And finally...an update!

On this day it seems appropriate to finally post an update. Two years ago today we found out that our baby, Bear, at 19 weeks was no longer alive. We made plans to deliver him and then spent the next two years dealing with his loss. I'm still dealing with it. Every day.

I last posted when I was still pregnant with pregnancy #3. I stopped posting because I was just so terrified and that's all I had to write about. It was okay when I was just sad, but for some reason the terror of losing another pregnancy late had me completely messed up. I was certain that I would never see that baby. Absolutely certain. I knew that I would be sad and dealing with yet another loss. I had no other way to feel. It was impossible to be excited or sure that I would have a baby. I couldn't process that it might actually happen. Even during labor I had a hard time. It wasn't until he was born via c-section after 36 long hours that I realized I was having a baby. He was there. And the words every mom wants to hear--he was PERFECT. Absolutely perfect. I am finally a mom to a baby here on earth. It's amazing and wonderful and so very fulfilling.

Jameson John was born on 10/27/12 at 2:26 in the afternoon and weighed 8 pounds, 14.7 ounces. The Ceserean was necessary because my water broke and my labor wasn't progressing. After 36 hours the doctor told me I had no choice. The c section was pretty rough and it turned out Jameson was sort of stuck in my pelvis-which is why my labor didn't progress.

I would like to talk about all of the awesome joys and challenges of parenting-but I'll be back another day to do that. Right now, it's about Bear. Even finally having a baby in my life I still think about Bear. I'll put Jameson in an outfit that was meant for Bear and I tell Jameson about it. I explain to him that he's wearing a special outfit that belonged to his brother. I cry. I get mad and I still hurt. But I'm also grateful. Jameson is perfect. I wouldn't have had him without all of this heartache. I would have had a different baby. A 19 month old by now. A baby with special needs. It's interesting because my husband has always mourned a "perfect" baby. I've always mourned the baby I actually carried. Bear. With T21. An extra chromosome that would have made him special. I mourn that. I'm sure it would have been tough being a mom to a kid with special needs. I'm sure we would have struggled with the decision to have any more kids after that. I'm grateful that Jameson is perfect, which makes me feel guilty too. It's so crazy all of the emotions that come with this! It absoultely helps to have a happy, healthy baby. But it definitely doesn't make it 100% better.

I'm so grateful for every moment of the last 2 1/2 years. I carried 3 babies. Only one made it, but I still think about the other 2 often. I know that the pain and struggle of this process is helping me appreciate every exhausting moment of taking care of a newborn. I LOVE being a mom. Jameson smiles when I walk into the room and my heart melts. Without the struggle would the reward have been so sweet? I don't know, but I do know it's not fair. Even though I appreciate every moment and love my baby with every ounce of my being--I hate that it came at a cost. That two other babies had to not be here on earth with me to get to this point. Human reproduction sucks. That's just it. My first ob/gyn told me that "pregnancy is inefficient." At the time he really pissed me off. But now I get it. I've heard so many stories of loss and heartache and have seen that this type of thing is actually normal. The people who have it easy and can pop out kids with no problems and no issues--they are the ones that are abnormal. Seriously. 1 in 4 people have a miscarriage. That's a lot of people. And on top of that don't even get me started on the non-miscarriages but millions of things that can go wrong during a pregnancy. The EIF, positive risk screens, etc. So many things to deal with.

Ahhh...so there it is. I'm alive and well and parenting a super happy 4 month old. Want to see some pictures? Of course you do! Here they are :)!



Here is Jameson at 4 months and one week old! Super happy kiddo!


This picture with the crown is Jameson's newborn photo.  He was about 2 weeks old!  The photo below is on his 4 month birthday!

This picture was at about 3 months.

Yes, life is good.  But it's also bittersweet isn't it?

It's a.....BOY

Sorry to wait so long between posts! May is a busy time for me at work and I didn't have much spare time at work or at home!

We had our 20 week ultrasound on June 4th with a specialist. The day started out pretty crappy. I had scheduled our appointment 8 weeks prior. I had it listed as 11:30a.m. in my phone. J and I were up and ready to go pretty early and were just waiting to leave. At about 10:20, right before we were planning on leaving, I received a phone call from my regular OB's office. They said that we no showed on our ultrasound and wanted to know what was going on. I explained that our appointment was at 11:30 and we weren't late. So I ended up having to call the specialist and we argued for a few minutes about the time. Finally I said "there's no way I would deliberately miss this appointment. At this point it doesn't matter what time it was supposed to be, we need to know if we can be seen." They said if we could get there right away they would try to fit us in. We live like 45 minutes away so we rushed out the door and made it in about 30 minutes. Yeah, we might have sped a bit!!

Once we arrived they got us right in. At that point J and I were cranky, I was crying and we were so stressed. So to begin with this experience wasn't quite what I would have chosen for us!

Right away the Dr. said he saw the HB and my anxiety dropped a few notches. We found out we lost Bear at our anatomy ultrasound and I think we were both expecting bad news. I just knew that things were going to be bad and we were going to go home sad. But, I was wrong. The baby's heart was still beating. The Dr. also said right away he didn't see boy parts. He ended up being wrong though I guess. He said the baby was in a really bad position. He was breech, and he was squished up against my placenta (which is still in the wrong place) and uterus and it was hard to get a good angle. So ultimately he decided he thought he saw a scrotum and a penis. So we are going for boy at this point!

Of course, nothing can just be all good. I so wanted 100% good news with no worries. I didn't get it. I still have placenta previa where my placenta is completely covering my cervix. It hasn't moved at all since week 12 and might have gotten a bit worse. I'm just going to be excited that it means more ultrasounds for monitoring. We go back in 8 weeks to recheck. I guess if it doesn't move we are looking at a Csection. I'm terrified of a Csection, but will endure what I need to in order to get my little guy out!

So finally, the doctor starts checking out the heart. He indicates that there is a "bright spot" or an echogenic focus on the heart. He immiediately says "This can raise the odds for a DS pregnancy." My heart dropped. We've been through this. We've had a DS pregnancy. We lost our T21 baby and are devestated about the loss. I couldn't believe we might have to go through something like that again. The Dr. said the nurse could recalcuate our odds from our integrated screening. So the odds went from 1 in 3100 to 1 in 1900. I know it seems crazy to continue to worry with odds that great, but I just can't help it. After being the ONE (two times in a row), it's hard to imagine fate passing us by and letting us be one of the 1900.

The doctor was in a hurry and wanted to leave for the day. I did feel like it was a little rushed. He left the room left me to get dressed. When I came back out he was back in the room and said he just realized I would be a good candidate for the Harmony test, which they were just starting to offer. In fact if I agreed I would be their first patient, because they didn't even have the paperwork or anything yet. They were going to figure all of that out and get back to me.

At first I was eager to get that done. J sort of talked me out of it though and I think he's right. We are now committed to this pregnancy. We are 21 weeks. I could not live with myself if I terminated a baby at 21 weeks. It would be even later by the time we did the test and got the results. So by then we might be out of the range of termination anyway. But even so, we had already decided not to terminate. I was willing to carry any baby as long as I could. Whether it had a fatal prenatal diagnosis or abnormal chromosomes we were committed. So the test would only give us more to worry about. If there were more health issues involved or more soft markers maybe we would do testing, but at this point he looks healthy. Often the EF is nothing. Tons of babies have it and are born just fine. The research I've done looks like between 5-10% of babies have this. The DS connection comes in becuase up to 30% of DS babies have the EF. But it's not a direct connection. Babies with and WITHOUT DS have this EF. So I'm hoping that the screening bloodwork works for us just like it did with Bear. With Bear it came out positivie and he did have DS. I'm hoping that with this LO it came out negative and those results will turn out to be spot on!

Now I just need to get through 19 more weeks :)!

I'm crazy

My doctor tried to temper my "crazy" a bit today. I had an appoinment just less than 2 weeks ago for a yeast infection. She suggested I push my appointment back that I had today and I told her I wanted to come in since I was getting ready to travel to Colorado and becuase we are in the time frame in terms of weeks when we lost Bear. She let me come in mostly because of the travel I think.

Well today I saw her, the baby's HB was 150 and everything looks okay. She told me to come back in 4 weeks, or to just make an appointment on the same day I see the perinatologist (3 weeks) if I wanted to combine appointments. I asked her if I could come in before our perinatologist appointment. She explained that there was no need and that I should be coming in every 4 weeks. I tried to explain to her my stress level and how crazy I was about the baby being okay at this point. With Bear I had an appointment at 16+ weeks, got the 2nd tri bloodwork and received a phone call around 18 weeks about the bloodwork being positive. We had the Level 2 ultrasound at 19 weeks. At that appointment we found out we had already lost him. So somewhere between 16+ weeks and 19 weeks our baby died. I am now 17 weeks and going crazy with concern. My doctor tried to explain that there was a specific reason (T21) that we lost the baby and that this baby looks fine so far. She quoted me my first trimester screen results and tried to reassure me. I appreciated her reassurance but also was stressed about the fact that she kind of almost dismissed my stress level. I get that she was honestly trying to be helpful, but good first trimester screen results don't mean crap. The baby can still die. There are a thousand things that can go wrong. I follow many BLM blogs and I've read many things about why people lose babies. It's not always genetic. There's still the 1% chance something could go wrong. And having been the less than 1% chance in the past I feel like I'll always be THE ONE. So anyway the whole point of this is that she urged me to visit in 3 weeks when I see the perinatologist. She basically said that if my crazy got the better of me in the meantime I could call the office and schedule an appointment to hear the HB.

So anyway. I'm still convinced something bad will happen. I'm just totally convinced. I fly to Colorado on Wed. morning. I'm half convinced the plane will crash. I'm never scared of flying, but all of the sudden for this trip I'm terrified. I'm so scared that now I have what I want we will both go down with the plane. Dumb huh? I was an aviation major with a pilot's license in college. I'm not scared of flying at all. Yet all of the sudden I'm terrified. I'm definitely going to overcome my fear and take the trip, but goodness all of this fear isn't good for me. So then I'm scared we will lose the baby really late to some cord accident or something. Or the placenta previa won't go away and will cause problems. Then I imagine we will actually have the baby but lose him to an infection or illness. I've become obsessed with stories of whooping cough and some herpes meningitis thing. I don't have whooping cough and have been vaccinated, but I'm worried about other people. I don't have herpes, but read this story about mom's who had their babies and then they got super sick within a week or two and ended up with some crazy form of herpes that inhabits the nervous system and causes all kinds of problems for babies. Most people have HSV1 (cold sore type herpes), I don't think I actually have it since I've never had a cold sore in my life, but what if I have a dormant version that ends up killing the baby? Or what if my family has it and kisses the baby? Or what about SIDS? I've been reading more and more stories of losses due to SIDS. Yes, I'm crazy. I just can't imagine a happy outcome. I can imagine multiple ways we could lose this sweet little baby, but my mind will not let me imagine a happy ending with him cuddling in my arms and smiling up at me. Does this make me crazy? Or just a mom who has had some bad luck?

In less crazy news I'm convinced that this baby is a boy. J is also. So won't we be surprised when it's a little girl LOL? Boy or girl we've decided on a nursery theme! J wanted animals. He said that it's a good way for the kids to start learning animals. I just hate the idea of those stupid cutsey zoo animals all over the place (no offense to anyone who has zoo animal nurseries LOL). So I googled animal themes and found some adorable woodland/forest nursery sets. Soooo cute. J and I love to hike, backpack and climb mountains so it's perfect for us! So excited. Also J's parents offered to purchase the nursery furniture for us which is a HUGE expense! So that's awesome.

I keep thinking I'll commit more fully after the 20 week ultrasound. I need to see that the baby is fine, that there aren't any obvious issus on the ultrasound before I can commit. I need to know if it's a boy or a girl so we can start thinking of names. I need to get past the point when we lost Bear so I can give my heart to this baby instead of wishing that we had Bear. It's hard and I don't know how many people get it, but a new pregnancy doesn't replace the lost baby. It almost makes it harder. I wanted Bear. I still do. I'm still sad. I'm crying as I write this. I love the new baby, but can't commit my entire heart to him until I know for sure he wil live. Which is dumb becuase it's not fair. This baby deserves every ounce of love I have to give. I hope that at the 20 week ultrasound no matter what happens I can figure all of that out. J and I have decided to commit to this pregnancy either way. Now if only I could figure out how to actually do that!

16 Weeks

I just wanted to post a quick note so you knew I was still doing okay! We are 16+ weeks now and everything is still looking okay. I have to go in for my 2nd blood draw for the risk screening this week and I'm sort of anxious. That's how we found out there was going to be a problem with Bear. So this part makes me nervous. On top of that sometime between 16 and 19 weeks is when we lost Bear. So I'm going to be a mess these next few weeks.

I saw my doctor last week for a yest infection and she said I could cancel my appointment I had coming up on the 14th. I explained to her that I would prefer to be seen again for a couple of reasons. One, I'm getting really nervous. I need to hear that heart beat. And second, I'm going out of town to Colorado for a conference and want to make sure everything is okay before I get on a plane. She was kind of noncommittal and just told me to do what I wanted. She's really not great with bedside manner, but I'll give her a break on that because she really seems to know what she's doing.

I do have a home doppler, but I never feel super confident with it. I do hear the heartbeat on it, but then second guess myself and tell myself it was my own HB, or the placenta or whatever. Not sure why I do that. I'm also not really sure if I'm feeling movement or not yet. It's kind of hard to tell if it's digestion or movement. Hopefully in a few weeks it will be obvious.

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that we get a baby in October. I still can't imagine that it will for real happen. I'm just holding my breath waiting for it all to get snatched away from me.

Can't stop crying!

Got our test results from the doctor today that combined the neck fold measurement and the blood work.

Risk for T21 1 in 1,100
Risk for T18 1 in 10,000

I am in my office at work and seriously cannot stop crying. My husband and I were both convinced we would get back crappy results that would require more agonizing and stress and decision making. Instead we get about the best odds you can get at my age.

I need to let go and just be happy. Well of course I can always stress about the second trimester screen, or maybe the placenta previa....or how about the other things that don't show up on an NT scan....someone save me from myself.

13 Weeks!

Last week we had our NT scan at 12 weeks 2 days. It went well. I really liked the doctor doing the scan and was very confident in him. He was compassionate, caring and kind. More than I could ask for in a doctor. He spent a ton of time with us because the baby wasn't in a good position to get the measurements. He ultimately came up with an NT measurement of 1 (which is great) and was never able to see the face well enough to find a nasal bone. He did check something with the heart that he said looks great. He said usually babies with T21 have some sort of wave form issue in the heart. So he checked it out and said it looked good.

Today I get the results of the blood test combined with the NT scan. I'm a little nervous, mostly becuase with Bear that's how we knew something was wrong. I never got the NT scan with him, just blood work.

The doctor told us several times that everything looked good and he didn't see anything to worry about. He urged me to stick with screening tests rather than diagnostic if I could handle not knowing for sure. He said that the NT, blood screens and 20 week scan should really give us a good picture of anything that might be wrong.

Even if something is wrong J and I had a coversation that no matter what happens we are committed to this baby. I admit we had thoughts of terminating for medical reasons in the past, but after what happened with Bear we both know we couldn't go through with it. I loved Bear. Even though he had an extra chromosome, I still loved him. I would have carried him another 19 weeks if I could have just to let him know how much I cared. So we will do whatever is needed and raise whatever baby the universe has given us. I feel pretty at peace with this decision and happy that we made it together. I think J has a bit more stress and anxiety over it, as he is a teacher and deals with special needs all day. I get that, but I'm glad he knows that I couldn't live with myself if we terminated. I think back to what happened with Bear and how depressed I was. Imagine if I'm the one that made the decision to end my baby's life, rather than fate. I just think the depression would have been a thousand times worse. I seriously may not have survived it. I do get why people make those decisions though and don't judge anyone else for making it. For me this is the right decision.

Hopefully it won't matter. I hope we will get our totally normal, totally genetically fine baby at 40 weeks in October!

I did find out why I was bleeding at 9 weeks though. Apparently I have placenta previa. A condition where the placenta is covering the cervix. Any trauma can cause bleeding and can be potentially harmful to both me and the baby. So no "intercourse" (as the doctor calls it), and no pelvic exams until we get our week 20 exam to see if it's taken care of itself. I guess it usually fixes itself and goes away, but sometimes it stays over the cervix. If that happens I'll need a C section and there are some risks of bleeding and needing a transfusion. I hope it will just right itself and leave no need to worry!

20 week ultrasound is scheduled for June 4th. It seems far away, and not that far away both at the same time!!

10 Weeks

So everything turned out mostly just fine last week. Let me explain.

Good news: Had an ultrasound. Baby was measuring 9 weeks 1 day (1 day ahead) and had a strong heart beat of 174. The spotting must have been from the pap or something.

Bad news: I told the OB/Gyn I wasn't feeling well and listed my symptoms. She suggested I had the flu and just take it easy. Well taking it easy sounds like good advice, but I had been running a fever for 2 days at that point and of course I had been looking on the internet about how fevers can affect your unborn child and there are lots of negative things out there. So on day 5 of the fever I saw my primary care doctor who prescribed me an antibiotic because on top of the flu I had bronchitis. She wanted me to call the OB/Gyn and make sure they were okay with the antibiotic. So I called them and they said they would call me back. It's now 5 days later and they never called me back so I'm going to have to call them today. As well as things had been going with this new doctor now I'm kind of annoyed they couldn't return a simple phone call.

Anyway, I'm still sick with a cough and am up basically all night hacking. I'm exhausted, my voice sounds like a dead horse and I came to work today because I've been off for a week and am afraid they might replace me.

So...things turned out okay with the baby, but this illness, the fever and all the tylenol and Mucinex I've been taking give me just one more long list of things I'm now worried about :)!

April 11th is our NT scan! I'm hoping that goes awesome and I can start to relax and maybe even announce this pregnancy at work and to the rest of my family and friends!