Most of my friends and family know that we went through two miscarriages in the last year. The first miscarriage was a complete surprise, and we found out at our 12 week appointment (in December 2008) when we could not hear the heartbeat. We were devastated. Our pregnancy with Olivia was so non-eventful, that I never expected anything different this time around. But at 12 weeks, we were given the devastating news that the baby did not have a heartbeat and had stopped developing sometime in the 9th week. It was rough on us. My favorite phrase became "this sucks". Because honestly, it did. My sister rushed from her home (getting her husband to leave work early to come home to be with their kids) so she could be with me and Travis during my surgery, which we were able to schedule for the same day. I was so thankful to have them both with me (Travis really didn't have an option), but my sister didn't even hesitate! They allowed me to be quiet, or talk about it if I wanted. They know me best and knew exactly what I needed that day! They even provided a lot of humor - to keep our minds off things.
So, we tried again, and got pregnant again, very quickly. We were so thankful that we were able to get pregnant so easily - as many couples struggle to even GET pregnant (we were thankful). But shortly after, we began to have issues. I had blood tests every other day, and ultrasounds every 10 days. We saw the baby's heartbeat on 3 different ultrasounds - and we were hopeful that our other issues were really "non-issues". But, just shy of 10 weeks, we went in for our 4th ultrasound (in April '09), and found again, the baby did not have a heartbeat. We were once again devastated. However, we'd been down this trail, and had faith that we would still have a child. After all, we had Olivia and she was perfect! However, since I'm no spring chicken, I opted to have the baby tested to see if there was something wrong there, or with me (after two in a row, you begin to think that your body is not playing nicely).
We found out that this baby, a girl, had a chromosomal abnormality that made her "incompatible with life". My doctor said that this is a common result of miscarriage, and had no indication that it would happen again.
That's when we decided to take a break. We had been on this baby kick and getting pregnant kick for a while, and honestly, I was exhausted thinking about it. So, we didn't. Well, yeah, you guessed it, that's when we got pregnant! We had planned to wait until fall to try again, however in June, after returning from a fun weekend in Las Vegas, I found out we were expecting again. It gets hard after two miscarriages in a row to get too excited about getting a positive pregnancy test. I was guarded, but excited. I just so badly wanted this baby to be healthy!
So, now here I am 21 weeks along, and we found out two weeks ago, that we're expecting a healthy baby BOY! I cried when we saw him on the ultrasound! It was the best sight ever! Travis and I had agreed a long time ago, that when we did finally have a child (and we knew we would) that we wouldn't have THAT child if we hadn't gone through the losses. Although they sucked, they were part of the process to bring the right child into our family. I'm really looking forward to meeting our son in February. I just feel so blessed. And once you've gone through something like this, you realize how precious and miraculous this whole process really is. It has made me more thankful for Olivia and the miracle she is, as well as this new baby, still growing strong!
So, here are a couple of pictures of Fletcher James for you to view....I think he's got Olivia's profile!
Olivia is coming around about having a brother. At first she was really upset, she was set on having a sister - and she told EVERYONE!! So, now she's getting there. It did help that Fletcher asked me to buy her a couple of stuffed animals for her while we were at Disney last week! She tells me "Fletcher got me Eyore and Pluto"! So, even if he's bribing her already, I think she's going to be a GREAT big sister!
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