The Brandt Buzz: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Pregnancy News

Ok, so this is an older blog post that I started writing while I was on bedrest prior to Bryk being born! Don't get all excited thinking there is another baby on the way...because that is most definitely not happening for a WHILE! This is just to finish out the post since I had already written most of it and never posted!

Again...as usual, it has been quite some time since I last updated our blog. So, I will try to catch everyone up to the present as simply as I can!

As a full time nurse, I am required to work at least 2 holidays from November-January. I have always chosen to work Thanksgiving because to me, Thanksgiving can be celebrated any day as long as we are with family. Typically, we will leave Friday morning for Welch and have a Thanksgiving meal with my parents and spend the weekend with them. For the first time in 5 years I was placed on-call for Thanksgiving! I was so surprised! Our original plan was for Carter to come and eat Thanksgiving lunch with me in the cafeteria at the hospital and have left overs for supper. Carter and I enjoyed the day just hanging out at the house since I wasn't allowed to leave town until after 7 pm due to being on-call. I had not planned to cook so Carter and I had to settle for Thanksgiving dinner at IHOP, the ONLY place open on Thanksgiving in San Angelo. We left later that evening to spend the weekend with my family in Welch.

I am going to skip right on to December. I will cover more on the pregnancy in just a bit. We had a busy December, as usual. We started out having our yearly gingerbread house building evening with our friends Stephen & Anna and Sohn & Jennifer. We had fun and this year everyone's gingerbread house turned out!

My cousin, Steeli, got married in Dallas on December 15. Carter and I went down, along with several others in my family, to attend the wedding. Also, Lindsay completed her Nurse Practitioner schooling and had a graduation party that evening after the wedding. So, we were able to kill 2 birds with one stone so to speak. We had a good time, although, neither Carter or I are city people, so the traffic just about drove us mad!

December is always a packed month. We also had our Small Group Christmas party. This year about half of our small group was expecting a new baby and they others already had or just had a baby within the last year. What an adventure small group is going to be next year!

All the pregnant women- minus one

Over Christmas, Dane and Aubree got engaged! Dane was so brave and did it in front of the whole family! So happy for them!

After spending Christmas with my family, Carter's family came to Texas this year to celebrate with us!

A few of my FAVORITE Christmas presents!

Robby- my new robot vacuum from my wonderful husband!

My new collapsable, rolling sewing table from my parents!

And lastly, pregnancy news... At 33 weeks the doctor's office called and said that we needed to do a follow up ultrasound for some possible placenta previa. So we went for the ultrasound and were there for maybe 5 minutes total. The doctor's office called me at work a few days later and explained that Bryk was measuring small. To be cautious, they wanted us to follow up with a specialist to get a more detailed ultrasound. I freaked out and was worried sick because they kept skirting around my questions regarding Bryk's health or there being something possible wrong with him. We had to wait a L O N G week to get into the specialist. When we did finally go to our appointment, Carter and I waited over an hour in the waiting room! My blood pressure was through the roof when they checked it and of course that sent the doctor into a panic. He placed me on bedrest and decided that I needed to be monitored at least 3 times a week, once by him and twice by my primary doctor. I thought they were making a big deal out of nothing...OF COURSE my blood pressure is high...I am here to find out if everything is ok with my baby!!! The only good thing that came of all this is that Bryk was absolutely perfect (just like we knew he would be) according to the detailed ultrasound! God is good, ALL the time and ALL the time God is good! What a relief to find that out! All of this excitement ended up in a chaotic tail spin. We spent MANY hours in the doctor's offices and in the hospital for blood pressure and check ups. Here are a few pregnancy pics!