19 Weeks Update:

 Today was Thanksgiving and I am 19 weeks along. I started feeling you kick two nights ago from the outside. You are already so very strong. Your brother loves to give you hugs and talk about all the things he wants to teach you as you get bigger and older. We are all very excited to meet you and will get to see you again on Dec 7th, so that makes me happy. I’m still getting winded really easily which makes my relatively useless for the most part. I also can’t stand for very long which also doesn’t help. Unfortunately tonight, (I’m assuming because of all the Thanksgiving carbs and fatty foods) I learned that I am not out of the woods this pregnancy regarding the thoracic endometriosis. Tonight was the worst in a long time and unfortunately I can’t even take anything for the pain with you inside me. I had to wake up daddy to put stuff on my back and ribs and have been laying on a heating pad for hours. I tried taking Tylenol, which doesn’t ever do anything for this but figured I’d try anyway, and instead the pain got so bad, I immediately threw them up. I’m still in a lot of pain right now at 3:22am but at at least not crying uncontrollably still. Really praying this goes away soon so that I can sleep but if it’s anything like the other times, I’ve got another three hours to go. I contemplated making daddy take me to the hospital but that would require waking up Ms. Nancy and freaking out all of the kids, especially for them to maybe not be able to do a trying either and then charge me a bunch on top of it for an ER visit. :( just know that I love you kid and that once you’re here, it’ll all be worth it. 

Edit: make that twice I threw up :( it’s now 5:11am and am finally starting to feel a little bit better. I made some echinacea and raspberry leaf tea to see if that’ll help any too, and to try and rehydrate me a little bit. Needless to say, I’ll need to do some serious sleeping in tomorrow, but I’m praying everything will feel normal and that maybe we can get the outside Christmas lights out up. 

14 weeks

 So there hasn’t been a whole lot to update these past few weeks, or I guess now thinking about it, there’s a few things :) today I threw up for the third time this pregnancy. Thankfully that’s all it’s been. I got my new glucose monitor because as to be expected, I have gestational diabetes again. On Oct 4th, we got the results of my blood test. You are a beautiful and healthy baby boy! :) On Oct 10th, we had a little scare at my appointment. She was unable to find your heartbeat on the Doppler, so they sent me in for an ultrasound. The great news is, there you were, beautiful and breathing and heart beating strong, and I got to see you again! But please let’s not scare me like that again. 

9 weeks?

 Today we got to see you for the first time! We confirmed that there are in fact only one of you hiding in there. My appointment was early this morning an hour away and the whole family came in order to catch a glimpse of you. Here you are, a tiny little bean. 

Everything is looking good so far. The due date moved by two days so you are now “due” April 18, 2024, which now makes me just shy of 9 weeks. We started my blood draws today and in two weeks I’ll go back to have my NIPT testing done, which will also tell us what you will be! :) we are so excited! Sophia can’t wait to find out and go back to von Maur to pick out a perfect little outfit for you! Unfortunately we won’t know before the local sale so I’ll have to wait until spring to grab you things for then, at least in regards to clothing. We also decided to start earlier on my GD testing so that I can be keeping track of it all. It was a very long but very exciting day. We also went over to grand mommy and granddaddy’s house to share the news with them, and sent grandma a text bc it was also her birthday. :) everyone is very excited! Love you little one!

8 Weeks:

 In good news, yesterday I was finally able after a lot of frustration, to get my Dr. to get me a script for zofran. Now I am at least able to eat and get off of the couch. Today I was able to run to the grocery, do a pickup, eat, do the kids school, garden and do dishes. All of this after two weeks of not being able to move or accomplish anything. Unfortunately now I’m having the unpleasant, feeling like I’m having an anxiety attack thing I unfortunately remember well from prior pregnancies. Not fun times at all. Heart racing and feeling indigestion. Ugh. I just want to get comfortable so I can sleep. 

Mid week seven

 So far this is the bed day I’ve had in about two weeks. I’ve had minor nausea at different points but was able to leave the house, take a short walk to get an iced apple cider that thankfully my stomach allowed me to have and have gotten to eat several different foods today without any upset. *fingers crossed* there is hope going forward. 

Week 7:

 We are in week seven now and I’ve been feeling nauseous a lot now. Usually starts first thing in the morning and runs until around 4-5pm and then I’m mostly good again. Still haven’t thrown up yet but still just feel gross and have been essentially useless  as I’ve been confined to laying on a couch all day bc any movement makes it worse. The past two days I’ve also been feeling exceptionally tired compared to the other days. Still peeing constantly. Other than that, doing pretty okay. More and more people know now bc it’s impossible to hide if you see me. Twelve more days until I get to see the Dr. and hopefully get some zofran and also get to see this little one on the ultrasound if I’m lucky. Then hopefully they will schedule the NIPT testing since we have DS that is in the family as well as me being more at risk by being over 35. Additional nice bonus is it tells us gender early too. :)

Week Six:

 Today we are at week six. As of yesterday I started feeling a little nauseous in the morning, but it settled out by lunchtime when I had to take Rosalie to the Dr. Today I had a little bit earlier again and a little off and on but not too bad. I had some lemon ginger hot tea and some soup for lunch. In a little bit I’ve got to take the girls to acting class, so hoping it’ll stay good while we’re out but I did put double bags and wipes in the car just in case. 

We are currently looking into ordering food delivery again so that I can start my diabetes diet since I know I’ll end up with GD again. Our first appointment isn’t until September 12, so hoping the nausea hangs on until then in case I need some zofran. 

The kids know, Carrie knows and a handful of local friends know bc of the need for safety as covid has a new variant making its rounds. We haven’t told either family yet. I’ll likely tell them after our first appointment just to make sure everything is good, and maybe we’ll even have a sonogram picture if we’re lucky. I’ll probably plan to do a sneak trick over to his parents house to surprise them, and text my mom since it’ll be here birthday. 

I still have anxiety over sharing the news with my family bc of the drama that happened this summer and knowing that my family won’t be able to be a part of it this time. :/ On the bright side, Carrie sounds like she will try to come up a week or so before I’m due in order to help get last minute things ready and to be able to keep the kids overnight if needed. 

I need to re reach out to my birth photographer from Everest and see if anything changed at the hospital since it was bought. I also considered asking if either of the girls want to be there for the birth if the hospital will allow. We’ll see. 

Cuatro

 So, a whole lot has happened since I last wrote. I honestly completely forgot about this and now feel incredibly sad that I didn’t also document my journey with my son, who is now 4.5 and absolutely amazing. He’s beautiful and funny and smart and sweet. He absolutely adores his momma and always wants to cuddle. He loves building and creating, whether is legos, magnetic tiles, foam shapes, play dough or even just drawing. He loves school too! He’s one of the greatest loves of my life. 

In June, I woke up two nights at 3:30am in excruciating pain in my upper back and rib cage. I tried a heating pad, took Tylenol, nothing helped. The pain made me nauseous. Finally around 6:30am, it subsided and I could sleep. Again this happened in July, both times right before my period was set to arrive. I don’t normally google issues but this time I did, and learned about the rare thoracic endometriosis which fit the bill and was the ONLY thing that popped up for my symptoms which is strange. It didn’t make sense since I never had symptoms of regular endometriosis and you have to have one to have the other, but still, it all lined up. I set up an appointment at my gyn to see if they could check. Bc my symptoms were thoracic related, she referred me to a pulmonologist. I set up an appointment with him and he agreed that this is what it sounds like, but has only ever had one patient who has suffered from this. As stated, its pretty rare. So he scheduled a CT which was supposed to take place during my period (which isn’t when my pain would come) so we scheduled it out for when my app thought my next would be. Then I ovulated sooner, so we moved it up. Then instead of working like my body normally does, it decided to have my period show up only 5 days post ovulation, and I called on Thursday when it started to reschedule my CT, but the soonest they could get me was Monday. Unfortunately something told me this period wouldn’t last as long as my others, and by the time Monday came, I was barely spotting. The CT didn’t work. :( however, my Dr. does still believe this is what I have and that it’s because the timing of the CT was off. I agree. Especially when it started happening by pre ovulation as well. 

Prior to this, we’d planned to start trying to get pregnant in June. We were asked to wait so we could have a full cycle to get the CT done. Now since we know and aren’t planning to do either surgery or hormones (both which would stop me from getting pregnant) we were clear to try for our final pregnancy. 

This time, my body decided to ovulate for five full days of which we took full advantage. 2.5 weeks later my nipples were sore and I had some minor cramping. I knew in my heart these were implantation cramps and I mentioned it to David that I couldn’t test yet but was pretty sure we were pregnant. 

On August 4, I took a test. In the first ten minutes (when it says to check by) it was negative. I threw it away feeling slightly deflated despite knowing it was probably still too early. When I came back later in the evening I saw it on the top of the trash can, and it showed positive now. I thought wtf?! So I took another. Same thing happened. So I took a digital and it showed negative. Again feeling defeated. :(

On August 10, I woke up at 6:45am feeling slightly nauseous but thought maybe I just needed to poop. So I snuck out to the girls’ bathroom and decide to take another test, just in case. This time it showed up positive within five minutes! 

I immediately texted Carrie bc I need to share it with someone and didn’t want to wake up David. I decided to wait until there was a better time to tell him, and decided that I’d wait to tell the kids the day we were planned to head on an overnight stay at Great Wolf Lodge. Later that day, I took one more digital just to confirm for sure! Again! Positive!

I have now told David, and fast forward to today. The day we leave for our trip. I picked up “big sis” shirts for the girls and a big “big bro” shirt for Everest to surprise the kids with, although pretty sure they already suspect bc despite now only being 5 weeks, I look like I did when I was four months pregnant with Everest. 🤦🏽‍♀️ not fun, bc I means there’s zero chance of hiding it from anyone when we see his family soon. Anyway, I’ll let ya know how the kids react to it. :) 

In shitty news…endometriosis is supposed to haunt symptoms when pregnant per both my Ob/gyn and the pulmonologist. Needless to say, started feeling the pains (not quite as bad but still awful) around 3:20am and it only just now stopped around 6:50am. Needless to say, it’ll be a long day. More unfortunate is that now that I’m pregnant, the herbs and meds I’d been taking to help with the pain, the majority appear to not be safe while pregnant. So basically I may have this awfulness through my whole pregnancy and I can’t even take anything besides Tylenol which does absolutely nothing bc what I need is anti inflammatories. 🤦🏽‍♀️ 

I have my first ob appointment set for September 12th, and hoping we’ll get a dating ultrasound out of it so that I can show his family on the 24th when we see them for Bruce’s retirement party. Then hopefully shortly thereafter we can get my GD testing out of the way so I can just start my process again, and also get the genetic testing done bc of my sil’s child with DS and now bc of my age, I apparently am also at higher risk for both chromosomal issues as well as twins (also bc it runs in the family, it’s my fourth kid and I’m over 35). The good news is, that testing also usually tells me a little early what the gender will be, so fingers crossed, bc then we can start the final shopping. :) Thankfully I still have a lot of our baby stuff bc I hadn’t completely written off one last kid, despite only originally planning on three. 

Anyway, now that the pain has stopped, I’m going to attempt to rest for an hour or two before this long day ahead of us that I have to get up for in three hours. Can’t wait to share the rest of this journey with you, and seriously so heartbroken that I forgot about this blog during Everest. Maybe I made some Facebook posts that I can go back and add in retrospectively.