Baby Girl

     Six weeks before my due date I was sent to the hospital for pre-term labor. After they finally stopped my contractions I was put on bed rest. Lucky for me, I only had to be on bed rest for two weeks. The nurse at the hospital told me that if I came in at 36 weeks in labor they wouldn't do anything to stop it. So for two weeks either my mom or J's mom was at my house to help with Baby J while J was at work.

      Two weeks after bed rest ended I awoke having contractions. This was no surprise, it had been happening for weeks. My mom came over to help with Baby J and did not like how frequent my contractions were. I called J and told him we should probably go to the hospital. Luckily he worked close to the house. 

We got to the hospital and were happy to find that I was truly in labor and progressing fast. At 5:59pm I was ably to have a successful V-BAC and brought our daughter Z into the world.

    

Surprise

     When Baby J was three and a half months old we had the shock of a life time.

      I was pregnant. Again. The pregnancy test was positive before I even put it down. I was extremely upset. I never thought I would be so sad to see a positive pregnancy test and for a a second I thought about aborting it. I mean how could we do that to our sweet little boy. Have another baby. He was still a very young baby.
     J was amazing. He let me cry on him. I can;t remember exactly what he said but it made me feel better and made me think about the big picture. We are happily married, have a sweet baby boy and these two would always have a friend to play with.
     So off to the doctor I went to make sure I could even carry a baby so soon after having had a c-section. He sent me for an ultra sound where everything looked nicely healed. And I got an early peak at our new baby.

     Everything was perfect.

     When I went in for my first official check up we found that the due date was one week before Baby J's first birthday. "Looks like your going to have Irish Twins" my doctor told me. Ugh! That meant that if I went past my due date they could the same birthday.
     The best news came at the twenty week ultra sound. Everything was healthy. And we found out we were having a Girl! One of each! That certainly softened the blow of being pregnant. I was truly excited now,

Life With Baby

     Baby J was such a joy. We took tons of pictures every day. We love him! However, my birth experience with him was so horrible, I didn't want to have any more kids. We were content with our little man.   

Baby J was so small. We could barely see him in his swing.

    

Hid first Halloween

First Christmas

A Baby is Born

      J and I arrived at the hospital about 3pm. Two hours later my doctor arrived and succesfully turned the baby around. Three hours after that he broke my water and my induction was on it's way.

      When I had arrived at the hospital I was already at 4cm and 100% effaced. I figured once my water was broken it wouldn't take much time at all. I was wrong. We waited. And waited. Finally at about 9:00 the next morning, the nurse came in to check me. 10cm! Woo Hoo! I pushed a couple times and then my doctor came in to check on me (Lucky for us it was his surgery day so he was going to be around.). He checked me and discovered that I was not fully dialated and the baby's head was coming brow first. He told me he could try to move the baby's head with forcepts but he thought it would be safer if we did a c-section. I relunctantly agreed. 

       As soon as my doctor left to find a plce for me in the schedule, I cried. I was so upset by the whole situation. I wasn't going to be able to push out my own baby. I felt like a failure. I was going to have to have sugery. I was so scared.

     J made the call to the family's. There was no way I was going to able to talk to any one with out weaping.

     They came to get us about 1pm. J had to wait in the hall while they prepped me for surgery. I had already gotten an eppidural the night before so they had to move me onto the operating table. By this time, I was pretty out of it. I hadn't eaten in 23 hours. I had barely slept in that time. I was very emotional. They started the surgery and I kept saying "Where's my husband? Is he still in the hall?" Then I finally heard him whisper in my ear ear "I'm right here." That helped calm me.

     About halfway through the insinsion, my epidural started wearing off. I could feel them cutting into me. The enethesiologist did his best but it was too late. I felt the entire sugery.

     Finally I heard the tiny cries of a baby. My baby.

     The doctor brought him over so we could see him. All I could see was a blob of purple. They took him away to clean him off and wrap him and my eyes shut. I could not open them. I could not move. I felt them staple the incision shut.
     They wheeled me back to my room. They let me sip water and Istarted feeling better. Then, they brought in my baby and asked if I wanted to hold him. Ummm... Yeah!
      I finally got to hold my baby. The cutet baby in history looked up at me. 

Baby J.
7 lb 8 oz
20-1/2 inches

Pregnant

     We did not believe the pregnancy test. I took two more two make sure I wasn't reading it wrong. All three were positive. I scheduled my appointment the next day, for a month out.
     We did not tell a soul. Well, almost. As I was scheduling my first appointment( I saw a doctor, not located in the office that I worked at because it seemed too weird to have someone I work with everyday see me naked.)  a co-working approached me right as I was saying "This appointment is because I'm pregnant." So, she knew. No one else did. And it was hard keeping it a secret. We didn't want to tell anyone until we heard that heartbeat and knew for sure it was a keeper.
     Finally, the day came. We saw a tiny little bean, and a tiny little heartbeat. It was real. We were going to have a baby. We immediately told our families. My mother-in-law was so excited she hopped up and down!
     I have to admit, a huge bonus for working at the OB/GYN office, was the ultra sound technician who worked there. I had no qualms about her letting me have ultra sounds. We even able to find out a month early that we were having a boy!

     Being pregnant wasn't too bad. I had waited my whole life for this so I was going to take it all in. That boy was so squirmy in there from the get go. He was always moving. Sometimes I swear he was trying to escape threw my belly. Maybe he was just doing handstands. Who knows. It was crazy. But we were so excited to meet our little guy.
     Towards the end, like any expectant mother in her last month, I was doing my best to get that baby out of me. Every day it seemed we were trying something. We walked around a lot. But he wasn't ready. At my 39 week appointment my doctor checked me and told me the baby was breach...again. He had been flip flopping my entire pregnancy. Since I was only a week away from my due date, I had two options: #1 I could schedule a c-section for the next day or #2 I could go straight to the hospital where my doc would that baby around and start an induction.
Well, there was no way in hell I was going to have a c-section. I'll take the induction, thank you.
I called J and off we were to have our baby.

Trying to Make a Baby

     Getting pregnant was not as easy as I had originally thought it would be. What made things worse was all the woman around me getting pregnant. When my older sister told me she was pregnant with her fifth child, I cried. J and I had been trying for almost six months to have a baby and every month nothing happened.      When I went to see my doctor for my annual exam he told me that if I wasn't pregnant in six months to come back with my husband to see what he could do.
     Six months later we were back in his office. Tests were ordered for both of us and we started right away.
     All the tests came back negative. There was no reason for us to be struggling so hard. We had my blood work done again to see if they'd missed anything. Sure enough, my progesterone levels were half of what they should be.
     I started chlomid. I hated chlomid. I turned into a crazy woman. I remember, sitting at home waiting for J to get home from work, and crying because he wasn't home. It was like, three o'clock in the afternoon and he never came home before five. This stuff was horrible. I took it for two months and said forget it. I didn't like who I was on this medication. It was not worth it.
     We decided to try a round of IUI. It didn't work. My doctor decided to put me on an experimental drug, femara, generally used for post menopausal woman who've had breast cancer. But some woman had had success getting pregnant.
     I took it and we tried another round of IUI. Once again, unsuccessful. I had one more month of femara left. I decided to use it and forget about it. This was the last time. No more pills. No more tests. No more tears.
     Two days after J's twenty seventh birthday we got the news that would change our lives forever. I was pregnant.

Introduction

     Like most stories, ours started with just the two of us. We met on an online dating site. After a bunch of emails we talked on the phone and decided to meet.  

Two months into dating.

     We dated for a year and a half before we decided to get married. We tried to keep the wedding small. Family and close friends. We had it in the back yard of my grandparents house, two hours away.

Married!

     J always told me he wanted to be married at least a year before we had kids. We were young so I had no problem with that. The fact that he even wanted kids someday attracted me to him all the more.
     I worked in an OB/GYN office as the records coordinator. J worked at a music store. Things were going well.
     I waited two years before I got truly, unbelievably baby hungry. Right before our second anniversary I told J "I'm going off birth control. I want a baby." He simply replied "OK." And so began our journey to parenthood.