A warm welcome in the great white north (39 weeks)

Happy Thanksgiving! I write this installment while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Its been a week filled with Thanks. Thankful for friends, new and old, family and family to come.

To get you up to speed, we are now up in Wisconsin on baby watch. 

We left Saturday morning at 5am. My parents arrived at our home in Georgia, Friday night, to watch the pups while we're gone. My mom was wondering why I was putting RainX on my windows before we left...I knew we'd encounter rain on the way. What I wasn't certain of was what we'd be driving through... I happened to be taking my break, cause (surprise!) I didn't sleep Friday night. I wake up to this whistling, howling noise coming from the car...and Dustin says, "Ryan? Is that rotation?"
**Meteorologist Activated**

Cloud lowering, serious wind, check radar. We were in what looked like a Quasi-Linear Convective System (QLCS) a line of thunderstorms that has kinks in it. The kinks can be indicative of areas of more significant wind or rotation. As Dr. Forbes says on The Weather Channel, those are the areas we look for tornadoes. After driving through that...I believe it. I couldn't confirm anything on radar we were in a section of the radar view where the ability to determine spin was not available.  Visibility dropped to 50 feet, the wind was whipping the truck around, we dropped to 10mph. Crazy moment. Two hours later after we drove through the front, it started snowing.

     We arrived in Madison Saturday night to spend time with our friends Tim and Paul. Tim is famous for his game nights and he designed one, last minute, for us while we were there. So much fun. We were exhausted but it was unforgettable. It was baby themed. Sunday was just all four of us hanging out. We. Did. Nothing. And it was glorious. We did however, make macaroni and cheese, watched Paul make rice crispy treats and then go watch Tim play hockey. Anxiety was at an all time low.

     Monday we all headed out early. Dustin and I used our free day before our reservations in Green Bay to pop over to Chicago. We're close, so why not? It was a superb day. We met up with our friend Caleb for a quick tour of the Windy city. Believe me, it lived up to its name on Monday. 

We had a great time. Took lots of pictures and had lunch at Shake Shack. Then we took the train back out to the Chicago suburbs, and started driving North.

   Fun story. Our reservation was for Tuesday night...thankfully we were able to amend it. We've been hanging out with our surrogate and her family since we got here. We felt baby moving around in there! It's so amazing feeling that little thing through a belly and how big it was compared to my hands...

   Tuesday night was dinner at their house. With all three of her children. (so freaking adorable) We had a nice meal and hung out again. Her husband was late getting home but we waited, said hey and then went back to the air bnb for bed. All the bed. Wednesday is the next OB appointment.

     Wednesday morning Dustin and I went out for coffee and met up with one of the local meteorologists. The TV business really is small especially with the help of Facebook.

     Lunch found us with our surrogate and her oldest son. He wanted to take us to his favorite Green Bay lunch spot, Al's. We had a great time and lots of laughs before heading off to the OB.  We packed all of us into the exam room. The doctor, whom our surrogate hadn't seen before, seemed surprised by the amount of men in the room and that NONE of them were her husband. Fun story. The doctor says,
     "You're definitely not 2cm."
He then points just below her sternum and says and I'm not so sure that's not the head we need to check.  And walks out.
Uh...what?
So there the three of us are. Hearts racing and starting to freak out a bit. Wait. So head up, I thought we were head down?! Last week we were! Why are you moving?! And what did he mean by 'you're definitely not 2cm?!' Are we more? Less? Whaaat?
He comes back in with the ultrasound and sure enough, the spine is pointing out, so thats good, but the head, is definitely up. So currently breech. All the good ones are! (I was born breeched)
So what do we do?
They want to do a version procedure Friday morning to flip the baby and get it head down. The OB seemed pretty confident about it. He got the baby turned about 45 degrees there in the office. So we'll see how that goes. We're all a bit anxious about the baby having flipped.

     Wednesday night we went out to dinner with our surrogate and her husband to 1919 at Lambeau Field and then to Titletown brewery. We had great laughs.  She and I ran a 40 at Lambeau. I ran a 6.7. I feel good about that. So much fun. Belly feels, and great friendship. We went into this with no expectations and have come to the end with wonderful, beautiful new friends.

More to come as we start the 39th week...

Happy Thanksgiving!
And Happy Birthday to our surrogate!