I am now 18 weeks along in the pregnancy and have been recently reminded of one of the greatest things you get to experience as a mother. A few weeks ago, I felt baby 2.0 ( as Will calls it) kick for the first time. 'It' kicks all the time now! Feeling this new life inside my growing girth just makes my heart swell and stop to realize truly what a miracle not only this baby is to us, but how God can do anything!

This subtle, yet special flutter inside reminded me of right after I delivered Carter. I was a touch sad because I missed feeling him inside me as he was always there within me. I love this special feeling that only us mommies get to share with out children and I want to hang onto it as long as I can.

On a separate note, all is going well with the pregnancy. Morning sickness is gone and no more headaches so far. We anxiously await anticipate June 17th when we will find out what we are having.

Stay tuned.

In this video, Rita zooms in to the fetus to look for a heartbeat. She sees the heartbeat, which she points out with her pointer tool. Then she swiches to a split screen that show the heartbeat on the left and her tool for counting the heartbeat on the right. The machine calculated 155 beats per minutes, which is just fine.

So, to sum up (hope I don't get sued)

• Twenty or more trips to Lubbock... 6000 miles on the car
• One in-vitro fertilization procedure... $13,000 +
• The look on your wife's face when she sees her baby's heartbeat for the first time... Priceless

Cilla and I had our first sonogram on Wednesday. Everything seems to be going well. Our nurse, Rita, saw one fetus (not three :) ).

The clip below shows the fetus, from top to bottom (click the film strip icon to see the video). The large black bean shaped object is the amniotic sack. The fetus is the white object to the left in the amniotic sack. The round item at the far far left of the amniotic sack is the yolk sack (I thought it was the head). The video pauses as Rita measures the fetus' length at 10 millimeters from crown to rump.

As Cilla's post said, we got a positive result on our first pregnancy test. What fantastic news this is. I think we're still getting used to the idea of being pregnant.

We left for Lubbock early this morning (March 20th). This weather this morning was beautiful. The air was crystal clear. We've had a few days of rain in Texas which cleared out all the dust in the air. I'd bet the visibility was 50 miles. The view east from the caprock at Post, Texas, was amazing. We heard a song on XM from a band called 'The The' called 'This is the Day' that has line in the chorus that says 'This is the day... Your life will surely change'. This seemed to be a nice omen for what was to come. Cilla and I got a bit more nervous as we got closer to Lubbock.

We got to the doctor's office 2 minutes late, the first time we've ever been late to an appointment with this Doctor. We got even more nervous as we sat in the waiting room for a few minutes. Finally we were called back for Cilla to have her blood drawn for the pregnancy test. We anticipated the test would take 5 minutes or so. The nurse told us the results would be ready in an hour or two. Disappointed, we went to lunch.

We ate a good lunch at McAlisters. Cilla didn't get sick this time although we were both nervous enough to be nauseous. We hadn't heard from the doctor's office so we drove around Lubbock looking for an outlet store. We had the address but couldn't find the store. We finally decided to give up our search and just as we were pulling into Linens & Things we got our good news from the doctor's office. We ended up waiting about three hours for the call from the doctor.

The weather in the afternoon was very different from the morning. A dust storm blew up in the early afternoon so we drove back under a brown sky. At times the dust was blowing over the road, almost like a thick fog. In Texas, a very dusty day can sometimes create a little rain since the dust will ‘seed' rain to fall out of clouds. Cilla and I saw a very faint rainbow at the end of the drive back to Abilene. The rainbow was a wonderful visual reminder of God's promises. I know God's promise to ‘Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life' is very different from our situation. But his promise ‘Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart' seems to be coming to fruition.

We're obviously very happy. The day was tiring because of the anticipation. We know not all pregnancies carry through the first trimester, but we have no reason to believe this pregnancy will be anything but perfect. I already feel myself falling into ‘protective' mode. I feel myself thinking things like ‘did Cilla put salt on her food?' or ‘should Cilla be lifting that'. We'll see in a few weeks or months if I'm grating on Cilla's last nerve.

Cilla and I appreciate and are humbled by your prayers and concerns. Thank you for being with us as we begin this exciting time in our lives.

P.S. Our faithful Ford Explorer turned 100,000 miles on this trip. Kinda cool. We bought that car with 28,000 miles more than 6 years ago. It is still running strong.

Cilla and I had a good trip to Lubbock yesterday and today (Feb. 26th and 27th.) She's a trooper for doing all this. Hopefully all our hard work will soon pay off.

I went back to Lubbock today for more routine bloodwork and an ultrasound. Usually, this consists of a 2 1/2 hrs. trip there for a 5 min. office visit and then, of course, another 2 1/2 hrs. back. But today, the office visit took a little bit longer. At this point in our cycle, the meds are working just as they should be and it took all of about 40 minutes today to measure each and every follicle that are sprouting appropriately. I have about 8 (follicles or egg sacs) on the right side with the biggest measuring at 12.9 mm and 5 on the left side with the biggest measuring at 11.5 mm. Our magic number is > 18 mm of most of the egg sacs before they will retrieve or remove them from my ovaries. The doc says that they grow approx. 2 mm a day. So, hopefully, the retreival will happen the middle of next week. Next on the agenda is more measuring and bloodwork on Sunday. Will is going this time. Yea! Until then, more yucky hormone shots in the tummy!

Well, I'm about 95% recovered from my unexpected battle with the stomach flu. Uggggh! I will be traveling to Lubbock in the morning (Fri. 24th) to see how my follicles are progressing. I promise i will ask for a count this time. The nurse practioner made it sound on Tues. that i may be ready for the retrieval sooner than we thought. So, that means our work schedules are so much up in the air that we can only take one day at a time. More tomarrow after my appointment when I should have better details. Oh, yea! My good friend Julie is now officially an RN!!

Cilla went to Lubbock yesterday for an ultrasond and blood work. We got a report from the nurse that she seems to be progressing just fine. Cilla didn't get a follicle count.

She met her friend Julie in Lubbock who was there to take the NCLEX again. Unfortunatly, they both got food poisoning at the new McAlisters across from Texas Tech. Cilla was up all night throwing up. What fun.

Update: Now it looks like it might have been something other than food poisining. Several people Cilla works with have been ill, so it might be some kind of 24 hour stomach bug.

Jan, one of the nurses at Dr. Dorsett's office was able to find us our medicine about half off. Patients who have extra medicine left over can sell it to other patients. Jan is facilitating this. Very nice.

we're traveling to lubbock on tuesday (Feb 7th.) for our first visit with Dr. Dorsett for the artificial.