Updates

**I can't figure out how to get the new format to show my paragraph separation, so this post may be annoying to read (other than just the poor writing!) because it is like a giant run-on paragraph**I had intended to document some of this pregnancy, but just haven't had the time. Or maybe it is that I am still a little nervous- certainly not in nearly the same way as last time, but still nervous about getting lucky twice in a row. It really just isn't my style. I guess not all is going perfectly or I would be more nervous. My husband will likely be furloughed (laid off in airlline terms) if another merger goes through. That would be very bad as I would then have to go back to work full time and miss watching my children grow up. They do grow up so fast and after going through what I did to have them, I don't want to miss a second. It is time I will never get back. I guess if I have to go back to work, I will be able to look at it as just plain being lucky to have them at all even if I only see them for a few hours a day. So, I am still pregnant and will be 30 weeks along on Friday. It has gone so much faster this time than the last, probably because I am so insanely busy at work even though I am only working 3 days per week. Sometimes it feels like more just because I am a single mom for most of the week since my husband is gone for 4 days at a time these days. I am not supposed to lift anything because I still have placenta previa, but that is obviously impossible when we have no family here to help and I am alone so much. I have been contracting a lot in the afternoon on the days I work, so it is then hard to come home and try to take care of my son. I also just found out I failed my glucose test and have to go back on Friday (my 40th birthday!) for a 3-hour glucose test. I hope I pass it because my diet is already very limited by the gluten/dairy free thing. Plus, I love candy. So far, the baby has looked good in the ultrasounds and is a mover. She is starting to accumulate a small wardrobe, but we still don't know where we will put her. Our dilemma is that we have 3 wonderful kitties, but one is mean to the one of the others so one has to be kept in her own room (a.k.a. the new baby's nursery). She has been urinating on the carpet pretty much any time the newest one (the one we call our "IVF baby" because we got him during the 2ww of our 2nd failed IVF) comes near her. We are at our wits end because we live in an 1100 sq ft condo on the 2nd floor and have NO space for anything, no garage and we our extremely underwater and can't move unless we foreclose. It is causing me great anxiety. I want the quarantined kitty to have a good life, but it would be next to impossible to find a new home for a 12 year old cat with anxiety issues :( And the other two really can't be separated as they are joined at the hip. Ugh. I know, if were still waiting for my miracle babies I would be taking this kind of stress ANY day over the stress I was under trying to get pregnant. It is a hard place to be in sometimes because I don't want to complain, but there are still stressors once you have kids they are just very different. More annoying than life threatening (to me, infertility was truly life threatening) I guess, but still there. I am a very lucky girl. I just hope my luck holds out and I can get my son's sister here safely. I will try to update a little more for anyone reading, but I am guessing most people end up on this blog by accident or are searching for a way to get or stay pregnant and don't care to read about parenting. I didn't much care to read about parenthood back when I was in the trenches, so I completely understand. I just want people to know how things turned out. If I could help even one person have his/her miracle baby by learning from what we have done I would be so happy. Please, please, please leave a comment if any of the information has been helpful to you. It would make my journey even more worth it in the end.

Why do people care?

I am not quite sure why people feel the need to ask if your c-section is necessary. I don't ask them if they should really be doing a vaginal birth or natural birth etc. It is really none of my business (or theirs). The same busybodies who make women feel guilty for not breastfeeding seem to be the same who feel the need to tell you why you should do a vaginal birth vs. a c-section. The reality is that the risk of death and complications is virtually the same, though you will not see this on any website promoting "natural" anything. The reality is that it should be the patient's informed choice and not dictated by an insurance company or the government. For many who have had multiple miscarriages or a stillbirth, getting a live baby at the end of it all is the primary goal. In my own situation, I just wanted to get my baby here alive and well and fast, before complications had time to occur. After losing 4 pregnancies and working as hard as I did to achieve this pregnancy I was not about to end up going through a long and stressful (for myself AND my baby) labor. I wanted my child out as quickly as possible even knowing the risks (albeit small) of major surgery. Why do the "pro-vaginal birthers" feel that their opinion is the only one that counts. These are the same women who supposedly promote choice for women and here they are telling other women that it the worst thing that could happen to you is to have a c-section. I think it would be worse to lose my baby, but maybe that is just me... They often argue that women have been giving birth naturally for 500,000 years. Have they ever noticed that prior to modern medicine (including the ability to perform c-sections), the death rate during childbirth was up to 40%.

I guess it comes down to the fact that many of us who worked very hard to achieve our pregnancies do not obsess over something as trivial as thinking we must "experience" vaginal delivery. The more important thing is a healthy baby no matter how we deliver it, don't you think? I think pregnancy was amazing enough, I don't feel the need to "experience" anything but raising my child.

Just had to get that out there...

Oh, and for the record, I was fortunate (though I wouldn't really call it that fortunate!) enough to have had a previous uterine surgery that allowed my doctor to "let" me have a c-section. He would have let me try a vaginal birth, but I just wanted to meet my little boy. And I did.

still here...

Wow. I can't believe I haven't posted in a month! I have the holidays and in-laws to blame. Not going into detail but suffice it to say that I am happy the holidays are over. incredible news is that I am almost 14 weeks pregnant. And it's a girl just like my hunch told me:) More on that later. I am still waiting on the genetic screen to even think about all of this.I would write more now, but I have to be up early for work. It is getting harder to find clothes that hid the start of a little bump. Typing is keeping my husband awake so more later. It is also hard to type from my new phone. Hope there are still a few people reading along!

Didn't mean to leave you hanging...

Sorry I have not updated. Part of it is that I haven't had a lot of time, but the other part is that I am still not sure what to make of this pregnancy. I had an ultrasound last Monday after not having a lot of symptoms and the baby was still there and measuring 8w6d with a heart rate in the 160s. I was STUNNED as I did not know that it was possible to be pregnant and have nausea disappear suddenly. My other symptoms (heartburn, fatigue, a little breast tenderness) were still there, but I figured it was the progesterone that I am taking.

So, now I have made it a whole week and I am getting concerned again that the baby will no longer be there. I am way better than I was when I was pregnant with my son, but the crappy thing about repeated pregnancy loss is that it sucks the sheer joy that you should feel out of the pregnancy. It is so unfair. I listen to people who had no trouble getting pregnant talk and after their 8-week ultrasound (or even just after they pee on a stick) they talk about their baby as someone who will be here soon needing all sorts of baby things. Anyone who has experienced a pregnancy loss or especially multiple losses can probably relate to the feeling I have that pregnancy becomes a terrifying game of life or death and there is no guarantee that a bouncing live baby will be the end result.

I will be 10 weeks on Wednesday and I have been having a hard time bonding with this baby. I have hardly talked to her like I used to with my son (yes, I said "her" because I just have a hunch). I am never sure if she is there for sure so it is hard to spend time talking with her. I don't love her any less than any of my other 5, I guess I am just scared. I am almost 40 years old so the "less than 5% chance of miscarriage after seeing the heartbeat" doesn't really apply to me. I also have the additional label of a 'repeated pregnancy loser' so that ups the chances of another loss. For as hard as it was initially for me to hear that I was pregnant this time, it is going to be a devastating loss if this baby is not still alive on Wednesday. I was just listening to the song, "Gone Too Soon," by Daughtry and it made me so sad for all of my losses and the idea that I could lose yet another one. The song had a video with it (it was posted on a blog I read) and it was the kind of thing anyone, losses or not, would need a box of tissue for.

Anyway, I will update again soon and let you know how Wednesday goes. I am supposed to do an intralipid infusion with my RE and then I go to my regular ob for my 10-week check-up. I still can't believe that they hand out those backpacks with coupons and give you a folder about choosing a hospital at that appointment. That is just crazy to me. I at least talked them into doing the ultrasound first for me before putting me through the whole spiel about the pregnancy. My friend went in for her 8 week appointment and sat through the whole spiel and then did the ultrasound and found out it was a blighted ovum. She was so upset, rightly so.

I guess I should get back to writing my holiday cards and getting them ready to send out. I swear I am not going to get them finished this year!!!!

So much for that...

So, I have had pink spotting off and on since last Sunday and then yesterday my nausea was gone and it is not back today. Spotting + sudden loss of symptoms= something generally not good. I am not totally surprised as I had felt that something was not right from the start. My doctor is going to squeeze me in hopefully tomorrow for an ultrasound. Luckily he does not dismiss my concerns and make me wait until my 10-week ultrasound. If I need a D&C I need to get it planned asap. My husband and I work pretty much opposite days so I need to figure out how we will schedule a surgery. I need to have it done before all of our out of town guests arrive on the 21st. We have several holiday parties to work around, too. My work CANNOT find out about this pregnancy. Funny, just a few days ago I was trying to figure out how I would get away with not drinking at our holiday work party and now I am thinking that I may very well NEED to get drunk at the party! I hate to sound nonchalant about a pregnancy loss, but when you get to number 5 it starts to become sadly routine. Of course I am always sad, but if I focused on all of these losses I would never get out of bed in the morning. Fortunately, my son is like an alarm clock and would never allow me to stay in bed. He is the reason I am able to get out of bed in the first place. If this loss had occurred before he was born, I would not be able to even describe the devastation. Right now, all I can allow myself to focus on is the fact that I am so fortunate to have him at all. Sadly, there are so many people out there still trying so hard to even see those two pink lines or get "the call" from the adoption agency.

It is real now.

Well, it's official. The baby grew by a week since the last ultrasound almost a week ago and it had a heart rate in the 150s. I was even given a due date and told to make an appointment with my regular ob/gyn. I am totally freaked out at the thought of telling my ob. He is going to freak that I am back already and pregnant. Hopefully I will be way less crazy. This pregnancy is already wildly different from my first. Once you have given birth it is different because you know it is possible. My anxiety lies more now with the baby staying. I just can't wrap my head around having two children 16 months apart.

I am tired and nauseous, so I am going to sign off... will update later. I have an intralipid treatment tomorrow morning.

Terrified.

I am terrified that this pregnancy won't last, but at the same time I am terrified that it will. I didn't know it was possible to feel such wildly conflicting emotions. I am sure there are a million people standing in line to smack me for saying that. I am absolutely grateful to have gotten pregnant again so quickly this time, but having a very busy 8 month old is hard and I cannot imagine having another child so soon. I am still adjusting the sheer amount of work it takes to raise a child while working part-time and having a husband who is out of state several nights per week. I have lost myself a bit, which I thought would never happen to me. And just as I am starting to look for myself again I feel as though I have disappeared. I do realize that this is somewhat temporary and just as I think I can't handle it, something will change. I just hope that holds true.

My body is already changing 6 weeks into this pregnancy, which also scares me. And then on top of that, I am going to be 40 by the time this baby would be born.

OMG! Is this what a midlife crisis feels like?? I thought I would feel like I had more control over my life after having a child after such a long struggle with infertility, but that is soooo not the case! I also feel extreme guilt for admitting this is hard. I mean, I am getting exactly what I wanted, right?? I sure hope this is just the pregnancy hormones wreaking havoc...