BIT BY BIT

On Thursday night, January 6th, 2011, I remember telling Jordan that this was definitely the most excited that I had EVER been in my entire life! He said that it was the most excited that he had ever been about something too! Little did we know.....we were both excited for what was going to be the most difficult thing we would probably ever go through. Laying there in bed, neither of us could really get a good night sleep because the next afternoon at 1pm, we were going to find out if we were having a boy or a girl!!!! THEN we were having a party that Friday night- January 7, 2011 at my parent's house. We had sent at least 40 invitations out and were prepared for 60 to 70 people to join us in our GENDER REVEAL PARTY!!!!

Everything was pretty much taken care of for the party......
------Pink cake, blue cake, GIRL-BOY banner, girl table with all sorts of pink candy, boy table with all sorts of blue candy, pink flowers, blue flowers, t-shirts made up for my uncles and brother with GIRL sewed on the fronts and BOY! sewed on their backs (FOR THE ACTUAL REVEAL)....., 80 hot dogs, 80 hamburgers, valet parking signs, pink and blue balloons on the road sign, girl poster for all of the girl votes, boy poster for all of the boy votes, baby Ray's WEIGHT and TIME born betting-board, LSU and whoever they played in the Cotton Bowl betting-board, box for Name Suggestions, a couple dozen "It's a Girl" and "It's a Boy" cookies, and a BIG box that me and Jordan were going to OPEN when we revealed the gender!!!!!!!
Pretty much, this party had been planned for weeks by me and Jordan, mom and dad, and my wonderful cousins and uncle. We were ALL SO excited to say the least!


SO, all we needed to do was get through the doctor's appointment, go get a BABY BOOK, and go get the color of balloons that we needed for the ACTUAL REVEAL!!!! Then, we would head to mom and dad's to get REALLY ready for the party!!!!!


January 7, 2011
Jordan was off of work. We went to eat mexican around 11am, drove to Edwin Watts to look around at some golf stuff, and I walked to Copelands to get me 2 cokes to drink on the way so I could get the baby moving to MAKE SURE we would find out the sex today! (I also had frozen a snickers the night before to eat on our way to the appointment to get our baby REALLY REALLY moving!!) Then, me and Jordan headed to the ultrasound.

We were sitting in the waiting room just quiet and smiling! Then, they called my name so we headed back to find out what our baby was! I laid down. The technician really didn't say much. She was just moving her wand around. She wasn't saying hardly anything at all. She got some measurements.....asked me if I needed to go to the restroom bc I could go now. So, I went. Came back, saw things on the screen, but I really couldn't tell much about what we were looking at......Then, she came to the heart, and she pointed out that the heartbeat was good. I asked her (since it was super and awkwardly quiet), "So, does the heart look good? Is everything how it should be?, and she basically replied that she didn't have a clear picture because of the way the baby was laying. So, then she made a few more circles, typed things, and then made way to see the sex of the baby. Apparently it wasn't clear either. She said that she thought it was a girl, but she wasn't sure. I asked her if I went to the bathroom and moved around a little bit....if that would help anything out! She basically knew that it wouldn't help, but since she felt like I thought it would help, I went back to the bathroom. On my way back to the room, I heard her talking to Jordan but didn't have a clue what she was saying. I was just jiggling my belly around in case that would get the baby moving.....BECAUSE CRAP! We had about 70 people that were going to be at the house tonight and we HAD TO BE SURE that it was either a BOY OR GIRL!!!!!!!!
Well, that's what I was making myself believe. I couldn't figure out why the baby wasn't moving around that much! I drank 2 cokes and ate a candy bar right before we came!!!

Well, after she looked around some more, very quietly, she said that she was 70% sure that it was a GIRL! What? 70%? Well, whatever. I guess that would have to be good enough. She said that she was finished, printed me off about 5 pictures that had been labeled, and then she said she had to let the doctor look at them and would be right back in. On her way out, she asked if we were going to see our doctor after this, and I told her that I didn't have an appoinment until next week. She walked out. I looked at Jordan and told him that this wasn't how it was supposed to go. I told him that something was wrong. I told him that the ultrsound pictures didn't look like others that I had seen at this point in the pregnancy. He just looked at me and said that it was going to be okay. We just needed to wait and see. After probably about 20 minutes of looking at the ultrasound pictures with a million questions and dissapointment, the technician AND THE DOCTOR came back in. The doctor told us that there were some things that didn't look very good and he was concerned. He had called MY doctor and she wanted to see us right now. He didn't want to talk to us about it because we hadn't met him before now, so basically he just told us that there was low amniotic fluid. I don't remember if he said anything else. I didn't pay anymore attention. Next thing I know, we were getting on the elevator to head down 6 floors to see MY doctor.

They quickly got us back to a room, and then my nurse came in to tell us that MY doctor had to go deliver a baby and would be back within 20 minutes. SOOOOOOOO, Jordan and I waited in the room both frantically looking up 'low amniotic fluid' and reading everything we could pull up off of our phones. We hardly spoke. We were probably both reading the same things. I sat there with kleenexes as I knew what I was probably about to hear. We waited and read and waited some more.

FINALLY, Dr. H came in, rolled her chair really close to both of us, and I really have no clue what she said. I can read people better than I can listen. She wasn't too positive. She wasn't hopeful. She was sad looking. I DID hear that she thought it probably looked like a Potter Syndrome case. She said that the technician had a difficult time locating our baby's kidneys. She wasn't certain that it was Potter Syndrome, but she wanted us to see a high-risk doctor soon. Jordan asked her a question. He asked her if she thought it would be a type of situation where we would have to make a decision. She said probably-yes. I asked her if there was anything that I could do, and she said no. That was basically all that was said I think. The high-risk doctor that was at this hospital didn't work on Friday's so we would have to wait all weekend to hear anything else. She did make us an appointment for another great specialist, but she had told them my baby's diagnosis and they still couldn't get me in for 2 weeks. She said that 2 weeks was too long to wait. I was just supposed to now wait until Monday morning for her nurse to contact the specialist and then they would call us. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO, that was all we knew. We knew that our baby's kidneys may or may not be there. We were 70% sure we were having a girl. We knew that at least 2 doctors were concerned. We left.

We were now heading to pick up two dozen balloons.

We debated whether or not to cancel the party. What do we do now? We didn't have the slightest clue. We had never done this before. We don't really have a CLEAR reason/picture of what is going on. We were having people drive from hours away to celebrate with us.....and we already had people at the house putting it all together.........Do we just act like nothing happened today besides the excitement of the gender!?!? Will we announce to EVERYONE at the party what we were told? OR, do we just announce the gender and take the rest minute by minute? We debated some more. We FINALLY decided that we would have the party. We would just celebrate that we were HAVING A BABY GIRL! Little did we know, the decision on whether or not to have this party would end up being the easiest decision we would make for several weeks. We also got a PINK baby book on our way out to mom and dads. And ice.