The joy of motherhood

This is what pregnancy looks like at 26 weeks holding an almost 2 year old. We're progressing nicely with no complications so far. This post at CJane did say it aptly for how I feel most days while pregnant.

Now we know!

We had our gender ultrasound and found out that our house will be blessed with another little boy. They seem to be what we do well. Little is growing and making me laugh every day as his vocabulary explodes and he bosses us around. It will be interesting to see how he interacts with another little dude!

It will be nice expense-wise. We have boy stuff and now I can just replace things that were too soiled by Little to be recoverable and get some additional blankets and extras that Little still uses so that our new one will have his own. We also will be looking into getting a crib/changing station for our room so that while the baby is small and in our room we have somewhere to change him that won't disturb Little in the middle of the night (oy!).

I am enjoying this pregnancy now that I am over the sickness part for real. It literally took until about 18 weeks for me to get back to a good energy level and now I am back jogging at the gym and feeling good. I was intent on taking a picture every week during my pregnancy this time around, but there is so little development from week to week in the belly area that it is fruitless and we are taking them every 3 or 4 weeks until something really starts popping out there. Plus pregnancy hormones lead me to feel fat, not pregnant so pictures are not my favorite :).

Little just told me he is wearing his "u-e-u-e-u" shirt. BYU. Adorable I tell you!

Wait for it...Wait for it...

We are coming up on the most exciting day of this pregnancy, except the whole having the baby thing. Tomorrow we get to go and be over stressed by a mid-pregnancy ultrasound where they look for all the things that may possibly be wrong with your child in-utero and then at the the end they just happen to tell you the gender of the baby if they can find the correct parts among crossed legs and smushed face and lots of amniotic fluid. It is exciting and very stressful at the same time, I dare say that most pregnant women feel the stress of worrying whether their baby will be perfectly healthy or have some abnormality that they will deal with as a family or as parents. We pray that everything is right, and that is all we can do - and wait in excited and yet for me slightly panicked anticipation for the moment when we know that all is well with our growing baby.

Little is talking more and more every day! He now exclaims "Fix it!" or "I want more..." and his vocabulary is skyrocketing. Yes some of is very hard to understand, like last night when we were going through his bedtime routine and singing "I am a child of God" and afterwards he started saying something in a sing-song voice. It took Husband and I about 3 full minutes of laughing and trying to figure out what it was to realize he was singing "I am a child of God"! It was just in a very garbled 21 month old way. :)

It is awesome(and somewhat daunting) to think that in 20 more weeks we'll be parents times 2 and have another little person (boy or girl) to play with and chase around and learn from. I've been working on baby projects for different genders so that I'm prepared in some way for either one and have baby gifts for others in any case.

We will know more tomorrow, maybe....

Cinnamon and Sugar

Last night, spur of the moment, I decided to raid my mothers pantry and make lovely cinnamon sugar breakfast muffins. They are from the pioneer woman blog and she calls them french breakfast puffs. I decided to take the light way out of all the butter and only butter the tops and then dip them in cinnamon and sugar. They are divine and pioneer woman doesn't lie, they freeze and reheat in the microwave beautifully! Sorry no picture, it was late - I guess I'll just have to make them again! :)

We are enjoying the turn in the weather and I am finally starting not to feel like a faker when I put on a maternity sweater :). As long as it is pretty fitted - there just isn't much showing yet and I know that later I'll be grateful for that. I have felt this baby jamming since thirteen weeks every now and then and now at 16 weeks I'm finally consistently feeling movement during each day and it makes it all more exciting and real.

Any guesses on what the gender will be? We won't know for a while, but we sure are excited to find out!

Well, was that a long enough break...

I couldn't bring myself to post until the world had heard the secret I was keeping. I felt like somehow I was lying by acting like I wasn't feeling like I would rather die than stand up due to nausea. But the secret is out and No. 2 is in the slow cooker. Little and I are on house arrest due to swine flu risk and can't even go around most family members, young ones especially, because symptoms are dormant for 3 days while you are contagious and no one would know they are picking up a horrendous virus. It is especially risky for Pregnant Women and children under 2 so alas, Little and I can't go anywhere except to visit Nana and Papa and everyone has to use hand sanitizer!

Still nausea is constant and exhaustion is overwhelming, but we take it a little at a time and so far we've gotten through. I am knitting again and working on the cutest pair of leg warmers you've ever seen! And if you have the chance to go to Heindselman's yarn store in Provo, run as fast and as far as you can because you will walk away with more beautiful yarn that you "just had to have" than you thought possible.

My name is not Myrtle

Fertility is a sore subject around my house these days. I guess not really sore as much as a seriously depressing and tumultuous subject that has deeply ingrained itself in my day to day. When I go out I see pregnant people everywhere. And I have made a victory in my life - I am no longer angry at all the pregnant people - just insanely jealous and sad that it is not meant for me at this time. I love seeing all the babies and holding their sweet, tiny bodies. Sometimes it even seems as though it would be nice to take a baby home after a miraculously short gestation, without doing 9 months of work beforehand.

For me it seems as though I must put in double duty, I must go through a serious 18 month to 2 year process of finding the problem spots in my fertility and addressing them one by one. I admit I only have one point of reference for this and now the continued struggle to get pregnant and have a child. We're 7 months in and it does not seem as though it is looking up. We know (the Husband and I) that it will happen when it is meant to. But in my life I find it hard to be patient and wait for blessings to be bestowed. I want them signed, sealed, delivered - Yesterday.

Today I have an appointment to find out the next step in the process. I'll be interested to find out what I'll be in for. It could be more waiting, it could be tests, or medications, or who knows what. We'll see what happens and in the meantime I will remain, as I have heard doctors say in the past, cautiously optomistic. I will also refrain from referring to myself as Fertile Myrtle.

These little piggies

are intermittently supporting a freestanding little man as I sit here and watch him test his balance and gently remove the the few chubby fingertips from the ledge that is supporting him. He tests and then decides for the safer route of minimal support and then tests again. Two nights ago he stood for about 5 seconds two different times while distracted by my other half. We tried to get him to do it again, but this little man has his own agenda and that does not normally involve standing or walking.

He is realizing he has a freedom in standing and he has learned the words "up!" to gain access to my arms and the world from a different point of view and only today "diap!" for diaper when his little bum was rash ridden and he wanted a new diaper. He's smart I tell you, but I'll also tell you I'm his mother. He got two more teeth on Saturday, now totalling eight. It has made his grin that much harder to resist. He is growing faster than I would like. The freedom from constant holding might seem like a luxury, but when I see him exploring his independence and refusing my hand or care in an effort to find his own way I yearn for a cuddly newborn that needs touching and holding and cooing. Alas, that is not in the life plan right now, hopefully sooner rather than later but I rely on greater things than my own wishes or desires to guide my life.

I frequently kvetch to my parents about my infertility woes, and indeed they do a good job of calming me and helping me to see through my jealousy and sadness. They help me to see that with 7 children of their own, my time will come. So I realize after brief sadness when I find out about a loved ones pregnancy that I am truly excited for them and cannot wait to see their joy and offer help when they may need it. When you experience infertility these announcements of the stork seem so frequent and so vivid in your memory, but in truth they are interspersed between happiness, sadness, grieving and the mundane happenings of years passing.

My life is great because of the little piggies pictured above, and I frequently kiss them and tickle them and bring laughter to my home making my life seem that much brighter!

Shattered

I have not blogged in the past about my struggle with fertility. But I had one. I was in the evil conception/miscarriage/pregnancy loss/surgery/hormone therapy cycle for a good(see: bad or stress-filled) two years. I found out I was pregnant for the first time in early December of 2005. I was filled with excitement and could not wait to see the little one in my belly develop and grow and make me grow wide/bloated as he or she grew and eventualized out of my womb.

Of course I had anxiety of growing wider since I had been so successful at Weight Watchers, but all of that was overshadowed by the excitement of growing a little human. I finally felt what it was like to be pregnant, and although I felt REALLY pregnant I was loving it! I found out a short time later that my doctor in Texas was what he called "cautiously pessimistic" about the outcome of my pregnancy and would not give me anymore clarity than that and repeated ultrasounds to see how slow my babies heartbeat was. I could not stand the ambiguity any longer and I saw my regular OB in Utah when I went to visit. He confirmed that I would miscarry and that my baby had died at 8 weeks gestation. I valued the honesty and even though it hurt, it allowed me to plan and endure the wrestle with my emotions that was to come - after all I WAS pregnant, and I wasn't passing the tissue so maybe they were wrong! Maybe I was still going to have this beautiful baby that I had envisioned in my head. On February 21st, 2006 I miscarried and it was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. It was like labor without the result of a beautiful baby in your arms at the end, I guess it wasn't like it - it was it! I was told I had to wait 3 months to get pregnant again, even considering my Uterine Septum that was discovered during the first pregnancy. My Doctor in Utah advised against this and believed I should have surgery to correct the problem, but since I was not living in Utah and would not be under his care we followed the direction of our Doctor in Texas and tried to get pregnant again 3 months later.

I got pregnant that summer and again felt sick and very pregnant. I changed doctors because I was not comfortable with the treatment we received with the previous pregnancy. All seemed to be going well, I was growing a little baby inside me. I began to bleed at around 7 weeks and I was put on bed rest and what they call "pelvic rest" meaning Husband and I now had a purely platonic existence. Joy of joys, let me tell you! But I was ready to do whatever I had to do to protect our growing baby. The bleeding did not stop and I was sure at 12 weeks I had miscarried when I had what seemed like period bleeding, but when I went to the doctor there was our little baby on the ultrasound screen weathering the storm that was happening in my body. It seemed that there was a pocket of blood behind the placenta and that is what was causing the bleeding. It could potentially cause miscarriage because it is an abruption making it so the placenta does not function properly because it is not attached all the way.

Fear and panic overtook my existence. I had already experienced a miscarriage and I did not want to do it again. I remember calling my mom and sobbing hysterically into the phone, "Why me?! Why do I have to go through this again!" But I was reassured by my doctor that the baby was fine and we were sent to a fetal specialist to have ultrasounds every week. At 14 weeks we found out that we were having a little boy, it was abundantly clear! He was moving around and kicking and comfortably swimming in my belly. We left the doctors office with orders that we could discontinue seeing the specialist and just go with our normal doctor. The baby looked good and we happily went on our way with a video of our little one.

At my next appointment I was 16 weeks and was giddily anticipating hearing my babies heartbeat again. I lay on the exam table as my doctor gelled my stomach and placed the monitor to hear the heartbeat. She laughed a little nervously and asked if he might be hiding. But her expression was stern and there was no reassurance in it. She calmly told me that we should do an ultrasound to see if we could find out if he was turned so we couldn't hear his heartbeat. And so we both quickly went to the Ultrasound room and I sat there panicked and overwhelmed to the point that I wanted to throw up. As she sat down and placed the ultrasound wand to my stomach her face fell and she announced, "It's what I thought, your baby died." She then proceeded to show me how his tiny fragile body had no life and was collapsed at the bottom of my uterus. And I held it together until I had to speak. Husband had gone to school that day because it was supposed to be a run of the mill appointment. Now I had to call him and tell him we no longer had a baby. I dialed him on my cell phone and when he picked up I broke into a thousand pieces and could not form coherent sentences amongst my hiccuped sobs. It was a Friday morning and I was going to have to wait until Monday to be put into labor and deliver our baby, it would be September 11, 2006.

My mother flew in and stayed with us and cared for me when I returned home from the hospital. Husband was very understanding and helpful and we started going to therapy together to deal with my postpartum depression and anger. And I scheduled surgery to remove my uterine septum that Christmas while I was in Utah.

I successfully had surgery and waited three months after to try and get pregnant. I found out I was pregnant again on July 17, 2007 and I was ecstatic and panic stricken, after all, what if it happened again. I had now suffered a miscarriage and a pregnancy loss during which I could have chosen to name and bury my baby and it had torn me apart. I moved to Utah weeks later and was under the care of my regular and trusted OB. And despite bleeding for weeks and many scares I gave birth in March of 2008 to a beautiful baby boy who stole my heart!

I know this a long look into what I have experienced, but I hope that as it has helped me to know that others have experienced this, I can help others by sharing my experience. As I look forward to having more children, it still scares the pants off me! That "What if?" is always hanging around and the memories of what I have experienced come back anew when I begin to think of pregnancy and all the joy and sorrow it can bring.

Our new addition

I know what your thinking, it's the inevitable announcement - drumroll please...........

Picture Courtesy of Me

No of course I didn't just give birth and no I'm not pregnant...I got a new lamp! Why all the hype? Because I love it and I am excited about the transformation that I am trying to make in my home. I want it to be a home that is beautiful and comfortable and uniquely mine. While a lamp from Ikea may not speak "originality", the way I choose to configure and piece together my own home does, at least for me. I am the proud new owner of the Knappa hanging lamp ($24.99) and the corner of my living room looks so much more pleasant for it!