Ellie's 1st Photoshoot

Finally! I'm getting some of these posted! We took these on New Year's Day, so Ellie was only 2 weeks old.




So, the first "funny" is that we purchased a medium-sized stocking ahead of time to "stuff" Ellie in to it for a picture. Alas, she didn't fit in to it! Luckily, David had a Santa hat and we used that. :)

The second "funny," and the picture that makes me laugh the most: we also purchased the medium-sized basket to curl her up in for some sweet little pictures. Not only did Ellie turn out to be 2 POUNDS more than what the doctors were estimating, but she was clearly too big for this basket. My favorite part is the feet!

Already, a sweet little smile!

In Mommy's hands...



Holding Daddy's hand...

Cute, "little" feet. Fun fact: Ellie's feet didn't fit the newborn socks we brought to the hospital for her to wear home!

Elliana Jane is Born!!!

(*Added 2 more pictures that I missed before*)

Our precious daughter has arrived! Elliana "Ellie" Jane Cerven was born at 2:42am on Dec. 16th, weighing in at 8 lbs., 15 oz. and measuring 21 1/2 inches long. I ended up being induced since we missed our due date...so, the Pitocin was a little rough for me. Labor was totally surreal, though...I'm sure all you moms out there can understand how inexplicable the whole thing is: the good, the bad, and the ugly parts! :) Little Ellie is healthy, content, and loves to sleep. She's already smiling and squirming out of her swaddled blankets.

Anyway, I'm sure more to come when we can! It's practically all I can do to finally get a few pics up and think beyond "feed, burp, change diaper, sleep...repeat." :)

Last picture of my tummy as we head to the hospital!!


Last picture as "just us" - off to get our daughter!!


Just minutes after Ellie was born!! Content already... :)


A close up of a precious little face!


Her "leaving-the-hospital" outfit...check out the feet! :)

Our new family leaving the hospital!

A precious little smile already!!

Updates...

Yes, it's been a while. When you get out of the groove of doing something such as blogging, it's hard to start up again. Rather than trying to go through all the details of what I've missed typing and updating, I thought I'd just give a quick overview-update and add in some "progression" pics. :) These are 3 pictures of my ever-growing profile at 16 weeks, 24 and now at 30! Crazy to think that we're only about 10 weeks away!!

Quick updates: the third trimester has met me with some new and some "old" symptoms that are really slowing me down. I don't want to sound all complain-y, but I also don't feel like the pregnancy books quite do these "9" months justice; sometimes I feel things are just glossed over, and other times, I've resolved that I just don't particularly ENJOY pregnancy. Bouts of nausea (though not as bad), near-fainting spells, and headaches are back like the first trimester...now I have "severe reflux" (which I won't even begin to get into what happens in the middle of the night to wake me up) and sleeplessness. I'm definitely having moments of round ligament pain (frontal, abdominal stretching that is sharp and almost knocks the wind outta ya), plus sacroiliac pain (backside pain, almost like a charlie horse in your butt), and pelvic bone pain (which we just learned this week could be from a loose connection in my pelvic bones). I had SOO planned on getting at least moderate exercise throughout this pregnancy, but just getting in and out of a car to run errands, standing on my feet too long, or doing some minor household chores, causes me residual, I-can-barely-walk pain for about 2 days afterwards. I am constantly telling myself that it's OK, and "we" just need to get through this pregnancy, reducing as much pain as possible.

For those who are curious, my scars from surgery are at a complete standstill, and I'm kinda convinced they won't ever look much better than what they are now. Afterall, Baby is taking all the nutrients first. I've had very little of an appetite and haven't gained too much weight yet, so it's been hard to think that I've been getting all the nutrients that I need after Baby takes them.

Now, for the way more FUN news. We have found out that we are expecting a *GIRL* and are thrilled that she keeps showing very healthy signs. She is a very active baby inside of me, but is a bit ultrasound-shy as she turns inward whenever we try to see her pretty little face. At home, it's constant activity...and she favors my right side most of the time. Friends and family who have observed my tummy closely can see a bigger lump on the right side almost all the time. She kicks way out to the sides, too...occasionally downward, but mostly so far out to the sides, that she's kicking right above my hip bones! And, no, since everyone keeps asking, we don't have a name for her yet...workin' on it!

David and I attended our 1st childbirth class this Monday and we loved it. The teacher is great, it's comforting to hear other women going through the same aches, pains and discomforts, and it's just SOO educational! We have 3 more weeks of classes and then we'll be pros, right? :) Yea, not until the little one makes her appearance and we all get through delivery, we know.

I'll try to shoot out another update and one that's even shorter soon. Thanks for reading and being a part of our journey!

Today has been a mix of emotions. For starters, we had our second appt with the new doctor earlier this morning. We are still a bit unsettled about our feelings for our doctor, though we feel overall she knows what she's doing...it's more a personality preference. We were pleasantly surprised that she took a few quick moments to check the size of the cyst - and it has gone down in size slightly! We learned that if it had grown in size instead, there is a risk of it twisting and eventually cutting off blood circulation and there are consequences to that situation that I'm still not sure I understand! Anyway, we got a 5 second glimpse of our little baby again, this time looking like it was waving at us as if to say, "Hello!!" (We know - we have quite an imagination about this baby who is not aware, but what new parents don't?) The doc did give us one little picture, where the baby totally looks like an alien: it's mostly just the head with hollow eyes and a skinny spine going up to its head. Kinda funny to us!

Later in the day, we received our first fun little baby items (besides the little robe that Lori picked up for us from a local "free" store - shown in the left of the pic below - thanks Lori!). David's parents found some cute little burping clothes, and receiving blanket and some onesies - all unisex of course! Hard for us to believe that our baby will likely be smaller than those first outfits!

Memorial Day..."Memorable Day"

May 24th/25th

Our Memorial Day this year should have been called "Memorable Day".... We were looking forward to a long, relaxing weekend together...still grateful to be out of the restaurant business and enjoy a holiday weekend with friends. On Sunday afternoon, Becky started feeling pretty consistent lower abdominal/pelvic pain. It went on into the evening and we tried to head to bed. I (Becky) was up ALL night, couldn't find a comfortable spot, couldn't eat or drink anything, and finally tried "relaxing" or sleeping in our old recliners. The pain increased into the early morning hours to the point where it hurt to breathe in or out. I finally thought "maybe going for a little walk would help decrease the pain...maybe it has gotten worse since I've been curled up in a ball." So, I went out in the neighborhood around 4:30am, barely made it around the block to the top of our street and had to sit down on the curb because I felt lightheaded. Things didn't get much better as I sat, so I got up and tried to get home quickly. I made it to the bathroom where I noticed that my face had lost all color and my arms and hands were starting to tingle; I began to feel pretty weak and sick. I woke David up and said, "OK, I think we need to go to the hospital now." Within a few minutes, we were in the car with a trash can (hey, just in case), a cold washcloth, and me groaning the whole 4-or-so miles.

Upon arriving, I leaned over the counter and just said, "I'm pregnant and I've been having severe abdominal pains." They immediately sat me down to check my blood pressure and then the shaking began - I couldn't stand up straight and my body was beginning to shake uncontrollably. I asked the nurse if I could please have some water or ice chips. His response? A straight-faced "no." I thought for sure I was going to pass out - a pregnant women who had not eaten or drunk anything in nearly 12 hours and you are denying her?!? They escorted us into a nearby room and I could not get remotely comfortable. David was pretty worried because I literally could not stop shaking. Of course, scary thoughts about the baby were going through our heads most of our time there. Eventually, I tried laying mostly on my stomach with one of my legs bent so my hip was in the air (and not all my weight on the baby) and MUCH to my delight, the pain began subsiding...until the doctor came in and poked around a bit. After a few hours, we were sent off to have an ultrasound done to check for the baby's health, possible kidney stones for me, and a condition I had neither heard of or had read of (as it relates to pregnancy) - an ovarian cyst. Apparently (now that I have found info in the preg books), ovarian cysts are very common in pregnancy and are supposed to be reabsorbed by the body. When they don't reabsorb, they can produce a lot of pain and can even rupture, though we learned the next day that mine was small enough they were not concerned about rupturing at this point.

In the midst of all this pain and long hours, we were SO touched to see the latest ultrasound. In just 3-or-so weeks time, our little peanut had grown so much!! Yes, us mommy-to-bes read it all in the books: the fetus' development, "your walnut-sized baby is now the size of a lemon," etc. BUT..., David and I went from the "what if something has happened to our baby?" to immediately seeing a heartbeat (!!) and then seeing FINGER BONES, TOE BONES, THE SPINE, and THE RIBS!! WOW!! I instantly forgot and cared so little about the awful night that I just went through (the little shot of morphine probably helped, too :] ). Our little baby was - as I say - havin' it's own little dance party in there, too. It was moving all around. We initially thought it was sucking it's thumb, but other views showed that it had it's arms up by it's ears and was moving it's feet all over the place. SOO good to see the little one moving around...so funny to see just how active it is, again!

We were sent on our way about 6-7 hours after arriving, with some pain and other meds. And we were blessed to get into the new doctor I hadn't yet seen the next day, since I decided to stay back from a work trip to Florida on Tuesday. She did yet another ultrasound and yes, our child was moving all around on THAT one, too! Of course we would have such an active child! :] The doctor also said that much of all my sickness I've experienced could be the baby's activity. Since we're 3-for-3 on the baby movement during ultrasounds, it all makes a lot of sense....

A Reason for a Blog...

Well, there are certain things that will get us to reconsider what we've always done, aren't there? We have a hard enough time keeping all of our family and friends updated on life here...I thought this might be a great way for you to check in with us every "now and then," and perhaps when we have BIG NEWS...like now!

For those who may not know - and for those who do know and want to "relive" the moment again with us - WE ARE PREGNANT!! We found out on the evening of April 18th, after Becky came home from a LONG and difficult trip to Indy for a seemingly long conference. She was increasingly sick over the week leading up to the conference and then progressed quickly while away from her hubby. :( By the end of the time spent away from home, random spells of sickness followed by being completely fine, awful food aversions, and sleepless nights, Becky called David prior to coming home and said, "If I'm not pregnant, that you can check me in somewhere because this unlike anything I've ever felt before!" Soon after arriving home, we took the test...and UNlike the other tests in the past, this one appeared as "pregnant" pretty much immediately. We stood in the bathroom, looking at each other in shock (and then eventually took a picture). Seriously? US?? Pregnant? What will we do? Little did we know then, we do what all newly-pregnant couples do: go get double-checked, learn whatever we can whenever we can, and refocus our prayers - a whole lot! It's so suddenly not about us anymore!