12 weeks

Today marks 12 weeks into our second pregnancy. Baby is the size of a plum! We have not told family yet as today is our little man’s 2nd birthday and we don’t want to take away from his bday celebrations. We have a midwife appointment on Monday and if all goes well we will tell our families that evening. We had an ultrasound at 8 weeks 5 days where we saw a strong heartbeat and a big head! I am starting to feel pretty excited! And not complaining, but the sickness is kicking my butt more with a toddler around this time. 
Did I also mention we have two teenage girls living with us? Now THAT has been a learning curve…. Whoa nelly.

Beta day

Well today I had the dreaded/exciting blood draw. Numbers came back at 581 17 days past IUI. With my son I had 347 at 14 dpiui so this is a bit lower but still incredibly exciting.  If this all works out we will have a 1 hit wonder! Can’t believe I might be able to say that after years of heartbreak! I think I will go for another beta in a few days. Eek!

So Confused! TMI and opinions wanted!

I really do not know what is going on. Am I pregnant? Am I not? Am I having a early loss?
On Friday Aug. 12th I had a 10,000iu pregnyl trigger shot at 8:30am. 1 follicle at almost 25 and a lining of 6.7mm. 

On Saturday Aug. 13th I had an IUI at 3:00pm. 

I have felt different since a couple days after IUI. I was sure something was going on and I felt the pressure cramps early on. I started trying to test my trigger out with a whack of ovulation tests I had that were expired. Yes I know….but ovulation tests read HCG as well. Just more chance of mix ups. I figured since they were going to the garbage, what could be the harm. Well I’ll tell you…mental health. So I took the ovulation tests starting at about 8 days past trigger and they were very dark. Didn’t seem to lighten up much over the next several days. At 12 days past IUI I got a dark line on a dollar store pregnancy test. So that was 13 days after trigger. Was curious why it was so dark. Woke up the next morning and took another test with FMU and it was negative (if I squint extra hard I can kinda see an evap  line). When I wiped (tmi) there was a decent amount of brown blood. I started crying. I was certain I was pregnant and now I was bleeding. I had been carrying the wiggly tantrumy 22 month old on a hike around the lake the day before. I was sure I had caused this. The spotting continued every time I wiped the whole day but instead of getting heavier it got lighter. I know it is too late for implantation bleeding. The day after at 5am 14 days past IUI I had a light positive on the pregnancy test. It was light but darker then the day before. Spotting continues all day. 5pm I take another one. Line is a bit darker than this morning. By now we are all confused and I’m still spotting. M goes to Walmart and picks up a digital. It reads 1-2 weeks pregnant. Today I am 15 days last IUI and 16 days past trigger. Very minimal spotting now. What is going on??? Could it still be trigger? With baby boy I took a digital 15 days after IUI and it said 2-3 weeks pregnant but the blood draw I had the same day came back higher then expected (early implanter). So I’m hoping 1-2 weeks pregnant is a good enough for 14 dpiui.
Ahh! So confusing. As I head back to work next week I want this to be figured out prior to the craziness of the first week of kindergarten!

Any ideas? Anyone? I understand only time will tell but what is the deal?!

The boy

I figured since we are 300 days from proper updates I need to show how much boy has grown. It’s truly unbelievable.  He enjoys crossing his arms and using duck face to say NO when he is not impressed. He loves animals and will lay flat on the ground to get a better look when he sees an ant or bug. His favourite food (which is amazing becuase he basically never eats) is peanut butter balls. Oatmeal and peanut butter with a bit of honey.  He does not sleep through the night yet but does stay in his own room. He is obsessed with balls and is quite athletic. He has since 19 months old been able to hit a soft baseball in the air with a bat. He can hit a golf ball about ten feet and throw a football pretty far. He REALLY wants to be able to throw the basketball into the adult sized hoop. He has just figured out how to steal the hose and spray us with it…. He is feisty, fiercely independant and hilarious. One of his favourite sayings is  “no mamma my” when he doesn’t want our help. We just love him so very much. 

 

IUI later today

Well yesterday I went to my RE for a second follicle scan this month. First one was on day 12 and I had one larger follicle at 15 and many other too small to measure ones. We came back yesterday at day 15 and I had one big follicle at 24.5 and was given a trigger shot. I am happy with the follicle size and timing of trigger to IUI. We are scheduled 30 hours later which is how we had success with our boy! I am not happy that for some reason my lining was only 6.69mm as previously it has been around 10-11. The doctor didn’t say it was a concern but it’s been on my mind. These IUI and donor sperms are big $$$$$ and I want to make sure we have a chance! 

So we will be driving into the city for IUI try #1 of getting boo a sibling. Deep breathes, deep breathes. 

308 days

308 days since I last updated.  I guess having a 21 month old takes up a lot of our time! Since I’ve been here last I’ve gone back to work for a very stressful year and had a partial thyrodectomy at the end of April. Besides the nasty scar on my neck, I seem to be healing well. My TSH blood test came back on track so that means……we have the go ahead to star TTCing number 2. I started clomid yesterday and will go in day 12 to see if I have any eggs! While I am still feeling a bit anxious….about if any eggs will be present, if the tigger will be timed correct with the IUI, if we will conceive with the 5 vials we have in storage, I feel much more calm this try. 
So… Here we go!

Hello

is this thing on? It has only been 234 days since I last posted. A bit fat oops! 
In that time my baby has started walking, back talking and barking at the dogs. He is amazing and wonderful and cute and bratty and extremely entertaining.  Just under a month until his first birthday and I can’t believe how fast it has gone.  
I’m back at work full time in a very challenging class this year.  Which might explain my 5 migraines in ten days.  Seriously…. That happened. I have a great photo of me nursing boo in the hospital with an IV and sunglasses on this last Thursday. What a memory.  Not sure what is going on there but I would like to figure it out.  When my migraines happen, it feels like the world is ending. I’ve Been to Chiro, acu, physio, massage and the doctor. No one knows why but we have a few leads…. Hormones? I nurse less now that I am working….stress from going back to work? Iron levels? My neck is somehow compressed…. Ahh I guess without suffering sometimes we would not be as thankful for our health. I see a naturopath end of move,bet. 

M is off for the next month with the little man while our twelve month parental leave finishes out.  I have to say it is the smartest thing I did for transition.  He came to my class for the first two weeks to nurse at lunch and now I just pump before work and feed him when I get home.  It has been amazing to just wake up and deal with my stuff (lunch, breakfast, lesson plans) for the last month while M figures out dinner and groceries and boo’s thjngs.  Feel very blessed to ease back in before the big 1 where he’ll be off to daycare all day and needs lunches, diapers, clothes packed, plus dinner made here. Ahh, then the real worlds settles in. 
Hope all is well out there with you all. I’ve been reading every day and see there is a lot of excitement out there.  

    
 

A horrible nightmare

I will start off by saying that my little family is healthy and safe. The little man is doing well, he had his first set of immunizations yesterday with a slight fever but seems to be feeling a lot better today.

Something happened three days ago that I hoped would never happen in my teaching career. In fact it is so difficult that I’m having trouble putting words to how I feel because I can’t figure out how I actually feel. I live in a small town of about 18,000 and this has rocked our community to the core. A student that I had in my class in kindergarten and grade one who is now currently in grade 2 was killed in a horrific car accident along with his mother. I job shared in kindergarten and taught him part time and purposely put him on my class list for full time grade one because I enjoyed him so much. M taught him at preschool for two years before I had him in kindergarten and grade one so we have quite the connection to this child and his family. Right now I am home on mat leave for the year and feeling weirdly disconnected from the school community so I don’t really know what to do. Last night I went to my old class website and went back through the whole school year to look at every picture I have with him in it. I don’t know if I’m in shock or being realistic or just naïve. I don’t know what feel. I feel heartbroken for the family and nervous of how all the children are coping and I also feel thankful that I was able to have those two years with him. He was 7. 7 years old.

When you become a teacher they tell you not to have favorites but I can say without a doubt he was my favorite student and it was obvious. He was quite the little monkey who would often get in trouble outside at recess and lunch but I never had a problem with him we just “got” each other. He is definitely the child I connected with most in my career thus far. I’m so glad I let him get away with all the little shenanigans he pulled and really had the time to connect and bond with him. I loved him.

Because his younger sister still goes to M’s daycare and I taught him we both had quite a connection with his mom. In fact the day before we flew out for Christmas holidays the daycare was having a Christmas concert and we had quite a long chat with her and she got to meet and hold our baby and we talked about her sons school year and how much I missed him. I told her I would try to be his teacher next year in grade 3 and we told her that we hoped our son grows up to have parts of her son in him as we both thought he was such a neat kid.

This boy was unsual but not strange. I keep racking my brain for some of the stories he told me as any day of the year I was able to tell the whole staff at lunch a funny story he said but of course I can’t think of anything now. That’s bothering me. I’m scared I won’t ever be able to remember any of the funny things he did. His mom told him for his birthday in June he could have a big party if he wanted to invite the whole class and he told his mom no thank you I would only like to invite my one friend and me (his teacher). He often asked me if I could play “what does the Fox say” on the projector for the class to dance to it and mostly I obliged. It was fun. He always sat beside me during school assemblies and in class meetings. Sometimes out of choice and sometimes out of necessity.

I wonder if I feel weird about this whole situation because I now have my own son. I do feel terribly sad but I look at my little boy who right now is waking up from sleep and smiling at me and I think that I need to be thankful for my good life. Mostly my feeling is that I don’t want him to be forgotten. I also hope that I never have to go through this again with another student in the rest of my career. I feel like I have no words. I am so sad.

8 weeks old

I have been a terrible blogger which is nothing new. I check my wordpress app daily and read everyone else’s stories. I could excuse my lameness with the business of a new baby but it is not really the reason I haven’t updated. I just haven’t.

So a lot has happened in the last month but I can’t remember what it is. I am not sleep deprived but we are tired. I was floating on happiness/adrenaline/coffee for the first 6 weeks or so. While I am still very much happy and in love, I can feel tired now. For the first 6 weeks we told everyone, “this is so easy” “We sleep great” and we thought it was true, it has just caught up with us now. The tired isn’t how I imagined. I just feel a bit sluggish nothing major.

Having a baby is really fun. He is almost 2 months old (in a few days) and has a personality. He is full of smiles when you talk to him and quick to cry if he is hungry. He can go from smiles to a hunger scream in 5 seconds, it really is amazing. He is generally happy and really likes to fight sleep. Our usual routine is bed around 9:30 – 10:00 and he usually fights sleep until 11:30. It sounds sad but usually we have to restrain him by holding down his arms and then he will fade off. It is not unusual for him to be in his co sleeper (best invention ever) and silent except for a swooshing sound. When we look over he is turning his head side to side with a giant smile on his face. I am pretty sure he is saying (HA HA you thought I was sleeping). After he falls asleep he usually will sleep for 3 hours then wake up for a diaper change and feed. So up at 2:30 back down at 3:00. Then up at 5:00, feed and change, down at 5:30. Up again around 7:30 for the day. He has actually stayed awake the whole day before. It was terrible, I tried to put him to sleep for the whole day, He just fought it so bad. Usually he will go back to sleep around 9 or 10 for between 2 and 3 hours and sometimes an afternoon nap as well.

Big news in our house this week is that he finally has been able to take a soother. This is huge! He usually uses me as a soother to fall asleep then as soon as I adjust him slightly he is up again.

I am exclusively breast feeding and have pumped a couple times. He took the bottle the first time which was great but he did not eat much. We used it for a couple nights to feed him in his co sleeper to doze him off and that was nice. It was also nice for M to be able to feed him for the first time.

He is so very adorable and we are the annoying parents who can’t stop talking about how cute his eyeballs and toes are. When he gets out of the bath his hair springs into curls like mine and during the day it sticks straight up like Kramer.

We are travelling to Phoenix for Christmas and he will get to meet the other half of his family. Poor us having to spend the holidays in the sun. I am less nervous of the plane ride now, and really just hope it doesn’t hurt his little ears. My plan is to nurse during take off and landing, and any time he cries. No matter how upset he is he will always take the boob.

I sent off my holiday craft exchange this morning and it was a weird thing. The blog I am matched with are struggling with pregnancy like we were last year at this time. I have not forgotten how hard it had been for us to achieve our pregnancy but I also want everyone to know there is hope. It is amazing how fast our lives have changed.

Baby boy still has a fast respiratory rate and we are still seeing a paediatrician. He has had 2 chest x-rays, 2 ECG’s, an echocardiogram, and several blood tests. The results are all the same – nothing abnormal. Our paediatrician told us to see our doctor in a couple weeks (Which was yesterday) and if he still had a fast rate to come see him in the new year and if not, cancel our appointment. Unfortunately his rate was still quite high. He breathes quick and shallow but does not struggle. The consensus was to see the paediatrician again and our doctor said he will likely discharge us. We have stopped panicking about it, but would like to see it clear up. There is no reason he is doing it and all the reasons that could cause it have been ruled out. The doctor feels it is because he is immature (young) and it should fix itself as he matures.

I hope everyone has a safe and healthy holiday season. Here are some photos of our love! 🙂

Newborn photo!

First time breastfeeding 2 hours after birth. And the closest I’ll ever get to appearing on this blog 😉

The hair springs curls when wet

All smiles at his baby shower

First Santa Photo!

His 6 week photo

Baby boy’s arrival

I figure I should write out the birth story before it’s been too long and I forget.

He was due on October 10th and showed no signs of coming on time. On the tenth day passed due we could chose to induce or keep going. After much debate we decided to induce as our midwife informed us that going more then 2 weeks overdue increases our odds of stillbirth and that is not something we were comfortable with.

So on Monday I went to the hospital and had an ultrasound and non stress test done. Both came back with great results. Baby had lots of fluid and a good looking placenta. The heart rate was good as well. We decided to insert cervadil which is a thin strip of paper placed behind my cervix. It didn’t really hurt going in anymore then a cervical check. Which seem to always hurt me anyways. I was then hooked up to a non stress test monitor for 2 hours before being allowed to go home around noon. Everything went well and I had some minor cramping until about 4 when I got one continuos contraction with no break. My tummy went hard and I could not get relief in my lower back. I was supposed to return to the hospital at 9 to take out the cervadil and insert another one but I decided to call the midwife and ask about the contractions and she asked me to go to the hospital right away and meet her there. So it turns out the cervadil hyper stimulated me and for the whole day it helped me dilate to a 1. So they took it out and did not insert another one. The plan was to come back the next morning and start oxytocin to bring on contractions.

We went home and tried to sleep. I’m not going to lie, it totally sucked. M was trying to push on my back to help combat the contractions but we did not fall asleep until after 5am and I just knew something was not right. We went back to the hospital at 8am and I got another scan and check. We had progress and I was at a 2. Which I was glad to have progress. Sad to have a full night of contractions to only be at a 2. They hooked me up to oxytocin and began to Increase the dose every hour. Something they noticed is that when I would get contractions babies heart rate would drop a little and then go back up. The nurses doctors and midwife were not happy about it but said it was normal as he was essentially getting squished with each contraction. My contractions were getting stronger and more intense and I was up to 4 strong ones in 10 minutes. I looked at M and said I was so sorry but I needed to have some meds to help. After more then 24 hours of it I was more then uncomfortable and we opted for the gas. I used the gas for a couple hours and it didn’t help the beginning of a contraction but helped by the end of it. I was more thankful to have something to focus on.

Once my contractions got back to back my midwife called in and we went to the birthing room (push room). It is there that she checked me and said I was at a 3. A 3!!!!! Argh how frustrating. They broke my water and it was not clear. I felt so terrible but I looked at M and told her there was no way and that I needed the epidural. I didn’t want it but I was exhausted. We were at 36 hours of labour now. So I get the epidural which did NOT hurt. Instead it was kind of amazing. During my next contraction babies heart rate dropped down and did not automatically come back up. The midwife called in the doctor and they called in 4 doctors for an emergency c section. So that was fun…

I was sent to the operating room while M was sent back to our room to get on scrubs and wait. They stated cutting me and the worst part was that one section of my tummy could not freeze so I felt it. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, I knew I felt them cutting and I knew it hurt but I didn’t really care. I knew it would be over soon and I was really waiting for a cry. They warned me that baby may have to be intubation as his waters were not clear. After a while they got M to come in and asked the doctor if I could do 5 minutes of skin to skin on the table if baby was okay. He agreed and I was happy. They told me I would feel some muscle spasms which I did and that was weird. I could feel my belly bouncing lots. Then they said I would feel pressure as another doctor pushed the baby out. All I know after that is that a second later I heard a screaming loud cry and heard them say it was a big baby boy! They said he looked healthy and I was so happy to hear the cry. They took him to the side table where M got to cut the cord shorter and I got to peek at him from my spot. I guess because I felt the cutting they kept giving me lots of medicine and by the time he got cleaned off for skin to skin m brought him over and I was passed out. She took him to our room for skin to skin until I woke up a couple hours later. Baby was born at 11:49pm October 21st. 8lbs even and just under 21 inches long. Isn’t he beautiful? We are very much in love. We had to stay in the hospital for 4 days due to his fast respiratory rate and while it has not come down it has not gotten worse. We have had consults with neonatologists and paediatricians and the word is to just keep monitoring and hope it goes away in a couple weeks. We have our fingers crossed. We want out little man healthy and happy.

Things I’ve learned about baby boy so far. He is a boob man. He smiles when he has gas and it is soooooo cute I can’t wait until it’s for real! I know everyone says it…but I really think he is the cutest baby ever! 😉