Rainbow Baby

Let's start this post off from the beginning of my journey into motherhood. December 1, 2017, my cycle had been five days late, I took a test before going to work and got those two beautiful pink lines. It had been eight months of my fiancee and I not preventing pregnancy. We were both so excited and scared! I made an appointment to see my doctor that following Monday. Sure enough, doctors confirmed what we already knew... we were going to have out first baby!

Tuesday... I started having some discharge that I questioned and I am (unfortunately) a Google fanatic. I concerned myself and called my doctors office and the nurse told me all sounded normal.

I worked for a Chiropractic office then and knew it was safe to get an adjustment so that Wednesday afternoon I did. The next morning, I woke up to some cramping and eventually bleeding. I had also been feeling a UTI (urinary tract infection) coming on and had made an appointment to see my doctor anyways. I alerted my fiancee and headed to the doctors. While there, they checked me, did some blood work, and all seemed fine that we knew of, but told me to take it easy... I winded up not going to work and was very thankful I didn't because as the day went on... my pain increased. That night I cried and told my fiancee to get me to a hospital as my doctor had advised me to do if things got worse.

We sat in the waiting room for over an hour before being seen... when we were finally put in a room, I was checked by a nurse, then a midwife several times, having more blood taken, and winded up spending another hour and a half there. They once again said all looked fine, but I would have to wait to get the blood test results back. We got home a little after midnight—and I knew something was wrong. I had another doctors appointment scheduled for Tuesday morning.

That morning came and blood test confirmed my worst fear... I had miscarried... I had lost our precious baby. I went on to work and let my husband know when arriving home...

We had known about our little bundle of joy not even a week before things went south.

The worst part was having to let work and family know the news...

My doctor had said give my body at least three months to go back to normal, come back, and I could be put back on my birth control if I would want. My fiancee and I decided we wanted to wait before really trying, so when the three-month mark hit, I visited my doctor yet again, and got a three-month supply of BC. I had about a week before my cycle was supposed to come so I said I'll start my BC after that so I can start fresh, instead of middle of the month.

Well, the day for my cycle to start came and went, as did the next two days with no cycle (a few days off was normal for me), but then five days came and went... on day six, I decided to take yet another test and surprise!! We'd once again had those two pink lines. By this time I had a different job and a new doctors office (we won't go into why). I made an appointment and confirmed we were pregnant! I tried not to get too excited this time out of fear. At six weeks, we got to see our little one on ultrasound... they were there and healthy! My doctor told me my fears of losing our baby, among many others, could be heightened due to the loss of the first pregnancy. I didn't know exactly how heightened things could get...

I had a little nausea until about eight weeks or so... of course I was ready to hit that 13-week mark because the chances of miscarriage drop drastically. I went in for my appointments, every four weeks... and so, come 10 weeks, all we well... then again at 14 weeks.

I went in for a gender check at 16 weeks... a friend of mine came with me because she was going to setup a gender reveal for us. That following Sunday, my fiancee and I got married. My best friend was now my husband and we got to find out the gender of our baby together on our wedding day! We were having a baby boy!!

I questioned EVERYTHING! When I say everything... I mean everything. Cheese because it had fresh dill and I had read (Dr. Google, of course) that I shouldn't eat that. I questioned a lot of foods unnecessarily and avoided salads at all cost! I questioned whether I could go bowling, to the beach, and swimming in a chlorine pool. I constantly asked my husband, "Do you think he's okay?"

Then I had the worst scare of my life on our honeymoon... we were spending an afternoon on the beach. I was scared of the water because the waves were rough and I didn't want to get knocked around. My husband helped me get past the rough waves safely and all was fine. We eventually needed a break from fighting the water and decided to go relax a bit... we got safe back as well, and did eventually make our way back in. This time, however, getting out was a challenge. Suddenly, when we were almost out, my husband tried to warn me, a big wave hit from behind! It hit my back side, thankfully, but down I went. I got pulled under, not knowing where the ground was, where my belly was, or how close the ground was to my belly. When I was finally able to stand up, I screamed for my husband to get me out of there!

When we sat down in our beach chairs, I cried! I was so scared... what if something had happened to my baby? I was still at the point where I hadn't felt really any movements yet, so I had no reassurance other than my husband. I eventually calmed down...we had a great honeymoon and at my next doctors visit, our baby boy was healthy and growing!

At 21 weeks, we had our anatomy scan to check his organs and confirmed he was, in fact, a he! Baby boy had everything he needed and all organs were functioning properly. I was pretty worried about his lungs because we lived with my mother-in-law, who has (and still does) smoke in her home.

That's a long post for another day, so we'll leave it at I hated being there, cried the day we moved in, and it caused even more worry for me about our baby. That wasn't what I wanted for him... we had no choice. Nobody told me how much I would cry over someone I had never met!

At 25 weeks I had to do a glucose test to check for diabetes... I felt pretty confident all was well and it was! As my pregnancy got closer to an end, my doctors visits became more frequent. I used to hate going four weeks between checking on our boy. I eventually got better, but it was nice to see how big he was getting every two weeks, and then eventually, every week.

It felt great when I hit the third trimester at 28 weeks. I was in the homestretch! Thankfully, I had no problems at all while I was pregnant. Skip ahead to 37 weeks... by that point, I was uncomfortable: Trouble sleeping, waddling, back aches, false contractions, you name it. I was pretty much a textbook pregnancy.

Hubby and I decided we wanted to have a date night before baby boy was born (his due date was set at December 13), on Wednesday, November 28, 2018. Hubby and I had some errands to run, including getting some gas for my car. I really wanted an icee (my biggest craving was snow cones and icees) so I went to get one while hubby pumped gas. While inside, I felt a very small gush from my nether regions... thought hmm, could this be it? My doctor has told me it may be small, but wait around as it will become obvious. We go back home and while eating some lunch, it happened, again. I Googled some info and found something that said to lay down for 30 minutes and if you feel a gush when you stand, it could very likely be baby time!

I took a nap and when I got up, nothing! I thought, okay, well maybe it's not time yet.

Hubby and I had a date night planned so we left, ate a great dinner at Waffle House (that's what momma wanted LOL), then went on a walk through Christmas light displays that have been in our city for years: Bellingrath Gardens in Mobile, AL! All that walking did some good! I did need a few breaks here and there, but it was a wonderful date night for hubby and I.

Later that night, pretty close to midnight, we were relaxing and watching YouTube videos. We both got pretty tired so we decided to go to bed. I was comfortable (to those who haven't experienced it, getting comfortable while VERY pregnant, is not easy) and didn't want to get up. Hubby told me it would probably be a good idea to use the restroom before... inner me said no, but he was right. A few minutes before this conversation, however, I had felt a small popping sensation and as soon as I stood up, the waterfall came! It was baby time!! For me, it was like the movies... huge gush that just didn't stop.

We made it to the hospital around one o'clock AM, and we got settled in for the ride. I wasn't having any contractions yet so my doctor decided to induce those since my water had broken.

Let me tell you... you can't describe contractions in a way that's actually going to explain how they feel. They are rough and I only made it to five centimeters before getting the epidural.

They had monitors on my belly to keep an eye on our baby. I was hooked to an IV and had my temperature and BP taken every so often. I was exhausted!! I don't remember when I got to five centimeters, but my doctor came in to check me and asked me about the epidural. I was having a hard time with contractions, but was afraid of the medication wearing off before the baby was born (that happened to my cousin). My doctor assured me it would not wear off so I gave the okay to do the epidural. After that, I finally got some rest for about an hour before being woken up again for a check up.

Again, I don't know exact times, but I went from five to eight centimeters quick! At that point, I was wheeled off to a bigger birthing room, which would be where I would spend the rest of our hospital stay. My doctor was in a C-section birth when I was taken to my birthing suite so my nurse said we should do practice pushes to help speed things along and so I knew exactly what I needed to do to get my baby out. After a few sessions of practice and some rest in between, I was finally at 10 centimeters and ready for the real pushes!

My doctor came in and it took a few real good, hard pushes to get him, but on November 29, 2018 at 3:39 PM, our sweet boy was born! James Edward Thomas... the doctor got his head and arms out and asked if I wanted to pull him the rest of the way, which of course I did! How cool is it to pull your own baby out? He instantly screamed! Let's just say it was very emotional for everyone... me, my husband, my mom...

I got to do skin to skin contact with my baby immediately after and then again after he was weighed and checked.

Our boy weighed eight pounds and 12 ounces, and he was 22 inches long!

I know... I don't know how I did it either!

Hubby and I had decided that we wanted to breastfeed him so they let me do that within the first hour as well. Our experience with that quickly went south... not long into breastfeeding, James's skin started to turn blue!

I screamed in panic, asking someone to please get help and fast (my in-laws were in the room). My nurse ran in there and used the bulb sucker on him before another nurse quickly took him away (he literally went full-on blue and limp in my hands). Everyone was reassuring me that everything was going to be fine. Soon, the nurse came back in to let me know what was going on. Apparently, he had had some mucus in his lungs from birth and trying eat, he wasn't getting oxygen. The nursery kept him for about an hour or so, gave him oxygen, and all was well.

I wasn't prepared for that... his Apgar score at birth (basically vitals) were about an eight; 10 is the best possible. In fact, I wasn't prepared for anything that was to come...

Nobody told me how much joy I would feel hearing and seeing my baby for the first time... and nobody told me how much I would cry.

Nobody told me how much I would worry about him when he was taken away blue and crying...

There is a lot more to our story that nobody told me... a second post soon to come: "Journey into motherhood."