The Next 6 Months will be Interesting

I guess it’s time to update everyone on our living arrangements, meaning where we’ll be living and when. Our current plan is to leave Taiwan in the middle of December to travel home for the holidays. We will stop in Arizona to visit family there before heading home to Austin for Christmas and New Years. I will stay in Austin with the girls and Anthony will travel back to Taiwan for work. He’ll come back to Austin in February, hopefully for the birth of the baby. Then a week or so after the baby is born, he’ll head back to Asia. We aren’t sure yet if that means Taiwan or to the new city we are being assigned to – BEIJING! Then, sometime in April, depending on when the new baby is at least 6 weeks old, Anthony will come back to Austin and pick us all up and we’ll all fly to Beijing where we will live for at least one year. Pretty exciting, yet, nerve wracking at the same time. I am sad to leave Taiwan, as I’ve made some good friends here, but we always knew we wouldn’t be here for long, such is the life of an expat. I am excited to be coming home for a few months, even if that means living life with 3 kids and no husband around! It will be a hard and trying time for all of us, I’m sure. We’re working on whether to put the girls in school for a few months while home or to hire someone to come to the house to help out. Maybe both, we’ll just have to see how that plays out.

I realized this last weekend that Ashley will be starting kindergarten in the fall, so we have a new dimension to our relocating that we haven’t had to worry about before – making sure there is a good school nearby where we live that Ashley can attend in Beijing. The one that I know of in Beijing is the International School of Beijing, which is not anywhere near where Anthony works. So, it will be interesting finding housing there. I can’t believe that Ashley is almost old enough for real school! How time flies.

We are keeping an eye on the bird flu situation. I am not concerned right now, here in Taiwan, as health officials tend to be on top of things and let the public know quickly about outbreaks, as well as all the embassies here. There has been no human to human contact that is known from the virus and we don’t hang out around any chickens, birds or ducks, or in the live markets, so we’re fine. I am keeping an eye on China though – heard a report today about hundreds more birds they found contaminated, but still no human to human contact. During SARS, China tried to hide how many people were infected and limit the amount of press that was released about it. I am really hoping that does not happen this time!

And It's a....

During my stay in the hospital, we were able to do another ultrasound and see the sex of the baby! From what we could see and what the doctor told us, IT’S A BOY! We are very excited and can’t wait to find out how different having a boy is from a girl. We have another ultrasound next week (3D) and will verify the sex just to make sure. He is a very active baby, as Anthony has been able to feel his kicks for weeks now. He is most active in the evenings, especially when the girls wake him up by kissing my belly and telling him goodnight. The other night, they even told him “secrets” by whispering to my belly. I have no idea what they said to him, but it was a darling scene. I have only gained about 2 pounds, so now that I am completely healthy, I’m trying to eat a lot to gain some more weight. The belly is growing though and people are now able to tell that I am pregnant. I am very tired, more so than with my other pregnancies. I haven’t had my blood levels checked for anemia though, so I will have them check that next time, in case that’s the reason for my tiredness. Not much else really, I am 22 weeks now, over the half way mark! At the last ultrasound, they moved the due date forward a few days to March 1 instead of February 26th. We’ll see. I have started my search for a birth and postpartum doula to help assist during and after the birth. I am excited at the prospect of having a more natural birth experience. We do have a name picked out, but are keeping it quiet until he is born, gotta have one surprise!

Yes, We are all OK

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. I’ve gotten a few requests from people to update, so here goes.

It’s been a LONG month. There were a few good weeks, with the kids doing well in school, me learning how to keep myself occupied with no kids during the day and Anthony working hard. Then, we had typhoon Longwang – no real damage around here, just windy and rainy on a Sunday, so Anthony didn’t even get the day off of work. I bought an air mattress the week before, in preparation, and we spent several hours sleeping on it in the living room, away from the big windows in our bedroom. I started to kind of feel a little icky that day, having some contractions also. By Wednesday, I was pretty sick and after visiting one doctor who said “oh, it’s just some GI thing, go home and rest”, I went to my OB here, who referred me to her husband, who is an internal specialist at the same hospital. He admitted me into the hospital to get some IV fluids in and run some tests. I was in a lot of abdominal pain, with on/off contractions and not able to keep food/water in for very long. The baby was fine, heartbeat was good and I wasn’t having consistent contractions. They diagnosed me with acute invasive gastroenteritis, from something I ate or drank. Fortunately, no one else in the family got sick. They were not able to determine exactly what bacteria was invading my body, but they went ahead and put me on antibiotics and kept me in the hospital for four days, until I could eat and normally use the bathroom, with no contractions. It was not a fun time, being in quite a bit of pain and not really knowing what or when it would be over. Due to the pregnancy, they did not want to give me any pain medication, so I had to suffer. It was nice knowing that everything the GI did had to be approved by my OB, so I was able to trust that they were both doing the best for me and for the baby.

Once I got home, I then started to run a fever for three days and then once I was better, Liz was home sick with enterovirus, which is commonly known as hand, foot and mouth disease. We thought the kids might get it as it was going around among friends that they had been around and it’s a fairly contagious virus. Sure enough, Liz got the spots on her hands, feet, mouth, legs and stomach – poor thing! She was in a good mood though and stayed home with me for the required 6 days. We had lots of fun as I was finally feeling good and she was happy to be at home with mommy and no Ashley.

Since then, we’ve all just been prodding along, watching my belly grow. Anthony has been working quite a bit, having dinner meetings, conference calls and working through email while at home. The girls are still loving their school. Liz doesn’t cry anymore at all when we take her, she gives us hugs and waves bye-bye. She has even finally learned how to walk the whole way there and the whole way back. This has taken weeks of huge crying fits in the middle of the sidewalk because she wanted to be carried. It’s getting difficult for me to carry her, so that’s kind of not an option right now. The girls sing songs they learn at school, even Liz. We don’t really understand what she is singing, but the mumbling has some sort of rhythm to it, so we assume it’s a song. Ashley is working on learning how to spell short words, along with learning the sounds all the letters make. She is also perfecting her art skills as she attempts to draw everyone in the family and animals. Liz is learning her numbers and colors and how to talk so we can understand her.