A completely different experience

When I got pregnant with Jacob, I prayed that things would go differently than they did in my pregnancy with Samantha, and that prayer was definitley answered the way I wanted it to be. Other things were different, too.

In the first trimester with Samantha, I felt sick 3 or 4 times and got sick 2 or 3 times. With Jacob, I felt sick nearly all the time in my first trimester, but never threw up at all.

With Samantha, I went to the hospital at 34 weeks 6 days due to extremely high blood pressure which turned out to be pre-eclampsyia. I was put on magnesium sulfate that afternoon and don't remember much of the next two days...I have only a couple snippets of memory of the delivery room...and I wasn't able to hold Samantha until her 3rd day of life because she was in the NICU and I couldn't get out of bed while I was on the magnesium.

With Jacob I started to go into labor at 31.5 weeks and once I found that out, I was terrified. I lost my mucus plug on 10/19/09 and called my doctor because there was a bit of blood. But I really wasn't worried. I had lost my mucus plug at about 33 weeks with Samantha, and didn't go into labor. Because there was some blood, the doctor had me come in for an exam. He said that I was a tiny bit dilated and he did a fetal fibronectin test. He said to rest that evening but that I could go back to work the next day. The next day he called and told me that the test was positive, which meant that it was likely that I would have the baby in the next 2-4 weeks. He put me on sort of bedrest (I wasn't allowed to do any housework or walk around much, but I could sit on the couch with my feet up rather than having to lay in bed) and had me come in for an ultrasound on 10/23. That was when I started getting worried.

After the ultrasound, he said that he saw some changes that said I was preparing to have the baby, but that my cervix was still plenty long, so I wouldn't be delivering too soon. He said that since my job mostly involves sitting, I could go back to work on Monday, as long as I kept my feet up and I did nothing but lay on the couch once I got home. I told him that I was planning to not have the baby until at least December...and he laughed at me. He definitely thought the baby would be coming sooner than that. I started having weekly appointments at this time.

I followed the almost no activity order and went back for another fetal fibronectin test and another ultrasound about two weeks later. The ultrasound was the same as before. That was good. Then the fetal fibronectin came back negative this time. Woohoo! Dr. Levy said that whatever had caused me to start going into labor was resolved and things looked good. He said that I could resume almost normal activity, just not push things to much.

Looking back, I figured that I probably had pushed to hard the weekend before losing my plug, because we were on the go and walking a LOT that weekend. And I was very worn out at the end of it.

I resumed more normal activity, but still took it pretty easy in the evenings and on the weekends. Brent's mom came to our house for 2 or 3 days nearly every week from then until Jacob was born. She cooked and cleaned and did a million things to help us get ready for the baby. She was an amazing help, and I am so grateful to have her for my mother-in-law. I am so grateful that she was able and willing to help us in this way.

I surprised the doctor and made it all the way to our scheduled delivery date. I walked into the hospital on my own at 5:30am on 12/11/09, still not having any contractions. I walked into the delivery room and got up on the operating table on my own. I remember Christine, the nurse anesthetist, putting my epidural in, and I remember the warm feeling that was actually the lack of feeling starting at my toes and moving upward. I remember the aneshtesiologist poking me along my ribs and telling me to let him know when I could feel sharp and scratchy like I felt near my neck. There was no NICU doctor or nurse present. There were just two newborn nurses for the baby.

I don't know why, but I felt nervous. I had already been through a C-section once. Why should I be nervous? Maybe because I didn't remember the first one. I remember a smell, and asking what that was. I said that it reminded me of a smell from my anatomy class in college and Dr Levy joked that he had never had an anatomy class. We had 2 cameras in the room because we had just bought a new one. Brent took pictures with one and Christine took pictures with the other...so Brent was in the pictures, too. Christine encouraged Brent to look over the curtain to see our baby as the doctor was pulling him out. And surprisingly, Brent did look...and took pictures...and even took a picture of Jacob before he was even fully out of my body.

After seeing how much Jacob weighed, Dr Levy joked that we would leave the next one in a little longer to see if we could actualy get to 10 lbs.

After Jacob was weighed and measured, the nurses swaddled him and brought him to me. I was able to hold him on my chest even as the doctor was sewing me up. I cried again, just as I did with Samantha, at holding my baby for the first time. After a little while, the nurses said that they had to take Jacob to get bloodwork and do some testing, and Brent went with them. But I didn't have to wait long until I was able to see them again. Dr Levy didn't have to cut through anything unexpected to get to the baby. There were no complications at all.

When I got back to my room, I found out that Jacob had low blood sugar and had to be given some formula while I was still in the operating room. He drank an entire ounce! Samantha was a couple months old before she would drink that much at once.

Since he already had a full belly, Jacob wasn't much interested in nursing for a while, but he was plenty strong once he was interested. My milk came in quickly and there was plenty for him. It took a long time for that to happen with Samantha. Other than that bottle immediately after birth, Jacob has not had any formula, and he nurses like a champ. He has already gained back all the weight he lost after birth. We were buying formula for Samantha until she was about 5 or 6 weeks old and feeding her a combination of milk and formula, because I couldn't pump enough milk until then. This time I already have a little bit of milk stored in the freezer.

I am so grateful that things were different this time around. I am grateful for no complications. I am grateful to remember so much about the birth of my child. I am grateful for my child being healthy.

(almost) 35 weeks

Tomorrow I will be at 35 weeks in my pregnancy. That means that today is the day in my pregnancy that Samantha was born...and no blood pressure issues so far, praise God!! One month from today is the day I am scheduled for my C-section. Any bets as to whether I make it that far or not?

So I thought I would use today's post to reflect a little bit, on the I will, I won't and I'll love.

Once we have the baby, things I will miss...
Having the baby with me at all times, even at work.
Feeling the baby move even when no one else knows that I do.
Being able to reach down and feel the baby anytime I want...no matter what.

Things I won't miss...
Leg cramps in the middle of the night.
Heartburn.
Having my ribs bruised from the inside as the baby practices his/her kickboxing skills.
Being too worn out to walk through Walmart.
Losing my breath so easily.
Constant backaches.
The baby using an already teaspoon sized bladder as a punching bag.
Getting up 15 million times a night becasue of the teaspoon sized bladder being used as a punching bag.
Needing pillows surrounding my body to sleep somewhat comfortably.
Being unable to sleep on my back or my stomach.

Things I will love...
Meeting the baby face to face.
Seeing Brent and Samantha meet the baby face to face.
Seeing Samantha give our baby kisses.
Holding the baby in my arms.
Seeing Brent snuggle with the little one...and the bigger one.
Having a baby fall asleep in my arms again.
Seeing God's grace in another sweet little face in our lives.

I'm not ready for the baby to come yet...but we are getting closer and I am looking forward to being at that point.

Getting ready

It occurred to me yesterday that although Samantha knows there is a baby in Mommy's tummy...she has no idea that means that a baby will come to live at our house soon. And she has even less idea that Mommy will have to be away from home for several days. And since my C-section is scheduled for 5.5 weeks from now (Oh my goodness!! Is it really only 5.5 weeks 'til we get to meet our new little one?!), I decided I need to try to prepare her.



So I started telling her about it. I told her that I will have to go to the hospital for the baby to come out of my tummy and that I will have to stay there for several days. I told her that she will be able to come visit me, but then she will go home with Daddy until Mommy and the baby can leave the hospital. She had no reaction whatsoever. Not that I really expected her to understand, but I did think I might get at least a bit of a questioning look. I will keep telling her each day that this is what will happen in the hopes that she won't be too upset when I am not home with her, but I'm not too confident that this will actually work.


Does anyone have any idea of how to prepare a not quite 2 year old for her Mommy's several day absence? I would love to hear your ideas!



(pictures were taken by my friend Stacey Collodi of Collodi Photography in Frisco, and these are just a few of the wonderful pictures she took...be watching for more to come :))

13 weeks

(written 6/12/09)

I went to the doctor today, and got to see baby number two. Everything looks good, size is right on, and everything looks normal. When the sonogram first started, though, I was very scared. The baby was lying completely still and I couldn't see its heart beating on the the screen. But then a few seconds later the sonographger told me that the baby's heart rate is 140. Whew!!

I think this baby will have a very different personality than Samantha. At the 12.5 week sonogram that I had with her, she was moving all over the place, swimming around, sucking her thumb, kicking her feet, waving, just showing everything off. With this baby, the sonographer had to push on my belly quite a few times just to get the baby to move an arm or a foot. Or maybe it was just having a sleepy day...I guess we'll find out in 6 motnhs!


I have been feeling the baby move for about a week now. I thought I was crazy, it is SOOO early to be feeling the baby move. With Samantha I first felt her at about 16 weeks, and that was early to feel her! But during my exam, the doctor told me that I would feel the baby move much sooner this time than I did with Samantha. That in fact, some women can feel their second baby at 12 weeks. And that is when I started feeling this one. Guess I'm not crazy after all. :)

Moving to Acceptance

Yesterday was a bit of a tough day...full of mixed emotions.

I had the first sonogram of this pregnancy and found out that we are having one baby. This baby is right on with its growth and the heart rate was perfect. That is the happy part. The sad part was that there was another baby transferred with this one. And the other baby is in heaven now.

My head knows this is the best. My head knows all the answers. It is very unlikely that I would have been able to carry twins to term. It would have been VERY hard to take care of newborn twins while taking care of an older baby under 2 years. In fact, it will be hard taking care of only one newborn and also taking care of Samantha. And I know that God is taking much better care of that baby (and all the others) than I ever could. And my head says that I will get to meet all of those babies in heaven someday. What a wonderful reunion that will be! But my heart says that I really wanted both of my babies here with me. And my heart can't understand why that shouldn't happen.

So I'm in a bit of a tough spot right now. It's strange to be both happy and sad at the same time. It's strange to be rejoicing and greiving at the same time. It's strange to be devastated and relieved at the same time. But that's where I am.

I find myself wondering why this is so much harder than it was when I found out that Samantha was the only baby to make it in that pregnancy. Perhaps it is because, with Samantha, my hcg levels were at the bare minimum to indicate a healthy pregnancy, so although I hoped for twins, I never REALLY thought I had twins. But this time, my numbers were more than double what they were with Samantha, so I really thought there was a chance of twins. But, whatever the reason, it is harder this time.

So until my heart catches up with my head and I come to true acceptance, you may see me crying for no apparent reason. I may tear up suddenly while talking to you. And now you know that there us a reason (besides pregnant hormones!)...and I may not be ready to talk about it. I will be OK. It will just take some time. So until my heart catches up with my head...please be patient with me.

The Story of the Pictures

If you weren't able to figure it out from the pictures...Samantha is going to be a big sister. Yep we are having a baby (or maybe two) near the end of the year.

We decided to do in vitro again, but Brent said that he didn't want to tell anyone this time. He wanted to just be able to say "Surprise! We are having a baby!"

We knew on March 24th that my pregnancy test at the doctor's office would be on Good Friday, so we started making plans for what to do on Easter weekend. We were already supposed to travel to San Angelo for Easter, but we decided that we would go to Clifton first and surprise everyone by just showing up and making our announcement. (We never really considered that IVF wouldn't work, we just planned for it working.) One of my friends announced her pregnancy to her blog readers by posting a picture of her younger son wearing a shirt that said "Middle Child", so I got the idea to get Samantha a "Big Sister" shirt and not say anything to our families but to see how long it took them to notice. Brent thought that was a good idea. We ran into a problem, though. I couldn't find a big sister shirt small enough for Samantha. The smallest we could find was 2T. That would swallow her!

I remembered another friend making her son's halloween costume by making iron on transfers with her home computer, so I decided to do that. I found a couple of plain shirts and used my scrapbook program to start designing the iron ons. We decided to make 2 shirts so that we wouldn't have to worry about keeping one shirt clean for 2 days. It took me about a week to come up with 2 designs that we both liked, but when I put them on the shirts, they looked terrible! Apparantly the iron on paper "for white or light colors" ought to really be only for white, because the colors of the transfers changed a lot! So back to Wal-Mart I went, and found the transfer paper for dark colors. Then back to Target to get 2 more shirts. This time it worked, with the colors looking exactly like they did before being ironed on. Yeah!

We got the car mostly packed up on Thursday (4/9/09) evening and I finshed getting a couple more things together on Friday morning. Then, while Brent fed Samantha breakfast, I went to the doctor's office for my bloodwork. We knew that we wouldn't have the results until that afternoon, so a few days earlier, I took a home pregnancy test, just to be sure. As soon as I got home from the doctor's office, we changed Samantha into her big sister shirt and left for Clifton. It felt so weird to be leaving town and not calling to tell anyone we were on our way.

Brent and I also had a bit of guilty conscience hitting us b/c we had both basically lied to our moms. My mom had asked me if Brent would be off for Good Friday. He was because of the slow production they have been having, but it wasn't specifically for Good Friday. They actually don't get Good Friday as one of their holidays. So my answer to my mom was, "Mom, he works for a corporation. They never get Good Friday off." Brent's mom was talking to him on Thursday evening about us going to San Angelo, and asked, "So you couldn't make it out there this evening, huh?" And biting his tongue, he just told her "No." Then he almost ruined the surprise because he almost said "See you tomorrow" to her. He managed to keep from spitting it out, though.

When we arrived at the Grelle house, Mom and Dad were at the office, but we kept driving to the house. By the time we managed to get out of the car, Mom was already there, and Staci had made it outside, too. They noticed Samantha's shirt immediately and were very excited. Dave was outside when they saw it, so who knows if he would have noticed on his own or not. Dad was still at the office, though, so he didn't know anything. When he got to the house, he hugged us, and started playing with Samantha. Brent kept straightening out her shirt, trying to draw dad's attention to it. Finally he saw it, but it still took him a minute to get it. Then he was very excited!

Mom called Uncle Charles and Aunt Ginger and told them that we were there and that they should come over, but that if they weren't able to come in the afternoon, we could all have dinner together that evening.

The guys all left to go play golf for the afternoon, and it was just us girls at the house. Right when we were getting ready to go meet the guys for dinner, Samantha threw up all over the place. So she and I had to change clothes and mom had to clean her living room rug. Needless to say, we were a bit late getting to dinner.

Brent later told me that before we got there, Dad asked Charles and Ginger "Have you heard the news?" When they asked what news, he started backtracking and said that if they don't know, he isn't at liberty to say. Then he also told them that when we arrive, to be sure to look at Samantah's shirt.

Brent and Dave met us at the door of the restaurant and Dave immediatley noticed that Samantha was wearing a different shirt, and was disappointed until I showed him that it also said Big Sister. We got to the table and Dad noticed that her shirt was different, but he couldn't see the front of it, and said something about not wearing her shirt anymore. Brent told him that it is OK because it was the same. Samantha was holding her lambie and blankie, so no one could see the front of her shirt yet. Dad then told Brent to show Charles and Ginger the shirt, and once they saw it,they immediately congratulated us.

Brent also told me that Dad told him at some point "I'm sorry, Son, I'm just so excited." about pointing the shirt out rather than waiting to see if they noticed. We can understand...we are pretty excited, too.

We left Clifton to go to Sana Angelo on Saturday morning, and once we were a little way out, I saw that I had a voice mail from my mom. I called her back and told her that I hadn't heard my phone ring, so we must have been in a dead spot when she called. (Of course, I knew that we were, because when we are in Clifton, unless we are actually in town, there is no signal for us.) Mom said that she figured that and was just checking on us. This was about 11am that we were talking now, and I told her that we got a little later start than we had planned and we were still almost three hours away. She said that was fine and she would see us when we got there.

Samantha finally fell asleep and slept until we had to stop in Ballinger. Then she woke up and was very cranky for the rest of the trip, so as we were getting into town, I called Mom and Kathy and told them that we were going straight to Grandma's house so that we wouldn't have to put Samantha back in her car seat after getting her out. They both said that they couldn't come immediately but that they would come in a little bit. We got to Grandma and Grandpa's house and let Samantha play on the floor and with Grandma and Grandpa. I kept standing her up, straightening out her shirt, trying to draw attention to it, but neither of them said a word.

Kathy got their about 45 minutes later, picked Samantha up and said, "What does your shirt say?" As soon as she read it, she got it and congratulated us. Then grandma said, "I was wondering why she had a shirt that said big sister, but I just figured it was a hand me down." We all decided she was just crazy! Hehehe...

Mom came over a while later and sat down beside Samantha. After a while she noticed Samantha's shirt and said "Big sister. You're not a big sister" I said, "Oh yes she is!" Mom said, "To who?" I said, "We don't know yet. We don't even know how many yet." Then Mom got it, too. She said that she also figured the shirt was a hand me down.

Dad came a bit later than mom, so he wasn't there when mom saw the shirt, and we didn't say anything to him. He didn't notice anything by the time we left to go eat. We got to the restaurant and he still didn't notice, so finally I stood Samantha up in my lap and said, (speaking as Samantha) "Grandpa, look at me." He said "uh-huh. You're standing up." I said "Grandpa, look at my shirt." He said, "I see. Big sister." and didn't say anything else. Brent was standing beside him and asked "What does that tell you?" Dad said, "That she is a big sister." I groaned since he had absolutely no reaction and said "My entire family is clueless!" And Brent kept leading Dad until he finally came to the conclusion that we are having another baby. Good grief! I thought it would be so obvious!

One we got back home, we wanted to wait to make the announcement to our class until we had told our small group, so on Wednesday, we put on the big sister shirt again and headed off to the Williams house. We were the first ones to arrive, and Beverly noticed pretty quickly and congratulated us. Everyone except James and Tammy arrived before Jill finally noticed what her shirt said. And everyone congratulated us. We had started thinking that no one would notice at all. Beverly even came over at one point and quietly asked me if anyone had said anything and I told her no. So, Yeah Jill! You got the word out!

When James and Tammy arrived, I told Tammy to look at Samantha. She did and said how cute. I told her to look at the shirt, and she again said how cute. Then she realized what it said and did a double take. That was kind of funny to watch her expression change.

The next morning I sent an email to our class just saying, I thought you might like to see these pictures of Samantha. A couple people replied, so I know at least some peole got it. We will see on Sunday if everyone did or not.

Anyway, so we had a lot of fun with our announcement, and now we have some great stories to tell to go with the pictures. :)

Pictures

I got the idea for these pictures from my friend Kimberly. Thanks for the great idea, Kim!!

the birth story

As I stated in my inaugural post, the biggest reason fo my having a blog is to get some of my journaling done and have it all in the same place so that I can find it later. So that means that I need to go back and journal some of the last several months, I have started working on that in a word document and quickly realized that it will be WAAAAAYYYY too much for one post, so this post will be the beginning (sort of, since technically the beginning was sometime last year) and I will continue to add a few more about the first six months as time permits. This is your fair warning that if you wouldn't be interested in reading my scrapbooks, you won't be interested in this post. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It has been an exciting and sometimes scary time. It started with me calling my OB from my in-laws house on Christmas Eve when I lost my mucus plug. After asking me questions about what else was happening physically, the doctor asked where I was (b/c he was going to have me come in to the office) and then after finding out I was 2.5 hours away, his next question was if there was a hospital nearby and if they have an OB unit. But then he re-assured me that losing the plug did not mean that labor was imminent and told me to call him back if anything else happened.

Nothing else happened and I went to my regular check-up on Friday, 1/4/08. The nurse came in and took my vital signs, then left the room and came back in looking very serious. She told me to lie down on my left side for 10 minutes and that she would come back in to take my blood pressure again. She came back in and didn’t look any happier with the result. Then my normally extremely jovial doctor came in with a very serious look on his face and didn’t make any jokes at all and took my blood pressure. He felt my abdomen and looked very surprised and told me that I do not have a small baby. In fact he was estimating six pounds…and I wasn’t due until 2/13! He then told me that I was on bed rest for the weekend and that I was to come back on Monday morning. He said that the bed rest meant lying in bed except to eat or to use the restroom. He also said that I shouldn’t be surprised if I had the baby in the next week. I told him that was NOT happening b/c it was too early. He didn’t say anything else. I did get permission to go to my baby shower the next day since it was only 5 minutes from my house and I promised to only stay for 2 hours and to sit with my feet up the whole time.

You would think that being on bed rest would mean that you would feel very well rested. That is SOOO not the case! In fact I was more exhausted than I had been at any other point in my pregnancy. Of course, some of that may have been due to the elevated blood pressure, but lying in bed for 2 days is most definitely NOT relaxing. I was very sick of it just by Saturday morning. And I had to keep it up until Monday morning.

It was definitely a relief to get out of the house to go to my baby shower. I felt so rude at the baby shower, walking in and immediately sitting down rather than mingling with everyone…but they all understood and were very nice to me. And it was great to be out of the house and seeing so many of my friends and family.

After the shower, Kathy and my mom brought everything into my room and starting sorting for me. We made a list of things that I didn’t have yet that would be necessary right after the baby was born, and they took my checkbook and went shopping for me. Then they organized a whole lot in the baby’s room and got some stuff set up for me. Thank goodness they were there to do that for me, because I would have been unable to do it myself for quite some time.

I went back to the doctor on Monday and my bp was even higher. 180/112. I knew that was bad, but I didn’t know until about 6 weeks later that I was at a very high risk of having a stroke because of that. So the doctor told me to go home, pack a bag and go to the hospital where I would be under observation, get some blood work done and possibly spend the night. Of course, I was so naïve (although I like to call it being optimistic) that I thought I would be going home by the next day. My family took me to the hospital, but then had to leave to go back to San Angelo. Kathy had to pick up Benjamin from the friends house who had already kept him for an extra day and dad had a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday. After they left at about 2pm, I slept until Brent got there after work.

At some point, I can’t remember if it was before or after my OB got here, Mike Collodi came to visit. He commented that we got the low end of the minister pool. I don’t think so, we appreciated him being there. Especially since he kept Brent company while I continued to snooze off and on.

When the doctor came that afternoon and saw the result of my blood work, he said that I had bad liver enzyme levels and that meant I actually had preeclampsia, not just high blood pressure. He asked how I felt about having the baby that night. I just looked at him and said, “You’re kidding, right?” He didn’t say anything and I told him that I couldn’t have the baby yet, it was too soon. He didn’t answer but then started asking about when I last had anything solid to eat and when I last had liquids. Then he told me that he would call my colon rectal doctor who would need to be in the operating room just in case and as long as that doctor was available, we would have the baby at 9pm.

The rest of the day was a huge blur…probably due to the yucky magnesium sulfate they put in my IV as a seizure preventative. I could feel it going through my veins when they started it in my IV. It felt like there was fire inside my body and spreading all over. I said that I wanted to sit in a bathtub of ice…and I really meant it. I still ask Brent questions about what happened that day and the next because I just couldn’t remember anything it seemed. Our sweet baby girl joined us via emergency C-section on Monday, 1/7/08 at 9:31pm weighing 5 lbs 13 oz and measuring 18 inches. And she was 5 weeks early!! She didn’t have a name because Brent and I had not agreed on one yet. Neither of us liked the other person’s top choices, so she didn’t have a first name until sometime on Tuesday, and we didn’t decide on her middle name until Wednesday evening…after the medical records person called and said that she had to submit the information to the state so we had to have a name by 8:30 the next morning. We did finally agree on Samantha Grace and now we can’t imagine her being anyone else. We chose her middle name because God showed us His grace in bringing her into our lives.