This is the story of your arrival into this world.
I will not lie to you, this pregnancy was difficult. It was difficult both physically and emotionally. We found out we were pregnant in January, right around my birthday! It was a wonderful wonderful birthday present. We were very excited! Shortly after that, I began to deal with the usual morning sickness and vomiting most mornings. Of course I was expecting that and even welcomed it because I knew that morning sickness meant I was still pregnant and you were most likely doing ok in there! At 18 weeks, we went in to have our first ultrasound and find out whether you were a boy or a girl. We were both so excited to find out that you were you. (especially daddy, I think he was secretly hoping you would be a boy). I was a little bit concerned when the ultrasound technician spent so much time focusing on your brain and kidneys. Little red flags started to go off in my head and I had a bad feeling in my stomach that only grew worse as they kept us waiting for a long time before calling us in to go over the results. It turned out that there were some small "'cysts" on your brain and your kidneys appeared to be swollen. On their own, these two things were fairly normal but together they were "soft markers" for scary scary things like down syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities. It was a very very emotional appointment for both of us.
The next day we went into Boston for an appointment for a more detailed ultrasound, we were super super nervous, but the results were good. The ultrasound technician just said that we would be monitored throughout the pregnancy but didn't seem overly concerned. We were very relieved (although a small part of me worried throughout the entire pregnancy about your poor swollen kidneys).
Fast forward to five months into the pregnancy and mommy failed a glucose test. No big deal though, a lot of people fail their first one. It's the second one that you have to worry about! Needless to say I failed the three hour one as well and received the diagnosis of gestational diabetes. At first I was able to control it through diet and exercise (which was very very hard for mommy as I've never been on any kind of diet before in my life) but eventually I needed medication to control my numbers. I did start to feel much better and had much more energy once I was on the diet and the medication.
For the last two months of the pregnancy because I was a high risk patient, I had to have weekly ultrasounds and twice weekly NSTs on top of my weekly midwife appointment,( that's four appointments a week!) so it was a crazy time. I couldn't wait until I got to hold you in my arms instead of seeing you on a monitor! It felt to me like pretty much nothing had gone right this pregnancy and I was so ready to be done. Also according to the ultrasounds you were enormous! They kept telling me you were going to be at least nine pounds, and the possibility of a C-section was brought up a few times.
top: 18 weeks
bottom: 38 weeks
For your part, you were a crazy man inside the womb, you were always on the move! Sometimes it felt like there were two of you in there because there were so many limbs kicking me from different directions. Once I even got to watch you kick the ultrasound monitor, and you were always kicking my NST monitors off. We were constantly adjusting them because you moved and we couldn't hear you in there anymore. I loved feeling all your movements, but at the end it got to be ridiculous! You wanted to come out so badly, sometimes we could even see the outline of your toes against the outside of my stomach! And I was so big at the end of the pregnancy, I looked as though I had swallowed a watermelon sideways (I'm not even exaggerating check out these pictures:)
34 weeks
Also notice how low you were? Ouch! I only gained about 18 pounds but it was all belly and it was killing my back!
36 weeks
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