Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Hunter's Story

After losing Morgan I was anxious to be pregnant again.  I knew I couldn't replace Morgan and that a new baby would not make everything "all better." But I wanted to bring a baby home into our family.  My Dr with my pregnancy with Morgan was a family practice daughter.  He was a wonderful Dr, who was actually the son of the Dr who delivered me.  So I originally planned on seeing him and an OB or Peri throughout another pregnancy, but we soon heard news that he was going to be moving.  It was a tough blow for me, followed by finding out that the OB Dr he recommended was also not going to be available either.  One of the ladies we met at the support group at the hospital highly recommended her Dr who she felt was just amazing through her loss.  It turned out that our favorite nurse from the night Morgan was born also highly recommended him both as being his patient and working with him.  So during our 3 month recommended wait before we began trying to get pregnant we made an appt with Dr. L. 

I wasn't overly sure about him at first, he gave very "vague" answers talking about the pros and cons of everything and not really giving a 100% definitive answer.  We wanted to know what his plan of action would be considering what happened with Morgan and he agreed that a cerclage could help and bed rest may be necessary as a "there is nothing else to do measure."  I decided not to look any farther for another Dr at that point though because of the cost with our insurance plan.  (It turned out that he is absolutely wonderful and I don't know how I could go through any pregnancy without him!)

We were very happy to find out that the first month we were trying to get pregnant we were able to.  No doubt our problems with bringing a baby home were not the getting pregnant part, but the staying pregnant part.  And so began our long sometimes scary subsequent pregnancy journey.

I took the pregnancy test around mid April and was so excited that it was positive.  I had taken the test during my lunch hour and had just enough time to hop in the car and drive to Chris' work to tell him right away.  He was just as excited and probably as scared as I was.  Once back at work I couldn't contain my news and had to tell one of my co workers right away.  I called my Dr's office next and because of my previous loss they had me come in right away the next day to check my HCG levels and repeated the test early the next week.  My numbers were going up well.  We scheduled an early u/s for shortly after the time in which they can usually find a heartbeat, which just happened to be after we took a vacation to Las Vegas. 

By the time we went to Las Vegas over Mother's Day weekend I was quite nauseous and happy to be nauseous as it generally means hormones are going up as they should be. The day after we came back from vacation was our u/s and we saw a beautiful heartbeat!  A few weeks later we had our first official OB appt at which we confirmed that the cerclage would be placed around 12 weeks as long as the pregnancy was progressing as it should be.  A couple of ultrasounds and a "freakout" later by me it was finally time to get the cerclage. 

I was very hesitant to share the news of this pregnancy.  Honestly it made me very uncomfortable every time we or rather Chris, shared it with someone new.  I disliked the encouraging comments that seemed to "brush away" what we went through with Morgan.  I especially didn't share it at work besides in my office.  It was also a little difficult to find out anyone else in my life was pregnant.  Not that I was so happy for my friends/family who did get pregnant, just that I no longer had that pregnancy innocence and they did, so they could have what seemed to be "carefree" pregnancies while I knew from personal experience just what it felt like to have a baby die.

The weeks crept by until we were finally to the "big" ultrasound.  Chris wanted to be surprised at birth on whether it was a boy or girl so we didn't find out gender but that was the start of bi-weekly u/s to check my cervical length.  Once we were to the u/s around 22 weeks I was starting to feel more comfortable.  We were past 21 weeks and my cervix looked good!  I scheduled the next u/s for 3 weeks instead of 2.  When we made it to the 24 week mark, viability, it was like a huge weight off of my shoulders.  Just a week later at our u/s though we found my cervix to be down to about 1cm and I was placed in the hospital on bed rest. 
I spent a very long 33 days in the hospital before going home to my couch for another 3 weeks of bed rest before I was able to start having a bit more activity. 

The weeks continued to go by until I was 37.5 weeks along.  It was Wednesday December 9th 2009 and I was baking Christmas cookies when I started having contractions.  I timed them for awhile until they jumped from over 12 minutes apart to like 5-6 minutes apart and then we headed to the hospital.  I was sure that it would end up being "false labor" and they would send me home and was so happy when the nurse announced I was 4cm dilated.  Shortly after midnight on 12/10 I was fully dilated and actively pushing.  But after all of those measures to keep that baby in, the baby would not come out!  I pushed for about 2 hours before the doctor (not my doctor but one of his partners) told me it seemed I had a narrow birth canal and he gave me about a 50/50 chance that I would even be able to get our baby out without a c-section.  So I opted for the c-section at that point, I was just ready to meet my baby, hear him/her cry etc. 

At 4:22am December 10th Hunter Robert was born.  Hearing him cry was the best sound! 
 

The subsequent pregnancy with Hunter was so full of emotional ups and downs.  I could not have gotten through it as well as I did without a lot of prayer, strength from God, a fantastic doctor and encouragement from my many friends.  But every moment, even of my 33 days in the hospital was so worth it when I finally held Hunter in  my arms.  God is so great and I try to thank him every day for the little boy who right now sleeps upstairs. 

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