The Post You've All Been Waiting For... Part 1

I posted the first week of August that we weren't pregnant, but we felt like we were making progress with my health.

Well, we were making progress with my health.   (I'll cover HOW in a later part)

Fastforward a few weeks: Gavin's birthday was in August, and I went all out for our little family party. Streamers and helium balloons and the works. The night before his birthday I was up until midnight, finishing his mini-cake (since it was just the three of us) and touching up the decorations so that he would wake up to a perfect morning. But see, my little man was too old, and every time I was too busy to play with him I felt guilty because my body hadn't been able to produce a sibling for him, and every time I looked at how grown up he was I felt a gaping hole because both Quinn and I knew the joy of having siblings growing up with us, close to our age and always ready to enjoy anything with us. I've said before that I had wanted so badly to put him in a "big brother" onesie for his 1st birthday, and now here we were, on his third birthday, and I still couldn't say he was a big brother.

I stood in the kitchen and sobbed. I couldn't even stop. It was irrational, it was faithless, it was raw, but years and cycles and losses and lonely nights sitting on the bathroom floor not wanting Quinn to know I was falling apart AGAIN all came piling onto that moment of guilt because all I wanted for my darling boy was for him to not be alone in his room any more. For someone for him to teach and play with and take care of as only big brothers could do and that was something I couldn't give him.

Quinn heard me, or rather, heard that I suddenly wasn't bustling all over the house, and came to find me. He held me and he told me over and over that it wasn't my fault, that God would work it out in time, and that someday the hurt would go away.

The irony of that night to me is that as I was standing there weeping, my body was nurturing and growing the beautiful little cell that my wonderful Jesus was waiting to breathe a soul into. And while Jesus was catching all my tears and crying with me, He was waiting to bless me beyond what I could dream or imagine. Thinking of how He has planned each one of us, and knows us from that moment when He chooses to give us life, gives me the shivers. Every "unplanned" or "unwanted" baby was planned and wanted before their mothers knew they existed. They were loved with everlasting love from the moment that He made the choice to breathe into them a precious, eternal soul.

A couple weeks later, as we headed into the start of September, I was feeling thoroughly "buggy" and having daily nosebleeds. We spent a day at church and got in the car to head home and another nosebleed hit, so Quinn pulled into Walmart and made me go in for a pregnancy test. I wasn't "late", so it seemed silly to bother testing early, but I felt bad enough that I followed.

I got a two pack. Just in case.

And that night we got a very faint positive.

Yep. It was that faint. Look REALLY close for the second line... 

You would think we would have been dancing and screaming after over 30 infertile cycles and at least two possible miscarriages, but we didn't. We kind of just sat around staring at it, trying to decide if it even counted as a positive line. I texted a picture of it to my midwife and asked her if it counted as a line. Her response was that it did, and that it was better than the line she had gotten a week before. (!!) That made me laugh, since she was the one helping me diagnose my hormone problems and she and I had had regular discussions about her testing and how she was doing as well.

The next morning I got a slightly better positive. Enough for us to start letting it sink in.

We spent the afternoon (it was Labor Day) out at my Mom's and managed to not say anything, since we hadn't decided how long we were going to wait to tell. We weren't even to the 4 week mark and only had a faint positive on a 5 day early test...

But we told. As soon as the younger siblings were all tucked into bed Quinn made me show my Mom a picture of the test. We knew that we needed prayer, if nothing else, and that my early symptoms meant my hormones were doing what they were supposed to: Going crazy.

Obviously we were all a little apprehensive, and my midwife had me get a blood draw on Tuesday morning to check hcg and progesterone levels to see if my body needed any boosting to maintain the pregnancy, but my numbers came back better than good and we passed the 30 day mark, which is as far as any of our possible miscarriages had ever made it, and we started to relax and rejoice and enjoy the idea of it.

But I was soooo sick.

At about 7 weeks (mid-late September) I was almost too sick to attend revival at our church, and Sunday morning I wanted so badly to stay home, but knew that people would start to wonder if I didn't make it, so we went ahead and announced/asked prayer, even though it was a special revival week and we had a lot of guests and a guest preacher. It was wonderful, though. The guest pastor (who I've known since I was 8 years old) had one of my brothers and my Dad come to the front with me and Quinn and the three of them prayed over us, that the Lord would bless and protect our pregnancy.

But....

I was sooooo sick.

Like, multiple times worse than with Gavin. I threw up every single day, had constant nosebleeds, was dizzy, couldn't sleep, had daily migraines that would make me throw up even more, etc. And the round ligament pain started at about 10 weeks, instead of mid-pregnancy. I felt like I had a hyperactive circus monkey the size of a peanut bouncing around at about 8-9 weeks. My midwives were continuing to monitor my hormones and had lots of advice and help to offer, but it was a long haul. We officially hired the midwives I work with as our birth team and started making a home birth plan. I couldn't wait. We had just had our fireplace resealed and I was looking forward to a springtime birth with a fire in the fireplace and a warm birth pool to labor in.

My first prenatal was at almost 15 weeks. I had put it off, since we were doing all the bloodwork and other care anyway. I felt big, and was still fairly sick, but had a few good hours every day.  The appointment went well, we found a strong heartbeat and they measured my fundal height. Weird thing -- I was measuring at 20 weeks pregnant. We were so sure of our due date, though, so the midwife doing the appointment searched everywhere for a second heartbeat to check for twins, but couldn't find one. We figured it was extra amniotic fluid, or my body had been really weird and I was a month ahead. I had an ultrasound scheduled for a month later, so we settled into the Thanksgiving/Christmas prep chaos.

We talked about how fun it would be if we were a month further along than we thought. Looked back on our temperature charts and calendar and talked about that only being possible if I had miscarried a twin the month before and then my body just hadn't acknowledged the living one until later (is that even possible? I doubt it... but you try to quantify these things...)  The idea of twins came up, since there are several twins on Quinn's side, but I didn't think there were any on my side, and a quick google search showed that a father cannot be the cause of his own twins.

So the week before Christmas hit and everyone was begging for us to tell the baby's gender right away, since we had waited until almost 20 weeks for our ultrasound, but I wanted to wait until Christmas and incorporate it into gifts. Why not, right??

We got to our appointment with Tammy and I climbed up on her table, chatting to Gavin about how he was gonna see an "x-ray" of our baby. I mentioned to her that I was measuring ahead, and if she noticed anything like excess amniotic fluid then I'd be really curious to know why. 

Both heads -- measuring Baby Girl's Head with baby boy's head on the left  

 She did a quick scan over my tummy and quickly lifted the doppler.

Tammy: "This is your first ultrasound this pregnancy?"

Me: "Yep. That looked like a head and a tummy...?"  (I had seen what my eyes had said was two heads, but if you've ever seen this view of an ultrasound, you'd know why I second guessed)

She looked at Quinn. "Good. You're sitting down."

She looked back at me. "No, sweetie, that was two heads. You're having twins."

I screamed. Or, I think it came out as more of a hoarse, high pitched, extended whine, because I couldn't breathe, but it felt like a scream. Quinn yelled a less politically correct version of "Heck yeah" and we high fived. I couldn't see from the tears in my eyes. Tammy was laughing and jumping up and down. She was just happy that we were so happy.

Jesus hadn't been waiting to breathe life into one little cell -- He had been waiting for two. Two separate sets of perfect DNA, two separate eggs. A boy and a girl. Both of them with every bone and chamber and structure exactly as it should be. The roller coaster of finding TWO OF THEM and then  the sudden rush of concerns because twins have a much higher tendency for deformities, chromosomal disorders, etc, then watching her measure every bone and check fingers and toes and heart chambers and lungs and even look for cleft lips.... and seeing that there was nothing wrong. They were only 2 days different in size, too, so they were growing at the same rate, and only a couple days behind where they were supposed to be, so getting plenty of nutrition.

I suddenly couldn't wait to tell the "baby's gender".  This was so much bigger than that. We texted friends and made sure that everybody who could be was going to be at Wednesday night service that night. We had talked about a little box with a colored balloon in it as an announcement, but now Quinn wanted to go big. We stopped at a shipping store for large boxes, a grocery store for helium balloons and I was so glad that I had extra wrapping paper and wide ribbon on hand.  We went home and wrapped the two big boxes, each with a pink balloon and a blue balloon secured to the bottom, then met Quinn's mom to send one home with her to open with Quinn's little siblings and headed to church with the other and 6 boxes of Krispy Kremes.

For now, I'm sure you're tired of reading, and I'm tired of writing. 

But coming up in the next part will be the change of care plans, new shopping lists, more round ligament pain, ridiculous amounts of protein and water, our naming process, Gavin talking about his brother and sister and so on. I'll also dive into some of the practical information on what we diagnosed and how we treated it to become pregnant and basic information on my disorder and why I wasn't immediately diagnosed by my OB.

Until then...