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.