for lauren: pillows & throws

structured pillows from west elm

pottery barn throw (i like the pattern, even though i wish it had some more blue in it)

more pottery barn throws

an adorable textured pillow from one of my favorite etsy shops (they have a million different colors and patterns)

adorable baby shower invitations

isn't it cute? image via bon a tirer letterpress

baby registry

this is a lot harder than i expected. right now i have a registry at target for most of our baby needs, and then at land of nod for some more stuff, and then at giggle.com for some more miscellaneous stuff. i feel like that might be too many places for a baby registery, but i can't find everything i love on one website! ah!!! thoughts? target has all the basic stuff we want, land of nod has more stuff and the bedding we fell in love with, and giggle has just random stuff that we love (like the sleepsacks i can't find anywhere else).

i love etsy

i seriously want everything from etsy. from pillows to jewelry to baby things, i absolutely love etsy. now i want a million things for our little boy (if you can't tell that from previous posts). look at these little baby loafers. so cute!!

i wish you could register on etsy. why is that not allowed? also, does anyone else think that registering for baby is super difficult? i've been going through our target registry like crazy, and also started a registry on crate & barrel's baby shop, land of nod. i found the bedding i want for our little guy at land of nod. it's so adorable.

boy stuff

first of all this little boy is adorable, and second: i love this little shirt. i found it on etsy. our little boy has a very fashion savvy daddy and he will need cute little shirts like this if he's going to compete with daddy's wardrobe.

baby boy and gastroschisis

We're having a boy, which is very exciting. We think we have a name picked out, but there are a lot of names I like, so we might change it.

So, we had our ultrasound appointment on Monday to check out our baby and see why my AFP results were high. Our baby has an abdominal wall defect called gastroschisis. His bowels are on the outside of his abdomen. There's a hole on the right side of his umbilical cord and his bowels are sticking out of that hole. It's a very fixable issue, so that's good, but it's fixable as long as nothing else goes wrong. Kaiser is referring us to UCSF's Medical Center for further scanning (as if the hour and a half ultrasound I had on Monday wasn't thorough enough), and we'll talk to them more about the defect. As long as nothing else is wrong they don't recommend terminating the pregnancy because of this defect, since it is fixable. After our first appointment with them I'll be closely monitored by them for the rest of the pregnancy. I'll have ultrasounds with my team at UCSF once a month until I'm somewhere around 28 weeks, at which point I'll have them about every week until they decide they need to take the baby out (the amniotic fluid can sometimes thicken the bowels, and if that starts to happen they need the baby to come out so he won't have any more issues). For some reason gastroschisis babies are totally fine until about 37 weeks and then sometimes they die. So I won't be allowed to carry to term, I'll probably have the baby between 32-36 weeks. It's been an emotional few days, and it'll be an emotional few months until we get to take our little boy home. I'll have the baby at UCSF and he'll have his surgery the day he's born. Hopefully the hole is big enough to put the bowels back in and just repair the hole, but if it isn't then it will take more surgeries. Typically these babies are in the hospital for 2 weeks to 2-3 months, and I know there's a small chance that he'll never be coming home with us, and I just can't think about that. We get to take him home from the hospital when he is able to keep down milk (instead of being fed through an IV) and is gaining weight. It's emotional and stressful and sad and Scott & I are doing the best we can to figure all of this out. We just need to focus on having a baby that's as healthy as possible and focus on the fact that babies are remarkable resilient and our little guy will be just fine. Also, we need to function as normally as possible with all of this; plan a nursery, have a baby shower, pick out little boy toys and clothes, and plan as if this baby is coming home normally just like most other babies. I need to focus on that, and live like that.

Here are some links if you want to learn more about gastroschisis or the process that Scott & I will be going through:

http://fetus.ucsfmedicalcenter.org/gastroschisis/

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000992.htm

mustache onesie

thanks, etsy.

a lot of people probably think this...

btw, i find this e-card hilarious.

new mommy presents?

do new moms get presents? because if they do i want this one (at macy's!)

well, and this (but that's been not so subtly hinted to scott about)

since we have to go down to the city on monday we thought we'd head down early, maybe have brunch in the ferry building, and then head over to the jewelry exchange to try on some rings. i know i won't be getting one for awhile, but scott is so sweet and doesn't mind if i want to go look at pretty shiny things. plus, getting a dream ring at wholesale cost? yes, please. that's why the jewelry exchange is so awesome. this ring above however, is not from the jewelry exchange. it's from a little jeweler in santa rosa, mark allen jewelers.

cute baby things.

are these not the cutest little bath towels you've ever seen?

i love the little hippo one (on the far right)

and they have an elephant, a pig, and a giraffe

i think the giraffe is my favorite.

(all bath towels from potterybarnkids)

...

these two videos just made me lose it.

the first is the amazingly wonderful and sad story of Danny & Annie's romance. i love scott this much, and hope we have an amazing and long life together.

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

the second is a very adorable video of a couple's entire pregnancy - in less than 4 minutes! this made me cry and the song is so fitting, but the whole time all i could think was, my baby better be okay. i don't know how i'll handle it if it's not.

adorable.

In other baby news, I found the cutest little knit shoes on etsy.

These are perfect for a little boy... but they also make girl ones, too.

How cute are they?!? I want them so badly. Scott and I have been on a major mustache kick lately, and I just loved those Mr. Mustache shoes.

alpha-fetoprotein screening (AFP)

I had my AFP done on Monday. The AFP test is "a blood test that measures the level of alpha-fetoprotein in the mothers' blood during pregnancy. AFP is a protein normally produced by the fetal liver and is present in the fluid surrounding the fetus (amniotic fluid), and crosses the placenta into the mother's blood" (Info from Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford).

Abnormal levels of AFP may signal the following:

• open neural tube defects (ONTD) such as spina bifida
• Down syndrome
• other chromosomal abnormalities
• defects in the abdominal wall of the fetus
• twins - more than one fetus is making the protein
• a miscalculated due date, as the levels vary throughout pregnancy

I got a phone call yesterday in my last half hour of work from a woman who is now my Genetic Counselor, Reena Patel. I checked my message right away, but couldn't call back since I was at work, and was immediately nervous. She gave me a phone number to call her back so we could discuss my AFP results. I called her the second I got into my car, but it was 5:45pm and I figured she wouldn't answer. To my surprise she answered right away and spent the next half an hour talking about everything with me (I don't think I've mentioned how much I love Kaiser but this is a perfect example of why I love them). Reena was wonderful to speak to and explained what the test is, what it measures, and then went through my results. Essentially the AFP measures protein levels in the blood that come from me and the baby. All of my levels came back normal (yay) except for one (not yay). My levels were slightly high for the protein that marks spina bifida (2.5 is normal and I was at a 3). Reena's job is to explain this to me without freaking me out (if that's even possible), explain what we're going to do about it, and then talk to me about how I'm feeling; and she did a great job at that. She explained to me that she's seen people with levels of 6 have a totally normal and healthy baby and that the elevated levels could really be about anything, not just spina bifida (I have high blood pressure and am on medication for it during the pregnancy, and Reena said that might be a factor for my high levels), and to try not to worry about it until there's something to worry about. But that's easier said than done. She said that the next step is to bring me to San Francisco to their Prenatal Diagnostic Services building and do an in depth ultrasound where trained techs will study the baby's spine to make sure everything looks normal and healthy. Before the ultrasound I'll spend an hour with Reena in a Genetic Counseling appointment discussing the ultrasound, spina bifida, and the AFP test again. If for some reason something doesn't look quite right in the ultrasound they'll do an amnio on me for further testing. She said that specifically for spina bifida the ultrasound does a better job than the amnio because it allows us look at the spine. We made an appointment for Monday, September 13th at 2:15pm with my ultrasound at 3:15pm. This ultrasound replaces my big 20 week ultrasound that was supposed to be Sept 27th, so we'll also be finding out the sex of the baby at this appointment (which I am very excited for).

I'm nervous, and scared, and just hope everything is alright. And Scott is overly rational which is just slightly annoying when all I want to do is be scared. But I think we're fine because spina bifida occurs in the first 28 days of pregnancy and at our last ultrasound (2 weeks ago) the baby was moving like crazy. We saw it huddled up against itself, moving arms & legs, fully extending the spine, and stretching. There was nothing to indicate that something was wrong, so hopefully we're fine. I'll keep everyone posted.