Week 34

Here are some photos of our 34 week ultrasound. All looks well. These are the best 3-D images she could get today. She didn't think they were the best, but I think they are pretty darn good! The sonographer today was the one that caught Will's kidney obstruction as well as Sylvia's CDH. I hadn't seen her in a long time. I joked (but was half serious)with her that Iowa City said all is well as have all my ultrasounds in Dubuque--she better not find anything! She laughed and said she wasn't worried. After showing us everything she was looking at (excpet the gender), she actually said, "Everything looks very normal!" I've always strived to be better than average, but in pregnancy, "normal" is THE BEST! Heart rate is 146 and a score of 8/8 on the biophysical profile. As we were walking to the exam room, we heard the Hawaiian version of "Somewhere over the Rainbow." I took this as a sign from Sylvia that all would be okay. She knows how much that song means to me and that I refer to her baby sibling as my rainbow. (It just happens to be a coicidence that this is one of my doctor's fave songs also and he plays it on his I-pod at work several times a day--or so the nurse told me.)I just had a flashback to when I was leaving Ireland back in 2001. After studying for a semester there, I was ready to leave, but I wasn't. I came back by myself. I changed my flight to get back a couple days earlier to spend some extra time with Andy as I'd be spending my summer at an internship in Chicago. As I was wandering the Dublin airport by myself, I heard another beautiful jazzy rendition of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" and was ready to get back over my rainbow back to America! Then when America, I longed for Ireland. Funny how that works--we always long for what we don't have. Now Sylvia is intangible to me--somewhere over the rainbow. However, there are so many rainbows and suns in my life. To get our rainbows, it takes both sun and rain. Bring on the sun because we're tired of the rain (especially the freezing type that made the roads like an ice skating rink today!)