To catch everyone up...

The past 26 weeks have been nothing short of a new adventure for us and our families. I know a lot of you have just now heard about the pregnancy and/or the hiccups along the way. Again, we are so thankful for everyone's prayers and thoughts, and even though we try to update everyone individually as much as possible, we want everyone to be able to stay informed on exactly what is going on. So to those of you who are interested in what has led up 'til now, here goes.

We found out I was pregnant back in January and despite the unplanned surprise, we are very excited about it! For those of you who know me well, you know my plans for kids (if any) weren’t in the near future, but it’s amazing how God has different plans. My attitude on kids has changed dramatically throughout all this.

We found out we were having a boy and I don't think it's any secret we're excited to have a little football player on the way :) We decided to name him John Hudson Butler. Blake, his father and grandfather all have the first name John, so we wanted to keep that tradition going. We were talking about parents who name their kids after cities and so for the fun of it, we went through where all Blake had lived (since I had only lived in Memphis) and we got to Hudson, Ohio... and we both kinda liked it. From then on we kept going back to it and ended up being sold on it.

So, besides the constant morning sickness, my medical problems have been minimal until recently. When I went in for my 21 week check up, I had told them about some complications that my mother had with me, my brother and the preterm birth my mom had before me. They measured my cervix and it measured a little shorter than what they were comfortable with. For all those not familiar with pregnancy terms (like me)… the cervix is basically the lining that holds the baby in. As this gets shorter (or thinner/weaker) the risk of the baby coming early is greater. For all my nurse friends, they first measured it at 2.9, which is slightly lower than "normal". I went back in at 22 weeks and it measured at 3.1. My doctor figured I just had a short cervix for my body and that it had just fluctuated. So I went about my normal routine and was scheduled to come back a month later. When I went back for my 24 week check up, I had felt more pressure than before and I asked my doctor to check my cervix again, just to ease my mind. She ordered an ultrasound and additional tests and told me that my cervix was measuring at 1.3! She sat me down and told me that I was to immediately go home and go on bed rest for the duration of the pregnancy and that where I was, was borderline to putting me on hospital bed rest. She then told me that she wanted to start me and the baby on steroid shots to boost his lung development in case he came in the next week or so. That was a scary reality. I met Blake at home and we talked about where to go from there. That was a tough day. We had begun to have a peace about the whole situation that afternoon and wanted to continue life as much as we could. For those of you who don't know, we have a bible study at our house every Thursday night for college and young adults and I wanted to still carry on with that--after all, life still goes on. So we told everyone that we were still on for bible study. About an hour before people were to arrive, I started having contractions. The weren't terrible, but I didn't feel good about it and decided to go in and make sure everything was okay. So we went in to the hospital Thursday evening. When I got there, they immediately hooked me up to a monitor and recorded my contractions at 3-5 minutes apart. They gave me shots to stop the contractions and luckily succeeded. They monitored me all night and Friday morning I started having contractions again. They started me on medicine to manage the contractions that I will take for the duration of the pregnancy. They ran a test to determine whether the contractions were the type to possible lead to labor in the next two weeks and it came back negative, which was the best news we had heard all week! So the only thing left they wanted to check was my cervix. They did an ultrasound Sunday morning and it measured at 1.6, so they gave me another steroid shot and sent me home! :)

Since then, I have gone back to the doctor once, and they ran some more tests and the report wasn't bad. They measured my cervix at 1.5 and said all things considered, that was just fine and to keep doing what I'm doing on bed rest and I will check back in next week. They also measured Hudson and said he weighed in at 1 lb 15 oz, which is right on track for 26 weeks! We have been so thankful that throughout all this that Husdon's development and progress has remained perfect and completely unaffected by the other issues.

So that's basically it for now. I didn't realize how much I have to say about all this until I sat down to type it. There have been so many little fun stories that I will post later for those of you who like reading blogs :) but as for now, that's it!