Our little guy!!!!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

We are so thrilled for another addition to our family! It feels like we've been waiting for this time to finally be here. I know other's have gone through more difficult trials to get their children here, and I feel like the little trial Ryan and I went through was to give us a better understanding of what others have had to go through. Although I don't feel like I took Kate's pregnancy for granted, I just had no idea how easy it was for us to bring her here. Everything went SO SMOOTHLY! Which is great, and I am so grateful I will have those memories to hold onto dearly.

This pregnancy has been a little bit different. We wanted to start trying in January of 2010 but decided it was important to get better insurance, and get Aflac. Due to the new insurance we had to wait until May to start trying. In my head that was an eternity away, but I figured that since it was so easy to get pregnant with Kate, that a few months wouldn't kill us. May came, and I felt like our time FINALLY came! I was so excited to get pregnant. Any girl can imagine the disappointment I went through when June came and that pregnancy test came back negative. July, nothing. I for sure thought August would be my month! We went to Newport with Ryan's family over my birthday. I knew that if I hadn't started by the 7Th, I was pregnant. I wanted to give myself the best birthday present ever so I waited until the 10Th to take the test.... And it was the best birthday ever!!!! The test came back positive! Our time had come. I was ecstatic. It was so hard to not shout it to the world, especially to Ryan's family since we were with them all week. We went to Disneyland and Jess was pregnant so she couldn't go on any of the wild rides. I was trying to figure out how on earth I was going to keep it a secret from the family when I wasn't going on any of those rides either. Jess caught on what was going on really fast! It was our little secret (and Ryan's too). We came home from Newport and everything was going great. At 6 1/2 weeks I finally called Dr. Smith's office and scheduled an appointment for our 8 week check up. The very next day everything changed. I started spotting but didn't want to overreact. I called up Dr. Smith's nurse and she said she wanted me to go in and let them draw my blood. They wanted to make sure I was pregnant. This next week DRAGGED for me. They called me back Wednesday saying I was pregnant but my levels were low so they wanted me to go back and draw blood again. Then on Thursday they wanted me to go in and get the Rhogam shot. The whole time I knew what was going, but I didn't want to admit it. A small part of me was hoping that everything was going to be OK, and I was still pregnant. On Friday when I got the phone call from the nurse letting me know that indeed it was a miscarriage, I was devastated. Although it was only 2 1/2 weeks, I was already planning on having this little one join our family in April.

I spent the time I needed to grieve over that little one. The next few months were still frustrating for me. I wanted to get pregnant so bad, and I wanted it right then!

I remember on Thanksgiving I was feeling sick. One side of me was excited thinking, "Yay, this is it!" While the other side of me was thinking, "Oh no, another month goes by and I'm still not pregnant." That Saturday I was too anxious so I took a pregnancy test (3 days early) and once again, it came back negative. I just kept waiting for it to start. Wednesday still nothing so I took another pregnancy test, and it came back POSITIVE!!! I couldn't believe it! And I couldn't believe that I was sick before I even knew I was pregnant. That day I called the doctors office and they said they would see me as early and as often as I wanted to be seen. That was comforting for me. I decided that no matter how often I go in, it wont change anything. We knew we wanted to tell immediate family on Christmas, but I told Ryan that we couldn't tell them until we had seen Dr. Smith. We went in at 7 weeks and were able to see the heartbeat. That was all I needed! We told the family on Christmas!

I've had a few friends that recently miscarried at 12 weeks, so I was still worried that I could have another one. The whole week before my 12 week appointment I kept telling Ryan how worried I was that we were going to go to the appointment and they wouldn't be able to find a heartbeat (even though we had already seen the heartbeat twice). The night before I had a nightmare about the same thing. So we go in, and the doctor is using the Doppler instead of doing an ultrasound. My heart is pounding and I'm about to cry when 20 seconds goes by and he still cant find the heartbeat. Finally, he finds it and I can calm down. Ryan was even worried there for a minute. So we've done it! We've made it past the 12 week mark! I can finally relax and not worry about every tiny thing that is going on!

Wrong. I'm 15 weeks now and I'm feeling so much better and loving it! On a Sunday evening I start bleeding just a tiny bit, but its enough to throw me over the edge. I'm balling and can't even breathe. I couldn't believe that this was happening to me. I spoke to a nurse on call, and she assured me that everything is OK since I haven't had any more bleeding. I went in the next day to hear the heartbeat and get everything checked out, and everything was OK! I cannot begin to tell you how relieved I was. And what helped was right after this incident I was able to feel baby move around, and have felt him several times a day since then.

I will be 20 weeks tomorrow, and nothing scary has happened since then. I am so glad that I have made it this far! I will never EVER take a single pregnancy for granted. I will cherish every moment, good and bad. As rough as it has been, I am so grateful for everything that has happened. I would like to believe it has made me a stronger person, and I can sympathize with those that have gone through a rough time as well.

Kate is so excited to be a big sister! From day 1 she said she was getting a baby brother, so we weren't too surprised when we found out she was right! We are so thrilled to have a little boy join our family.

Here is baby boy's profile.

Here is his left leg in 3D.

His left leg again. He was moving around so much! It was fun

for Ryan to see how much he moves around.

His face in 3D. The placenta is covering up half of it :(
(The doc says that I could feel him so early on because

the placenta is in the front.)

It's a little blurry, but here is his foot.

He has no shame! He wasn't afraid to show us that

he is a boy!

His cute little body. At 18 weeks he weighed 9 ounces.

I realize now that I get 2 amazing birthdays in a row! My birthday in 2010 gave me hope that Kate would get a brother or sister. Then for my birthday in 2011, our little miracle gets to come join our family! Who knows, maybe he will even come ON his due date, which is my birthday :)

It amazes me how much I already love him!