No baby yet....

Ok folks here's the dealio.

It's HARD to be a vessel!!
The hardest thing for me during pregnancy is the fact that although everything depends upon me... I have no real control over anything that is happening in my body. I can eat well, and exercise(which I do). I can try not to get too stressed and get enough rest(which I also do to the best of my ability)... but really there's nothing that I can do about most of the things that my body just does as part of nature. I am a vessel. It can be a beautiful thing, I got to feel all those first little flutters. I have an intimate relationship with this new little person that no one else has had the opportunity to experience yet. And although I know that the things that I do and don't put in my body make a difference in how this new little life developed and grew, when push comes to shove, I can't really control what is going on in there.

I had no power over whether or not my placenta would attach properly in the very beginning of this journey. I could not save the little embryo that wasn't meant to become a fully formed little person, in my early months. I can not force this baby to be born any sooner than it is supposed to be born. I am but a vessel. I have a huge part in this miracle of bringing new life into the world, but no control over how it goes about happening. That is a very humbling thing to accept. I must admit that it is very difficult for me. I feel such responsibility, but have no control at all to change the way that things are going... and it is a struggle for me.

I went in for my weekly checkup yesterday. I had been planning on starting a serial sweeping of my membranes. Last week things were perfectly aligned for me to be swept, but it was too early. My cervix was not effaced(thinned out) yet, but I was dilated to a good roomy 1 and we figured with my daily contractions that I would have more progress by yesterday. Also although the baby's head wasn't engaged(that never happened with my last until I was actually pushing him out) the baby was easily moved into my pelvis to put the right pressure onto my cervix to do the sweep.... last week that is.

Yesterday when I went in I was feeling a good amount of anxiety. I feel pretty torn about messing with nature and trying to push my will upon it. I have been going back and forth about doing the sweep and how comfortable I am with it. Although it isn't a chemical induction it is a "medical procedure" that can have consequences. Things like accidentally breaking the amniotic sac, which could be a big problem if labor wasn't spontaneous after that... causing a hospital birth and possible chemical intervention to help get things started.... all of which is about as far from what I would "like" my experience to be as it could be! And honestly it's not just about what I want my birth experience to be like.... it also has a lot to do with the way that I feel about birth in general. I really do believe that the least amount of tinkering with this natural process is the best. BUT, I also have this hernia repair... which tweaks and stretches in a painful way everyday at this point... so I let my fear of rupture get the best of me and "planned" this procedure. The amount of internal struggle that I was feeling over getting it done was obvious. It was obvious enough to my midwife that she wasn't sure if she should even go through with it. We talked for a bit and she left it up to me, but said it would be fine for me to NOT get it done. I waffled and discussed it some more with her and my husband but in the end, I decided yes..... let's just do it.

So I bared my bits for her to examine, not the most comfortable thing in the world. My husband was there holding my hand( the sweeping is down right painful and I wanted his support)... and then nothing! Well, not really that quickly, but I could tell something was wrong from the beginning of the exam. The midwife was able to fit only one finger inside my cervix still, so I had no more dilation over the week, and my cervix didn't efface at all yet, still. The baby's position also made it impossible to move into the pelvis, so there wasn't the right pressure and she simply couldn't do the procedure.

ACK!!!

I can not describe the amount of disappointment that I felt. I have been thinking about and anticipating this for two weeks. I have been having daily contractions for months. The night before I had gone to bed early, because I am getting so tired... only to be waken up with contractions, that although I knew were not "real" labor were strong enough that I couldn't sit still(or sleep) through them. I had to rock and walk and tone just a little to get through them. They lasted for 3 and a half hours, about every 5 minutes, sometimes every 2.
For nothing.
I know that this is the way that my body works. Every baby has come later than my due date, which is not until Friday. And all of my pregnancies have had weeks of contractions that even last time with my THIRD baby, I still convinced midwives and myself were"real"... went down to the center and had all my people ready and everything... to end up with them stopping after a few hours and not being "the real thing". It is immensely frustrating!

Yesterday after I left the office I was pretty grumpy. I was feeling disappointed... I want to hold and kiss this baby!! Plus, there is a part of me that was happy to have some kind of "time" that I would be having this baby. I knew the possibilities that I still wouldn't have the baby after the sweeping but I had honestly not considered not even getting it done. I cancelled my appointment for today because there is no point unless my cervix effaces a little bit more, and I wanted a day off of the stress. I DID NOT cancel my appointment with the midwife tomorrow, because I want to leave my options open, and that is my internal struggle right now. I have decide if I should set myself up for probable disappointment again by going in and not being able to get the sweep done. I also have to decide if it wasn't the universe helping me to see that I was going against my gut by scheduling this thing in the first place. I honestly don't know what I am going to do yet.

I am headed out to the zoo with the kids today. I will walk 2-3 miles today and I'm sure that I will have oodles of contractions because of it. It is possible that I will have effaced more by tomorrow and that even if I don't, the baby's position could be better for the sweep tomorrow... but is that what I really want to do?
I just don't know.

Blah! I will do my best not to be a ball of stress today. My goal is to not think about it at all today(ha ha) while I am out with the kids. I want to take advantage of this time with them before everything changes, but that will be a hard task for me! Not enjoying my kids... I love spending time with them... just the not being distracted part... BUT I am going to do my best. I have been spending a lot of time praying and meditating over the last amount of time, and will spend some time doing the same this evening, and hopefully I will be comfortable with my decision by tomorrow morning, which ever way I decide to go with this.

I just wanted to let everyone know what was happening in our crazy little world right now. I hope that everyone is doing well. I will let you all know if anything happens. If I have the baby I will at least put up a quick announcement... if I don't you can bet that I will back on here venting my frustration and impatience! :P

Today I am grateful that my baby is happy and healthy inside my womb.
I am grateful that I am worrying about when I will get to hold this new little person and not why this life was taken away. (I just found out that a friend who was pregnant in the beginning of my pregnancy and lost her baby, finally got pregnant again and just lost this one as well, and I DO realize how incredibly lucky and blessed we are!)
I am grateful that one way or the other I will be holding my baby very soon... no one stays pregnant forever!! : )

Wading through Muck... to find a little happiness?

Pregnancy is a crazy thing.

It has the capacity to completely take over your entire existence.... even if you already have a lot of other stuff going on. For me there is an undeniable connection to not only myself but also to everything and everyone around me. I feel super sensitive in not only the cliched emotional ways, but also to the working of our universe.

We are all interconnected, and I feel much more aware of these connections while I am carrying a child. The most interesting thing about doing this for the fourth time around has been the ability to separate what is my stuff from what is pregnancy stuff. What I mean by that is that is that some of the inevitable hormonal crazy is easier for me to see IS hormonal crazy... as opposed to me losing my mind or being a horrible person. I am a different person when I am pregnant and although I like my non-pregnant person a little better I am trying to appreciate some of my pregnant person attributes as well.

My goal this time around has been to try and fully take advantage of this connection that I feel that is so different than my "normal" way of interacting and reacting to things, situations, and other people. I am hoping that I can come out of this with not only an amazing little human to watch and love and learn from, but a better sense of who I am and where I am headed.

My husband and I are both very much in love with each other but we have our struggles and frustrations with each other as well. I think that my husband's best quality is what an amazing father he is. I wish he was as committed to being as good of a husband. I happen to think that I am a pretty good mother as well, and I try to be a good wife, but the inequality of our marriage has reached a point that I am not as doting as I used to be. I sometimes worry about the ultimate future of our lives together and nothing makes me sadder than these thoughts.

We have been in counseling for a little while together but with all the holiday madness we had to take a small hiatus. During this time I went and sought out a counselor for myself to try and work on some of my own issues that have nothing (or little) to do with my husband, but are buried in my somewhat dark and mucky past. I shared in my last post that he is now going to start seeing our marriage counselor on his own. We will still go together occasionally, but I am hoping that without the distraction of "our stuff" he can work on some of his own. It gives me hope anyway, which is never a bad thing! I only hope he will be able to reach down deep to do the work he needs to, he had never been in therapy before me and I'm not sure he really knows what he is getting into. All I can do is hope that he will do the best he can, and him agreeing to go in the first place is a pretty big step for him!

I am so glad that I took that step for myself and I am working really hard. It amazes me how much things from my past can effect the way that I interact with people and situations today. It's not as though I haven't dug through all of these things before. I have been through a few incredibly dark periods of time. I have told the story of how I eventually became pregnant with my oldest daughter, Emily in previous posts (part I & II). I have also alluded to some some fairly heavy darkness in my high school days, which I might touch on more at some point but for now I can sum up by saying that during my four years of high school I missed about half of my first two and a half years, by being institutionalized. The first time I tried to kill myself I was only 12 years old. It obviously could be a long story, but it wasn't for attention or because I was trying to call out for help, it was honestly that I didn't think that my life was worth the pain of living every day anymore and I just wanted to give up. I was in rehab for several months the first time. In the next couple of years I was sent back twice. My second time I woke up in rehab after having fallen into an alcohol induced coma from drinking too much after about a week of binging on Crystal Meth. Everyone thought I was trying to kill myself, but I was just too messed up to know how bad off I was. I talked myself out of that jaunt within only a few weeks. I had learned what needed to be said and when, but it didn't really help me at all. I was back to drinking and doing drugs, literally the day I got home. I don't remember how long it took before I was sent back but but it wasn't long. And this time my mom sent me to a bigger city with different people and no one bought my bullshit there. I spent several months there again this time. I spent A LOT of time in therapy. Personal therapy, group therapy, family therapy, group family therapy(that was a super weird one!!) you name it I did it...

The point of putting all of that out there is that I have had a lot of time to air my dark places. They have had a lot of light shined on them and yet they are still there. The interesting thing that I am finding now... readdressing some of that same stuff is how much it STILL messes with me. I have to admit that it annoys the hell out of me. In some ways I feel like there is only so many times you can go over the same crap before you have to put on your big girl panties and fricking deal with it, but at the same time I am desperately trying to be kind to myself and let myself feel the sadness and pain of these things... let myself acknowledge their power over me, because only then can I truly GET OVER IT.

I am working with an amazing woman who I have developed a growing respect for. She has helped me to connect with things that I really thought I was over... but I am obviously not. She has been kind and patient and with her guidance I have made connections that I have never made before. It has been a long time since I dug this deep into a lot of this crap and I am A LOT older now and have a lot more life experience behind the eyes that are looking back. I really think that I am making progress with this stuff and that makes me feel truly hopeful that even if these things are not vanished forever.... at least for right now I am beginning to feel my heart and soul have a little less weight on them.

One of the hardest things for me to do is to sit with my own sorrow or pain. I always want to push it away. Even if the way that I usually push it away is generally a good thing, by looking at the lessons I have learned or see how I am a better person for having gone through these experiences... sometimes I just have to stop and sit with the pain. Allow myself to grieve for the loss of innocence or the pain of loneliness and neglect. I struggle doing this because it feels like self pity to me, which I can't stand, but one of the things that I am discovering is how not giving myself permission to feel the things that I DO feel is a large part of what is hurting me the most.
I think it is funny that I am so harsh, judgemental, and uncompassionate (and yes according to dictionary.com that really is a word, I wasn't sure so I went ahead and looked... OCD anyone? : P ) with myself because I think that if you asked most people who know me, and know me well, those words would probably come up as the complete opposite of some of my most positive attributes. Isn't it funny how easy it is for me to give to others what I find it nearly impossible to give to myself? That is another way I hide from my pain btw, which I honestly didn't see the depth of until recently. I laugh when I want to cry. I have been doing it for so long that I truly didn't even notice how often I do it. Now that I see it a little more clearly, I have been amazed at how often I laugh at things that really aren't funny at all. And again I don't do it with other people's pain, just my own. It is astounding to me how easy it can be to just not see these things about yourself when you do them everyday, for years, maybe a lifetime even. Yet another reason that I am so glad that I made that call and found this woman to help me. My days after a session can be hard because it is so very draining, but I am finding that the next few days are beginning to feel better and better. I hadn't realized how heavy my heart had slowly become over the last good amount of years, it feels nice to air things out and let a little more sunshine in!

Sadly, it's not helping things with the hubby because some of what is happening is that I want to change some of my more destructive behavior patterns... which of course he has become quite accustomed to, but if we are meant to be together forever like we both hope that we are, then we will be able to let each other grow in the ways that will make us happier, healthier people on our own AND together as a unit. I don't for a second think that things are going to be easy for us. They never have been for us. We have always had a relationship full of extremes both good and bad, but I have faith and hope (I know that word has been a little overused this post) that we will make through this together. Together as partners, lovers, and friends building our relationship and our family in the healthiest, happiest way that we can.

Today I am grateful that I becoming more comfortable letting myself feel what I need to feel, with a little less judgement.
I am grateful that my husband has taken a step to be a healthier person.
I am thankful to have more hope than I have felt for awhile. I have missed my natural optimism greatly! : ) I plan to enjoy it while it lasts... even if it only visits, I think it will be visiting more often!

Acceptance and Unexpected News

Acceptance is a running theme for today's post.

I have accepted that I am really a bad blogger. I read often, but comment rarely, and I am lucky to get a post a month up lately, but I'm hoping that the people who read will keep reading anyway. (oh, and I welcome any of you to use the flickr link on the right to see some pictures of the past month or so of craziness... )

I am in the process of accepting the fact that my sweet, sweet boy has just turned two and that even my little angel will succumb to fits, tantrums, and the general chaos of toddler hood.

I am in the process of accepting that my dear Sophia will probably always need just a little more from me than I always have available for her... and that she is getting the very best of me everyday, and that is the most that I can do.

I am in the process of accepting that as incredible my oldest, Emily is, she is still a teenager going through the throws of hormones and change and painful growing up. That not only can I not shelter her from it, but that I don't want to, because as painful as it it is to watch, that is my job as her Mama. My job is to watch her try and sometimes fail, but be there to support her getting back up and trying again. It is my job to watch her love and get her heart broken, but be there for a shoulder to cry on and help her to know that she will love again, probably many more times with the same outcome. It is my job to watch her struggle to understand things that are difficult, to watch her realize that life is not fair, that the world can be hard, but that she can still be open and fair and giving anyway.

I am in the process of accepting that this pregnancy is amazing and has already given me so much. The knowledge that I have the capacity to love more, give more, be more than I was before I conceived. And that no matter what the outcome I am a better person for having experienced exactly what I have up until this point, and for as long as I am blessed with this continued life within me.

As of today I am 20 weeks.

I have made it halfway through this pregnancy. This would usually bring me some kind of comfort... but sadly last week when I went to my sonogram appointment I got some unexpected news. It wasn't the good kind.

First off, because I will be turning 35 at the end of next month (and about two months before the baby is due) I had to get genetic counseling... which was fairly unpleasant. The truth is that I do know quite a bit about the things that can go wrong, but personally, I don't do much testing because no matter what we would find out I wouldn't do anything differently. I already eat as well as I can, exercise, and follow the guidelines for pregnancy. I would never terminate a pregnancy because there was something wrong... even something really wrong, because at this point I am halfway through and it just doesn't fit into my personal belief system... that being said the DH and I had to sit through about 30 minutes of a geneticist telling us all the terrible things that could be going wrong and pressuring us to get an amnio, even though there are no big markers or any family history... but just because "well you know you are getting older now..." yes, thank you young chippy... I realize I am the ripe old age of 34 right now... please get me my walker... good lord... I'm 34!!!. Anyway, by the time we got to get the sonogram I was already full of a lot of information (mostly negative) and I was ready for the pleasure of seeing my healthy beautiful baby!

We did and the baby looks great! Healthy, right on target size-wise, a real mover and shaker just like all her siblings (oh, I am calling her a her but we don't actually know what sex the baby is... we like to wait for the surprise at the end of the journey!!). She actually gave the tech a pretty hard time, not wanting to show her face to check for a cleft lip... but eventually all the necessary shots were taken and all the organs look as though they are functioning well. There are 10 fingers and toes, a beautiful brain... just about perfect.

The baby is looking very good, but my placenta is not. I have been diagnosed with a circumvallante placenta, which basically means that the placenta is starting to pull away from my uterus in a circular manner. Instead of being 100% attached it is at about 80% right now. Because the placenta is a smart organ (like a liver) it is compensating for this by being thicker than a "normal" placenta. Both the detachment and the thicker placenta are strong indicators for low birth weight babies. Also because of this separation, I have a good size blood clot resting on top of my cervix right now. All of these things separately are strong indicators for pre-term labor. All of them together make the possibility much, much more likely.

Wow... it was nothing I was thinking I would hear. I usually run late with my babies, my big chubby babies. With the first I was induced 7 days post dates (7lbs 12 oz), the second was 15 days late(8lbs 10 1/2 oz), the third was 9 days late(9lbs 12 1/2 oz).... the thought of having a preemie or God forbid a baby too little to even survive never even crossed my mind... not even once... not until Monday that is.

The doctor said that everything has the possibility of being just fine, and in the same breath he told me that if anything happens in the next 6 weeks there is nothing to be done. I now have 5 weeks to what they call the cut off for viability... and my waiting has begun.

I have talked with a lot of people about this and they all had their own perspectives about the possibilities. The biggest thing that I have been struggling with is how to NOT think about the negative things that COULD happen and trying to put all my energy into the positive things that also COULD happen. I can't help but think about how hard it would be to lose this baby. The thought brings me to instant tears, it has already been such a crazy journey for us this time around, I already feel so much love.

I have been feeling better today about things because I spoke with one of my midwives(who just started at the birth center as a midwife, BUT was the nurse at my prior two births there) and she had a similar, but much more dire prognosis during her last pregnancy. Things did not turn out perfectly but the end result is a beautiful almost 5 year old daughter who came early, but now is just like the rest of her peers. It felt good to hear a real life situation, that although didn't have a perfect situation, turned out well in the end. AND, she gave me some perspective about where my stats are in the levels of badness... they are low level right now. Things might change, but for right now I have reason to hope, which is nice to know. She also told me how during the summer she had to catch 40 babies for her schooling, and that out of those she had several that were full term, average weight babies whose mothers also had circumvallante placentas, one of them, who never had a sonogram, went through the whole pregnancy none the wiser.... so really, truly things could turn out just fine. It is just a waiting game at this point.

I am not bleeding and haven't had bleeding since 11 weeks. If I do start to bleed, it will not be a good sign at all... but there's no reason to think that will definitely happen. It is possible for the blood clot to be reabsorbed, which would be amazing and take away one risk for pre-term labor. The baby's growth starts to become more of an issue much later on, around 28 weeks. By that time the placenta will have either healed itself or become much thicker which means it can impede the baby's growth. The possibility that the placenta could continue to detach is also very real. There is a wide spectrum of possibilities at this point, from going full term with a big healthy baby to having spontaneous placental abruption (complete detachment) at any given time, and everywhere in between those two extremes.

So, like I said the waiting has begun. I am praying and sending all my positive thoughts into myself for that precious little one to hear. I am eating as well as I can.... exercising daily (the doctor said it was good to keep as active as I feel comfortable with) ...trying to rest... although that has been kind of hard, I have been having a great deal of difficulty sleeping since Monday. But I am doing everything that I can everyday, and that is all that I can do.

The most difficult lesson for me to learn from any pregnancy, but it seems especially in this one, is that I am not the one in control. I have to let go and let what will happen, happen. Surrender is a difficult thing for me, but it is the only thing for me to do right now... so that is my ongoing goal.

Acceptance, surrender, and LOVE. I don't know what else to do.

Today I am thankful to have a healthy 20 week fetus moving and grooving inside of me as we speak (or type!).

I am grateful to have a supportive group of women around me to listen, teach, talk with, and support me through this trying emotional time.

I am grateful for every week, every day, every minute that I have with my baby and hope that there will be many more to come.

I am grateful for any thoughts, prayers, and positive energy that any of you have available to send my way! Thank you! : )