Flu Update

Well, I ended up at the hospital after all. I went in Sunday night. Thought the flu had passed and went to stay at my mom's - miles away from the sick house, where my husband and daughter were still hacking. But got sick there too, so much that I was concerned about the baby and my dehydration. It is all fine now. The fluids helped a lot.
Monday AM I went to my doc for an ultrasound and Trey looked so cute... he seemed fine so far. Of course, I need to scan in the photo... It's a scary sight to see the umbilical cord and what looks like a big knot in it.
I've monitored the heart rate throughout the sickness. Yes, it changed. Lowered. But now it seems normal.
I am keeping focused on my personal experience where I felt like the Lord said this boy will live. I need more faith! It's a daily push for it and working through it.

Even with reassuring kicks that remind me of this baby's presence, I feel so empty. My house feels empty every time I serve a meal.  I just feel like there are missing children, and I am left empty without them.

Stomach Flu

So much for boring...
I got a stomach flu this week. Still quesy as I type...
I am 20 weeks, exactly the time I was in my last pregnancy when I got a really bad stomach flu. Claire was normal at 20 weeks, ans shortly after got a deadly infection. It is not for sure, but signs point to this stomach flu. This is what the specialists say. SO, easy to see how depressing it is to get a similar illness at the exact same time...
I have a ultrasound on Monday to check the baby's blood levels. That will give some peace of mind. But it was a hard day yesterday... I saw, once again, how futile I am in the process of making a healthy baby. I could monitor his heart rate all day - and it was a little high when I had fever or was dehydrated. But other than try to keep down fluids, what could I do for him? It stinks.
I am trying to stay upbeat and have faith that this baby is supposed to live. Most kids are fine when mom is sick. He will be fine. Still, I'm so mad!

Happy Easter

To Jackson and Claire,

Love, Dad

"Trey" - my 6th pregnancy

That's right; we're having another baby. We are 19 weeks now. These photos are at 18 weeks. Notice how SKINNY the baby is in the 3D pic! I know it's normal at 18 weeks, but seeing it made me just want to gain weight! (No probs there.)

My husband and I prayed a lot about having another baby. He didn't want to do it if it would die. We felt peace about it in December - not any big Moses moment answer, but feelings of peace. So we decided to try in January.

I was already pregnant. Just for TMI, I must have ovulated WAY late in November and made this little guy.

We thought right off he was a boy, mainly because I was so sick. Boys make me want to die. To add to it, my husband over time had 3 dreams that we had a little boy. I had one early on - that we had a boy and he was small. So, knowing now as I do that we never know how long these babies get to stay with us, I went at 16 weeks to a free ultrasound at at PHX school to find the sex out ASAP. (Thanks so my sister in law for the reference.) I wanted - and still do - to see this baby as much as I could because we just don't know how long he will be with us. He's here now, and I want my kids to enjoy him while they can. Luckily, they were able to see boy parts. :) Our dreams weren't crazy. He moved a lot! Looked normal size and without any obvious probs.

The detailed scan at 18 weeks showed us he's still a boy and still healthy. They even did a cross section of an artery in his brain and determined he's not anemic like Claire was! This is amazing technology to me. Had my last doc done this weeks before I had her, when I first complained of decreased movement it would have revealed what was going on a lot earlier. But I don't write that out of anger. I believe she was meant to be born the day she was. I know even if they found her hydrops sooner, her chances of survival were SLIM. For myself personally, I can have peace. For the millions of moms out there though, who feel something's not right, I say, go to someone else if your trusted doc blows you off. You are usually right.

I digress. So, we are on the horse again, as they say. You'd think it would make me happier, or lesson the grieving. No. I miss my lost kids a lot. I will miss them until I can get to know them someday. But this pregnancy does give me something to forward focus on. And it does help my children A LOT. My daughter was at first really upset about it. She said she didn't want another baby because all our babies just die. But she's the one who's so gushy with me and who talks to the baby every day now. She's come around and now she's quite attached. Just this a.m. she was talking to the baby while we got ready. My son said, "who are you talking to?"

She said, "The baby! He can hear us, you know." She hugs my belly daily. I PRAY this baby lives for her sake more than anyone's.

I feel like he will. I have pondered over it daily for many months. From before he was conceived. And I feel like I have recieved a personal answer that he will live. But I try to do my part by seeing a high risk team of docs. I monitor his heart beat every morning and evening. Just last week my friend gave me a blood pressure cuff so I can add that to my regime. I take my pressue at night. There is an unresearched link to low blood pressure and stillborns. My BP is now, during pregnancy, about 95/56. That's way low to me. How can I raise that stuff?!

And last of all, I will hopefully soon add kick counts twice a day to the monitoring. I am FRUSTRATED because my placenta is attached right in the front of my stomach - you know- right where the baby kicks? So he's kicking and I can't feel it. It absorbs the movement. I see him kick a lot on ultrasounds. I hear it in the dopler at home. But I don't feel it. I only am able to feel it really high or really low. I will ask the doc next week if this will change as he gets bigger. How can a mom who NEEDS kick counts have a front-facing placenta?! This is the first time I have ever had one.

So, for the next 19 weeks, I hope to keep updates on this baby. I hope it's so, so boring.

April 4, 2010 Update

It’s been a long time since I posted. Not a day passes that I don’t think of my babies, where they are now, where we who are left behind are now.


Most of the time I am functioning much like I used to before all this happened. My heart is seldom in it, but for most daily duties don’t we need much heart, do we? Just able physical energy.


I don’t post because it would be much of the same feelings and “cycles” over and over. Some days I am quite at peace with my circumstances. It’s more a matter of finding my place in the plan than questioning it. But now and then, and I have found usually after being in a lively public place with many families, knowing the plan or purpose doesn’t do a thing to calm my agonized heart, and I am overcome with sadness. It’s about once a week that I am knocked out. Which makes sense, because isn’t it about once a week that we go out and “have fun?”


I am okay in my small day-to-day home life. By those standards I’d look like a grieving champ! But out in “society” I tend to flop. I have never, NEVER so many times just wanted to not exist. It’s a longing for death, but without peace, because even with death there is no hope of peace for me, because I know my death would thrust my living kids right into a similar hole that I am in. I could never purposefully do that to them.


So my only “hope” is to break all scientific rules and imagine erasing my existence. It’s there that I feel any chance of escaping this unique pain that physically hits my body as well as breaks my heart.


I press on, knowing this mortal pain will cease, must cease, giving way to a reckoning of every detail of my life. I know a restoration will come, as well as further understanding that will bring immediate and lasting peace. If I do my part, possibly there will even be a celebration over this life that is uniquely my husband’s and mine.


Again, through each low end of my cycles, I come to feel immensely sorry for other people called to walk down darker roads. I feel desirous to lift other’s burdens. I want to shield people from loss, which of course no one can. I feel close to people now who suffer. I’m thankful for them! What would I do without their honesty and their examples to me? I want to connect with them because I know how terrible is forced isolation from unsolicited adversities.