Living Like Kings: April 2016

Millie Is a BIG Sister

Through connecting with other mothers of infant loss I have learned that I am not the only mother that desperately wanted to become pregnant again as soon as possible after the loss of a child. I found this to be especially true for families that lost their first and only child. This desire to get pregnant right away might be misconstrued as a desire to replace the child that was lost but that is in no way, ever, EVER true. In the wake of losing our daughter, what I needed was to feel connected to motherhood again. I needed to know that we would be able to parent living children and fulfill our new rolls as parents. I needed to feel purpose in our lives as parents.

Because of my C-section, my doctor had us wait 9 months before trying again to ensure mine and the baby's safety and health. While I hated waiting it was a blessing in disguise because I needed that time to grieve and deep down my heart knew being forced to wait was what was best for us. Even during our immense grief I always believed in my heart that we would become parents to living children. In many ways I need the opportunity of parenting to help keep Millie's memory alive. I need to be able to share her memories with her siblings, to have a reason to incorporate her in the growth of our children, to always be able to include her in our lives.

We were finally able to start trying and I knew not to expect pregnancy immediately but I was hopeful nonetheless. My body felt built for pregnancy and carried Millie so well, even though she was so sick. In the past we have become pregnant rather easily so I was feeling quite optimistic. And each month I would be extra careful to avoid alcohol, caffeine, cold cuts and chemicals during ovulation periods in a desperate attempt to prevent the same thing from happening to our next baby that happened to Millie. But then my period would come and I would have to face another month of trying again. We decided to try an ovulation kit just to make sure my body had resumed normal function after pregnancy and to get a better idea of timing. Turns out the ovulation kit made me so anxious about testing every morning and so worried that I wasn't ovulating that I barely got any sleep at all that month. Once it confirmed that I was ovulating I refused to use it again because of the undue anxiety it caused me. So the ovulation kit did not help us get pregnant that month either.

My emotions started getting the better of me when I had to make choices about my healthcare for the following year. Because of an impending employer change mid-2016, I was unsure of how to go about making my choices. My company's premiums were going up but at the rate we were going with not getting pregnant it would be impossible for me to be 9 months pregnant with this current employer. So without knowing what type of insurance my new employer would offer, I felt my safest bet was to join Obamacare at a very expensive rate. I chose to do this in order to ensure that my prenatal care would consistently be managed by the OB and MFM that I had with Millie, as well as the delivery. I needed to ensure that doctors familiar with our situation would be taking care of us in the future.

But in this process of choosing very expensive healthcare I became overwhelmed that all of this cost and worry would be for naught if we never get pregnant again. I also got overwhelmed that if 2016 proved that we couldn't get pregnant again (it does happen to parents of living and passed children) and required further intervention that my new Obamacare would not cover such services. My anxiety about our situation and many possible future situations was getting out of control. So after trying to manage a depressing 33rd birthday without my daughter and without a hopeful pregnancy and with these crazy insurance decisions to be made I reached out to my OB for reassurance. After a few questions about what we have tried thus far she told me to come in to her office for testing on the third day of my next cycle. This third day was likely going to fall over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and make it very difficult for us to accurately test me but we agreed to do the best we could with whatever day it ended up being. So as we moved into Thanksgiving weekend my period was not coming as expected even though I could feel all the signs of an impending period. Because I wanted to partake in drinking some alcohol that night I decided to take a pregnancy test first just to ease my worrisome guilt. (Mind you I had taken a pregnancy test a few days earlier that was negative). When I came downstairs to show Heath the test he said, "it's okay honey, we'll just keep trying. It will happen for us." I said "look again daddy." Heath had gotten so used to my disappointment with negative pregnancy tests that he apparently was already prepping to console me which lead his heart to be tricked. But low and behold, I was holding a positive test!

We were of course nervous and I immediately worried about all of the things I may have eaten or drank while unaware of this pregnancy but Heath reassured me that I have been extra careful. So we had to wait until after Christmas for our confirmation ultrasound but we decided that there was no point in waiting to celebrate this little life growing inside of me. We surprised each of our parents with a blanket of Millie pictures followed by a picture frame of Millie containing a special message.

To say our families were surprised and overwhelmed with love is an understatement. It was a bright moment in an otherwise challenging holiday season. Our confirmation ultrasound went well and from there our future ultrasounds would occur at the high risk doctor's office (the MFM). So our next ultrasound was scheduled for 2 days before Millie's first birthday. As if emotions weren't running high already, I was also dealing with extreme anxiety that we would learn bad news during that same week that we were celebrating our daughter's first birthday without her. It was at the 12 week ultrasound that we learned that our very first baby was sick so as my anxiety heightened I turned to God in prayer and asked Him to comfort us with whatever news we learned and to prepare us to care for our child no matter what the ultrasound says. This helped curb my extreme emotions some but it wasn't until we got a good report and got to see the little heart flutter that I started to really feel hope seep in. Heath felt reassurance and hope immediately in the little ultrasound room but it took my heart a bit longer to feel at ease. After that appointment we started sharing our news more openly and worked on our social media announcement.

Heath has always loved the shoe baby announcements, so I decided that we had the perfect plan. We already had little cowboy boots purchased for Millie while we were pregnant with her so her little sibling was going to get their first hand-me-down! Plus we had the sweetest picture of Millie's feet from her NILMDTS professional photo shoot. There was no way Big Sister was not going to be incorporated in our announcement! Also at this time we had received the advanced blood work results that told us that this baby was unlikely to have any serious genetic or chromosomal disorders. This test also revealed gender. I had always wanted gender to be a surprise at birth. We had tried with Millie but when we learned she was sick we decided we had bigger fish to fry and needed to know gender to better assess her health outcomes and to name our baby. I would have loved to have kept gender a surprise again but knew my heart needed time to adjust to whatever sex this baby would be.

We were suspecting a boy given our ultrasound tech's guess and the blood work confirmed it! We spent an afternoon with my sister, Laura and Woody taking amazing photos for our announcement. We just love how they turned out and how special it is to have our entire family of 4 (plus puppy girl) together as best we can in this picture.

Since then we have had 3 more monthly ultrasounds. At 17 weeks we had the anatomy scan which looked great but was a little early to feel completely relieved. We had another anatomy scan at 21 weeks which also looked good but Millie's looked good at this point too so it was not entirely reassuring.

3D image of baby bear, he is signing I Love You to us <3

Yesterday we had our 26 week ultrasound and I was not too terribly nervous going into it even though I knew this one would reveal his heart, brain and blood flow condition. All three areas looked perfect! As well as everything else that can be checked at this point. After this visit, the comfort and peace I immediately felt made me realize that my heart had already turned the corner to believing that he will get to come home with us and grow up with us. Somewhere between the 21 week and 26 week ultrasounds I started working through the emotions of preparing for his arrival. My husband's dad and step-mother want to throw a shower for our little man. So in helping my mother-in-law make invites and in planning a registry it began the process to allowing my heart to open up to the idea of bringing him home healthy. In feeling him move around regularly now my heart has furthered felt reassured that we will hold him, kiss him, love him, raise him and tell him all about his big sister in heaven.

I love feeling a little life inside of me again and believing that God is building our family. Now our next task is coming up with a name for our little baby bear. We really cannot come up with anything that feels right, and who knows, maybe we will have to meet him before his name comes to us.