Our Family of Six Becomes Seven

For those of you not on facebook that may have missed the announcement, our family had a new addition early Saturday morning. 

This has come as a surprise to quite a few people.  I thought I’d post some pictures and write up a quick review of the last nine months as well as her labor.

I kept this pregnancy to myself for a lot of reasons.  Mostly, I just needed to keep this private.  My reasons are multifaceted and because I needed to keep my feelings to myself, I don’t intend to spill my guts now.  The reasons for keeping the pregnancy to myself remain the same so I will continue to keep my feelings to myself for the most part.

 

That being said, there are a lot of things I can and am happy to share.  So here are the parts I want to share:

Mike and I went to the first ultrasound at 17 weeks.  My doctor’s appointment was immediately following the ultrasound.  I found it interesting that the tech kept asking me if I had an appointment with my doctor afterwards.  After she asked the third time I finally said, “Is something wrong with the baby?”  She told me that as far as she could tell, everything was fine with the baby—she just wanted to confirm that I did have an appointment.  When the doctor came in I was prepared to hear something was wrong so it wasn’t too surprising when he confirmed that something was wrong, though, thankfully not with the baby.  The doctor told me I had placenta previa.  My doctor had such a way of putting my mind at ease throughout this entire pregnancy.  He told me not to be worried unless the placenta hadn’t moved by 35 weeks or I started bleeding.  I had heard of placenta previa but wasn’t sure exactly what it meant.  A quick internet search showed that it had the potential to be a serious situation and could even be life-threatening.  Of course I was anxious about it and my mind immediately thought of all the horrible things that could happen—bedrest, hemorrhaging, early delivery, etc.  I didn’t actually think anything life threatening would happen so I never allowed myself to think of the worst case scenario.  We just prayed about it and I tried to keep the doctor’s words in my mind so I didn’t get too worried.  I began bleeding off and on a few weeks later and I got pretty worried but it was never enough to freak me out.  The doctor scheduled ultrasounds for every three weeks and by 27 weeks the placenta had moved out of the way and the bleeding stopped. 

At this particular ultrasound I was prepared to see my doctor after and have him tell me everything was good now that the placenta had moved but unfortunately he gave me more bad news.  The placenta had moved so I no longer had that worry over my head but now they had discovered a cyst on the baby’s ovary.  Again, he did a pretty good job of reassuring me and putting my mind at ease.  I really had very little information about cysts on a baby’s ovaries so I had no idea what to expect.  He told me that if the cyst grew they would perhaps need to do surgery immediately following delivery to make sure the cyst didn’t burst or get so big that she would lose her ovary or fallopian tube.  More ultrasounds were scheduled and in the weeks between each ultrasound we just did a lot of praying and hoping that it would all end up being fine.  The following ultrasounds showed that the cysts hadn’t grown at all—it was still 2 cm.  While we had hoped it would just magically disappear, we were relieved to know that it wasn’t growing at all, eliminating the possibility of her having to have surgery.  Instead, the pediatrician just has to watch the cyst for the next few months to make sure it dissolves on it’s own now that she is no longer receiving my hormones. 

Fast forward to this past Thursday.  I went in for my 37 week checkup.  I was only dilated to a 2 and wasn’t effacing at all.  I went home assuming that I would not be having the baby early.  However when I woke up to go to the bathroom that early morning (3:45am) I noticed some bloody show and my mucus plug fall out and began feeling pretty crampy.  My mind kept racing as I considered what things I needed to do in case I was to go into labor.  Who would I call if I went into labor while the boys were at school?  Who would I ask to watch Eli for me if I went into labor while the boys were at school?  What would I do about Isaac’s play date he had scheduled for the next day?  I finally fell back to sleep around 5:30 am only to have Mike wake up at 6:00 to get ready for work.  I told him to keep his phone on him in case I needed him.  I got up and went about my day as normal as possible.  I was still bleeding a little off and on and very crampy.  The contractions were definitely harder than they had been and seemed more consistent than normal but I’d had frequent contractions for weeks.  I had experienced “episodes” of contractions that were as close as every 6 minutes but I would always wake up the next morning still pregnant so I generally just ignored the contractions and worried I wouldn’t know when I was actually in labor.  So even though the contractions were consistent throughout the day, they didn’t increase in frequency or intensity at all. 

I got up and got breakfast for the boys, made lunches, got them to school, came home and showered, invited a friend to come over with her kids so Eli could have a play date, got two birthday presents ready for the following day (the boys had birthday parties to attend), picked up the boys, took Isaac to his play date, made dinner, did the dishes, etc.  It was all in all a very normal day.  I wondered if something would happen but couldn’t see any change from the following morning at 3:45 am so I just tried to keep things as normal as possible. 

Around 8 pm that night (Friday) I was on the phone with my friend discussing plans for a lunch date the following day when Eli rolled off of our exercise ball and whacked his head on the floor.  He immediately started bleeding.  I quickly hung up and Mike and I inspected the injury and decided he had to go to the ER for possible stitches.  Truthfully, I was trying not to cry.  I was so exhausted from the day and the contractions and felt pretty miserable and now one of us had to take Eli to the hospital.  Of course I didn’t start crying because that would have just made everything worse for Eli.  We all helped him find things to take to the hospital to help him be brave (his blanket, a special stuffed animal, etc) and said a prayer with him before he left.  Thankfully, Mike didn’t even assume I’d take him.  As he got in the van with Eli he said, “Please don’t go into labor while I’m gone.”  I assured him that it didn’t seem that was going to happen so it would be fine. 

At 10:45 pm he arrived back home with Eli—no stitches, just a glued forehead.  We quickly put Eli to bed and got ourselves in bed.  I started crying and told Mike I wasn’t ready to have a baby yet and told him I didn’t know what to do about all the things that needed to be done the following morning if I went into labor that night.  He said it would all be ok and that I probably wouldn’t go into labor.  It was about 11:00 when we turned out the lights.