Our Journey: Life Before & After Our Miracle : Thinking back on April 30th

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Thinking back on April 30th

I got up with Daniel and we did what we do every morning that he's not working. I get my breakfast, he gets his coffee, and we sit on the couch and watch all the Judge shows or The Price is Right. About 10:30 a.m., my phone rang, and I recognize that it was the doctor's office. I walked outside with the phone, and answered the phone with dread, because I already knew what was about to be said. The nurse got on the phone and said, "You were absolutely right. Your blood test came back a definite positive!" I think I zoned out or something, because she had to ask if I was still on the line. I snapped back to reality, and said "Are you serious?????" She laughed, and said "Yes ma'am. It's weird that it didn't show up on the urine test but you're definitely pregnant. We're gonna re-run the test to check what your HCG levels are, and we want you to come in tomorrow so we can recheck your levels and see if your pregnancy is progressing like it is supposed to." I was dumbfounded. Speechless, and yet had so many thoughts flowing through my head at once. I started crying, and shaking, and I told her, "Wait. Be honest with me. You can't get a false positive with a blood test right? I don't want to get my hopes and then be disappointed." She just laughed and said "Honey, you're definitely pregnant." I hung up the phone and stayed outside for a few minutes trying to gather my bearings because I didn't want that to be the way Daniel found out. I had something special that I had tucked in the back of mind for when I told him we were having our first little one. When I felt like I had my emotions composed, I came back inside, and Daniel immediately asked "Was that the doctor? Is everything okay?" A couple weeks back I had gone to the doctor for some female issues, and had my regular annual check up. So in his mind it wasn't unusual for them to be calling. I quickly told him that it was the doctor, and they were just letting me know that my annual PAP came back normal. :) He smiled and told me that was great, and dropped the subject.

We had made plans to go out shopping and go for lunch this day, which didn't allow me any time apart from him to go out and get the things I needed to get in order to announce the pregnancy to him. That's why when he told me his boss called him in for 2 hours of training, I wasn't the least bit disappointed. As soon as I dropped him off, I quickly went down town to find a conch shell. The reason I needed the shell is because when Daniel proposed to me, it was on the beach with "Will You Marry Me?" painted on a conch shell. So I had always wanted to tell him I was pregnant in a similar way. I finally found the shell, then went to K-MART and picked up black paint and a pack of paintbrushes so I could paint the words on the shell. As you can see by the picture below, the words are kind of sloppy because I was doing the painting in the back seat of my car. Oh well....it got the job done :) As soon as I got it painted, I went to the resort that Daniel works at and walked back to the beach and laid in a hammock. I placed the shell under the hammock and text him to come get me whenever he got off work. He finally walked back there, and he immediately asked about the shell under the hammock. I told him that I had found it, and wanted to take it with me. He was like, "Babe we can't take that it belongs to the resort! I could get in big trouble." I grabbed my purse and told him to just sneak it into my purse and no one would see it. I finally convinced him to pick up the shell, and when he did he turned it over, and saw the words on it. He stared at the shell in silence for what seemed like eternity, then looked up, and said, "Are you serious?!?!?" I immediately started crying and he wrapped his arms around me and teared up himself. I told him that the doctor had called and confirmed this morning. He laughed and told me "Oh so you lied to me this morning huh???" Long story short, we had quite a special moment and I was ecstatic that my plan had worked out so well.

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The Story of Our Struggle

We met in 2009, and were married in January, 2012. We both decided to wait to have a baby, so that we could enjoy being young and newly married. Surprisingly, even with our precautions, we discovered we were pregnant in May, 2012. Sadly, the pregnancy didn't last long, and I had a miscarriage at approximately 5 weeks pregnant. We were both devastated. I struggled with the question of how I could love a little one so much that I thought I "wasn't ready for". After the miscarriage, we decided to stop using precautions and to allow a baby to happen when the timing was right. Almost exactly a year later, on April 30th, I received the phone call from the doctor that my blood test came back positive. I was sure this time would be different. I painted a shell (with the words "will you be our baby's daddy") to announce the pregnancy to Daniel (just like he proposed to me). We made Mother's Day gifts to announce the pregnancy to our families on Mother's Day. The day before Mother's Day, however, I started bleeding, and on that following Monday I received miscarriage confirmation. The first miscarriage was hard, but this one truly devastated me. I didn't want to function. I literally wanted to just withdraw from everyone and spend each day in tears. Thankfully, as a few weeks went by, I felt stronger and my heart was healing. Daniel was my rock. He held me, cried with me, and walked me through a really hard time in my life.

The doctors had told me my uterus is extremely tilted back, which kind of explained why it had taken me exactly a year in between pregnancies to conceive again. Actually, I had two different doctors tell me that because of the extreme tilt, I could possibly never get pregnant. So, knowing that, I really didn't think a third pregnancy would happen......at all, or at least not any time soon.

Only a month and a half later, I tested positive again (on Daniel's 23rd birthday). I immediately sent a picture of the test to my family and his family. I saw no reason to try to make some kind of special reveal like I had with the last. That only made it harder when I lost that little one. I went to the doctor and got blood test confirmation, and they began having me come in every other day to have blood drawn to see if this baby was growing properly. Things looked good, and the weeks began to go by. I started making it to little milestones.
We found out when I was 17 weeks that we were having a baby girl. Words cannot describe the complete joy and happiness I felt making it to the ultrasound for gender determination. As the weeks continued to go by, I grew more and more comfortable in my pregnancy, and the anxiety started to lessen. After going through two recent losses, it kind of steals the joy of pregnancy because you are constantly worried about "what if". In December, when I was around 24-25 weeks, I tripped on some stairs and landed right on my stomach. Not long after I began having contractions, and my doctor sent me in to Labor and Delivery. My heart was terrified. I couldn't fathom making it all this way with this pregnancy and then losing her. They gave me a shot and some meds to stop the pre-term labor, and sent me home. The next day, the contractions continued to come, so back to the hospital we went. They gave me more meds, and kept me overnight to make sure the labor had stopped. When they sent me home, they prescribed me with a medication to take every 6 hours. I took that medication from week 25 all the way to week 36, and our little girl continued to healthily grow. Currently I am 38 weeks pregnant and we are beyond ready to meet our little miracle baby.

I've had alot of people give me "the side eye" for being pregnant at 22, and for not waiting till after I finished nursing school (which I am set to graduate in May 2015). That was my original plan. But I am living proof that plans don't always go the way you want them to. When we lost the first baby, we decided not to try to control when we would have our first child. Because I've had such a struggle with my body carrying a pregnancy, I didn't want to possibly miss my only chance to have a little one. We don't regret our decision for an instance. I still fully intend to make it through nursing school, and even though we are young, we are fully prepared to take on the responsibility of little miss Skylee Rae Hester.