Laying it all out --- My truth, my pregnancy

Laying it all out on the table.

Your first pregnancy is a fun time. From the moment I told Adam we were surprisingly expecting a wittle baby time has been flying by. But with that said it hasn’t been the bed of roses I always thought (assumed) it would be. Here is my story…the bare naked truth of my life for the past 7 ½ months…well more accurately 5 months (since she was a surprise).

My pregnancy has been a smooth one in the sense that I have NEVER been sick, at the most I experience some back pain, I am a woman on the go so I suspect that is expected. But things have happened along the way, small bumps in the road that made me (us) stop and pray with all our hearts…we had no idea how much we wanted something until it was possibly in jeopardy.

I had my very first baby doctor’s appointment Thursday, July 13^th, 2012. At this appointment they confirmed that we were indeed pregnant (almost 9 weeks at the time) and performed our first ultrasound. We were able to see her and hear her heartbeat for the first time. We left there elated! Life had thrown us a curve ball, but we were loving every second of the wonderful surprise. The following day while at work I received one of the scariest phone calls ever. It was the baby doctor calling me to tell me that they needed me to come back in as soon as possible for another ultrasound, that they had found some “sac separation” (a common cause of miscarriage in the first trimester). The nurse told me not to do anything strenuous, take things easy and that they would see me for my follow up ultrasound Monday. I calmly left my office, walked down the stairs and outside the office building and went hysterical. I called Adam sobbing…I already felt like I was failing as a mother. He (like the doctor) told me not to look up anything on the internet. The doctor had already told me “sac separation” could heal on its own and he insisted that I take things easy, to calm down and that everything would be fine. That night when Adam came home from work the first thing he did was drop to his knees, laid his hands on my stomach and started to pray. Now, I have failed to mention that all of this was going on while we were in the midst of MOVING (a stressful process and something that can be physically straining)…I received the phone call Friday and we moving that following Sunday. Adam was a beast and basically moved our entire apartment across town in to our new house, solo. The next day we went in for our ultrasound…I was on pins and needles. After the ultrasound we were left to anxiously await the doctors assessment. And praise the Lord her answer was exactly what we (I) needed to hear, she no longer saw any separation, it had healed on its own! WooHooooooo!!!!

And then two months went by. September 11^th, 2012, we were finding out if baby Hammond was going to be a he or a she. I had been waiting for this moment since I saw our first ultrasound. Like every other expecting parent we were SO EXCITED! We had successfully made it past the first trimester mark and we thought we were in for smooth sailing. The ultrasound tech (is that what they are called?) told us we were having a baby girl. I was elated and Adam was pretty proud of himself because he said from day one he thought it was a girl. They sent us back out into the waiting room to wait (everything is a waiting game) to meet with the doctor. They finally called us back to the back again. And the appointment went a little something like this: The doctor told us 90% of everything looked great. However, they did see some things that they wanted checked out further by a specialist. I was a deer in headlights, my mind was a fog…thinking, “why, how, what?” The doctor told us that she could see some holes in her heart (VSD’s) and that it looked like something may be going on with her aortas (she had some big fancy name for it, transvascular…something, something, something). I think MY own heart stopped beating. Again, I felt like my body was failing me, my baby and Adam. It was as if the doctor could read my mind and her exact words were, “There is nothing you did or could have done differently. We don’t know why things like this happen to some people and not others. Rarely are pregnancies like the movies where you spend 9 months glowing and deliver a perfect 7 lbs baby with zero bumps in the road.” She sent us BACK out into the waiting room (this was becoming the longest appointment of my life) to wait on scheduling…we had to make an appointment to see a “High Risk” doctor. Me? High risk? I went from the high of finding out we were having a baby girl to a sick feeling in my gut. How could I be high risk? I am 26 and healthy. I was also so angry (at the time) at the doctors…why couldn’t they have given us this day to celebrate finding out the gender with our family and friends and called me the following day with this gut wrenching news? Instead my pain for our child heavily outweighed the excitement of finding out if baby Hammond was a he or she.

I went back to work long enough to send our parents an email (because I could NOT talk about it without crying) keeping them in the loop and letting them know that we wanted to keep this information private for the time being. Not much longer after that email was sent I left work…I couldn’t sit in my office and pretend like I was okay. Instead I put on my game face…went to party city, ordered pink balloons, decorated our “he or she” box, and prepared to be “carefree and everything is fine” for our skype/reveal with our families and friends.

We meet our specialist on that Thursday (after the Tuesday gender appointment). When we walked into the high risk office they handed me a stack of papers to fill out. I cried the entire time I was writing. Adam asked me gently if HE needed to do it (I am sure I looked a fool), but it was scary. All the paper work was about all the possibilities and a majority of them were about downs syndrome…I just wasn’t prepared for all of this. After all the paper work was done and I underwent another ultrasound we met the high risk doctor….and this is how he introduced himself to me…he didn’t say hello or anything, he said, “I am so sorry you are here.” UGH! What was he trying to do? As if being there wasn’t scary enough??? He took us to a small room with a tiny table, four chairs and a huge box of Kleenex. He pulled out a giant binder and began with what they saw with her heart. The good news first…they could not see anything wrong with her aortas. SCORE! He did say that her heart was just the size of a dime so just to be safe he wanted me to come back in a few weeks when her heart was the size of a quarter so that they could make absolutely sure that there was nothing funky going on with her aortas but as far as he was concerned they were looking and working like they are supposed to. BUT he did find VSD’s (holes) in her heart, only 2…but that’s 2 more than anyone would like. He said one looked tiny and would probably close up on its own but the other looked much larger and would probably have to be closed up with surgery a few months after she was born. I still wasn’t thrilled with the option of surgery and Adam agreed that we didn’t need to do surgery unless it was an absolute necessity because there is no such thing as a simple HEART surgery. The risk is always there and with a heart the risk is always high. I walked out of there with mixed feelings…happy because things could have been MUCH worse but still bummed about our little girls heart. We prayed and prayed and PRAYED for our little girl!

The following week I got a phone call that my grandmother had been in the hospital and they were sending her home with HOSPICE and that the doctors said she probably wouldn’t hang on longer than a week…I was on the next plane home to be with family. I had to see my Granny and let her know that I loved her and if nothing else be there for my Mama and Pop.

A couple of weeks after that I had to check back in with my high risk doctor. I held my breath pretty much the whole time during the ultrasound and when she “zoomed” in on the heart I teared up…fearing what else they could possibly find wrong. At this pointed I HATED going to the doctors. Again, after the ultrasound the doctor took us to a tiny room. However, this time we left with tears of joy. The doctor said that her heart looked perfect. He saw NOTHING wrong with it and NO holes! They had closed on their own. Such a blessing! He told me that I did not have to come back to see him if I did not want to. He offered to see me ONE more time if I though it would put my mind at ease…I smiled and said, “Just one more time and then I promise I will leave you alone.”  God has most certainly had His hand over my pregnancy.

A month after being home to visit my Granny I got a call from my Mama saying that they had put my Aunt into HOSPICE (she, like my Granny, had been sick for a long long long time. She had liver problems.) Mama told me that the doctors had given her 3-6 months to live…2 days later I got a call from my Daddy (My Aunt Karen’s brother) that she had passed away. Back home I went….heartbroken.

Once back in Memphis I had my LAST high risk appointment and we passed with flying colors (again) so I will never (fingers crossed) again have to see that office space, ultrasound lab or doctor again! At this time I also had scheduled my gestational diabetes test with my regular baby doctor. I thought nothing of it; I thought for sure I would pass….woah nelly was I wrong. I received a phone call informing me that I failed the blood test and would need to come in for the 4 HOUR long test…I thought “shoot me now”. I had a million questions for the nurse…why me? She said it has nothing to do with what I eat (although if you do have gestational diabetes you control it with your eating habits but you don’t GET it by your eating habits, which I believe because a stick thin girl was there having the same test done as me and I can assure you she doesn’t eat cupcakes.) She said it just depends on the woman and her hormones and that stress could play a major part in triggering those hormones. I thought, oh great! This is the most stressful time at work, I am dealing with the loss of a family member, we all have that person (or people) that causes UNNECESSARY stress in our lives, figuring out how to be a mama, looking for daycare's, my Granny and then not to mention I have a family history of diabetes (that puts me at a higher risk factor right off the bat). I asked the nurse what would happen if I had gestational diabetes and she said exactly what I didn’t want to hear, “We will send you to the high risk doctor.” I thought, “Oh, hell no you won’t.” and I started speaking into being…”I DO NOT HAVE GESTATIONAL DIABETES!”

I went in that Friday for my 4 hour test (grumpy as all get out) the next morning (Saturday) around 7:30am I got a phone call from my Mama…my Granny had passed away earlier that morning, a month from the day that my aunt passed away. I told Adam that if I didn’t have gestastional diabetes, that I do now. Her passing has been hard for me…on so many different levels. It hurts me to see my mama hurt (just like it does for me to see my Daddy hurt after his sister passed) and it crushes me to see my Pop’s heart ache the way it does. I told someone at work the other day that if it were truly possible to die of a broken heart that I thought he would. It’s been an all around hard time for my family recently, lots and lots of heartache and tears. I cry at the slightest memory of her (my Granny) just yesterday Adam put out her teapot set that she had given me and when I saw it sitting in the china cabinet I started sobbing. Although I am SO happy and find some comfort in knowing that she is healthy and whole in Heaven it pains my heart to know that she will never meet Kinney. After all, she was the GREATEST grandmother to me and my sister and I just wish Kinney could have had the opportunity to know her like we did. But on the same hand I know she’ll have a front row seat when Kinney is born and be an angel on her side always.

The next week I got the phone call with the test results…NO gestastional diabetes for me!!! YAY!

I hate to see my body getting “fat” but that just lets me know that she is GROWING like she should. Sometimes her kicks and punches make me uncomfortable but that just lets me know that she’s kicking around happy and healthy and then I smile…sometimes maybe I cry (tears of joy). During this pregnancy I have had a lot of heartache and tears…so I am CERTAIN Kinney will have the sweetest and softest heart of anyone I know.

This is just my story and it is mild compared to what other women go through. I think often of women that go through things that I never even realized were possibilities. I never knew how high the risk of miscarriage (even after the first trimester) was until it became somewhat of a possibility for me. I never had any sickness associated with my pregnancy, high blood pressure or even the possibility of bed rest (knocking on wood as I type this). I never really thought about how STRONG women are until I became pregnant. Pregnancy is an emotional rollercoaster…THAT. IS. FOR. SURE! And from what I understand the constant worrying about your child and if they are “ok” never stops.

We had our 3D/4D ultrasound last Friday and girlfriend is sitting pretty. She’s looking healthy and she’s head down (like she is supposed to be). We only have 9 weeks left before she will be gracing the world with her presence (hopefully no sooner or later). This past weekend my father in law came up to help put her nursery together…which I am thrilled with, I just go and sit in her room and think about the future. 

It's crazy how much ultrasounds have changed! This is Kinney last Friday. The ultrasound below is the only one my parents have of me in 1986

And speaking of the future I want to close this blog with a BIG CONGRATULATIONS!!! Our dear friends Brian & Deana Mathes announced this weekend that they are expecting a wee one this June!!!! I am SO EXCITED FOR THEM!!!! I hear June 26^th is a GREAT day to have a baby…just saying ;)