She's Here!

It's been ages since I posted, but I wanted to let all of you know that our little one, Arden Grace, arrived safe and sound on Tuesday, December 9th.

At my checkup the week after Thanksgiving, without much change, the doctor decided to put me in the hospital on Sunday and start me on servidil to ripen my cervix with plans to induce on Monday morning. Harv and I headed to the hospital, took care of all of the question answering, got on the monitors, and the servidil was started. After a few hours of this, the monitor kept losing the baby's heartbeat. It was still beating, but she seemed to be moving all over the place. The nurse wasn't concerned, but she thought that the heartbeat was a little bit high for the baby to be positioned correctly. She was head down on Thursday at my appointment, so I didn't think too much about it. They did an ultrasound to check her position, and sure enough, the little stinker had flipped and was as head up as can be. Breech.

They pulled the servidil and called my OB who gave me the option of attempting to turn the baby, something that I really didn't want to attempt. I had friends with horror stories of trying to manually turn the baby with both of them ending up having c-sections anyway. I didn't want to cause the baby (or myself) any unnecessary stress. We decided to schedule a c-section for Tuesday morning, thus giving the baby 24-36 hours to turn before the surgery. If she turned, we would go ahead and induce for a natural birth, if not, then we would head to the OR for the surgery.

Headed to the hospital on Tuesday morning and, sure enough, the stubborn little thing had not moved an inch. Into the OR for a C-Section. They rolled me in there at 8:00 am and Arden Grace made her entrance at 8:16, all 8.6 lbs and 20.5 inches of her. She entered the world screaming like a banshee and proceeded to poop on the nurses before they even got all of her vitals checked! Nice way to make a first impression, huh?

Anyway, all went well and I was out of the hospital on Thursday morning. I have been breastfeeding her and while I thoroughly enjoy it, it was hard to get into the routine of things. We worried a little bit about Wyatt's reaction to her, but he loved his sister right away. He's very protective and wants to "hold she" (we're working on the her thing) first thing every morning.

So far, it's been a pretty good transition. Wyatt is starting preschool and I go back to my part time job in a couple of months. We're all adjusting to the new situations as they pop up. I've felt pretty out of touch, as my laptop crapped out and I'm only now getting back online.

Thanks for all of the thoughts and prayers that you guys have sent to us during my pregnancy and Arden's birth. They are so appreciated.

Feeling kind of bummed...

I've been feeling kind of bummed lately.

I guess that It could be the fact that this child that I'm carrying seems to be sitting smack dab on top of my sciatic nerve rendering me unable to walk with any degree of ease at any given time, making me look like a pregnant geriatric patient who's recently lost her walker.

Maybe it's the fact that Harvey and I were faced with one more struggle this month when the loser who employed him decided that he no longer needed his services. It's rough when your husband, who works his butt off, has to take grief from a person who seems to be a spoiled rich kid with no regard for anyone but himself.

Maybe it's the fact that I try every day to the best of my ability (okay, so most days I try...) to be everything to everyone and to stay on top of things. It's a daunting task, but it's part of that independent woman, wife, mother triad that so many of us struggle with these days.

I know that attitude is only a state of mind and I try to remember that. That's why I still go for a walk whenever possible, swing on a swingset, spend some time coloring in a coloring book with my son, visit the zoo, or join Harvey and Wyatt in their wrestling and roughhousing every once in a while. Sometimes in the midst of all of the chaos around here, it's hard to remember to do those things.

As bummed as I've felt lately, things do work out and I feel truly blessed. I have a chiropractor's appointment later this week to try to give me some relief from the sciatica caused by the child that I'm lucky enough to be blessed with at 42, Harvey got a new and better paying job in commercial construction which he started on the 15th and seems to like, and as for my "be everything to everybody, do it all" struggle, I'll continue to do the best that I can do and try not to beat myself up over it if things don't get done. The dirty dishes and laundry will still be there tomorrow...

I never thought that I'd look at the dishes that didn't get washed as a blessing, but at least we are fortunate enough to have the food to put on those dishes in the first place. It's all in how you look at it, I suppose.

Latest Doctor's Visit

Well, I had my latest check up and things seem to be going well. I had to take that disgusting glucose tolerance test where you have to drink this vile, overly sweet orange concoction and sit for an hour so they can check your blood for gestational diabetes. Blech! I hate orange flavored drinks in the first place, but this stuff is just ::shiver:: nasty! I got a little bit queasy, but managed to make it through the hour without getting sick.

While at that visit, the baby's heartbeat was great, I was measuring a week bigger than my due date, and had to get blood drawn for antibodies, anemia, and glucose levels. Three vials of blood. Stinkin' vampires... As if that weren't enough, they also had to give me my second Rhogam shot because my blood is Rh negative. Needless to say, by the time I left that appointment, I was feeling run through the wringer!

The bright spot was that when I left, I was told that I would get to have another ultrasound at my next appointment, hopefully a 3D version, in October. It will be nice to get another look at the little booger who's rolling around my insides 24/7!

All the Gory Details...Part II

Okay, sorry for the delay, but it's been one of those really busy weeks at work and I'm trying to potty train a two-year-old boy. Needless to say, it's been a busy, often frustrating week!

Well, I spent the ten days following the amnio, stressing, worrying, and being pretty anti-social. It was always there in the back of mind, wondering just how different our lives might become if something should be wrong with the baby. We would have had the child, regardless of the outcome, but the worry was still there. I'm not a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl - I need structure and need to know what's going on. I can't take ambiguity. I needed answers and they couldn't come fast enough.

We went to Houston to watch an Astros v. Red Sox game on the Sunday before I was due to get the news. While I did manage to forget things for a while and enjoy the great seats right behind the BoSox dugout (Go Sox!), the minute that we got into the car to head home, the thoughts were there again. Hard to avoid.
Anyway, I woke up Monday morning to hear my cell phone ringing. By the time that I got there, they had hung up. It was the peri's office. Without even listening to the message, I returned the call and braced myself for the news. My heart was racing when the counselor's voice came on the line...

Fortunately, the news was good. The amnio came back showing no chromosomal issues and the baby was a girl! I was not expecting to hear the girl thing and think that I was more flabbergasted by that than by the good news that we were receiving. I was really expecting to hear that it was another boy, but no! A girl. Oy. Where on earth were we going to put her in our little house? Girls are so much harder than boys.. It was a big relief to have those kinds of thoughts instead of the others!!

I called Harvey and think that he was stunned to hear that it was a girl. His though on that is that when you have a boy, you worry about one pee-pee; When you have a girl, you worry about all of the pee-pees!! I think that secretly he's kind of excited about having a girl, but you never know.

After getting the good news, which was around the end of June, we breathed a sigh of relief, but still hadn't told anyone. We were about 18 weeks along at that point, but wanted to have one more ultrasound to check on the CPCs (cysts) just to see if they'd resolved themselves. We had an appointment the next week, on the 10th and were leaving for a vacation with my family to Colorado the next day. We really hoped for good news, so that we could tell everyone and enjoy the trip. The appointment went well and all looked good, but the CPCs were still there. The doctor said that they seemed a little smaller and she really expected them to be gone by our next appointment in a few weeks.

In good spirits, we headed home to start spreading the news before leaving for our trip the next day. As suspected, everyone seemed very happy for us and were thrilled that we were going to be having a girl. My sister, Rishanne, who we all knew was pregnant (about four weeks behind me) was shocked and stunned to hear the news - I had gone with her on a maternity clothes shopping spree a few weeks earlier and never said a word!

Colorado was great. Very relaxing and a lot of fun. While the CPC issue still lingered in the back of my mind, I finally started to loosen up and start to enjoy the pregnancy. We returned home and I had an appointment scheduled for August 7th with the peri. Harvey couldn't go to this one with me, so I headed to the doctor and prayed that this would be our last visit with her and that the CPCs would be gone. Sure enough, after an exhaustive Level II ultrasound, the cysts were gone! No more visits to the peri!

Finally, it seemed like I could start to get excited about our impending arrival. To be honest, most of the time I still can't quite believe that we're having a baby in three months. Then there are days like yesterday where my back, hips, and tailbone ache so much that it's hard to forget that fact...

The aches and pains, however, will not keep me from shopping for the little one. We've already got a name picked out, colors for the nursery, and the wee world giant sale is this weekend...Time to go forth and shop!

All the gory details...Part 1

As I said in my first post to this blog that I would post all of the gory details of the last few months, I guess that I'm forced to do it.

The past year has had its ups and downs, with Harvey being employed in a job that he hates, my attempting to stay sane while wrangling the world's most active and defiant toddler, and our both dealing with the same everyday struggles as everyone else. This parent/spouse thing is really rough sometimes...

I don't know how my parents did it with four children. Honestly, I think that I would have lost my mind had that been my lot in life. Now, that's not to say that the four of us didn't do an ample amount of damage to the brain cells of both mom and dad, but they do still manage to take care of themselves, remember their own names, although they confuse ours sometimes, and wrangle three grandchildren with amazing skill and dexterity. We tried to make them crazy, and still do, but they are too ornery to give in. Thank goodness.

Anyway, back to our craziness. In April, I started feeling kind of poopy - fluish and generally cranky. I had started a diet a few weeks before and figured that was part of the reason that I was a little tired. A couple of weeks later, I thought that there might be more to this whole thing and took a pregnancy test. Didn't get a line! Whew! That was a close one. Well, after another week had passed and that irritating little friend hadn't stopped by for her monthly pow-wow, I bought another test on the way to work one morning. Stopped in the bathroom at the office, tinkled on the stick, and Voila! A pink line. A very dark pink line. I sat there in stunned silence in the stall and wondered how I was going to manage this - a very active two-year old, a 42 year-old body (and brain!!), and no health insurance. It wasn't the glowing mom-to-be moment that we all dream about, I assure you.

Now, don't get me wrong. I wanted one more child, but I thought that ship had sailed. Obviously not. It had just been dry-docked for a while. Do you know how goofy you feel when you find out you're pregnant, without assistance (okay, Harvey assisted, but you know what I mean!), at 42 and it was an "accident"? Pretty darn goofy, I'll tell you. Pretty darn goofy.

I went home and told Harvey, who stared at me blankly for a moment before composing himself, and he seemed okay with the idea. I know that the no health insurance thing popped into his head immediately, but he should know by now that I usually find a way to work these things out.

With our past history with miscarriages, we didn't get too excited, stressed, or panicked, as we didn't even know if this was going to stick. We had gotten our miracle two years ago and were wary that we were going to be blessed with another. I called the doctor to set up an appointment in early May and we simply waited to see what would happen.

In the meantime, things seemed to go along as usual. No morning sickness, although I did get a little queasy in the afternoons and gagged up a lung when attempting to brush my teeth in the mornings, and I generally felt pretty good. I visited Dr. Geldernick and she confirmed the pregnancy with an ultrasound. Sure enough, there was a little kidney bean that seemed to have implanted pretty well. Things started to seem a little more real at that point, but I was still cautious. She set up an appointment with the perinatologist that I saw when pregnant with Wyatt (because of my "advanced maternal age" ::gag::) and I would see her again a week after that appointment.

I've been very lucky with my OB/GYN, Dr. Geldernick, as she has always been very supportive and very straightforward when dealing with issues related to my pregnancies. She was with me through all three miscarriages, the birth of Wyatt, and was excited to hear that I was pregnant again at 42. She's never made me feel "old" or challenged to be an older mom. I just wanted to say thanks for that...

Anyway, back on track here...At the peri, they performed an NT (nuchal translucency) scan. This scan combines the results of an ultrasound where they measure the skin on the back of the baby's neck (a thick nuchal fold indicates the possibility of Down's Syndrome) with a blood test to determine whether there is a higher than average risk of birth defect. A few days later they called and said that my numbers for Downs were a little lower than average, but that they were better than for someone my age. They gave me the option of having an amnio or just going with the results. I figured that, although it was going to cost out the wazoo, I didn't want to worry for the remainder of the pregnancy and opted to take the amnio a couple of weeks later.

I told Harvey that there was no way that he was going to get out of going to that next appointment. If I was going to have a giant needle plunged into my gut, he was going to be there to witness it. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The ultrasound tech came in and did an ultrasound and all looked good, except it seemed to me that she lingered quite a while on the brain. Now, you have to understand that when it comes to pregnancy and the health of the baby, I am the world's absolute worst worrier. Considering I was already a nervous wreck wondering if there was some birth defect monster waiting to pounce, her hesitation on my child's brain did nothing to ease my fears. When the doctor came in, I immediately asked her what the problem was. She said that they had seen two bilateral choroid plexus cysts in the baby's brain. Brain?! Cysts?! PANIC! PANIC! PANIC!

Before I could go into total meltdown, she explained that these cysts are sometimes seen in early ultrasounds and may be a normal stage of development, as they usually disappear by 24 weeks. Not a comfort. She said cysts in brain. Need explanation. She went on to say that the cysts were actually in the choroid plexus, a conduit which carries spinal fluid to the brain, not in the brain itself. While some children with birth defects do exhibit these cysts, she had seen nothing to indicate any problem with the baby, no "soft markers", no clenched fists, nothing. She was completely convinced that these would disappear within the next few weeks and, if they didn't, they would not cause a healthy baby any developmental problems or mental defects that she knew of.

At this point, I'm pretty freaked out because I just hear the bad, not the good. Harvey, luckily, only hears and believes the positive things that she says. They prepped me for the amnio, stuck me like a pig, and I hated every minute of it. It's not a painful procedure, but it is extremely uncomfortable. Like someone just kicked you in the stomach. She drew out the fluid, said it looked good and they would let me know the results as soon as they had them - in 10 days to two weeks. Excuse me? How long do I have to fret, worry, and think of every horrible scenario my twisted little mind can conceive? Two whole weeks! You must be kidding...

Has she put on some weight?

Well, here we go again...As you can see from the photo to the left, I've gained a little bit of weight in my gut. Yes, I have been eating like a castaway who's just returned to civilization after existing on bananas, coconut milk, and random sea creatures for some time, but that's not the reason for the weight gain. Okay, that's the reason for some of the weight gain, but not all of it.

We're expecting again. Not planned, but a blessing nonetheless. We're 23 weeks along and due to deliver a baby girl the first week of December. It's been a long few months due to testing, advanced maternal age issues, and various and sundry other problems that have cropped up, but we're hoping that the worst is behind us.

I thought that being pregnant at 40 was a challenge, but so far being pregnant at 42 is seriously kicking my booty. I'm going to document all of the ups and downs of this pregnancy here and will keep anyone who's interested updated on things as they move along. I'll post more details of the saga later, but wanted to get this post out there while I still had the energy to do it.