My First Pregnancy

I always knew I wanted to be a mother. I always have known I wanted a big family. My dream has always been to have children. I wanted the picture perfect layout of life. Find an amazing man, get engaged, have a fairy tale wedding (totally did–that’s a whole other post), and then start a family. Just over 3 months into my marriage, I found out I was pregnant. We were so excited, but also a little terrified of what was to come (normal right?). Anxiously awaiting the coming couple of weeks before we had our first ultrasound, we told our closest family and friends (we could not keep that secret), by sending them a little picture of some alfredo & pregnancy test. At my eight week ultrasound, we were excited to see our little gummy bear of a baby, and hear the heartbeat. We were filled with nerves when the ultrasound tech said, “Wait a minute…” Umm.. WHAT. Never tell an expecting momma to “wait” without telling her why. It was a few minutes (felt like an hours) that passed when she asked if twins ran in my family… “No… WHY?” Because she found Baby A, and a Baby B. My eyes swelled with tears (excitement, fear, a little… What the HECK?!). Adam was beaming with happiness. Our amazing doctor, told us we had two very strong heartbeats, and to prepare for a life with twin babies. We left that ultrasound with a whole new expectation of this pregnancy. The coming weeks I did everything I was supposed to do as an expecting momma– ate all the right foods, took my prenatal and folic acid, plenty of sleep, etc. We were excited to see our sweet babies at our next ultrasound at 12 weeks. At the routine appointment, we were shocked to see that there was no growth in Baby A. There also was no heartbeat. Devastation was an understatement. I felt like I had failed as a mother… “What did I do wrong??” was all I thought… I felt no physical pain, no bleeding, nothing out of the “norm.” How could this of happened??? I couldn’t even look at the screen due to being so upset about having lost one of my babies… (Que guilt of not “caring” about the other healthy baby that was THRIVING). My emotions had complete control of me. I was in a whirlwind… So upset over having lost my baby, but felt lucky that I still had a healthy baby thriving inside. I can’t even imagine the pain, the horror, the guilt of if I had lost both. My heart still sinks when reliving that day, and even thinking about the thousands and thousands of mommas who have gone through miscarriage. There was no explanation as to why this happened other than it was probably just a chromosomal disfunction or one of the babies (Baby B) was taking more nutrients than the other. That was hard for me to swallow.. the WHY. After my grief period, I picked myself up and was able to thank God for giving me the opportunity to still nurture the strong baby I still had. I decided that there was a greater reasoning behind the “WHY,” and I was going to “give it to God.”

I tried to continue as normal, grateful each day for the blessing of a healthy baby I had been given. My purpose to grow this baby to term. That’s the best you can try to do when given a massive speed bump in life, right? My best friend was getting married in a few weeks, and I tried to stay busy. Being pregnant at a wedding isn’t the most fun thing in the world… but ya gotta make the most of it! A week later, at 16 weeks pregnant, I got into a horrible head-on collision, which my life-saving seatbelt caused my collar bone to snap in half. Talk about the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life… and I’d like to believe I have a pretty high pain tolerance. I had never broken a bone up until this point.. and I feel like your collar bone is the WORST bone to break, only because it plays a huge role in connecting all of your other bones in your skeletal frame. Every single centimeter of movement was like breaking it all over again… horrible. It was at the hospital after the accident that we were surprised to find out we were having a baby boy. SO beyond grateful that our baby was healthy and untouched by the accident. My husband was a saint through it all… and after 6-8 weeks & a few weeks of physical therapy, I was able to not have to wear my lovely sling.

The second trimester was pretty “typical” after that. I was surprised with some placenta previa (which is when the placenta is close/covering the cervix, causing spotting). That only lasted a couple weeks, then thankfully the placenta moved up as my uterus grew with baby boy. I was about 25 weeks pregnant when we moved my grandmother in with us. (Another story to be told at a later date.) She needed more care, and we felt it was the right thing to do at that time. We wouldn’t have changed anything, if we had to do it over again. I think my favorite thing about this pregnancy was feeling our little guy toss/turn/punch/kick inside… Talk about a whole different kind of feeling. It is really something magical if you think about just how extraordinary the female body is. As much as I loved feeling him move around, I was in no means “loving” pregnancy… The heartburn, the sleeping positions (or lack there of), the round ligament pains, braxton-hicks… You. Name. It. It was tough… I wasn’t a lucky one of the few who go into labor slightly before or on my due date… Oh No. I was 40 weeks 5 days, at my last appointment scheduling my induction date with a baby who the doctors could already tell the baby was going to be over 8 lbs. To my luck though, I was having contractions all day, and my little man had plans to arrive no more than 24 hours later. We were so, so thankful our little guy was SO healthy. You can read my birth story here for how well this little guy came into this beautiful world.