a science lesson.

The dog is sitting on the other side of the door breathing REALLY HARD, just to make sure I know how much he wants to come in and pee on all my stuff.  Can someone please tell me why he didn't move out with Tyler?

We have some news about Baby Nugget.  We actually have a lot of news about her.  She's kind of a big deal.  And a drama queen.

Are you ready for a science lesson?

On Friday we went in for the anatomy ultrasound with a perinatologist, just as a precaution, to check baby's stats and growth and make sure everything's where it needs to be and doing what it should be doing.  Unfortunately, they spotted a little trouble in her heart, so we went back on Monday to see a pediatric cardiologist and to have another ultrasound, this time with an echocardiogram for a more detailed picture.  It's a pretty cool thing.

What they found is that Baby Nugget has two heart defects.  One is called a VSD, which is basically an opening between the ventricles [lower chambers of her heart] that allows blood to pass through freely, both ways.  This one is the most common congenital heart defect, and can sometimes repair itself.  The other options are applying a patch between the ventricles through a catheter, or if it's too severe they would repair it through open-heart surgery.  [These are some pictures from the Mayo Clinic's slideshow.]

This is a healthy heart.

This is a heart with VSD.

The second defect is a little trickier to explain, and I can't seem to find any pictures.  A healthy heart has two arteries: the pulmonary on the right side and the aorta on the left.  Baby Nugget got a little confused while she was growing her heart and decided to just put them both on the same side.  Silly girl.  So while her blood is pumping just fine through her body as long as I'm doing all the breathing, once she takes her first breath that little mix-up will start to cause a lot of problems.  To repair this defect, she will definitely need open-heart surgery, immediately after birth.  They'll have to reroute the artery that's on the wrong side and possibly replace her aorta, because it's a little smaller than it should be.  The doctors are all really nice when they talk about this and really emphasize the fact that knowing about it now makes in about eight-thousand times easier to prepare for her upcoming birth and surgery.

Fortunately for us, we live in a time when doctors can monitor these issues on a regular basis and perform fancy surgeries to fix what's wrong before it causes any permanent damage to her development [hopefully].  We're lucky that we moved to Las Vegas, where we have access to a children's hospital that specializes in heart care.  Sunrise is the only children's hospital in the region that is equipped for pediatric open-heart surgery.  As much as we might have thought moving in with my parents was a backwards move, we are in the best place possible for this adventure. 

And that's exactly how we're looking at it.  As an adventure.  So far there's no reason to believe that this is a genetic condition or that it's being caused by anything else [we are waiting for results from a test for Down's Syndrome and that kind of condition, though].  We've met with a genetic counselor and she doesn't see any correlation between this and anything else we've told her about our family histories.  Sometimes these things just happen, and sometimes they happen to us.  But John and I both know that Heavenly Father wouldn't have sent us this special little nugget unless He knew we could handle her and love her just like He does.  We can, and we will.  And we'll have some really great reasons for why there's no money to buy her a car for her 16th birthday or pay for her college.

Aside from all of that, Baby Nugget is doing great!  She's right on track growth-wise, has all the right numbers of fingers and toes, and works night and day on her dance skills.  She is, however, a little camera-shy, and likes to keep her arms up in from of her face during ultrasounds, so all the pictures we have of her little face are too blurry.  That, and I think all babies look like creatures from the black lagoon in ultrasound images.  Or else I would post a couple pictures worth looking at, instead of just those hearts.

Ugh, ok.  Fine.  Here's one that actually kind of looks like a human.  Just don't make fun of her distinctly "Woodbury" nose... she'll grow into it!

We are very optimistic about all of this.  We really don't want all of our friends and family to feel like they need to walk on eggshells around us.  If you have questions PLEASE ask us!  It might not be something we've thought to ask the doctors yet, so really, any questions at all, send 'em our way!  And if you know anything about these heart defects, or know anyone who's been through all this, tell us about it!  We want to be open about everything.  We want everyone to know that we're doing ok, and we're confident that in a few short months we'll have a beautiful baby girl to show-off to the world.

... and counting.

John has been accepted into four different law schools!!
 
          Penn State,
          UNLV,
          Indiana University,
          and University of Utah!!

We're pretty excited to know that come August we'll be headed somewhere, and now we have some real ideas of where exactly that might be.  Utah is at the top of our list right now.  It's a great school, and not tooooo far from home :)  Definitely a plus with our sweet girly nugget on the way!

There are still about seven schools that we haven't heard from, so we'll wait and see what they have to say before we make any final decisions and send off those seat-deposit checks!

We are so excited to start a new chapter of our life together [even if it will be crazy-hectic until we figure out baby's quirks and preferences!].

I'm so proud of John and his determination to go to law school.  He worked so hard up in Idaho to make this possible, and I'm just in awe of his brains everyday.  I'm so grateful to have him in my life, and to know that he's mine forever.  I think I'd be lost without him.

And, because no post is complete without a completely unrelated ending:

There is an owl outside our bedroom window...  random.  But I'll definitely take a muffled "hoo hoooo" over a piercing "cock-a-doodle-doo" at seven in the morning, any day!  :)

nap training.

Who says you have to wait until you actually have a child to start training them to take naps??! Baby girl and I are tackling this like old pros!

But seriously, I should really stop taking three-hour naps in the middle of the day. It makes falling asleep (and staying asleep) that much more difficult. So unless I'm on to some kind of new parenting trend that encourages teaching babies in-utero, I should probably focus more on getting our lives ready for the Baby Nugget.

Step 1: Clean and organize all our - ok, MY - junk.
Step 2: Figure out the difference between onesies and bodysuits.
Step 3: Research all ninety-seven million different types of baby gear.

Hmm... that's already kind of daunting. I'll probably have to take a couple naps just to make it through step 1.

In other news... John got accepted into TWO law schools today!! I'm so proud of my Johnny Monster! It's also nice to know that we will, officially, be going somewhere in August. Now we just have to wait for more answers to decide exactly where that will be.

uni-bed.

It's normal for a married couple to sleep on the same bed. Unfortunately, the beach house only has two rooms with grown-up beds. The room that John and I are in is the "kids room"... complete with Mickey Mouse pillows on the matching twin beds.

The first night we were here I really loved sleeping in my own bed. Even if it was so tiny. It takes me so long to get comfortable anyway, that knowing John wasn't there to shuffle the pillows or tug on the blanket was heavenly. Unfortunately, we've gotten really dependent on each other's body heat, and were both freezing all night.

So last night, as we're lying there shivering and talking - four feet apart - John got up and says "I wonder how hard it is to move this bed."

Not hard. Not hard at all.

Now we have an almost-full-size-bed, with a crack down the middle. And sleeping close together made it much warmer last night. But I did wake up to John using my "belly support pillow" for his head, lying awkwardly diagonal across both beds, and snoring.

I like him.

and finally...

That's right!!  Come the end of July, the world will be just a little bit prettier  :)  We are so excited!  [Mostly I'm excited to finally hit up the fabric store for my dream baby quilt!]  I think John was a little bit disappointed that his guess was wrong, but he quit the habit of calling the baby "he" right away!  Now we call her Girly Nugget.  That will probably stick through grade school.

It was a looong day waiting to reveal our news, but thank-you all so much for being patient!!  We can't wait to share even more about her  :)

oh, baby.

We finally got in to see the baby-doctor today.  And I'll be honest, I was a crazy mess of a person until about 3pm when it was all over.  But everything went well.  The baby is right where it needs to be, I'm not too fat [yet!], and we get to have an ultrasound to check the gender TOMORROW!!

Since I don't really have any news beyond I'm still pregnant to share with you, I'll tell you a funny story that will embarrass John.

During the physical the doc checked the baby's heartbeat.  She was talking the whole time about all sorts of tests and stats and facts about babies and pregnancy, so unless you were paying attention you wouldn't have seen her grab the fetal heart monitor and slather it with goop.  [But I was naked on a table, so I was paying pretty close attention to everything.]  It didn't take her very long to find the little nugget.  And let me tell you, after three months of only being pretty sure there's still a baby growing in there, that was music to my ears.  Until she put the monitor away and John says, "What was that sound?"  Yep.  That's what he said.  Can't even recognize his own offspring's heartbeat.  Sheesh. 

They also took a handful of blood samples to run tests today.  It was the first time I've had blood drawn since I was nine.  I did not like it.

We came home with a stack of information and magazines to look through, and a handful of coupons - which are the best part!  So I should probably be looking through those instead of reading all the old wive's tales on how to predict the gender!  Haha.  But, just for the sake of having making an "educated guess" let's take a look:

                    • Carrying High or Low:  I'm just guessing here with low.  That'd be a BOY.
                    • Baby's Heartbeat:  155 today, which points to GIRL.
                    • Craving Sweet or Salty:  I ate a whole bag of chips last week.  That's all BOY.
                    • Chinese Calendar:  BOY.
                    • Mayan Calendar:  GIRL - but they haven't been the most reliable lately.
                    • Morning Sickness:  For me, it felt awful, but I'm a wuss.  We'll still say GIRL.

Hmm... that didn't really help, did it?  I guess we'll just have to wait and see tomorrow!

Oh, but I'm sure you're all curious what our guesses are!  John says BOY, but I'm leaning towards GIRL [that's probably just wishful thinking after walking through Target and Baby Gap the other day!]

this baby...

Does NOT like it when I eat milk.  Which means that cereal is a difficulty.  Also, oreos.  I sure hope this doesn't last until July.

The nugget also won't let me eat Del Taco.  And that was kind of a main reason I wanted to move back to Las Vegas.

Other than that, we are pretty excited for our FIRST doctor's appointment on Tuesday.  Um, yeah, I said first.  Technically I did see a doctor in Rexburg, but he really just told me that [1] I'm pregnant, and [2] I should try to not eat anything with salmonella.  So I'm not counting it.  Which means that poor little Baby Orr could have three arms or twelve toes.  We'll just find out on Tuesday.  Keep your fingers crossed for super-powers!!  Haha.

We're also kind of hoping that they'll be able to tell us if Baby Nugget is a boy or girl.  It's getting pretty annoying saying "he" or "she" on accident and then have to explain that we don't actually know yet.  Although, John brought up a good point that once we know we'll have to start a serious discussion about the name.  And judging by the not-so-serious conversations we've had so far... it could get ugly!

John asked me the other night if having a baby means we're grown-ups now.  I laughed at him.  But then I got to thinking.  We are definitely growing up a little faster than we would have without a baby in the near future.  And the universe has decided to throw us a handful of "grow-up already" invitations... including the Baby Nugget, but also that we need to replace my car, and let's not even get into all the things we need to do for law school.  It's completely daunting, but also a little exciting.  For me at least.  John's an Olympic gold-medal worrier.  The mountain before us looks like Everest to him.  But I'm pretty sure there's going to be a chair lift around here somewhere.  :)  So maybe we're not grown-ups now, but it sure will be fun to grow up together.