An acute awareness of time

Last week, as a preventative measure, my doctors stitched my cervix shut. The surgery was quick, successful and we are hopeful this pregnancy will hold longer than the last. My son was born at 35 weeks.

For my last two pregnancies, my cerclage was put in at 19 and 22 weeks respectively. They were each considered an emergency cerclage. The surgeons did not have much cervix to work with, and it was late enough in my pregnancy that they also needed to give me an extra drug to keep my uterus from contracting.

The hope is that by having the stitch done earlier, doctors would have more cervix to tie shut and the pregnancy last longer. I guess only time will tell! I’m still not moving around all that quickly, but I am off all my pain meds and am starting to feel the baby kick!

I’ve been back at work since Monday and am steadily feeling better every day. I get exhausted pretty quickly as my body continues to heal, but I’m hopeful that will continue to improve!

Honestly, it needs to. About a week before the surgery I had finally had enough of the disorganization of my daughter’s room and decided to start clearing it out. Mainly, of clothes.

So here I present you with clothes I found in my daughter’s room. She’s six. These sizes range from 18 months to 4T. Clearly, a #mommyfail.

We don’t want to get rid of the clothes (which is also driving me nuts) because we have decided NOT to find out the sex of the baby. This baby will be a surprise on the day he or she arrives! I’m kind of excited about that. It was my husband’s idea. We found out for both our daughter and our son. Since we have one of each we figured, why not wait! We are clearly over-prepared with clothing. I haven’t cleaned my son’s room out in a looooooooong time either. And my daughter has the rest of her stash in bins in the basement. I just have to get over my urge to purge until the baby arrives.

When I told my younger brother about this he said, “Uh oh. Are you sure you’re not nesting already? I’m not sure that’s a good thing.” I thought about it… and my answer is still no. It’s more an acute awareness of time. I’ve been on this train a couple of times before. I know my energy level.(It’s not great) I can get one project done a day. We just finished a house remodel. We’re unpacking from that, have my daughter’s room to organize, my son’s room has to move down the hall and get decorated and furnished, the baby’s room needs to be redecorated and rebuilt, and we all still have to live our normal lives! I’m 16 weeks along in my pregnancy. I realize that’s not that far. But I’m pretty sure I won’t make it to 40, and there are only so many weekends left before this baby gets here.

I’m hopeful we can finish it all, but I can’t guarantee that will happen. We’ll be okay if it doesn’t, we’ve managed before.

Surgery scheduled for tomorrow

I had to look back to see when I got my cerclage with my other two babies. Hannah’s came at 19 weeks, and Colin’s at 22. This baby, I get it at 15.

I’ll back up a little bit in case there’s some folks out there who are confused. For those who are unfamiliar, I have a uterine malformation called Uterus Didelphys. Instead of one uterus and one cervix, I have two of each. Here’s what it looks like…

Because of this, I’m at risk for miscarrying during the 2nd trimester. People with my anomaly are at greater risk of having something called an “incompetent cervix”. My cervix, essentially, starts to shorten and give out before I actually go into labor. My high risk doctors watched me very closely during my pregnancies with my son and daughter. Both times my cervix started to shorten dramatically, so the stitch was put in.

This time, since it’s happened twice before, they are just going to put the stitch in early. Tomorrow, doctors will be sewing my left cervix shut in order to reinforce it.  This will not, however, keep labor from happening. As I learned with my son, your stitch can be in and your water can still break. He came at 35 weeks.

I’m nervous, because I’m going to a different hospital and different doctors than I’ve ever seen before. It’s not that my other doctors weren’t great… but my previous OBGYN doesn’t practice Obstetrics anymore. 😦 That means she doesn’t monitor pregnancies or deliver babies. I can’t blame her. She’s got 3 awesome kids of her own and being on call is hard on the family. But it was sad for me because I was faced with a choice. Ultimately I chose to go to a small practice closer to home. I know I made the right decision for me, but change is always scary.

After a bleeding episode and loads of questions I am sure I’ve made the right decision. My regular OBGYN is having me see a high risk doctor (perinatologist) to get me through this part of my pregnancy. Tomorrow, I go in for my surgery. It’s out patient. I’ll be numbed through my spine. They’ll also give me something to relax my uterus so it doesn’t start contracting. And hopefully they’ll give me some meds to relax my mind!

I’m expecting minor spotting after and a good deal of relaxing and staying off my feet while I heal. For the next several weeks to come they will keep a close eye on my cervix and the size of my baby. So say a prayer, keep me in your thoughts, keep your fingers crossed… whatever you feel compelled to do. I’m gonna need all the good vibes I can get!

A Special Announcement!

img_2699It’s been quite a while since I last posted on here, and our family has changed quite a bit! My daughter is now in Kindergarten, while my son… who I was pregnant with when I started this blog… goes to Kindergarten next year! Oh yeah, and we have another baby on the way! Due Spring of 2019.

This will be another wild ride, as I have no idea what to expect this time around. I’m pregnant in a uterus that has never been pregnant before. Both of my other children were on the right side, this one is on the left.

I’m nervous because this uterus started out smaller than the other one. My doctors, high risk and regular, assure me that that doesn’t automatically mean this baby will come sooner. Maybe this uterus stretches better than the other one, maybe not.

So far so good, though! I have surgery for my cerclage scheduled for next week… I’ll put up another post on that later.

My right uterus lining is pretty thick, and lucky me… I’m starting to spot. It made me panic when it first happened, because I wasn’t expecting to see a quarter size of brown blood when I went to the restroom. A quick call to my doctor and an ultrasound showed the baby still looked great, and there was evidence that the blood was coming from the other uterus. We’re not sure how long it will last, but I feel a little better knowing what it is.

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Much like my other two pregnancies, my symptoms have not been fun…

Nausea/vomiting…. still! 🤢

Sciatic pain

Lactose intolerant

Nose bleeds

Fatigue

And crazy pregnancy dislikes to sugar and basically all of my favorite things. Oh well, it’s worth it in the end, right?!

My goal is to keep this blog updates throughout this pregnancy and beyond! Hopefully it provides more insight to people going they the same thing!

Check out this 2 minute video of how we told the kids!