Practice Run

Much has happened since our last post many weeks ago.  Our nursery is nearly baby ready, Mals belly has continued to grow and we had a practice run to the hospital and got to spend the night. 

We finally decided on a crib set and colors for our nursery and purchased the entire furnitire set.  We have the crib and armoire set up and we pick up the combo tomorrow.  It's funny how the unborn baby gets entirely new everything while every single thing in our own room is secondhand.  She's already spoiled.  We decided to entice the family and give them the first letter in the name we have chosen (it's an E) and they are racking their brains to try and figure it out (they never will).  Mal's parents came last weekend to help paint the nursery and a friend of ours is going to paint a mural on the wall that you can't see in the picture next week.

After two weeks of fighting a nasty cough and sore throat, I (Mal) was finally starting to feel a bit better and could semi-swallow. We went to a friend's house for dinner last Friday for homemade pizza and RockBand. Little did we know, that they had the flu, or would be getting it the next day. Saturday night I woke up with a stomach ache and ended up hanging over the toilet the entire night. When I couldn't stop throwing up, I asked Drew to call someone to help so he called the doctor to find out what to do. She recommended heading to the ER to get some fluids since I was probably dehydrated. 

When we arrived, I was having some small contractions and was pretty delusional. (Ask Drew). They sent me to the OB to check out the baby and make sure I wasn't going into labor already. After an hour or so on the baby monitor, they said the contractions weren't labor pains and that I just needed fluid. So we traveled back down to the ER through a VERY back way and waited to get a couple bags of fluid through an IV. Three bags later, I was still dehydrated and throwing up so my doctor decided to admit me to the OB to monitor the baby and get me stable enough to go home. 

I don't think I've ever felt worse in my life. They had to give me potassium along with pepcid and normal saline solution. I had a complete freak out when they gave me the potassium because it hurt so much going through my veins. I was very glad to find out the next day that it bothers everyone like that and I don't just have a low pain tolerance level! I was getting very nervous for how I would handle labor if I couldn't handle the IV fluid!!

After two days in the ER and OB, they finally thought I was hydrated enough to go home. The rest of this week has been very slow moving for me because I feel like a zombie still and its taken me all week to actually eat a meal! Anyone who knows me, knows this is very unusual. 

As you can see in a picture here, I actually threw up so much that I busted many blood vessels in my eyes....making me look very creepy says my family. They look much better than they did in this picture...so be thankful if you didn't see me before this. 

The last update we have is a new belly picture. This is at almost 32 weeks!!! Only 59 days to go (or sooner). :) Our first baby shower is next weekend and we are so excited to start getting stuff to fill her room up with! 

If you have 20 minutes to spare

Along with our pictures we also got a DVD of our baby girl. It's awesome, you should schedule 20 min to watch it. If you don't have that long here are a few highlights:

• 0:35 She misses putting her thumb in her mouth. She takes after her parents (especially me/Drew) who often misses with the food he attempts to put in.
• 1:30 She finally gets it
• 5:45 We find out its a girl!
• 8:05 Showing off her biceps
• 13:12 You can see her heartbeat and she has the hiccups
• 14:23 Her strong muscular calves
• 15:10 Again, it's a girl

Unfortunately we couldn't tell whether or not she has Mal's curly hair. I'm hoping she does so Towona doesn't shoot me. She was serious too.

It's a Girl!

Because we didn't find out what gender our baby was at our first ultrasound and another one wasn't scheduled until April, we decided to get one on our own. We found a place in Columbus that specializes in 3D ultrasounds and went on Friday. I (Drew) was right, we're having a girl. Here are the ultrasound pictures. Any bets on who she looks like yet?

Mal's Growing Stomach

October 2008
Week 7 & 8









































January 2009- Week 22

Ahhhh! It's been forever since we actually gave a real update on here. I'm almost five months pregnant now and we still haven't found out what the gender is! Our due date was moved back to June 1 and we go back in on Monday to see about getting a second ultrasound done in the future.

We can actually feel the baby moving now, at least I can. Drew often imagines he feels the same thing and sometimes actually does. I keep trying to describe it as a pair of tennis shoes in the dryer moving around. It definitely isn't feeling like butterflies like many people say. I've finally got a little bump popping out and most people could probably tell I'm pregnant and didn't just eat too much this fall. If Drew has his way, we'll have a picture soon to prove it. Although I have to put my foot down somewhere and refuse to post a picture of my disappearing belly button.

Drew insists the baby is a girl since at our last ultrasound the technician told us she didn't see anything between the legs but couldn't be for sure because of the new due date. Apparently male Schlabachs would have something to be proud of.... if you understand his logic. So since the baby can only be a girl now, we went out and bought Texas size bows to make this mystery baby a "bowhead" when it finally arrives while we were in Dallas over Christmas. All you Texans out there can be proud.

As for other news in the Schlabach household, Drew begins guitar lessons next week with Tim Shue, our music director from high school. He's been playing my ear off with the same couple of songs, so I think we'll both be ready for whatever Tim throws his way! :)

We've also had the pleasure of being snowed in our house all weekend after a winter storm brought more than six inches of snow/ice/nastiness. We're still feeling the lingering affects of random snowfalls and insanely cold temperatures rendering salt and cinder useless. The temperature right now says its 1 degree but feels like -12. We can definitely vouch for that. It's times like now that we miss Abilene's unusual weather patterns.

Although it feels like we've done much, much more since we last wrote, this is all for our update. Hopefully more pictures will show up later tonight showing you the progress of the growing baby!

The promised airport pictures.