The Big 3-0!

Not my age (sadly enough, it's over a decade since my 30th birthday) but the number of gestational weeks that Sharon and the as-yet-unnamed-one (right now we're thinking "Jane Doe Eble-Schrader". That would be pretty distinctive, no?) reached on Saturday.

Anything in the 30s is tremendous. And along with that advanced gestational age comes some new experiences for Sharon. Like fetal hiccups. She never felt those with Hallie and Olivia. Of course, Hallie's had more than her fair share of reflux hiccups since being on the outside. So we're hoping that hiccups in utero will translate to LACK of hiccups ex utero. Maybe we'll get lucky on this front.

Sharon is also surprised, elated, and somewhat weirded out by the baby's constant movement. She never got to experience this with the twins, and finds it kind of funny to be sitting still at her desk, working, or lying in bed trying to sleep and getting battered from the inside out. We're thinking the kid has already taken a few karate lessons and would not be surprised to find that, like Hallie in her infant days, she's a bit of a thumper (Hallie loved to lift her legs high in the air and then thump them on the bed, floor, or the maternal figure repeatedly. Very charming and quite a good strength builder).

On other fronts, it seems like we're dealing not only with renewed GI symptoms on Hallie's part, but also a cold (I'd guess the DX would be bronchiolitis). She's coughing up a storm, particularly at night---practically all night long. We've got the humidifier with eucalyptus/camphor/menthol stuff in it running at night now, and one of those plug in vaporizers with more eucalyptus/menthol stuff, and are trying to take it easy on food while making sure the kid has enough fluids. As a result, she's lost yet more weight (she probably gained last week, and lost that, and perhaps more over the past couple of days). Wednesday's weight check (pre big family conference) may be a bit traumatic. The daily vomiting continues, but it seems more related to snarfliness than anything else. So we are stuck at 156 vomit-free days this year, and honestly, I'll settle for an even 160 this year. At least we did break 150. That is something, particularly in comparison to last year's measly 16 days.

But we do have some more stuff to talk about at the family meeting and some new avenues to pursue. We'll keep you guys posted, and are trying not to get our hopes up too high that we'll actually figure out what's going on with Hallie because we've been-there-done-that before only to find ourselves back in the same old cycle.