9 Months In, 9 Months Out!

Happy 9 months out, little lady!

When I found out I was pregnant with my second baby, it was a surprise. I took a test on a whim ‘cause I had felt a little extra moody and hungry, and I passed by the test while at the store for other things and said ‘what the heck, I’ll grab one just in case.’ But I wasn’t truly expecting to see a positive result. Nevertheless, I was excited, (and maybe a little nervous), when i did. 

Little side story: Funny enough I had literally just started a new job of cleaning houses the previous week, so I knew that I was going to be job hunting again very soon because I wasn’t about to be vacuuming stairs, and squatting to clean in showers with a big ol’ baby belly.  Noooo thank you! 

But anyways! now I had to figure out how I wanted to tell my husband. I found out on a Wednesday night and somehow kept the news to myself for about a day and a half. That Friday morning we went out to breakfast with our son to Snooze (which has the best breakfast EVER, if you didn’t already know that), and at some point I got up to take our toddler to the bathroom to change his diaper. In the meantime, my husband who hadn’t brought his phone to breakfast, picked up my phone to look something up while I was gone. Of course I had left a browser tab open that had a question related to positive pregnancy tests pulled up. So I came back from the bathroom, sat down, and he asked me if I had something to tell him. I said ‘maybe’ with a smirk. He asked if I was pregnant. I said yeah I am, and we both laughed about how he found out and spent the rest of breakfast celebrating. 

I was very excited to be pregnant again.. I even bought my outfit for maternity pictures that weekend! Then later that same day I had some spotting, and immediately started crying assuming the worst. I prayed to God to let my baby be okay. The spotting went away, but then came back a couple days later. I got in to the doctor for some bloodwork, and my HCG levels were increasing like normal which was good! I then got in for a dating ultrasound, and saw my tiny baby with a strong beating heart. Everything was good. I continued to spot on and off about every other day for almost a month, and tried to say positive that everything was still fine (which it was).

Time continued to pass, and it was soon time for the 20 week anatomy scan. Little miss was hiding her lady bits for probably a good 40 min, while the tech did all of the measurements for the scan. She eventually had me go to the bathroom to empty my bladder hoping this would encourage babe to move around to a different position. It worked,  and when I came back we were able to see that baby was a GIRL! I had knew it in my heart, but was excited to find out officially nonetheless. I was excited to get ALL THE THINGS for a girl. However, excitement quickly turned to worry.. when my midwife reviewed my scan, she found that my cervix length was shorter than it should be at that point in the pregnancy. She said she was concerned that this may have been why I went into premature labor with my son who was born 5 weeks early, so we should keep an eye on it. She wanted me to come back one week later to re-measure. If it hadn’t changed, I was probably fine, if it shortened more, we might need intervention. And so I came back one week later only to find the cervical length had shrunk almost another half cm (which is pretty substantial when we were woking with less than 2cm as is), and I would need to go to a high risk doctor for a second opinion.

I couldn’t get into the new doctor’s office for ANOTHER week, and I really started freaking out. I was CONVINCED I was going to have this baby even earlier than the 5 weeks early that Parker was, and had all kinds of anxiety. I barely wanted to walk around because I felt like every step I was risking my water prematurely rupturing. This baby girl had me worrying about something new around every corner. I thought ‘she’s gonna be my problem child isn’t she?’ Totally kidding, but still.. the worrying in this pregnancy was so high compared to with my first, it was a whole different experience.

When I finally got into the high risk doctor they put me on progesterone, and told me to come back in another week to see if there was any positive progress or if we thought we would need to do a cervical cerclage(which if you don’t know, is stitching the cervix shut to ensure no premature opening). Ouch! But when I returned the following week the cervical length went back up about a whole cm, so we decided to continue on just the progesterone because it seemed to be doing its job. I then had to go to the high risk doc every two weeks, to keep monitoring the situation, in addition to my regular appointments with my midwife. I was in the doctor literally every week for 8 or 9 weeks straight. When we made it to 28 weeks I ‘graduated’ from the high risk doc, and could proceed with my regular appointments as usual.

When I reached THIRTY SIX weeks, (praise God, I surpassed the date I had Parker!), I was able to stop the progesterone. I then made it to almost 38.5 weeks by the time baby was ready to make her arrival.

One morning, keeping with her regular pattern of confusing me, and making me anxious, I had arrived for my morning shift at work, and just felt blah. About an hour into my shift I started having weird symptoms that possibly seemed like labor. With my son, my water spontaneously broke at midnight, and that triggered labor to start several hours later. By the time I started having contractions around 7am, they quickly went from light crampy stomach pain every ten minutes, to painful contractions & time to push. So this time, if my water didn’t break at the beginning of labor, I didn’t really know what to expect. So I was going about my morning at work, and I would have a random crampy stomach ache, but it would go away and wasn’t exactly coming back in a timeable fashion that made any sense to me.. Then I would have a weird shooting pain up my back, and then nothing. I started tracking everything I was feeling in a contraction app, and after a certain amount of logs in a short window of time, my app told me I should call my provider or head to the hospital, but I really wasn’t sure if this was labor or not, since everything seemed so sporadic and random. I called my midwife’s office to see what they would suggest due to my fast labor history. I wanted to be prepared.

I left work to go in for a NST to monitor contractions, and they said that YES! I was in early labor, and baby would probably be here within 24-48 hours. 24-48 hours?!? I was a bit anxious to have to head home, because I was half an hour from the hospital, and was scared I would go home, labor would progress super fast, and I’d end having a baby in the car & not make it to the hospital. My provider’s office wanted to help me out, and try to buy me more time to track labor progression, so they sent me to the hospital for another NST and to walk the floor of the ward to try to speed things along. I was there for about 2 hours and there really wasn’t any progress. They still let me stay for another 2 hours, and there was finally the slightest progression in dilation, that they let me officially be admitted and prepare for baby. It was still probably a good 3 hours before my contractions really hit fast and hard, but when they did ohhhh man. I was shaking from the adrenaline, and crying in pain with each contraction. When baby finally started to descend I felt like I was going to die. I was forgetting to breathe during the pain from the contractions, so they gave me a couple breaths of oxygen with a mask. It took only about 4 or 5 pushes though, and little miss was out! (Needed some stitches too, but I try to block it all from memory.. ) but She was finally here, and it was all worth it.

9 months out now, and this girl is the absolute perfect edition to our family. I am so glad God’s timing is better than ours. We knew we wanted a second child, but we weren’t planning that exact time. She was the perfect little surprise. She is such a curious, and energetic bundle of joy. She crawls around so fast, and is always looking for an adventure. She is currently getting her two bottom teeth, and can also say Dada.. come on kid, who dealt with that pregnancy for 9 months, and you’re gonna say Dada first?! I still love you though. So glad this girl rounded out our family of 4, and I cannot wait to see where life continues to take us.