Poppy

Imagine my surprise when Jon agreed to trying to have another baby. I mean how could he not? We make some beautiful babies, but that's besides the point. We just started trying in November and got the shock of our lives when we got pregnant on the first cycle. Yes, you read that right the first cycle! When it took us 4 years and 3 miscarriages to get Jasper and then another 2 years to get Samuel I would have been thrilled if we had another baby by the time I was 40.

At first I didn't even believe it. I didn't even miss my period yet and I was already so nauseated that I had to eat something almost all the time or had something to drink to try and keep it at bay. Some of my co-workers kept saying it, but I just thought they were crazy. There was absolutely no way that I could get pregnant so fast.

I finally got up enough courage to go get a test on December 13th. I went to the store to get the tests thinking what a waste of money it was because there was no way I was pregnant. I got home and peed on the darn stick and imagine my surprise when the line showed up right away. I was so beyond happy. I nicknamed my baby Poppy.

Everything was going great and I was eagerly waiting to see my Poppy's little heart beat. Little did I know that that would never happen. On the 21st I saw a very scant amount of blood. I got a little freaked out, but I had the very same thing with Samuel so I brushed it off. On the 22nd I had a little more and that is when I had some cramping on my left side and I even brushed that off until the 23rd when I had more blood. I called the OB's office told them about the cramping on my left side with the bleeding and they told me to get to the ER. I personally didn't believe it was ER worthy so I talked them into sending me to out patient diagnostics for an ultrasound and they agreed to it.

I got there and went in back with Jon and Samuel. I watched while she did the ultrasound on my belly knowing that it would be way to early to see anything that way. Next came the oh so pleasant dildo cam were I was unable to see anything and Jon was clueless as to what he was looking at. After all was said and done I was forced to wait in the lobby for someone to read the ultrasound to make sure Poppy was not ectopic. Minutes felt like hours until the tech came back out and said the Dr. that read the US wanted me to go to the ER for further tests because they found some free fluid in my left tube and they suspected an ectopic pregnancy.

As we walked to the ER for me to get signed in I was freaking out. My biggest fear was being rushed into an emergency surgery to remove my baby from my tube. A couple hours went by and it was time for Samuel to eat so I sent Jon home to feed him and hopefully let him get a nap. Soon after they left I was called back and put into a room. The nurse came in asked me some questions and left. I don't know how much time past when the Dr finally came in and told me one of the OB's came in to read the US and it was the corpus luteum cyst that burst and that I still had another one on my right side to sustain the pregnancy. I wanted to believe her and maybe some part of me tried to, but after I heard that the cyst burst I knew my little poppy was in danger. The corpus luteum cyst is what sustains the pregnancy with progesterone until the placenta can take over at about 8-9 weeks. I was only in week 5-6.

I left the ER and they told me to follow-up with my OB on Thursday the day after Christmas just to make sure everything was going alright. I had to switch days around at work so I could have Thursday off so I ended up having to work Christmas day. On Christmas eve I had a bit more bleeding and on Christmas day I started to miscarry my little poppy. It was confirmed with another blood test on Thursday.

I am just so damn mad that this happened. Why me? Why does this have to happen to me? Not that I want it to happen to anyone else. Not that I want anyone else to have this pain. But I don't understand why my body has to fail me yet again! At least I can say now that I have moved from denial to the anger part of the grief process.

Flashback to Innocence

Tonight as I was giving Samuel a bath I gave myself a break from toddler radio and was listening to some 90's pop radio on Pandora. We where having a blast. I was singing and dancing around and Samuel was laughing. I was just happy that he was having so much fun, but then all of a sudden I was hit with a ton of emotion. There should be a 4 year old in the tub with Samuel. He should be laughing and getting up and dancing with me and maybe even trying to sing along. I hate that it just hits me like this. In the most happy moments then....BAM! Slap across the face with the what should have beens. Then I start thinking back to the 90's when I was so innocent to this life. The life of a baby loss mommy and I miss those days. I am sad at the fact that for the rest of my life I will be plagued by the what should have beens.

Worlds worst blogger....

But you can't exactly blog when you have so much to say and just can't get it in writing. I am going to try and blog about one thing at a time instead of cramming it all into one post.

The most important will come first and that is Samuel. Can you believe he is 15 months already? I sure can't. It feels like yesterday I had him. He is starting to get around pretty well now. Some of you may know, but for months now we have been struggling because he is so far behind his peers. We are now moving onto the next step which will be Early Intervention. We did go to occupational therapy, but our wonderful health care insurance (insert sarcasm here) only allowed 6 visits including the eval and if refusing to pay for any more. They wrote on his eval today that he is delayed in fine and gross motor skills and decreased motor planning skills so that is what we are working on. He passed vision and hearing. He just barely passed the speech so we will come back to that in 6 months to see how he is progressing with that. Our 6 month goals are for him to start crawling, pulling up to a standing position and hopefully take a few steps or I will be happy with 1 step, and for him to start using his hands to feed himself. It has also taken me some time and at times I still have to convince myself that his delay's are not my fault. I have done and am doing everything I can to get him back on the right track.

I am trying to rely on the monkey see monkey do method and letting him go to daycare once a week to be around other babies. I am both excited and sad that he likes it so much that he doesn't even cry when I leave him with total strangers. I am hoping that it is not a red flag that he doesn't cry when I leave him and seems to be comfortable with strangers. I am also a little worried that he got so sick the first couple of times he went and it was to the point that I had to give him Antibiotics and I hated every last second I had to give it to him.

7 Months already?

Seriously, How has it been 7 months? It feels like I had him yesterday. Adjusting to mommyhood to a baby here in my arms has been challenging to say the least. But no matter how hard and challenging these last 7 months have been it has been 100% worth it. There is not a day that goes by that I don't feel some sort of sadness that I never got to have any of this with Jasper or that Jasper and Samuel should be growing up together. What would their similarities be their differences be? These are just some of the questions that go through my mind on a daily basis and I guess over time it will get easier or at least less painful, but for now it is an on going battle. Here is a couple of fun pics I took recently: 2 days old and 7 months old

New and improved birth announcement

Front:

Back:

Breastfeeding failure

Ever since I decided to start trying to have a baby I wanted to breastfeed. I wanted to have that special kind of bond with my baby that you can't get when you feed with formula. I have absolutely nothing against formula feeding. I was formula fed, my sister and brother, my niece's and nephew's where all formula fed.

I have had over six years to fantasize about what I was going to do when I finally get that take home baby. For over six years I thought once I had my baby that he or she would be breastfed and when it doesn't work out the way you planned it doesn't only make you very sad, but depressed as well.

When they brought Samuel in for me to start breastfeeding I was very excited and ready to go for it. Samuel had other plans though and didn't want to eat, so we waited a little while longer to try again. A couple of hours passed he started fussing about so we took it as a que that he was getting hungry and wanted to eat. Again I put him to my breast and nothing except for crying. The nurse came over and was trying to help me latch Samuel on to my breast with no luck all he would do is scream bloody murder. We tried all types of techniques to try and get him to latch. Another couple of hours had passed and thought it was time to give it another shot, but the same thing happened he just screamed bloody murder and if he did manage to latch it was only for a few seconds before the screaming started. In the meantime between the feeding attempts the nurses where feeding him sugar water to keep his blood sugar up and kept telling me that he needs to feed. Yeah, like I didn't know that as if I was starving my poor child on purpose. The same routine played over and over throughout the night in the hospital and before I knew it 24 hours have passed and my poor baby still did not have any food. Between the stress of trying to get him to latch and the nurses constantly telling me he had to eat I had no choice and made the call to give him formula.

Over the next 6 weeks we kept trying and trying to get him to take the breast before he had the formula and every time with the same result of blood curtailing screams. I started to pump the day after I got home from the hospital. It took two days of pumping for my colostrum to start coming out and when it did I fed it to him with a syringe before he had his formula. I had tried everything from pumping until the milk started to come out then try and feed him to using a nipple shield to trick him into thinking it was a bottle. The nipple shield worked for five minutes once, so after all is said and done I got to feed my son for five wonderful minutes. There is not one minute of the day that I am not upset or even depressed that breastfeeding didn't work out. The what if's are constantly playing over and over in my head...What if he would have latched? What if I didn't give it enough time? I could go on and on.

The truth is I am happy that I gave breastfeeding a shot. I was able to give him all the colostrum and 2 ounces of breast milk a day until I ran dry. In the end it sucks that I couldn't do what I really wanted to do, but at least he is happy and healthy and in the end that is really all that matters.

Three years...

It's been three years since Jasper passed away. I should have a three year old. Techinically he should be 3 in June because he was born 15 weeks early, but my body failed him and I'm still pissed about it. I miss him so much. It kills me every single day that he is not here, that he will never know his younger brother.