When it rains it pours

Her side:

September 16th it was confirmed I was pregnant for the 6th time. It was both terrifying and exciting. Terrifying it would be another failed pregnancy; exciting to be possibly adding to our family.

Our excitement grew as I became very sick with the dreaded "morning sickness" that seemed to be extreme this time around. It raised our hopes and gave us peace. But. There is always a but. We went for my first ultra sound and it happened. We were informed it was another empty sac. I scheduled a "peace of mind" ultrasound for the following the week. Nothing changed except the sac was dropping and became abnormal shaped. We moved forward with having a D&C and completing the miscarriage.

After I had the surgery we moved on with life. We got back in to our routine and continued life. We traveled for Thanksgiving, started preparing for Christmas and planning Nella's 5th birthday party.

Then, on the morning of December 9th things took a very confusing turn. Andy had just left for work, I was laying on the couch with Gordie, and Nella had just gotten up and wanted breakfast. I get up off the couch and notice blood. I assumed I started my cycle (first one since my miscarriage) but when I get upstairs the alarm bells started going off when I notice the flow is extreme so I toss pop tarts and  cereal bars on the table for Nella and hop in the shower. While in the shower I pass a huge clot that is not normal for a monthly cycle. I immediately call Andy and catch him before he gets to the office. I explain what is happening and he turns around to come home. He arrives at the same time as my mom.

We arrive at the ER and get "settled" in a room. They have me give a urine sample and then hook me up to an IV and take my blood. I tested positive for another pregnancy. But since it had only been 5 weeks since my surgery and I haven't had a cycle everyone was confused about the situation. I get wheeled in to the ultrasound room and have an external and internal exam done. The results came back with me having a cyst in each ovary. One measured at 2 cm and the other at 5cm. But this isn't a concern. My hcg levels came back really low, in the 70's, and with that being low it would be unlikely to find a sac, anyway, since I would have to be very newly pregnant, if I really am. I also had a pelvic exam showing I still had some more clots to pass.

I was able to be released being told to expect passing some more clots and to go into the lab on Monday for more blood work to check my hcg levels again and then do a follow up appt. with my regular OB.

We are still trying to wrap our heads around this; to fully understand what is happening and why it's happening. It's so unexpected and we had no idea I was/am pregnant. The fear is always there that the passing of this one will put me back in the hospital. And my hatred of my body, the lack of being able to conceive properly after having 4 successful and, for the most part, healthy pregnancies and births is hard to take...even after the 3rd time.

But my body is taking this well. I feel fairly normal and anxious for this round to be completed. I am praying this will never happen again. Praying that if we are to ever get pregnant again it will be a healthy, successful pregnancy and we can finally add that 5th blessing to our ever growing family. And continuously praying that God keeps us in His mighty, comforting presence.

Romans 15:4
“For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”

2 Corinthians 1:3
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.”

Rainbow Bear

Her Side:

On September 16th, we found out we were officially expecting, again. The emotions that followed were so overwhelming it was frightening. When I told Andy the test was positive I broke down in tears. Mostly they were tears of pure joy and excitement but they were also tears of terrifying unknowns, what-ifs, worst possible scenarios. This is our first pregnancy after our miscarriage. And I say "ours" because though my body endured everything it still affects my entire family.

I would like to assume everyone knows what a rainbow baby is but on the off chance you don't it's a baby born after a miscarriage or still-birth or a baby that died shortly after being born. While we had a blighted ovum miscarriage it still counts because we lost the pregnancy; we lost the hope and dream of having another child. It was a very traumatic event that I hope to never go through again. Because of this traumatic experience I have been paying even more close attention to my body and everything that is happening and changing. Let me tell you, this rainbow blessing is proving to us it will be worth everything I go through. 

This pregnancy has, by far, been the worst experience I have ever had compared to the 4 successful ones. It has been testing my confidence as a person, wife, and mother. At first I just thought it was a rough go-around of morning sickness but when it started happening upwards of 5 times before lunch and waking me up in the middle of the night I knew something else was happening. The concerns branched over to Andy. And when he starts to worry about mine or the kid's health he researches. Its one of the things that he is very good at. After his research and my own we both came to the conclusion that I probably had a mild form of hyperemesis gravidarum. Its the technical term for extreme morning sickness in pregnancy. When the nausea started getting to the point of me not being able to keep anything down, including water, I called the doctor. They provided me a list of things to try and see if it would hopefully ease a lot of what I was feeling. Andy, being the amazing partner that he is, went to the store after he got off work and stocked up on everything I needed. So far, the B-6 and anti-nausea meds are the only thing staying in my system. 

Its tough. For about a week or so I have been unable to do anything but the bare necessities which include taking care of my children enough they at least get dressed and have food to eat and, for Petey's sake, gets a clean diaper. Enough to get Amie on the bus and off the bus. And, usually, enough to get Nella to preschool and back. But today I had to call her teachers to tell them she wasn't coming because I didn't feel safe driving the kids anywhere. My energy has completely disappeared. And I know that's normal in a pregnancy, especially one with older kids involved, but this is extreme. I am weak from the lack of nutrients. I get shakes and light headed because of my low blood pressure. All I can do is lay on the couch. And even then its a challenge because the little ones want to snuggle with me but I can't handle motion at the moment without having to run to the bathroom. I can't handle their little elbows and knees digging in to my abdomen. I can't handle the physical touch. All I desire is something extremely cold in my system, sleep, and stillness. The tv has been on so much more than I would ever like to admit but its the only thing I can do to entertain the kids with little interaction. I had to cancel going to Amie's very first school party. It was heart breaking. Ever since I can remember I wanted to have kids and be a very involved mom. I signed up to help with every party and to be as involved as I can with 4 small kids. But I failed. I can't make dinner because I can't handle the sight of food let alone the smell. I can't stand for very long without the feeling of falling over. 

My husband. He has picked up the slack where I have failed. He makes dinner when he gets home from work. He takes care of the kids. He takes them everywhere they need to be while I just lay in bed. He has to inch his way in to bed so I don't get sick. And even then the chances of me actually staying in bed are slim since I wake up needing to be sick. And then I lay on the couch to be close to the bathroom.

I know I am not the only who has ever gone through this. I know there are women who have gone through worse. I've reached out to people for advice and just for encouragement because I know they understand what I am going through. 

Rainbow Bear, 
You are making this pregnancy experience one of the toughest for me but you are also making it a constant reminder of what a miracle you are and that every hug of the toilet is worth what I will gain in the end. If you decide to let up I WILL NOT complain. But, if you decide to make this an entire pregnancy thing I will complain but constantly tell myself I get YOU in the end. 

James 1:2
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,

God bless our mess!

HIS POV:
As anyone may notice that tries to follow our "blog", we aren't very good at keeping it up.  As a matter of fact when I came on to write this one I noticed the last published one came from December 2015 and here we are four months later.  Some of this reason is because neither one of us are much of writers, but also because we rarely get time to just sit down and type any thoughts out even if we made it our first priority.  Don't get me wrong, though, just because I say typing a blog isn't our first priority, cleaning our house isn't either.

If you visited us on a normal day when we weren't expecting you (because lets face it, if we expect you then you will be treated to a slightly cleaner house) then you would be faced with an obstacle of toys, clothes, shoes, papers and, to be brutally honest, food.  Andrea and I were never the cleanest people.  That isn't to say that I haven't had my moments in life.  As a young boy I was verging on OCD.  Every toy and every item in our house when I was a toddler had a specific place and it had to be there or I would correct you.  As I grew, though, I adapted a more of a loose idea of the concept of clean.  I still had my moments like the night as a teenager late one night from working at Wal-Mart and just deciding that my parent's kitchen was a mess when I went to make a late dinner.  I cleaned all the dishes and wiped down all the counters.  Over all, though, I learned not to stress the mess.

As I dated Andrea I learned quickly from her and her family that Andrea never had quite the issue I had ever had making a mess.  She didn't just tolerate it, she embraced it.  After we got engaged she started stating she wouldn't be able to go out because she was going to clean.  I would ask her why all of a sudden she felt the urge to clean.  Her reply was something to the effect that she knew how good her mom did cleaning up and if she and I were going to have a family then she wanted to be able to keep our house clean like her mother did.  At this point I reassured her that I wasn't marrying her so I could have a maid and even if she started cleaning then, she wasn't going to change who she was and she wasn't going to fool me.  I knew by marrying her that I would have to expect a little bit of a mess.  Not because she wouldn't be able to recognize a mess, but because she had a high tolerance for what would be allowed prior to "freaking out" about it.

Well as expected, after we got married we had a slight (a relative term to what we endure now) mess in our house but we both owned it and we both shared the chores as we both had day jobs so that neither of us had more of an excuse to do less.  Then more time went by and we started adding to our family and Andrea became a stay-at-home mom.  She thought when staying home she would be able to keep up with the housework.  She had underestimated how much more messy the children could be than she and I were as just the two of us.

The mess the kids have added to our own us definitely spilled past our own tolerances, but we have learned to accept it.  We hit spurts of trying our best to keep up with the cleaning.  As a matter of fact, without knowing what I was doing, Andrea started having the kids clean up a couple paragraphs back.  Our tolerance for a mess has come from our own "messy" lifestyles prior to the addition of children, but has grown because we have decided just living with the children has been more important than cleaning all the time.

We have never painted or repaired a wall because we know life happens and if we took the time to paint our walls than maybe our tolerance would lower to the point that a simple swipe of a dirty hand on the wall would no longer just be a child keeping their balance but now it would feel like a slight against our hard work.  Our children do take pride in their cleaning when they do it.  Right now Amie is cleaning a window and doing all she can to get to the parts she can't reach naturally and asking how good it looks.

So yes we live in a mess, but I like that there is proof we live here.  I love that when I come home I can see evidence of what my family has done when I have been at work, whether it be cleaning or painting pictures; I can see evidence when I get home.  Sure there are moments of exhaustion when something gets broken because it got knocked to the ground and got lost in the ground mess and stepped on.  Or there are the times important papers get lost and we can spend hours looking for the sheet of paper.  But overall we have spent more time as a family enjoying each others company without stressing over the little things, like shoes being put away.