honeymooning in Hawaii:

First Anniversary - Leavenworth, WA:

Law school graduation + post-graduation trip to Vancouver B.C.

Which brings us to the most recent: prego Jess and excited Erik

(Please try to ignore my crazy eyes in this one)

Last night as I was getting myself situated in bed with my big body pillow I turned around and found Erik carefully arranging my wedge pillow behind me and thought for the hundredth time that I have the best husband in the world.

Three years ago we celebrated a wedding; today we celebrate a marriage.