where i've been....where i am (part 3.~ the pregnancy)

It's going to be hard to explain this next part.  I was really excited about the pregnancy, but there was something inside of me that just didn't feel right.  At the time, I thought it had to do with the year our family had.  Also, a really good friend of mine had a miscarriage just about a month before, so I was thinking about that as well.  I mean, how could I not?  Never-the-less, I couldn't shake this feeling inside me.  I guess if I had to describe the way I felt with just one word, it would be uneasy.  Everyone in our families were so excited; Patrick (my husband) and Ilyssa (our daughter) included.  I just couldn't get to the point of excitement like they were.  Not because I didn't want to have this baby, but because this feeling I had 24/7 wouldn't go away.  And I was the only one who felt it; I just felt like something was gonna go wrong.  I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but this feeling was horrible.  Call it coinsidence; call it paranoid; call it mother's intuition...whatever you want, but it wouldn't go away.

When I was five weeks pregnant, we took Ilyssa to Patrick's mom and dad's house to go swimming.  I wasn't feeling the greatest that day and I was just thinking it was because I was pregnant, but that feeling was still very prevalent.  It was nagging and I thought I was gonna go crazy.  I was tired of it, and I just wanted to know that everything was gonna be okay.  We stayed at the pool for a couple of hours before we decided we should head home and get Ilyssa in bed for the night.  Before we left, we all went to use the bathroom, since we had like a 30 minute drive.  It doesn't sound long but when you have a pregnant lady and a six year old...  When I sat down to use the bathroom, I noticed for the first time the blood.  I sat there and silently freaked out.  It wasn't just a little, but it wasn't a ton either.  Either way, it was there; it wasn't normal in my opinion; and I had that insane feeling still that something was wrong.  I got out to the car where Patrick was and told him.  After I told him, I started to cry.  The tears just kept coming.  I was scared out of my mind that I was losing the baby.  On the way home I started having mild cramps and still couldn't quit crying.  I didn't want this to be over. I wanted this baby more than anything and I would do anything to protect him. 

As soon as we got home, I called my doctor.  By this time Patrick and I both were in tears.  He prayed over me and the baby while we waited for the doctor to return our call.  Both of us were a nervous wreck.  When the doctor called us back, I explained to her what was happening and all she could say was that I was threatening to miscarry and that if anything got worse to go to the ER immediately.  Also, she said to stay off my feet and get as much rest as possible.  So that's what I did.  The bleeding eventually stopped but the pain in my stomach got worse.  The whole next morning I was still hurting, so we decided to just go to the hospital.  I cried the whole way there.  I didn't want them to tell me or show me that our baby was gone.  I couldn't imagine the pain it would cause all of us.  I just didn't want to go through what so many women have to go through.  

When we got to the hospital we really didn't have to wait long...and we were so thankful for that.  We just wanted to know if the baby was okay.  They did an ultrasound and there he was.  All it took was to see his tiny little heartbeat for me to lose it.  He was okay.  He was still alive!!  After the doctor checked me, he told me, just as my doctor had the night before, that anytime you have bleeding in the first trimester they consider it a "threatened miscarriage".  It certainly didn't mean I was going to, but I had been bleeding and cramping so that's what it was...a threatened miscarriage.  Well, two weeks went by pretty uneventful.  Nothing else happened, but that feeling was still right there inside of me, taking over me.  The morning of my 7-8 week check up, I started bleeding again.  I couldn't believe it.  Again?...but why?  Everything was going well, so I thought.  I was just glad that we were on our way to the doctor's office.  When we got there, she checked me and my cervix had blood on it, but she said it didn't look like it was an active bleed.  Meaning it was older blood from that morning.  She couldn't tell where it was coming from.  They did another ultrasound on me, and again, the baby was fine.  And again, we were rejoicing.  The ultrasound showed that the pregnancy was viable and they didn't see anything that looked concerning.  They had no idea where the bleeding was coming from.  I still was threatening to miscarry so I wasn't able to do anything.  No exercise, no sex, no major housework, etc.  After the bleeding started that day, I had it off and on throughout the pregnancy.  

Fast forward five weeks or so...still bleeding.  I had a doctors visit just about every week leading up to that point.  And every time the baby was still doing great.  My doctor's were telling me that some women just bleed the whole time they are pregnant and since everything was still looking good, except the bleeding, we should just be cautiously optimistic.  At 12 weeks I was peeing like never before.  I had to go constantly.  I mean I would get up in the middle of the night like six to eight times.  It was insane.  I thought it was normal because I was pregnant and my uterus was only getting bigger.  I talked to my mom about it, and she and I were joking because I told her that I couldn't hold it when I had to go.  It would just come out with no warning.  Ever since I had my daughter I had had a weak bladder, so I was just thinking that this pregnancy was making it worse.  When I was 13 weeks, I met my good friend Melanie for breakfast ( the one I mentioned earlier) and was telling her all about my potty woes.  She suggested I call my doctor, again, because she said it sounded like I had an infection.  I just thought if it didn't let up in the next couple of days, I would call.  That afternoon, when I was standing in the hall at Ilyssa's school waiting to pick her up, I started having these extremely sharp pains in my lower stomach.  They were so bad, they made me have to lean over.  They were powerful and very painful.  I couldn't wait to get home so I could lay down.  As soon as we got home, I had to use the bathroom...as usual.  When I sat down, I was horrified because the pad I was wearing was soaked with blood.  I absolutely freaked out.  I called my husband at work right away and told him what was going on.  Then I called my doctor who told me to get to the hospital so they could check me out.  Here it was again, still, that feeling.  This is it.  My normal optimistic self was no longer.  I was just plain over all the scares.  I was over the bleeding, the pain, the bad thoughts, the doctor's visits and trips to the hospital.  I just wanted a normal pregnancy.  Unfortunately, that is not what I had or would ever have with this baby.  After getting all the tests back, they said I had a UTI.  Again, the ultrasound was good.  The baby was perfectly fine and my pregnancy was still considered viable.  What a relief!  If I could just get rid of this infection then maybe everything would be okay, I thought.  Well, they sent me home on antibiotics. However, the pain would not go away.  In fact in got worse.  It was on the left side, really low and by Friday I could barely walk. (I went to the hospital on Wednesday)  I had a follow-up appointment on Friday and I was so glad because the pain was horrible and the bleeding was pretty heavy.  I saw the nurse practitioner that day.  She was very concerned, because at that point I was in my second trimester and she said I shouldn't be bleeding.  Apparently, second trimester bleeding gets treated differently than first trimester bleeding.  She cleaned off my cervix and put me on complete bed rest until I could get in to see the high-risk doctor that following Tuesday.  We went home and I was feeling miserable.  I was so confused as to what was going on in my body.  All I wanted was to stop hurting, stop bleeding and deliver a happy, healthy baby in February.  Later on that night, I started running a fever.  This was after I had been on the antibiotic for two days already.  I knew something was really wrong, but I thought I just needed to give the medicine a little more time to work.  But by Sunday, the fever had only gotten higher.  And I was in so much pain, all I could do was lay in bed and cry.  I talked to my mom on the phone that afternoon and she said that I needed to call my doctor right away because there should be no reason for running that high of a fever, especially after being on antibiotics for four days.  So I called...again (they knew me very well at this point).  My doctor said to get to the hospital ASAP because she was afraid the UTI had spread to my kidneys and if that were the case I would have to be admitted.  We only had to wait in the ER for about 15 minutes before they got me back.  I think I must have looked horrible, because they didn't mess around getting me tested and checked out.  When the ER doctor came in and told me my white blood count had gone up since the Wednesday before, I was devastated.  She said they had already called my doctor and they were waiting for her to get there.  They were already in the process of admitting me.  I was very sick and I knew it.  When my doctor got to the hospital, she checked me and said it felt like my cervix was opening up.  My husband and I both lost it.  I knew that you can't have a cervix open at 14 weeks and expect the baby to make it.  Although, after having yet another ultrasound done, we saw that my cervix seemed to be fine and the baby was still doing great.  I couldn't wait for this nightmare to be over, except the true nightmare hadn't even begun.

where i've been....where i am (part 2.)

Like I said we were so excited about the baby.  Our family was discouraged and ready for something good to happen.  Don't get me wrong, we were very thankful for the outcome with Jenn, but we were tired of all the bad news the year had brought us.  A baby...how perfect!  

(Let me start by saying, I am going to write about everything that happened during my pregnancy, so if you think you can't handle the really bad stuff, you may not want to read this.)


We found out we were going to have a baby after I went to the doctor for my regular check-up.  The month before, that would be my April cycle, I was late.  I thought I was pregnant, but after four negative tests and finally a late period, of course I knew I wasn't.  However, my next cycle was thrown off because I was so late.  My husband and I do natural birth control.  For those of you who may not know what that is, it's when you don't take any contraceptives and you chart every little thing about your cycle (i.e., start of period, what the days leading up to ovulation are like physically, waking body temp., etc., you get  the point).  Basically, we rely on my body to tell us when it is and isn't okay to....you know.  Because I had a late period, my ovulation would be later...so I thought.  Wrong!  In fact, I ovulated earlier than usual, and, well, I ended up pregnant.  Things like that don't usually happen, so if you wanted to try natural birth control, don't let my experience stop you.  Anyhow, during my check-up, I was talking to my doctor about how I thought I was pregnant the previous month and how, my body just didn't seem normal.  So she went ahead and did some blood work.  She wanted to check my thyroid, because that could cause me to feel the way I had been feeling...of course being pregnant could as well.  Part of the blood work was a pregnancy test, but I knew I wasn't, so I wasn't too worried.  After a few days, I got a call from the nurse saying my results were in and that my thyroid looked great, however my hcg levels were elevated, (I had been pregnant before so I knew what that meant....we're having a baby).  I couldn't believe it...a baby?  No...impossible! Or not!  I've learned that really, nothing is impossible.  She told me that sometimes, if you're close to your period those levels could be thrown off, so she suggested I take a home pregnancy test...so I did, and it showed up positive almost immediately.  We were gonna have a baby, and we were so excited.  We weren't planning on another baby, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted more once we found out than to hold and kiss and love on that baby for the rest of my life.  What an exciting time that was...until two weeks later when things started to go badly.  

where i've been....where i am (part 1.)

So, I guess since I'm new to this whole blogging thing, I'm kind of nervous about putting it all out there.  But that is exactly what I intend on doing.  The good, bad and the ugly...it's all gonna be here.  I'm just gonna use this first post as trial and error and to explain how my life is completely different now, at the beginning of 2011, than it was this time last year in 2010.

Last year started out pretty bad.  I certainly didn't think it was an indication of how the entire year would turn out; I don't usually think that way.  I try to stay pretty optimistic, so when my sister started getting really sick, I was very worried but tried to think, "this too shall pass".  My sister and I are very close.  We weren't always because she is six years older than me, but I guess that's what growing up will do to people.  When she was three, she was diagnosed with an extremely rare cancer called rhabdomiosarcoma.  Basically, a cancer attacking her muscles.  She was sick most of her childhood, fighting for her life for about nine years and winning in the end. She is a trooper; one of the strongest people I know.  Having said all that, we got pretty worried when 20 years later she started having difficulty breathing for no apparent reason.  After a few weeks of her symptoms getting worse, she finally went in for a  chest x-ray.  The results were shocking and heartbreaking.  They found a mass in one lung and a lot of other junk in the other.  We were terrified for her, but we all have a very strong faith in an amazing God, who graciously rocked our world when he healed her the first time.  We had to believe that this time wouldn't be any different.  After lots of other tests were done, about a month of waiting and an admission to Emory in Atlanta, we found out that she did not have lung cancer like we all were thinking but that she was in heart failure.  All the stuff they were seeing in her lungs was fluid caused by the heart failure.  Thank God!  Heart failure, while it still is not a good thing, was a way better diagnosis than lung cancer.  They began treatment right away, but couldn't find the reason for it.  To this day we have no idea what caused her heart failure.  Outside of having cancer as a child. she was a healthy 33 year old who had not been sick with any infections and didn't and does not do drugs.  Her doctors were stumped.  Before she left the hospital, however, they were doing one last scan of her left lung because they kept seeing something in there.  When she was released, she got a call from her doctor a couple days later who told her they didn't find anything in her lungs, but they did see something of concern in her left shoulder.  Okay, so she's in heart failure and now she has to go see an oncologist.  Is it ever going to end?...the question we would be asking ourselves for the whole rest of the year.  After going to the oncologist, he confirmed what we were dreading to hear....cancer, for real!  This time it was a form of bone cancer.  A tumor that went from her shoulder almost down to her elbow.  Really?  As if she isn't already facing enough, now she's faced with her worst nightmare of having to battle cancer again.  Luckily, though, it hadn't spread and it would be very easy to remove.  So, after getting her heart failure in control, her surgery to remove the tumor was under way and scheduled for sometime in June.  The surgery was a huge success; they had to cut out the entire bone from her shoulder to about an inch or two up from her elbow and replace it with a prosthesis.  Things were finally staring to look up and we were so very thankful.  While all this was going on with my sister, my husband and I found out that we were going to have a baby at the very beginning of June.  My sister was so excited...we all were actually.  We needed this joy in the midst of such a hard year for our family.  We saw this pregnancy as a gift from God.  But little did we know,  things were just about to get a lot harder, except this time it was gonna be hard times for me personally.