Our doctor appointment today went great!  Our little man is doing fabulous!  He weighs 1/2 lb. and in the above picture you can see him sucking his thumb.  He was super active - as always! :)

The blood pool between my amniotic sack and uterine wall is still present, but it has not moved (great news as we don't want it to move behind the placenta) and has reduced in size from 5cm to 3.7cm - hooray!

Our insurance situation is also being resolved.  The Bethpage OBGYN doctors and office staff are super nice, and they have decided to only charge us $25 per ultrasound (instead of $100 per ultrasound) so the doctor's office is swallowing the additional $75 that insurance is not covering - so kind of them!

Our next appointment is two weeks on Monday, November 5.  At this appointment in addition to monitoring the blood pool, we'll have the detailed anatomy ultrasound to look at baby's heart, lungs, kidneys, etc.

Thank you for your continued prayers for baby V #3 and our family. 

My sweet Abbie girl saved up her personal fun money for a month to purchase these pink sparkle princess shoes!

Each week our kiddos get $5 for their allowance.  $1 goes to offering and the other $4 are theirs to save and spend, so they end up with $16-20 in their "fun money" banks each month (depending on whether it was a 4 or 5 week month).  We provide our kiddos with their food, clothing, school supplies, and presents on holidays and birthdays, but other than that our kids use their fun money to purchase their toys, movie theater tickets, ice cream cones, special clothing items, etc.

Greg and I love our system because we simply budget $50 a month for the kids fun money, and we rarely hear "Can I have this or that?" requests because the kids know our answer, "Sure...if you use your fun money to purchase it."  Our kids are 5 and 3, but they already get the basic concepts of saving and spending money.

Abbie has been longing for these pink sparkle shoes that she saw at Payless when we were purchasing practical black Mary Jane shoes for fall/winter, so she saved her money for one month to purchase these pink sparkle princess shoes and she now lives in them!  Greg and I can't imagine Christian ever using his fun money to purchase a pair of shoes, so we couldn't help but giggling over the girliness of our little princess in her pink sparkle shoes. :)

Yesterday everything went well at our OBGYN appointment.  Our little man is still developing perfectly, and the blood pool has not grown or moved. 

I am still taking it easy and resting as much as possible, but thankfully I'm allowed to go out as long as someone else drives (since I can't do the lifting and bending involved with taking apart and putting together the wheelchair).  It's going to be a little rough over the next few months adjusting to not being fully independent, but with the help of Greg and friends we'll make it though.

Also, please be praying that God will work out our insurance situation.  We were informed yesterday that our insurance seems to require us to pay $100 per ultrasound, so we already owe over $1200 and we're only 16 weeks pregnant.  The OBGYN office is going to try to work things out with the insurance company (since this is an oddly high amount for individuals to pay), and they assured us that if something can't be worked out they'll only charge us for every other ultrasound but that's still a huge amount of money.  We're praying and trusting to God to work out this insurance situation and provide the finances we need to take care of our little guy.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers!

Our next appointment is in two weeks on Monday, October 22.

Yesterday was a day of surprises!  At 10:00 AM we got a phone call from the Maternal-Fetal Specialist's office asking us to come in at noon for an sonogram and consultation!  Greg quickly rearranged his morning schedule, I made the various insurance approval calls, and we headed over to Winthrop Hospital.

During the sonogram I noticed "a little something" and asked the ultasound technician if we are having a boy.  She looked surprised that I could read the sonogram, but then smiled and confirmed that we are indeed having a little boy!  Technically we weren't supposed to have the gender determination sonogram until our 20 week appointment in a little over 4 weeks, so it was a wonderful surprise to find out the gender of our little boy yesterday!

When we told Abbie we were having a boy she started crying (she wanted a girl), but within a few hours she was totally thrilled at the idea of having a baby brother.  When we told Christian he started jumping up and down squealing with excitement (he wanted a boy), so we're all super thrilled to have another little man joining our family in March! :)

After the sonogram the specialist confirmed that there was a pool of blood between the amniotic sack and the wall of my uterus, just touching the edge of my placenta.  Thankfully the blood is definitely coming from me, not the baby.  It appears the blood is a mixture of old and new blood.  At this point the doctors don't know if the bleeding is still occurring or if it has completely stopped.  They also don't know if the blood is coming from a burst capillary in my uterus wall or the placenta.  The pool of blood should continue to come out on it's own as the baby grows and pushes the blood out, but what the doctors are concerned about is that the blood pool could move behind the placenta.  If this happens then it's very dangerous as the pool of blood could put pressure on the placenta causing it to detach from the uterine wall.

The specialist still wants me to "take it easy", and I need to go in every 1-2 weeks for sonograms to make sure our little guy is OK and the blood pool isn't moving behind the placenta.  Our next sonogram will be this Monday, October 8.

Please join us in praying that 1) the blood pool with not move behind the placenta, 2) the blood pool will completely come out soon, and 3) the bleeding with completely stop.

Thank you for your love and prayers, friends!

I wanted to give you all a little update on Baby V #3. Unfortunately over the past two weeks I have experienced some bleeding - it's varied in intensity but is still continuing. We've had two ultrasounds over the past two weeks, and the baby's heartbeat is strong, he/she is developing normally and moving all around, but still the bleeding is a concern. At this point the doctors are not sure why the bleeding is occurring, so I'm in the process of making an appointment with a specialists to see if they can shed any further light on the reason for the bleeding and I'm on bed rest.

My bed rest isn't super strict, so the doctors allow me to get up and do little things in short bursts (take a shower, prepare a sandwich, take Abbie to dance class, etc.), but the majority of the day I have to remain horizontal. This is obviously difficult for me, hard on the kiddos who are not all used to mommy just laying around all day, and hard on Greg who has to take over all the domestic duties I usually do (cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, etc.). Greg's so amazing - yesterday he came home in the evening after church and meetings, and then proceeded to prepare dinner, get the kids ready for bed, pick up the house, and sweep and mop the floors - I am so blessed!

Here are some specific ways you can pray for our family:
1) Please pray for Baby V #3 to continue to remain healthy and strong
2) Please pray for Rachel's bleeding to completely stop
3) Please pray for the doctor's to have wisdom in figuring out and treating the bleeding problem
4) Please pray for Christian and Abbie emotionally - particularly Christian is really struggling with a lot of anxiety
5) Please pray for Greg as he has to balance church work, seminary, caring for his family, and the household duties

I'm going to try to update our family's website regularly to let you all know how we're doing. If you're interested in keeping up with us then please click the RSS Feed (located on the upper right corner of this page just below our family picture) or just bookmark http://vrugginks.weebly.com and check this website regularly.

Thank you all so much for your love and prayers for our family!