Week 15 and Maybe Some Baby Names...

Welcome to week 15...which arrived rather fast thanks to the busy schedule. I hope each of you had a wonderful Christmas, I know Joseph and I did. We are so blessed with great family and friends to share the holidays with. We just hope after next year we get invited back to all the dinners and lunches. We are also so very thankful for the gift we've been given this year of 3 healthy babies!

What is going on with those babies this week you ask?! Well, according to my book they are about 4-4.5 inches long, weight about 1.75 ounces and are close to the size of a softball. That seems rather big to me, and if you look at my belly, which I know I have not put pictures of on here, you can tell there is a lot of something growing in there.

This past week found me going to back to the nutritionist, which did not go great. Remember she gave me the 36 pounds before 24 weeks article, so Joseph gave me Muscle Milk. Anyway...after two weeks of keeping track of what I ate and Muscle Milk I managed to gain 0 pounds, and actually lost about 1/2 a pound. She was shocked too, so now I'm on a new plan. Now my plan is to get 2,000 calories a day by eating throughout the day. That's a big adjustment for me because I'm not a big eater, so for the times when I don't feel like eating I'm to drink a Boost or Slimfast since they are liquid and can "fill in the cracks" so to speak. Don't freak out over Slimfast either...it's got exactly the same components of Boost or Ensure, it's just marketed differently, so no I'm not trying to lose weight drinking Slimfast, it's just something that taste good to me, so that's what we go for. Oh, and one of the great recommendations was at the end of the day if I had not met my calories to get a bowl of chocolate ice cream with some chocolate syrup and enjoy...darn, that's going to be pretty tough! She also wants to me to start doing pregnancy yoga to try to make more room for babies. And if possible, I am suppose to find a way to get taller, which is not to my advantage at all this pregnancy. Let me know if you have any ideas on that one! The last thing we talked about was my thyroid (oh how I love that stupid thing!). I need to have my levels checked because if you remember back to the hives incident, the treatment for that was over medicating me, which can lead to weight lose and stuff like that, so we are going to see if that is keeping me from gaining weight. At the end of the day though the babies continue to grow right on track and that is all that matters. In a few weeks weight will probably start piling on and I'll be here complaining, so for now, I'll just eat my ice cream!!!

Did someone say something about baby names?! I got side tracked thinking about ice cream!! After weeks of discussion and going back and forth and even some voting amongst family and friends, we have finally decided on names. It may seem early for names to you, but if I'm at week 15 and the babies can come anytime after week 28, well, we are closer to the end then we think, though the babies are staying put until 34 weeks for Dr. Hilton. That's still almost halfway through.

Anyway, names were tough...we actually had solid names picked out for 2 boys and 1 girl, so when it became 2 girls it got a little tricky. Then there were family names we wanted to include, names that one liked more then the other, names that would be on, then off, then on the table again. The list got pretty short rather quickly and after practicing for a week or so we decided we had the right names.

So, now it's time. Introducing...........

Abby Love
Abby was the name we had chosen the first go around if we had a girl. I've always loved the name and so has Joseph. We actually went back and forth on this one and tried out a few others, but in the end she was Abby. Love is a family name. My middle name is actually Love, so we know we would always use it if we had a girl.

Claire Elizabeth
Joseph fell in love with the name Claire so fast it blew my mind. We had originally planned to use it as a middle name, but then decided if we could find a middle name to go with it we would use it. Clair was also my grandfather's name, actually he was Clair Love, so these girls are pretty much after him. Elizabeth was the only name that really flowed with Claire. We found out later that it is actually my grandmother's middle name, so there is family history there too.

Brayden Jae
It was hard for use to decide on a name for baby boy. There were 3 names that we went back and forth between (Collin and Cooper were the other two). Joseph again fell in love with the name Brayden, and I too have always loved the name. We knew the middle name would be Jae after Joseph's grandfather, who passed away a little after Jackson. After trying Jae with other names, Brayden was the most loved and sounded the best!

So, those are the names of the babies. A huge weight has been lifted. So go crazy with monograms people! Oh...I did forget to say that all the babies will have the last name Hedgepeth...we decided on that pretty quickly! Thanks as always for sharing in our journey. As always, please Remember Jackson! Also, please continue to keep us in your prayers...

and babies