this is my story.
how do stories begin anyway...once upon a time. nope that's not it , this is no fairy tale. no happy ending here. i guess it is more appropriate to start... buckle up this is going to be a bumpy(no pun intended) ride.
my story begins in 1994 while i am still in high school. it was a couple months before my 18th birthday when i found out i was expecting with my now husbands baby. i was most certainly scared and uncertain about what my future held. but once i found out i was pregnant i was never uncertain about the fact that my future included my baby.(little did i know) i had always wanted to be a mom and a teacher. but isn't a teacher a lot like a mom. so i had always wanted to be a mom. and i was willing and ready to prepare myself to be just that. anyway to make a long story a little bit shorter found out we were having a girl at about 17wks, i then lost my precious baby girl about 3 wks later in dec. of 1994, to what my dr. believed was an incompetent cervix.
i was young and stupid and made soooo many mistakes. i wish i could go back and do things differently, but the past is just that so you have to move on.
so moving on....
i became pregnant again in november of 1995. (still not married{try not to judge}but still by the same man who would one day become my husband) got married to my high school sweetheart and had my cerclage placed in feb. 1996. and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl 8/8/96. not without complications mind you. but she is here and healthy now, and a vibrant 14 year old girl.
skip ahead two years and i become pregnant again in october of 1998. thinking we have this whole thing figured out and that i would be fine , what else could go wrong, Right? nope, so wrong! we lose our second baby to a blighted ovum in dec. of that same year.
still too young and too dumb to know what has hit me or how to grieve. so i take a day and move on.(not what i would recommend)
fast forward one year and low and behold i am pregnant again.( you see getting pregnant is not my problem. sneeze in my direction and i get pregnant. staying pregnant would be my biggest obstacle.) this time with a baby boy. i make sure not to get excited...i won't even go to the dr. until they can tell me for sure that i am going to stay pregnant(wouldn't recommend this either). at about 14 weeks i have my cerclage placed and in may of 2000 give birth to a beautiful baby boy. again not with out its set backs but that is a story for another day. and 10 years later he is still his mommy's bouncing baby boy.
it is now 4 years later and the summer of 2004 when i become pregnant for the 5th time. and lose my third child. this is an early loss like the one in '98, also to a blighted ovum. i have my d&c, cry that day and again move on.(i cannot stress enough how unhealthy this is)
three months later i am pregnant again. but in my mind i have decided there is a pattern to my losses and i think i am in the clear. i did not know how wrong i was. i have my cerclage put in at around 13-14wks. believe everything is going to be fine but my membranes rupture on 1/24, the cerclage is taken out and i deliver my perfect baby boy ethan daniel on 1/25. i get to see him and hold him and count his perfect fingers and his perfect toes and then i say goodbye.
at this point in our lives my husband and i decide to actively try not to get pregnant. up until this point we had never been trying one way or the other. so we go on hiatus if you will. we decide that having just our two children is perfectly acceptable and maybe we will just never , ever, ever, try again. because it is just to hard to lose 4 babies. and then comes that itch at about the 4 year mark. mind you i don't get the itch, i have finally come to terms with having no more babies and i LOVE babies. no hubby starts to get the itch ( i think his biological clock is ticking) and he starts talking about trying again.
so i finally decide ok we can do this...nothing bad is going to happen this time...i should learn to never let this thought enter my head again! found a new dr. thought everything was going well...she decides a cerclage is not needed because of thrombophilia but will monitor my cervix "just in case". in june has to do an emergency cerclage because my cervix goes from 4 to 1.7.(think she might of been wrong about me not having an incompetent cervix) i am now put on bed rest by my regular ob though my other dr. tells me it is not really needed, but what does she know she was the one who told me i didn't need the cerclage. so modified bed rest it is, along with 17mg progesterone shots once a week, 4mg. of folic acid daily for mthfr and 1 baby aspirin a day for some other clotting issue, though for the life of me know i can't remember what. probably because my brain is mush.. any way, all this to say i went into labor on 8/8/10 and delivered wyatt at 2:47 pm at 24 wks. 1 day.
wyatt was a fighter from the very beginning. which is funny because after he was gone i looked up what his name meant and it is brave & strong. just like my baby boy. but anyway they got him breathing right away and took him to the nicu. he was off the vent on his third day while his eyes were still fused (this is rare, or so they said).he didn't have to have a blood transfusion right away (again they say this is rare) he had his transfusion around day 5 and around this time had to go back on the vent(my personal opinion they took him off the vent way to soon, he just wasn't ready and it was too taxing on his system, but that is just my opinion, i am just his mom what do i know anyway? ) but all the while i was pumping and he was gradually increasing his breast milk intake daily. he was pooping and peeing like a champ. keeping the nurses very busy. on his 12th day in the nicu my sweet little boy opened one eye and gave us a wink. we thought this was an awesome sign (i have since stopped believing in signs) who were we to know that this was going to be his way of saying good bye... his gift to us. i was called in on sat. and told my baby had nec, as we were driving to the hospital i knew the outlook was grim but i prayed, oh how i prayed that god would not take my baby not after 13 days not after he was born on my living daughter's birthday not after all we had been through. (i have since also had a really hard time believing in prayer, i am still a christian, i thank god everyday for my salvation because at least i have the comfort of knowing i will see my babies again someday {or at least this is what i have to believe in to keep going, it is what gets me through}) when we got to the hospital we were told to wait in the conference room, instead of getting to go back and see wyatt, at this time i realized the truth. they came in and told us that the antibiotics they were giving him weren't working and the cold hard truth was that our baby was going to die. how long we would prolong the inevitable was up to us...i am not one for prolonging the inevitable so we made the choice to end the fight and hold our baby for the very first time as he passed away. he was 13 days old.
i do not know what the future holds for us. i do not know if we will ever try again or if my body will even let me. i am not always sure if we will ever make it to the other side of this. but i have to choose to believe we will. i would love to one day have my dream, to have a baby no matter what sacrifices it takes on my part and to be able to hold and nurse it on the day of its birth. this is something i have never gotten to do with any of my other children. this would be my miracle and these days i could really use a miracle. but one of my favorite quotes so far is this...
"We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes."~ John F. Kennedy
followed by a little bit of this...
"Once you chose hope, anything is possible."~Christopher Reeve
so i finally decide ok we can do this...nothing bad is going to happen this time...i should learn to never let this thought enter my head again! found a new dr. thought everything was going well...she decides a cerclage is not needed because of thrombophilia but will monitor my cervix "just in case". in june has to do an emergency cerclage because my cervix goes from 4 to 1.7.(think she might of been wrong about me not having an incompetent cervix) i am now put on bed rest by my regular ob though my other dr. tells me it is not really needed, but what does she know she was the one who told me i didn't need the cerclage. so modified bed rest it is, along with 17mg progesterone shots once a week, 4mg. of folic acid daily for mthfr and 1 baby aspirin a day for some other clotting issue, though for the life of me know i can't remember what. probably because my brain is mush.. any way, all this to say i went into labor on 8/8/10 and delivered wyatt at 2:47 pm at 24 wks. 1 day.
wyatt was a fighter from the very beginning. which is funny because after he was gone i looked up what his name meant and it is brave & strong. just like my baby boy. but anyway they got him breathing right away and took him to the nicu. he was off the vent on his third day while his eyes were still fused (this is rare, or so they said).he didn't have to have a blood transfusion right away (again they say this is rare) he had his transfusion around day 5 and around this time had to go back on the vent(my personal opinion they took him off the vent way to soon, he just wasn't ready and it was too taxing on his system, but that is just my opinion, i am just his mom what do i know anyway? ) but all the while i was pumping and he was gradually increasing his breast milk intake daily. he was pooping and peeing like a champ. keeping the nurses very busy. on his 12th day in the nicu my sweet little boy opened one eye and gave us a wink. we thought this was an awesome sign (i have since stopped believing in signs) who were we to know that this was going to be his way of saying good bye... his gift to us. i was called in on sat. and told my baby had nec, as we were driving to the hospital i knew the outlook was grim but i prayed, oh how i prayed that god would not take my baby not after 13 days not after he was born on my living daughter's birthday not after all we had been through. (i have since also had a really hard time believing in prayer, i am still a christian, i thank god everyday for my salvation because at least i have the comfort of knowing i will see my babies again someday {or at least this is what i have to believe in to keep going, it is what gets me through}) when we got to the hospital we were told to wait in the conference room, instead of getting to go back and see wyatt, at this time i realized the truth. they came in and told us that the antibiotics they were giving him weren't working and the cold hard truth was that our baby was going to die. how long we would prolong the inevitable was up to us...i am not one for prolonging the inevitable so we made the choice to end the fight and hold our baby for the very first time as he passed away. he was 13 days old.
i do not know what the future holds for us. i do not know if we will ever try again or if my body will even let me. i am not always sure if we will ever make it to the other side of this. but i have to choose to believe we will. i would love to one day have my dream, to have a baby no matter what sacrifices it takes on my part and to be able to hold and nurse it on the day of its birth. this is something i have never gotten to do with any of my other children. this would be my miracle and these days i could really use a miracle. but one of my favorite quotes so far is this...
"We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes."~ John F. Kennedy
followed by a little bit of this...
"Once you chose hope, anything is possible."~Christopher Reeve
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