First pic

Wednesday I rode the subway home with my pregnant neighbor.  As we walked backed to our condo, I couldn't help but notice that she was adorably cute with a big round belly.  I was jealous, so jealous.  She is three weeks behind me and she looked so cute.  There is nothing that I want more than to finally be able to walk around with a big baby bump to show the world that I am in fact pregnant.  After almost two shitty years of trying to have a baby, I want to be able to look the part.  Not only do I want to look the part, but I want to feel confident that there is in fact a baby in there and the baby is healthy and growing.

Up until now, there really hasn't been much for me to show.  Well, I think there is finally enough there for me to take a belly pic at exactly 25 weeks.  It is hard to believe that a viable little girl actually lives in my tummy right now, but rest assured she is in there and measuring in the 58th percentile!  I wanted at least one shot to document my journey (mainly for my own memory).  I plan on posting one more closer to my due date when I am hopefully really round and plump.

25 WEEKS

And just for fun...I came across the next picture on my phone which happens to be of my adorable little furbaby. I know this has absolutely nothing to do with my blog post, but I couldn't resist! He pretty much got shaved the other day because he was so matted.  He has been shivering ever since so we got him this cute sweater to wear.  We usually don't dress him in outfits, but seriously he is 5 pounds and so cold! He is cuddling up in my snoogle pregnancy pillow which he thinks is his :)



24 Weeks

First, I wanted to say that I am feeling much much better.  My last bout of fibroid degeneration pain was about four days ago.  When I am not in pain, I feel like a new woman :).  I am currently on "modified bedrest" which means I can go to work when I don't feel as if I am dying, and then I get to be a couch potato.  I went back to work Monday, which was rough, but since then I have been doing okay.
 
24 Weeks

Weight Gain: 7 pounds.  I fully expect this to pick up now that I can no longer work out and since I am not in as much pain!

Symptoms:  Hungry, backache, and fibroid pain.

What I Miss:  Sleep and working out

Milestones: Viability and seeing my tummy move from the kicks

Things to look forward to:  Decorating the nursery.  We have a painter coming and plan to have our furniture delivered in the next couple of weeks.  I have also ordered custom bedding for a super low price which is being delivered.


I am excited for this weekend. We have friends that live out in the burbs and they are coming into the city this Saturday to celebrate.  We are going to grill out, the men are going to have some drinks, and us ladies are going to find something fancy and non-alcoholic to sip on.  I just found out last week they are expecting as well.  I am super excited for them.  It is amazing to me when I look back at last summer and where we both are today.  They came up for my birthday last year and we attended the Southport Festival.  I specifically remember having a conversation about four bars in and at 2 a.m. about how we both were so frustrated that we weren't pregnant yet...if I remember right it may have turned into a bit of a pity party.  And now, here we BOTH are currently expecting.  Their doctor is pretty sure they are having a boy, although it is too early for them to tell for sure yet.  My friend said she is writing up a "marriage contract" for our future babies.  Kinda cute joke :).  Anyways, it will be nice for me to have some human interaction with good friends and hopefully some nice weather...oh, and NO contractions (crossing my fingers)!

Day 8 of Hell

Last night, I reached the realization that I really don't know how much more pain I can take.  I want to educate everyone out there on fibroid degeneration.  It is HELL!  Imagine someone running a knife through your spine and stabbing you continuously in the back...over and over and over again. And imagine this going on for days with no end in sight.  A morphine drip would  be heaven right now.

I am honestly not trying to whine.  I imagine what other women have gone through and who aren't able to carry a child.  However, I am human.  There is only so much any person can take.  To say that I am not severely depressed and under extreme distress is an understatement.

My parents arrived in town yesterday.  It has been nice having someone wait on me hand and foot since my hubby has to work.  My mom stayed up with me the entire night as I bawled hysterically.  On the floor on all fours, arching my back, rocking back and forth to relieve the pain, my mom sat there all night massaging my back as I screamed in pain.  Yes, this has been my life for the past 8 days, minus the personal massage therapist (my mom).

Another week down.  23 weeks....viability.  Now I know many women may strive for that 23/24 milestone, but my milestone is 36 weeks.  As I sat in the OB Triage at Northwestern Hospital Monday morning while the doctors tried to get my contractions under control, we had a pretty frank conversation with the doctor.  If I gave birth at 23/24 weeks, there would still be little chance that our daughter would make it.  If our daughter did make it, there was a 90% chance she would have some sort of disability.  Very grim outcome.  So, that leaves me with no other choice than to hang on for as long as possible...bedrest, pain and all.  And if bitching is the only thing that makes the pain slightly more manageable, then by all means I am going to bitch.

Scared

It was just over two weeks ago that I blogged that I finally felt this was real.  This was going to happen...I was going to have a baby.  It took me 20 weeks to finally feel that way, and I feel that in a matter of hours that joy, relief really, has been taken from me.

This past Thursday at exactly 22 weeks, began like any other day.  Work, gym during lunch, go back to work, and made plans to meet up with a friend after work.  Looking back, there were clear warning signs that something was happening.  However, being that I have never made it this far in a pregnancy, I have no idea what is normal.  I chalked up the back pain to just being pregnant.  I mean afterall, that is normal right?  I chalked the abdominal pressure to the baby possibly shifting and kicking me "down there" causing lots of pressure.  Again, no big deal, my baby is breached.

Like I said, I met up with a friend for dinner and to play with her adorable baby girl.  My husband was on a flight to Ohio, his first overnight trip in months.  As the evening went on I started  to become increasingly uncomfortable.  As my friend and I had dinner I started having some gas pains.  Nothing worrisome, just annoying.  As I walked to find a cab afterwards, I noticed that I was having unrelentless Braxton Hicks.  It was pretty difficult to walk, but I managed to flag down a cab.  When I got home I still was not too concerned and just began chugging water to hopefully relieve the Braxton Hicks.

Fast forward to 3 a.m., I was still suffering from unrelentless Braxton Hicks and the back pain began coming in waves, spasms.  My back felt like it was on fire.  As if things couldn't get worse, the gas pains became so bad that sometimes it was hard to catch my breath.  Maybe the sleep deprivation played some role at this point, but I was 99% sure I had caught an intestinal flu and that it was just causing me to contract.  I spent the rest of the night rocking back and forth, crying and cursing at my husband for traveling, praying for these gas pains and Braxton Hicks to ease up until I could get into the doctor the next morning.

I wobbled into work (with no intention of actually working) and called the doctor right away.  Now I know some are probably wondering why I even went to work.  Well, my doctors office is four blocks from my office so I was going to have to go downtown anyways.  Also, I wanted to be around people.  By this time I was pretty freaked out.  Remember, my husband is out of town and I live in Chicago where the nearest family member is in Kansas City. I didn't go to the ER because lets face it...I have made three trips to the ER in the past two years due to miscarriages and endometriosis pain and all three times they did nothing.  I didn't want to go to the ER if I only had the flu. 

Anyways, I finally got into the doctor around noon (yes it took that long).  I must have looked ridiculous as my doctor walked in.  I was drenched in sweat, no makeup, puffy eyes, and gripping the side of the exam table for dear life.  It took him less than a minute to give me the bad news that I in fact did not have the flu.  I was having full blown contractions.  He immediately checked my cervix to see if I was dilated.  Thank god I have a super star cervix and it was solid.

I will cut right to the point, my fibroids are degenerating. This means that the fibroids are so big that they have cut off their own blood supply.  It causes severe pain, contractions, and can lead to preterm labor if not managed appropriately.  I had been warned of this and it was something my doctor was concerned about.  I was put on medicine for the next 48 hours to stop my contractions and am on complete bed rest.  Monday I have another cervical ultrasound and my doctor will decide what to do from there. If I have menstrual-like cramping at all during this weekend then I am to go in to L&D immediately because that pain most likely means your cervix is being affected.  Hopefully this is avoided because the last thing I want to do is spend the next several months on bed rest in the hospital.

I am only a little over 22 weeks.  I am pretty scared.  My doctor even appeared a little nervous which is unlike him.  I am going to take it day by day.  As I type this blog, I am still having contractions, although the severity has decreased significantly.  For some reason I just feel as if this will all turn out okay.  I don't know how I know that, but it is just a gut feeling I have.  Degeneration can last for a couple of weeks so I am just praying that this passes soon and that our little girl remains healthy.  Who knows, maybe this medicine will work and by Monday I will be back to normal.  As long as my cervix stays solid, then the doctor said the contractions shouldn't bother the baby other than making her a little crankier than normal.  I guess this is a plus for me since I have been feeling her non-stop since Thursday...which I love by the way, even if it means she is cranky :)

Reality

This past weekend was absolutely beautiful and sunny.  As I was walking along the sidewalk in the sun I noticed a shadow.  At first, I turned around to see who was following me.  See, the shadow was someone who was clearly pregnant.  It took me a second to realize that the shadow was me.  For some reason this small instance of seeing my shadow was the moment in time that I finally realized that this may actually happen!  The connection was finally there.  The connection between my daughter and I that I had so longed for up until this point.  Not that I didn't love my baby before, but I would not allow myself to be excited yet.  I didn't quite believe....it is all feeling so real now.

I have to admit that I feel a bit guilty that I can continue to talk about my pregnancy especially after what my friend has endured which is probably why I haven't blogged in some time.  I was quite affected by her loss.  However, I decided long ago that I was going to do this.  Good or bad I was going to document my infertility struggle which would hopefully end up being a pregnancy blog and a future baby blog.  So hear goes:

20 Weeks

Weight Gain: 6 pounds.

Baby Bump: Yes! Finally! I do have a small bump, although still quite low.

Maternity clothes: I have bought one pair of maternity jeans and one pair of dress pants.

Symptoms:  heartburn/acid reflex, cramping, and I am still getting bloody noses.  I have also started to get hungry....as in I feel like I am starving all the time.  Bring on the weight gain!

Milestones: We had our 20 week anatomy scan yesterday.  Everything looked good as far as they could tell.  The placenta is extremely close to my cervix so I will be getting rescanned in four weeks to make sure that the placenta has moved up.  Otherwise, I could get placenta previa and end up on bed rest (yuck!).  Also, I think the baby had a choroid plexus cyst which I think are fairly common, but I still get nervous.  Again, my rescan in four weeks will hopefully show that this has gone away.

Things to look forward to: Finally looking at baby items.  I am trying to get through the Baby Bargains book before doing so.  I finally picked out custom bedding/fabric that I love and am pretty much going to plan the nursery around that.  Still haven't bought anything baby related yet though.

I continue to feel blessed everyday.  I had dinner with my Resolve 2 girls last night.  It is always fun seeing pictures of their babies and listening to their advice.  They all give me hope that I will have a beautiful, happy baby even after everything I have been through, because they have all been through the same.  My husband and I are also going to dinner with our friends who lost their babies (see previous post).  I can't wait to see her and give her a big hug!!!  I think about her everyday and continue to pray that in time her heart is able to heal, although never forget....as I wish for all the other women out there dealing with infertility or loss.

Heartache

I know I have been asking my followers to pray and keep in their thoughts my friend who has been in the hospital due to complications in her pregnancy. Unfortunately, Sunday morning she lost her babies.  I wasn't going to write about it, and I still am not because it is not my story to tell.  However, I also can't ignore the significant impact the turn of events have had on me.

Miscarriage and loss brought us together and to our surprise we both became pregnant at the same time.  She was my buddy...always the optimist calming my fears whenever I became scared shitless about this or that.  She knew my secret before anyone else and I knew hers.  To me, she always came across as this symbol of strength for which I often strived for.

After getting the news yesterday, everything I had set out to accomplish for the day seemed meaningless.  I felt lost, alone.  I felt angry and sad.  A couple of times throughout the day I found myself wondering to our bedroom just so I could get away and have a good cry.  I just needed some time to mourn for my friend and her precious babies.

There is nothing fair about it.  Life is a pile of crap sometimes and there is no logical reason for things.  It just doesn't make sense.  The more I try to make sense of everything, the more frustrated I become.  I can say that I refuse to lose my faith.  My friend will one day take home a child, and she will be such an absolutely amazing mother, just as she has been such an amazing mother for all of the beautiful babies she has carried thus far.

Please just keep my friend in your thoughts and prayers.  Let her find peace and resolve.  Pray that she can mourn, but never give up hope.

17 Weeks

This week was a BIG week for us!  On Sunday we found out the gender of our baby and it is a....GIRL!!!  Hubs and I were ecstatic.  Of course we would have been entirely happy with either a boy or a girl.  The hubs has been so cute all week.  He is a guys guy, and just to see his excitement about having a daughter almost makes me cry.  It has been a good week :)

Sunday we also came out with our secret that we are expecting.  The day was full of texts and phone calls to our closest friends and family.  I could genuinely hear the excitement and relief that most of my friends expressed with our news.  Many were just praying that the no news meant good news and that the IVF was successful.  I still have a few friends to reach out to.  Again, we are blessed to have such good people in our lives.

17 Weeks

Weight gain: 4-5 pounds

Baby bump: definitely rounded out finally

Maternity Clothes: No

Symptoms: headache, headache, headache....did I mention headache?  And the dreaded growing cramps.

Milestone: finding out that we are having a daughter.  The beginning of "flutters".  I at first thought it was gas or muscle twitching a week ago.  Now, there is no mistaking that I am feeling the beginning movements of our baby.

Things to look forward to:  My bi-weekly ultrasound which will be next Wednesday.  Also, our anatomy scan in three weeks.  I pray that everything is perfect.

I continue to pray each and every day that I am able to keep this baby inside me.  Hopefully I will have good news from my doctor next week that the baby still has plenty of room.  I know that as the baby is growing, so are my five fibroids.  There is only so much room.  7 more weeks until viability and then every week thereafter will be another milestone.  I love our baby girl more than I ever thought possible.  I can not and will not fail at bringing this beautiful girl into the world.