Welcome Lucas Elijah Fugler!

Needless to say, things have been a bit crazy in the Fugler household!  On 4/4/12 we welcomed out little Lucas.  He weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and was 20.5 inches long.  As expected, he was born with a unilateral cleft lip and palate.  He is a beautiful baby, and we are truly blessed.

However, it has been a lot of work to keep up with a toddler and a newborn...especially a newborn with weekly dentist appointments.  We have been very, very busy so I am going to take a hiatus from this blog for a while.  I will continue to keep Facebook updated with lots of pictures and posts.  Please look for new pictures there!

Love, Caroline (and the rest of the Fugler Family)



Our First Family of 4 Picture

Tummy Time



Newborn Lucas at the hospital

Almost 36 weeks pregnant

Today we had our 35 week midwife appointment and our growth scan/ultrasound.  I'm still measuring small according to my fundal height (33 cm), but luckily I grew enough to be considered in the normal range.  I've only gained 21.5 lbs, but the ultrasound showed that baby boy is 5lbs 9 oz (if the ultrasound is reliable) so he is on track to be bigger than Josie when he is born...unless he is born in the next week!  I'm 1 cm dialated, so things are heading in the right direction.

Since I've only gained 21.5 lbs and the midwives wanted me to gain between 28-40 lbs, I got the ok to eat a little more...even with my gestational diabetes.  I can add 15 carbs to my meals, and the midwives want me to eat foods with more fat.  That means full fat dairy, olives, etc.  I've already been doing that lately, but I'll really go for it now.  Did someone say bacon cheeseburger for lunch?!  The baby is on the small side of normal (27th percentile), so it is unlikely that he will get too big in the coming weeks.  However, if he goes past 40 weeks they may decide to induce me just to make sure he stays a good size.

All of the baby's measurements still look good.  The doctor confirmed that it appears the cleft involves both the lip and the palate.  The cleft appears to be fairly wide, so we should expect both nostrils to be affected.  Nursing will be difficult if not impossible.  None of this came as a surprise to us, as we are expecting the hardest possible situation with the cleft lip and palate.  However, there are other things that the baby will have to be tested for after he is born...heart problems, various syndromes...  Please keep this baby and our family in your prayers as we continue to hope that we will not have to face any of these other problems.

We will be 36 weeks pregnant on Sunday, and I am quite ready to meet this little guy!

Getting Ready for Baby

I am 33+ weeks pregnant!

In the Fugler house, we are finally starting to get things ready for our new arrival.  I dug out some of Josie's old clothes and managed to find some white snap shirts/onesies and other gender neutral items.  A bunch of them had yellow stains on them (which I found out were breast milk protein stains that can appear on clean baby clothes when exposed to heat)...but I soaked them in OxyClean, and they washed up pretty nicely.

Also, I ordered a Haberman bottle from Amazon.com, and it came in today.  Our baby will most likely be eating out of this special bottle, so I wanted to make sure I already had one on hand since they don't sell them in the regular baby bottle sections of stores.  These are literally the most expensive bottle/nipple sets I have ever seen, so hopefully it will work!

We still have a lot of work to do to get ready (paint nursery, dig out the swings and bouncer, get pack n play with bassinet set up, etc), but at least we are getting started.

Next step - pack my hospital bag!  If baby boy decides to come early, I would take it in stride since this Gestational Diabetes has made it hard to make choices of what to eat...and once he is born we can get him over to Children's Hospital so we can start making decisions and scheduling appointments for managing his cleft lip and palate concerns. 

Until he is born, we will be playing the waiting game...

Add another thing to the list

On top of everything else going on, today I got a call from my midwife that I have gestational diabetes.

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001898/

It is one of the most common pregnancy problems/complications, and it is easily managed.  My midwife said it looks like I have a fairly mild case that should be able to be managed by watching my diet carefully.  But I'm still frustrated that I have so much to worry about with this pregnancy. 

I will be meeting with another doctor and a nutritionist in the next week.  In the meantime, it looks like my Girl Scout cookies will be finding a home in the freezer for the next few months...

Playing Catch Up

We've been through a lot of transitions lately, so it has been hard for me to get on the computer to post!  I'm going to do my best to do a quick summery of what has been going on.

- Christmas was great!  Josie was thoroughly spoiled by Santa, family and friends.  She is still enjoying playing with all of her new toys and treats.

- We all came down with colds and the stomach flu over the holidays.  NOT FUN!

- We have had 2 additional ultrasounds at the Perinatal Care Clinic to check on our baby boy.  Aside from the cleft lip and palate, all other measurements are normal.  That is good news!  We have an appointment at the Cleft Lip and Palate Clinic at Denver Children's Hospital later this week, but generally we will have to wait until the baby is born to start making plans for surgery and such.  Once he is born, they will be able to determine what type of care he needs.

- Josie started asking for "big bed" so we bought her a big girl bed.  She is now sleeping in it for naps and overnight.  Some days are easier than others...  :)

- We received over 2 feet of snow at our house on Friday/Saturday.  It was a big snow, but as soon as the snow stopped the sun came out...so we were far from snowed in.  There is still a lot of snow on the ground, but we are out and about in it.

Here are a few pictures from the past few months:

Christmas Eve 2011

Enjoying presents on Christmas morning

Worn out!

Addy and Josie

Playing in the snow

Nothing's better than hot chocolate with mini marshmallows after playing in the snow

It's a....

BOY!  We are 21 weeks pregnant with a baby boy.  We had our ultrasound yesterday, and Josie came along.  Ryan, Josie and I are so excited to expand our family and welcome this little boy in April.  Josie even pointed to the television showing the ultrasound and said "brother."  She has been talking about her baby brother and even helped pick out a little sleeper outfit for him in size Newborn.

However, the ultrasound did not come without some surprises.  After the ultrasound was over, the doctor came in to tell us that all of the measurements look normal except it appears that our baby has a cleft lip and will probably have a cleft palate.  Of course, this news was shocking to Ryan and me so we have been taking the last 24 hours to think, pray and let everything sink in.  We have another appointment with the perinatal care center on Monday to confirm, find out if there are any other unexpected concerns with this pregnancy, and find out more about our next steps.

As we process this and prepare, we ask for your thoughts and prayers.  We are so excited to welcome our baby boy, but we are also preparing for a difficult journey as parents.  We know that there are so many parents and children who have gone through similar journeys with unexpected difficulties, some much more trying than what we are facing.

Halloween and First Snow

Over the course of a week, we had our first snow of the season, then it all melted in time for Halloween, then it snowed again!  Josie enjoys the snow, but her clothes keep her a little too bundled up to get too crazy in it.  In fact, when she is dressed in her snow clothes she can barely move her arms and her legs!  But she definitely wants to be outside in the snow, so we've been getting some quality play time in.

Here are some pictures from our recent adventures:

First snow!

First snowman

Oliva the pig went Trick or Treating at

Highlands Ranch Trick or Treat Street

Mmm, candy

Addy and Erin

Trick or Treating in our new neighborhood

On our front patio with Daddy

Getting ready to go out in the 2nd snow

We're still getting used to it...it was deep!

Having fun

OK, I think we're done!