And another one bites the dust...

Andrew and I are expecting another bundle of joy in late February or early March! Due to my previous stories (read my previous posts) we are super happy that this didn't take as long, though the timing isn't perfect. I'm hoping for a VBAC this time around. I got a new doctor and I love her! Well, I love her staff so far, I haven't met her yet.

We are working on getting finances completely in order so this is easy to deal with financially. It's going to be an interesting few months and I'm excited to see where things go from here.

The Road to Ethan's birthday.

Now that I've blogged about how I got pregnant, I figured it'd be interesting to see how I got to Ethan's birthday. The long road called pregnancy! At 16 weeks, I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes. I had been steadily losing weight so they wanted to check things out (especially since I didn't throw up my entire pregnancy). I kept my gestational diabetes under control by diet alone until I was 35-36 weeks pregnant, when I went on pills to level out my morning sugars.

We moved to Saint Louis when I was about 18 weeks and I got a new OBGYN. From the first time I met her, she had decided I was having a c-section. I believed they had my due date wrong all along (about two weeks later than it actually was) and that's why I was measuring big, but overall she was a very supportive OB and said "we'll see". She didn't like GD patients to go much past 39 weeks because of complications. At 38 weeks, I had an ultrasound. Ethan was measuring at 41 weeks + and my placenta was showing signs of dying. The choice was made for me to schedule a c-section for the next week.

On the morning of June 16th , I got up bright and early and we went to IHOP for breakfast (around 5am), my c-section was scheduled for 6:00pm. I started having bloody show and contractions about that time and knew that either way at the end of the day I was probably going to have a baby. I tried to nap and couldn't, I was so excited and in a little bit of pain. After checking into the hospital and waiting for the doc (getting the IV and all that) she came in and was very surprised to see that I was having contractions, but on we went with the c-section.

When I got into the OR, I got the spinal block, once they laid me down I became very sick and told the anesthesiologist. He gave me blood pressure medicine, saying that my blood pressure had dropped really low. When the first dose didn't help at all, he gave me a second dose. At that point I had become loopy and Andrew walked into the OR and said, "why do you have that doofy looking smile on your face?" I just laughed at him.

At 6:30pm exactly, Ethan was here! He took a gulp of amniotic fluid right before coming out and so he didn't cry right away. One quick suction and I heard him and teared up. At that point, everything happened so fast. Andrew stood up to go see him and the nurses whisked him to the other side of the room. No one bothered to show him to me. His apgar scores were 8, then 9. He was too big for the regular scale (read: too long) so they got another one out and I got to see him. It was love at first sight!

When we left the OR, I got to hold him, and he opened up his beautiful brown eyes and looked right at me. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life.

My road to Ethan

Andrew and I tried for Ethan for two years. This included learning how to take my BBT (basal body temperature), learning more about PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), learning about cervical mucus, taking Metformin, taking Clomid, and finally dieting to lose some weight. This road was so long and so hard, especially after the PCOS diagnosis and failed fertility treatments. I endured comments like "Your baby will come when you are ready", "Enjoy your childfree life now", "You'll get pregnant when you deserve it", "Just relax, it'll happen when you do". So on and so forth.

One night in tears I explained to Andrew that I thought he was going to divorce me because I couldn't have a baby. He reassured me we would have a baby, whether we adopted or whatever. We looked into adoption and into things like IVF and realized that we would have to wait for quite some time before we could afford those types of things.

So, in September I made an appointment with my PCP (primary care physician) to go back on birth control. My doctor had to cancel due to a death in the family. I was so mad, I just wanted to be on birth control to control my emotions and know that I couldn't be pregnant. I rescheduled the appointment and talked about going to planned parenthood for the birth control.

One night, Andrew and I watched Baby Mama (btw not a very funny movie for me), and I bawled and bawled and Andrew held me and told me "Someday...". Now mind you, at this point we had decided to wait until after I finished seminary (I was starting in January) to start trying again to have a baby.

The next day I was SO thirsty, like, I drank 4 glasses of water before lunch. My co-worker (who was pregnant at the time) said, "I bet you're pregnant". I laughed at her, but decided to buy a pregnancy test (i should have bought stock in them, really). I came back to work with the test, went to the bathroom POAS (peed on a stick) and thought I saw two lines...At this point, I knew that I "saw" things when looking at pregnancy tests so I packed it in my pocket and went back to our (mine and my co-workers) office. She was on the phone and I asked "Is this what I think it is?" She was like "OMG, you are pregnant!"

I wanted to call my mom first, but knew I had to call Andrew. He was in shock and didn't/couldn't say much. Next, I called my mom and she was super excited, but trying not to be.

The next several weeks were filled with worry. I had some first trimester bleeding and was put on bed rest/pelvic rest. I was terrified that my little baby was going to be gone before I could enjoy it and I did whatever I could to help. As you probably have figured out, nothing bad happened and I have my wonderful little boy!

In my next blog, I'll tell more about my pregnancy and the road to and day of Ethan's birth.

5 days or less!

We are less than a week from the c-section date for little Ethan. I'm hoping he'll come on his own before then, but it seems less than likely. This weekend we are going to keep to ourselves and try to do some stuff that is "just us" before Ethan gets here. I'm so excited for him to be here, but I also know that life is going to change and so a "just us" weekend is going to be important. I'm hoping I don't have the c-section for several reasons, but one is definitely that I want to be home more days while Andrew is off work. I may see if I can talk him into still working while I'm in the hospital so that he can take time off work while Ethan is actually at home! I'll be updating this regularly and adding pictures for friends and family to see!