First of all I want to send a big hug to those who still occasionally pop over and read this blog as sparse as it is these days. It’s like getting a hug to me when I check in and see new comments even when I’ve been so neglectful of keeping updates on here. Thank you so much!
Baby Hope and I are doing just fine. I will be 32 weeks this Saturday. I’m still getting contractions often but, at this point, the midwives say that with as many as I get if I haven’t had the baby yet then they are obviously not doing anything significant and not to worry unless I get other labor symptoms. That approach made sense to me and has eased my worries significantly. My blood pressure was back down to a normal range at my last check and I’ll get it checked again today as I have another appt. in a few hours. I’m down to the 2 week checks now…unbelievable. Thank you for the prayers.
All of the busyness of life makes the weeks of this pregnancy fly by so quickly that I am feeling this sense of wanting to just hold on tightly and not let go. I’m not ready for this pregnancy to end. I can’t tell you how desperately I want to meet this sweet little girl that kicks me all the time but I know that this is it. I can’t imagine that I will ever get this experience again after all we have gone through and my age so I feel like I just don’t want to let go and as each week flies by it is bittersweet to me. I know I am so much closer to holding this dear one in my arms but I’m also so much closer to not having that beautiful time of her being only with me…everywhere with me…feeling her little movements and all the other beautiful moments that only happen when baby is tucked safely inside the womb. Soon my belly will be empty again and I’ll have to share this baby with others and this sweet sweet season of my life will be over. That’s hard for me to believe…but…
What a precious gift childbearing is…there’s nothing like it. I’m so thankful that I’ve gotten to do this completely 4 times, now. I am so blessed. SO BLESSED! Soon this big rounded full belly will be once again empty but the blessing continues as I watch this baby come into this world and grow and become the person that God created her to be. I’m sad to see my pregnancy season end but oh, so very very thankful that I got to do it just one more time and that soon I’ll be cradling a new life in my arms.
Hard to believe it that I’m 6 months pregnant already. The first trimester seemed to creep by but now the time is just flying. I think that Christmas has something to do with that. All of the busyness makes the weeks just go faster and faster and when it is all over and the slower days of January come along I’ll be in my third trimester…wow.
I had my usual midwife appointment this morning and my blood pressure is going up. She told me that along with the contractions that I’ve been experiencing my body is warning me to slow way down. I argued that is easier said than done at this time of the year with 3 children at home all day (and a husband!) but she made her point when she said…well, you can take some control and slow down on your own at home or you will have that taken away and be forced to slow down while you spend several weeks lying in a hospital bed. So, please pray that I will find a way to take life a little easier and keep a proper perspective of my own limits. I don’t want to wind up in the hospital trying to avoid preterm labor or worse yet, have this baby prematurely…especially this prematurely.
Today is November 15 a day of significance to me since it was the due date of the last baby I lost…we called her Leah. It’s amazing to be 20 weeks pregnant this day with Leah’s sister and I am most grateful for it. Get this, though… a very interesting twist in it all is that my due date for Hope is the same day that I lost Baby Leah. What are the odds? I am due to give birth to my new baby girl 2 years to the day that I lost my last one. Oh, and to make it even more interesting I conceived this baby on or very near the due date of my second loss, Baby Liam…unbelievable. It all shows me the very Hand of God and how He reveals it to us in so many of the details. I don’t believe it is in any way a coincidence…He is so good to us!
Almost 19 weeks and still scared…how can this be? I really thought conquering the first trimester was going to be smooth sailing through the rest of the pregnancy. I was wrong. Now I don’t feel her often like my others or I have an asthma attack and decide that she is not getting enough oxygen or I’ve lost a few pounds and so she isn’t thriving. The worries come at me from everywhere. I’ve realized that this baby struggle is not over and won’t be until I hold her in my arms and see her with my own eyes. So I find myself clinging to the name that the LORD gave me for her in week 4. I’m clinging to Hope. The hope I have in Him will be forever embodied in this little girl. We have hope in Him no matter what the circumstances and I just needed to remind myself of that today.
This is the song that kept coming to mind in the middle of the sleepless nights. Wish I could read the scripture and you’ll have to overlook “pleace” for “please”…otherwise a beautiful video for a beautiful song…
I have to admit that I don’t know how much to update this blog now. I had really slowed down when we were moving beyond ttc and now that I find myself actually expecting again I am unsure how much to put here about my pregnancy. After all, I know how painful it can be to hear the details of pregnancy when you are healing from a miscarriage or struggling through infertility. I did feel, though, that a few of you that have “gotten to know me” through this blog a bit over the last couple of years may want to know that this baby continues to grow and an ultrasound last week allowed us to find out that we are having another little girl…now we are even with 2 boys and 2 girls.
For some reason, I don’t get email anymore informing me of new comments. My dh put a super filter on my email account and I imagine that is what stopped them and I’m not tech savvy enough to go in and fix it so I’m truly sorry that I’m so slow to respond to new comments. I’m not purposely ignoring anyone…I promise!
Oh, and in response to a recent comment and because I was not clear in my posts, I thought I would say that we did not use our usual protocol to conceive this baby. She was a completely unexpected surprise. She will be my first baby born, LORD willing, that was conceived completely spontaneously (without any help) since 15 years ago when I conceived my first. I’m not sure why she seems to be thriving while the last 3 went home unless it is from the progesterone cream and the red raspberry leaf capsules that I continue to take. I was taking them a couple of other times after conceiving but stopped after reading that they shouldn’t be used during the first trimester especially if you have a history of miscarriage. This time, though, I read in a book called The Naturally Healthy Pregnancy by Shonda Parker that she kept miscarrying until she used red raspberry leaf and then she went on to carry her babies full term. I took my chances and stayed on them this time as well as using Progest progesterone cream 1/2 tsp. at 9:00am and at 9:00 pm until 13 weeks where I weaned down to 1/4 tsp at each time. I did that for a week and then went down to 1/4 tsp evening time only. I’m still doing that just to be safe.
On a spiritual note, I do feel like the LORD began preparing me a bit for this pregnancy right before I conceived. I was truly past this…really! I was just moving right along with life and did not see any more babies in my future AND I was okay with that. The month I conceived I felt like I was getting drawn back into thoughts about pregnancy and I realized that I was terrified to become pregnant again! I felt like I needed to let that go…the fear and so I would find myself periodically telling myself, “I am not afraid to get pregnant”. I thought it was strange to find myself back in those thoughts but after I missed my period that month it began to make some sense.
The first trimester was so difficult for me…I can’t even describe how scared I was. I really thought I would lose this baby. A few friends knew that we knew would hold us up in prayer but we didn’t tell any family…not even our children. Friends would give me maternity clothes or baby items and I would take them home and cry because I really didn’t think they would be necessary. The LORD was so merciful and would continue to calm me each time I didn’t think I could make it. In the middle of the night when I would wake up and not be able to sleep because worry would overtake me I had this certain song come to mind as if He were speaking it to me Himself. Week by week went by until I finally had that midwife appointment at 11 1/2 weeks where we heard the heartbeat and knew that this time was different. I’d like to say that after that it has been a piece of cake but that would be a lie. Although, I have been GREATLY relieved after the heartbeat I have still continued to have some fear and am still dependent on My Daddy to get me through each day, each week, each month. And He continues to whisper to me…peace be still.
Sorry, this turned into such a rambler!!! I was really just going to get on here and write that first paragraph!
This morning I entered through the door of the office of my midwives of the last 8 years. They delivered my second and third baby and I used to love entering through that same door into the cozy waiting room that in a past life used to be the living room of the beautiful old victorian. It has now been warmly converted into an inviting place to go while awaiting a new arrival. It hasn’t changed much in all these years I’ve been going there…same couch…same bookshelves…same comfy chairs but it has certainly changed for me. The whole fuzzy feeling I would get each time I would sit in that waiting room eagerly looking forward to my turn to go back to one of the other rooms to chit chat with a midwife, see how big my belly was growing and, my favorite part, getting another chance to hear that rushing choo choo train sound of my baby’s heartbeat had slowly turned to fear and dread during the last couple of years as I sat waiting. While they had shared my joy for 2 healthy pregnancies and births, the last 3 times I had been pregnant I had walked out of the examining room in tears after finding that the choo choo train sound was nowhere to be found. I would then have to return several more times and wait in that room surrounded by swollen bellies to varying degrees to have a blood test taken to make sure that my HCG levels were returning to normal and maybe briefly talk about how I was handling everything since the miscarriage. Not happy memories. So today as my husband and I found ourselves once again waiting in that same room I realized that the warm cozy feeling had completely disappeared…the place had simply lost its magic. It seemed like an eternity that we waited. Glowing ladies with barely noticeable bumps and beautiful women sitting in full bloom sat around me reading magazines and being called back one by one. We continued to sit and sit and sit. As I sat, I wondered if I should just get up and leave. Ignorance is bliss, right? If I did not go back to the examining room then they couldn’t deliver bad news. I could still get out…make some lame excuse or simply just get up and walk out the same door I came in. Do it now and explain later. I had gone nearly 12 weeks knowing I was pregnant but not knowing whether the baby was alive and kicking. Did I really need to know??? As long as I stayed away from dopplers I could go on imagining the best. Yes, the progesterone I was on could keep sustaining even a non-viable pregnancy for a very long time so I could just keep on going just the way I had been for the past 2 months. Suddenly, in the midst of planning my way out, my name was called and there was no turning back. Here we go again! “So how are you feeling today?” the very pleasant young midwife asked me as we settled into the examining room. “Nervous!” was how I replied. So, she decided first things first…let’s find that heartbeat. No! Not yet…I’m not ready for the glass to shatter! I can’t go through this again…I just can’t!!! Here she was, though, laying me back and pulling up my shirt and putting that doppler on it…that doppler that could have been the same darn one that had brought me such pain before. Right away you could hear my heartbeat and some gurgling (I should have eaten breakfast) but I thought…maybe I just imagined…a choo choo train sound very faintly behind it. I looked at the midwife’s face and she didn’t seem to notice it so I chalked it up to wishful thinking. “There it is!” she smiled as she found it but it quickly went away and it was so faint that surely she had been mistaken. More moving around on my belly when all of a sudden the unmistakable sound of a rushing train started blaring through the room. “Sounds really good! Let’s see…(quietly counting to herself)…yes…about 170 heartbeats per minute!”. I immediately covered my face and began to cry. Two months of worry and fear were washing away from me. Could this really be true? Am I carrying a live baby? This part of my life was over…I thought…and, yet…here I am lying on the table and listening to the sweet sweet sound of a new beating heart. What joy! So we finished up our visit and as I walked down the stairs into that dreaded waiting room I began to realize something. The magic had returned. Praise Jesus! We are blessed.
Seriously, I’m not trying to be evasive or anything after my “when you least expect it” post…I promise. I’m truly holding out further info for a very good reason and will disclose it all as soon as I can. Well, to be more accurate, I will disclose it all in just a few days, on Wednesday, September 16. So if anyone is still reading this blog, please forgive me for being so silent. It will all make sense soon.
Just got back from an overnight woman’s retreat and feeling very blessed and loved. I hope that you find a moment today to let God love on you…He wants to.
