Parenthood, Part Eight

By the end of September, I knew, without a doubt, that I was once again pregnant.

Talk about conflicting emotions! We were both going through them! We were very excited to be pregnant again, but we were not naive. It was going to be a scary ride, and one that we were not sure we could handle if it didn't go "our" way.

Other than Ted and I, the only other person who knew of our issues (besides my doctor, of course) was my mom. She was an RN at our local hospital and I would ask her questions. Throughout her years as a nurse, she had worked in every department...EXCEPT obstetrics. Just my luck. Even though the OB department deals with newborns and their mothers, there is an occasional horrible situation and information as to why or how things happened comes to light.

At this point, any information she could give me could quite possibly be helpful. But she never worked in OB, so I was out of luck. I would occasionally ask Shannon some technical questions, but her situation was different than mine, in that she could not get pregnant, and I was turning into a "Fertile Myrtle" but just not able to stay pregnant. I didn't want to arouse any suspicion, so I kept my questions to a minimum.

So here we were...pregnant for the third time, hoping and praying that this one would "stick" and we could become parents.

Each day that I was pregnant was a gift. And with each passing day, our confidence levels grew by just a hair.

We got through October with our fingers crossed and all was well. Whew. Maybe we could get through another week. That magical 12 weeks threshhold was in mid December. Could we make it? Maybe....maybe not. But I didn't want to think that far ahead. We were really only thinking one day at a time. That was it.

In November my doctor prescribed natural progesterone for me, so that I could create a wonderful, hormone enriched environment for what was growing inside of me (can you tell I was almost in denial?) So twice a day I inserted progesterone inside of me, then laid down for an hour so that as it melted, it wouldn't leak out. It must have worked because we got through the entire month with no spotting. Come on... I don't like being teased. Could we possibly make it to 12 weeks? Maybe so....but that was too far away.

One day at a time.

Suddenly we were approaching the middle of December. A year earlier I was pregnant for the first time and things went into a downward spiral quickly and pretty much ruined our Christmas. But this year? Things were looking....okay.

I had no morning sickness, but would have welcomed it with open arms if it showed up.

No spotting, and we were almost to 12 weeks.

Of course I had an appointment in early January with my doctor. Was it too early to actually think about being able to really GO to that appointment?? After that appointment we were going to tell people that we were expecting a baby in late June.

On Friday, December 13 (can you believe it??) I would be 12 weeks and maybe, just maybe, we could breathe a sigh of relief.

I woke up that morning feeling just fine and dandy, and decided that it would be okay if I finally admitted to myself that I was pregnant.

WOW.