Well, shoot. I am so overdue on writing about my sweet girl.
I have two beautifully blogged pregnancies in the books for my two boys, and
finally, here I am at baby #3, and finding myself with limited time chasing
after Aaron, and working full-time. Being the youngest in my own family I know
what it is to have maybe not-so-complete things from childhood because of this
phenomenon (though, my mom is pretty awesome, and I do have pictures and such,
so it isn’t like I have nothing from childhood.)
Part of why I haven’t written as well is that this pregnancy
has been by far my most difficult. My
posts about Noah and Aaron are more flowery and up-beat, whereas I have to be
honest and say that I keep trying to write posts, and then feel bad because I
am basically sitting here complaining a whole lot. I don’t want to be
inauthentic in what this experience is like. And want to be very clear in
stating that no matter what I feel physically, or the emotional toll of what I
am facing, I am so over the top stinking excited about this girl. I cannot wait
to look into her eyes, snuggle her, play with her, and take care of her. She is
a dream come true for me, and I am over the moon excited to have her part of
our family.
So, what’s been going on?
First trimester was rough. Really rough. I threw up a lot. I
had morning sickness with the boys, but it was manageable. It was more of a
blood sugar thing for me. As long as I gorged myself on food, I was ok and
could get through. I had snacks stashed everywhere. Next to the bed, in the
bathroom for middle of the night pee-breaks (which Chris thought was so gross),
in my car, in my desk at work, you get the idea. I was constantly eating. I was
picky too…I ate only what was so good to me that I couldn’t turn it down. All
of that was more or less true with this pregnancy, but man, I would find a
favorite thing, and it would work for a few days until I threw it up, and then
was on to trying to find the next thing. And, once I started throwing up, I
couldn’t stop. One night I threw up eight times in a row before finally just
going to sleep. Seriously. Chris was out of town for work, and I was trying to
take care of Aaron who was really taking care of me, truth be told, as a 3 year
old. Guilty, guilty, guilty… He was right there next to me as I threw up,
saying in his little boy voice “you got it all up Mom?” I finally had to call
my sister-in-law to take him so I could just go pass out. It was bad. The good
news is that they have much better drugs for morning sickness than what they
had a few years ago when I was last pregnant. Being a natural childbirth (and
natural pregnancy for that matter) mom, it killed me to take the drugs, but I
seriously had no other choice. Finally, by 17-18 weeks or so it passed. I am
still really picky about food, but I have more choices, and I haven’t thrown up
in a few weeks, which is a huge relief.
Once that passed, I found myself at work one day, just
having an ordinary day. I went to use the restroom, wiped when I was finished,
and found blood. FREAK OUT. I have friends that have had that happen and it was
no big deal, so I tried to keep it together. I called my doctor. I am kind of
annoyed at how that works. You don’t get a live person to talk to – you have to
leave a message and wait for them to call you back. Meanwhile, I am freaking
out while I wait. I gave it like five minutes before calling back and telling
the receptionist that I am coming down, and someone had better be able to check
me out! I high-tailed it to the doctor, where they did get me in. They did an
ultrasound, and it revealed a tricky complication called “
placenta previa.”
Basically, the placenta is a pancake shaped organ that resides in the uterus
with the baby. The baby is connected to it via the umbilical cord. The placenta
filters blood and nutrients to the baby. It is supposed to be located close to
the top of the uterus. Mine is stuffed down at the bottom, completely
covering the cervix, or the baby’s way out.
Here’s what it looks like. I am the one called “complete
placenta previa,” which unfortunately is the worst one:
This means a number of things:
- I will have to have a c-section
early. I am not allowed to have any labor symptoms at all. They want to take
the baby early, around 36-37 weeks to be sure I don’t have any contractions.
- Having this organ located next to
an opening of my body, I am at risk of bleeding, and even hemorrhaging. Because
of that I have to rest, rest, rest. I am not officially on bed rest, but when I
get to third trimester, depending on how things are going, that might be part
of the deal.
- Delivery is super risky, even with
a c-section. Depending on the anatomy of where everything is, I could need
blood transfusions or a hysterectomy. Seriously. I could bleed out and thus the
blood transfusions, and if they can’t get the bleeding to stop, they will just
yank my plumbing. Or as Chris says, gut me like a fish! It is pretty scary.
- Baby girl’s growth could be at
risk. Depending on how my placenta is stuffed in there, it could mean that she
isn’t getting the blood and nutrients she needs. If that’s the case, she will
be delivered as soon as it is safe to do so. Or, if I hemorrhage and they can’t
stop it, I could deliver her super early then as well. We will just have to
see.
- I get one free pass if I have a serious
bleed (which the other day was pretty minor thank God). Meaning, if I bleed, I
will go to the hospital and they will try to stop it. Then, they will send me
home to start bed rest. If I bleed again, I will be on bed rest for the
duration of the pregnancy from the hospital.
So, I have to rest, and will have tons of doctor’s appointments
to check my progress and the baby’s progress as well. There will be lots of
ultrasounds to check the placenta’s position, and to measure baby’s growth. It
will inform what we do.
For now I am feeling very carpe diem over the freedom that I
do have. I am enjoying being at work, or going to a store (even though I have
to ride the lame motorized wheelchair things now! Sigh…) Being tired from
having another kiddo, it is easy to think at times “man, bed-rest would be
awesome,” but I think it would only be fun for a day or so before I got so
stinking bored and lonely. I am trying to just face it for what it is and deal
with it. My work is cool with me working from home when I get to that point,
which is great. I will do better if I can use my brain to do something each
day, even if it is from my bed.
It is uncomfortable too. I have felt pressure down low from
the beginning, and even had days before I knew about all this where I would lay
on my back and stick some pillows under my hips to try to encourage everything
to move up. It didn’t work. Well no wonder! I had all this going on! For those
that have been pregnant before: you know how at the end of the pregnancy, where
the baby moves down into your pelvis and there is just pressure down there until
you deliver? That is what it feels like all the time. Sucks. It isn’t painful,
just kind of uncomfortable.
On the plus side, at about 18-19 weeks or so, suddenly I
could feel her move! She is an active little girl, mostly in the evenings and
night time when I am laying down and life is quiet. I just love that feeling.
Both Chris and Aaron have felt her now which is so fun. Aaron LOVES to feel his
sister move. He is such a cutie about his baby sister, and loves to talk about
her. My only regret is that he gets confused between her and Noah. He sees
pictures of babies, or we talk about babies with him, and previously we were
talking about Noah. Now we explain again and again that he has a brother AND a
sister. I have to keep reminding myself that this will all straighten itself
out, and he will know his siblings apart. He really does understand though,
that he is getting a sibling. He has friends at school that have had other
siblings, and he had asked us if he was going to have a brother or sister. It
is great for him to have this experience. Lord knows how he will feel about it
once she is actually here. It has already been tough at times with him starting
to get a feel of what life is like when you are not the main focus of the
house, which has resulted in some interesting behavior patterns. That is all
natural I suppose, and I am fortunate that he is a little older doing this. You
can reason with him a little more than if we did this when he was a 2 year old.
We will just see how it goes!
We have also picked her name! This was a tough one to decide
on. Problem was that my mom picked out a name that I really liked at first, and
so did everyone else. But, when push came to shove, I found that I didn’t feel
right calling her by this name. The name she almost got was: Lydia, and we
would have called her Lydie. So, we went a different direction. I have always
loved the name Katherine. Seems like every Katherine I know also loves her
name. Fortunately, Chris liked it a lot too, and lo and behold, we have her
name:
Katherine Jean
Wilkerson
She will go by “Katie.” Her full name means “pure gift from
God,” which we absolutely agree with. The “Jean” part is special to us because Chris
had a really great relationship with his Grandma Jean. She passed away years
ago, so unfortunately Katie won’t know her, but we will tell her what an
elegant lady Grandma Jean was, and how she was always there to take care of and
love on Chris.
Finally, we are moving! After my dad died last summer, we’ve
been talking with my mom about how we can re-arrange life to make it fun and
more inclusive of her in our family culture. We would like to move to something
bigger, and to have her close by where kids can ride bikes to her house. We thought
it would be great to end up in the same neighborhood, where she can be with us
when she wants, but also enjoy some quiet freedom from our chaos with small
children! Through a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, we sold our house through a
crazy series of events, and have found a big beautiful newer house! Moving is
so stressful. These big purchases and sales are hard. And, I can’t do anything
with my tough pregnancy situation, so this is a tricky transition to work
through. Please pray for us. In the end, I think it will be amazing once we are
done with all this!
So, I will try to do a better job here, blogging about my
Katie. She deserves to have her story documented just like her big brothers
were. I just need to stop feeling weird about posting the good, the bad and the
ugly of how this is going. It just is what it is, and as I said before, no
matter how this situation plays out, I am so very excited about this girl. Can’t
wait to meet her face to face for real! We love her and need her in our family!
