It's a Boy!!!

Hm. That sounds like I just had my baby at 16 weeks. If only that was possible. :)

Yep, yep, yep, we had a special ultrasound with a perinatologist yesterday (because of my Anti-Lutheran issue), and I said, "Heyyyyyyyyyy.... while you're at it, is there any way you can see the sex?" Both the ultrasound tech and the perinatologist said that there is absolutely NO DOUBT that this is a boy, boy, boy. He wasn't shy about showing his nethers. Sadie was very modest in there and kept her legs together when we had her ultrasound, but not this man.

Did I want a girl? Yeah, I thought it would be nice. But I'll take what I get. A healthy, happy, fuzzy, snuggly, sweet-smelling baby of any sex is AOK with me. So my BFF Pooh is going to get all my baby girl clothes. I cannot WAIT to clean out half of my storage room. I swear all that is in there are kids' clothes of all sizes. This is an exciting time for the Clean Sweep Addict, Kar. (I watched an episode of that this morning, and it made me so happy.)

They only gave me one picture of my little man:

As far as ultrasound pictures go, it ain't bad. With my other kids' ultrasound pics, they all looked horribly malformed. Dylan's nose looked about seven feet long. Micah looked like Skeletor. Though, in this one, it looks like our new little man has a really fat tongue he's sticking out, or something. Maybe he's punching himself with his left fist. You never know.

And he was SO. DANG. CUTE. I had some Skittles right before the visit, so he was in a happy sugar fix. He was a wiggle-meister. And in the cutest way possible. And at one point, he settled down for some rest, and he was in this position:

I totally just stole this off of my friend, Megan Blethen's, blog. She is a fantastic photographer. And this is her website. Check her out. She takes all of my family's pics.

Anywho. I love when babies are in that position. Soooo cute. I am just a baby lover. Almost as much as Ben. He is a plain old baby hog. If there is a baby in the room, he takes over.

As far as the baby's health: All of his organs are looking great. He's at the right size. All is well in that aspect. The perinatologist looked at the artery in the baby's head and was able to tell, based on the rate of the blood flow, how anemic the baby is. If 100% is where you need to give the baby a blood transfusion immediately, our little man is at about 30%. This means that I need to go in and have an ultrasound once a week to make sure he's okay.

And you know what, I'm fine with that. I'm lucky I get to see him more often than a regular pregnant person would. I could watch him all day long. Am I lucky that my body is attacking my baby? No. But I'm trying to look at the bright side. Here is another ray of light - I don't have to do that thing where I drink 48 ounces of water and have to hold it in for like two hours before the appointment and am ready to kill everyone. Honestly, I think the drinking-tons-of-water-and-having-to-hold-it thing is almost as bad as labor. It's right up there with the IV they give you when you're in labor and delivery. I HATE IV's.

I didn't have to do the water thing yesterday, either. Isn't that awesome? I won't ever, ever have to go through that again, because, as I have iterated before, THIS IS MY LAST PREGNANCY. The end. Finito. They saw everything they needed to see without me being a big balloon of water.

If the baby's anemia gets too high/too dangerous, they will have to do an intra-uterine blood transfusion. I found out that they don't have vaccines for the Anti-Lutheran antigen. Only the Rh antigen. The blood transfusion is the only thing they can do. They would give me a local anesthetic, put a big needle in there, and sedate the baby so that he doesn't wiggle all around. Then they would take some blood from the baby's umbilical cord. They would test it to see what blood type my baby has. Then they would insert a tube into the umbilical cord and give the baby the same type of blood that he has. I've never had a blood transfusion, so I wasn't sure how they work. I asked the doc. He says that, essentially, if a baby is anemic, his blood is just too thin. In a transfusion, they just add blood to what he already has to thicken it. And that's it. Hopefully they would only need to do it once.

Does it freak me out to think about these things going inside and meddling with my baby? Uh, yeah. I'm going to make them put a sheet up, like they do for C-Sections. I'm not kidding you. I'm the squeamish type. I can't even look when they're drawing my blood every month. But the doc insists that it is very safe for the baby. And I'll do anything to ensure he gets here safe and sound.

Aren't we lucky to be having babies in this day and age??? This baby could die without these things! Micah probably would have died when he came out of me, not breathing. Thank goodness for the neo-natal nurses. It's such a blessing to be living in this day and age.

With each pregnancy, I have the unpleasant symptoms from the pregnancy before, and then several more things are added. It's reached this crescendo of discomfort and pain. The new things that have been added this time around are 1) Ever-present, all-encompassing, never-abating exhaustion. I should be pulling out of that phase by now, but it's still there in full force. I've never been so incapacitated by exhaustion before. 2) My little spit thingeys underneath my tongue (yes, that is the scientific name for them) are really overproducing the spit. It's like gallons and gallons per day. I'm swallowing gallons of my own spit all day long. It makes me feel even more nauseated than I already am. I can't sleep, because it's like a flood in my mouth all the time.

And here's something I've been thinking about since yesterday. I get these same two symptoms whenever I have a virus or a bacterial infection. My body is fighting these invadors really hard. I think the reason I have these two symptoms with this pregnancy is because my antibodies are fighting this baby. To my blood cells, this baby is an invader, a parasite. My body is working overtime to kill this baby. I think that's why all the spit and exhaustion. Just my professional Kar opinion. Since I know so much about science and I'm so good at it.

Alright, on to more pleasant things - names. I had three boy names up on my blog for awhile. However, a few weeks ago, I was looking at my name book and came across the name Gage. I liked it. I wanted to add it to my poll, but I kept forgetting. And then Ben finally went through the name book, and he, too, picked Gage. In fact, that is the only name he liked out of all of them. Since we both liked it, I think we're going to go with it. Gage. And we're going to go with Casper for a middle name. Not because we are a fan of Casper the Friendly Ghost. I mean, he's nice and everything....But Casper is actually a family name on Ben's mom's side. We've tried to give a nod to each grandparent with each of our kids' middle names. Gloria is the only one who hasn't had her name involved, so we're going with Casper in honor of her. His name will be Gage Casper Awesome. Because Awesome is our last name. :)

And now that we have picked a name, Mom, you can feel free to stop talking about it. :) My mom is OBSESSED with baby names. My cousin's wife, Ashley, had a baby last fall. She was pondering names last summer, and my mom caught wind of it. So she writes this enormous e-mail to Ashley with all of these names she's been thinking about. When Nat and I were pregnant with Micah and Ivy, the woman would not stop talking about it. Nat was starting to get really annoyed, and one evening I had to put my hand on Mom's arm and say, "Mom, you have got to stop this. Natalie is going to kill you." While my sisters, Dad, and I were skiing a few weeks ago, I got three text messages from Mom about some names that she, her brother, and her sister were talking about for my baby while they were on a drive to Southern Utah. I truly think they talked about it for the whole eight hour drive. Three texts. No asking how our skiing day went, or if we had a safe drive. Nope, the texts were all baby name suggestions. I texted her back, saying, "I can't believe you texted me three times about baby names." She texted me back, saying, "So what do you think?"

So it's Gage, Mama. The end.

I asked my mom yesterday if she wants my baby name book, now that we're done with it. Since she is so obsessed. She said no, but I still think maybe I'll give it to her for Mother's Day. :)