Happy Fall Y'all

Hello dear bloggy friends! It has been, I think, the longest I've been away since starting this blog. Realizing that an update was long overdue, I thought I'd write a quick one today.

The number one reason I've been too swamped to blog is that early last month we moved into a new house. We spent most of June, July, and August wrapped up in the whole process. We put our house on the market and had 4 offers within the first week! That was great, but it made us feel like the race was really on to find a new house that we loved. We finally found the right one and moved in on Labor Day weekend. The day of the big move was the first day of my third trimester, so needless to say it has been challenging. We have finally settled in for the most part, and best of all, Lily has adjusted very well to the new house. We are really happy with the extra space, especially when our families come to visit and we can accommodate guests again.

All that being said, I never really knew or was fully prepared for how much I would miss our old house. 10 years of memories, 8 pregnancies, lots of loss and tears, immense joy in finally bringing a baby home... all wrapped up in that little house. Of course it was also hard to leave our lovely, big backyard with our special tree that we planted in memory of our babies, but we know that we carry their memories within us wherever we go. We were able to share the meaning of the tree with the new owners and they assured us that they would take great care of it, and even left an open invitation for us to come visit anytime. It was very nice of them but we're really doing okay. There is something to be said for starting over again and making new memories, too. The babies we lost are safe in heaven and will always be in our hearts. And there's nothing that says we can't plant a new tree in our new backyard to serve as a visual reminder!

Our little family is doing well. Lily turned 2 years old on September 21, just a few weeks after we moved in. We had her birthday party here, surrounded by family and friends. She had a great time and loved her Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme! We just had her 2-year checkup and she was 28 lbs (75th percentile) and 36" tall (95th percentile). She's such a big girl all of a sudden and I can't believe she's almost a big sister.

Lily Rae is 2!

This weekend I'll be 34 weeks pregnant with baby sister, Anna. Besides the stress of the move, it has been a good and uneventful pregnancy so far. I do have borderline gestational diabetes this time around, which only means that I've been on a low carb diet for the past couple of weeks through the end of the pregnancy and am watching my weight. Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but most certainly not the hardest either. I'll be having another C-section after 39 weeks, so she will arrive (unless she surprises us) sometime the last week of November. We are scheduled for Wednesday, November 28 at the hospital, but only because Monday and Tuesday are completely booked. So, if by chance there is an opening, we may get in on Nov. 26 or 27.

No matter when she comes, we are excited to meet this new little one! She is so much more than what we imagined -- the icing on the cake and a truly wonderful gift. We chose the name Anna because we have loved it for many years, and because we love the story of Anna in the Bible (found in the second chapter of Luke). The name means "gracious, merciful," which the Lord has certainly been to us. Her middle name will be Evangeline, which means "messenger of good news." The middle name is also a nod to our beloved home state of Louisiana and Henry W. Longfellow's poem of the same name about the Acadian Exile. We absolutely love her name and cannot wait to see the face of our little Anna Evangeline in about five and a half weeks.

I hope this finds each and every one of you doing well. Even when I'm away from the blog world, you remain in my thoughts often and I always wish you the very best. I'll leave you with a few recent family pics that we had taken just a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to those of you who still read and follow this little old blog! I've appreciated your thoughts and prayers for my family over the years more than I can ever express.

Ten Years

Today is the tenth anniversary of my first miscarriage. Ten years. An entire decade.

I'm finding it difficult to summarize it all in a blog post. We have lots of anniversaries like these -- six different miscarriage dates and six different unfulfilled due dates to go along with them. But this day in particular always carries so much emotion for me. It was the beginning of everything, the beginning of things I couldn't even imagine were yet to come. It was the end of a lot of things, too. The end of a certain sense of security and innocence that I had back then, at the age of 25. I thought my life was settling down after a difficult childhood with divorced parents and an alcoholic father and having just enough to scrape by. Against all odds I'd finished college and found a wonderful man to marry. We'd moved to a different state to follow a great job opportunity for him, and we'd just bought our first house. Now, I thought, we'll have a baby. Start a family.

Recurrent pregnancy loss was nowhere on my radar. I'm sure it never is for anybody. I'd known a few people who'd had a miscarriage before (my mom, included). But I didn't know anyone personally who had been through it over and over and over again. Not yet, anyway. Or it could have been that I knew them but just never knew their struggle. And I think that's entirely possible because, for some reason, people don't really talk about miscarriage. I went through a time like that myself. It felt like such a personal and private struggle and I became almost reclusive. I stopped wanting to socialize with people because I didn't want to let anyone in for fear they would trivialize what I was going through. I thought they could never understand, so I quit trying. All I kept hearing were things like, "Oh, you're young. It will happen if you just stay positive." "Something must have been wrong with the baby." "At least you know you can get pregnant."

All of those things hurt so much more than they helped. How did anybody know that I would eventually have a healthy baby? Was there any guarantee, really? Was it my fault for not thinking positively enough? What comfort could there be in thinking something was so wrong with my baby? And finally, what good was it doing for me to keep getting pregnant if my babies kept dying? How was that any consolation?

There were so many questions and never seemed to be any answers. Doctors couldn't give me any, and even my prayers seemed to be falling on deaf ears sometimes. I trusted that God had a plan but I had no idea what it was or how long it would take. Years passed and my babies continued to stop growing during the first trimester. We were desperate for help. The next 7 years went by in a blur of doctors, tests, surgeries, waiting, wondering, and most of all, more loss. I thought about giving up; thought it had become more than I could handle. Hope would return, though, and I would think What if the next time is the one? And what if it's the last chance we'll ever get?

Fast forward to 2010. After a new doctor, new tests (although not many new answers), and three years of infertility, the chance finally came. I still don't know exactly what was "right" about that time and what had been so "wrong" about every other time before. All I know is that somehow, miraculously, we held our daughter in our arms for the first time that September. She grew inside my body and arrived healthy and whole. And here I am in 2012, halfway through another pregnancy that is going well, hoping to hold another beautiful, healthy girl in November.

We've come so far and yet the hurt is still there. I still don't know how to answer the question, "Is this your first pregnancy?" A nurse at my doctor's office asked that just last week. She wasn't making small talk; I was there for blood work, another screening test. She was noting something on my chart. I stumbled over my words as I tried to answer, "No, it's not. It's my second. Well, it's actually my eighth pregnancy. But I only have one baby..." She stopped writing and looked up at me. "Oh, bless your heart," she said. I appreciated her kindness, but I hadn't been looking for sympathy. I was just trying to describe it all succinctly.

Sometimes I think I don't know how I got here... but oh, I do know. Simplified in my mind the years look like this:
2002-2007: Loss (x6)
2007-2009: Waiting...
2010-2012: Joy (x2)

But we all know that it's not summarized so easily. Because, broken down, I remember all too clearly the tears, the pain, the sleepless nights, the entire painful journey that led us to here and now. And the joy, too. Thank God for the joy that finally came and will come again!

I look back on the decade with lots of different emotions swirling around. I know this day will always make me remember, because it was the beginning of so much. It was the beginning of a lot of heartache, but it was also the beginning of the miracle that was to come. When I look at it all together, in hindsight, I can see much more clearly just how far we've come, and, amazingly, I can be thankful.

Brother or Sister?

I can't believe how the weeks (and months) have been flying by lately. July already? Wow!

The most exciting piece of news to share is that we had an ultrasound last week and found out that another sweet baby GIRL is on her way! Lily Rae is having a baby sister and we are truly ecstatic and can't wait to meet her. My sister and I have always been extremely close. I think it will be so sweet to watch these two girls grow up and share so many things together. My sis and I are 21 months apart; Lily and her baby sister will be 26 months apart -- if she arrives on schedule.

I'm 18 weeks today and things are going well (despite some back pain that started plaguing me recently). Our next OB appointment is next week, July 9, and we have another ultrasound scheduled for July 23. It's hard to believe that we've almost reached the halfway point of this pregnancy. We continue to be thankful every single day for how far we've come. Last week I also started feeling the baby moving for the first time, much earlier than with Lily. Feeling those flutters and kicks helps to calm my fears and reassures me that she's doing fine.

It has been a whole month since the melanoma surgery on my arm. A couple of weeks ago we heard great news -- that the pathology report came back all clear. All of the cancer is gone and I'll need no further treatment, thank the Lord! I had the stitches removed last week (finally!) and it's looking pretty good. I'll go back in 6 months for a checkup and, since the baby will be here, they'll go ahead and do the chest x-ray that we've been putting off because of the pregnancy. Since melanoma sometimes shows up in the lungs, they like to check that out to be certain even though they don't believe I'm at a high risk. In the meantime, it feels great to have this behind me and especially to know that the pathology report showed good news.

My big girl is growing like crazy and is surprising us daily with new words in her vocabulary. It has been really fun watching her grow and learn in these past couple of months. Her second birthday will be here in just a few short months. I feel pretty certain that the theme will be Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, since it's her favorite thing in the entire world! :)

Just a quick update for now from our family to yours. Hope you are all doing well and enjoying summertime!

A Trip, A Milestone, A Surgery, and An Anniversary

It has been nearly a month since my last update, and a very busy one at that. Here's the rundown and lots of updates with the help of some Instagram photos:

May 17 - We traveled to Houston very early in the morning for the first trimester screening ultrasound. We opted out of this test with our last pregnancy, so it was new for us this time. The baby still looked great, had a good heartbeat, and was moving around. It always lifts my spirits to see that! We got the results the following week that everything looked normal.

May 18-26 - We hit the road for a long drive to N Louisiana to attend my mother-in-law's retirement party. It was great to see lots of family and friends there and to celebrate a great achievement for her after 26 years of being an elementary school teacher and librarian.
After the party was over we loaded back up in the car to head southeast until we arrived at our vacation destination of Gulf Shores, Alabama. We met my sister and her family there and stayed all together in a beach house we'd reserved for the week. It was Lily's first vacation and first trip to the beach. She had a great time!

I think the pool was her favorite, but she did enjoy the beach after she got used to it a little. We learned that vacationing with a toddler is not exactly simple, and her sleep schedule got ALL messed up (we're still trying to get it back) but it was worth it to spend a week away with family and make lots of fun memories. Lily also picked up two new states on our road trip, bringing her total number of states visited to 5 (TX, LA, OK, MS, and AL). Not too bad for a 20 month old!

May 27 - Right after we returned home from the beach, we hit a big milestone with our current pregnancy: the second trimester. As you know if you read this blog regularly, this is only our second time to make it this far out of eight pregnancies. It was definitely a reason to celebrate and rejoice!

May 31/June 1 - We spent almost all day on May 31 at MD Anderson cancer hospital doing all of the pre-op stuff for my melanoma surgery. My mom had come the day before and stayed at home with Lily, which was a huge help for us. My surgery was early on the morning of June 1 and everything went well. I'm feeling extremely relieved to have that part behind me since the diagnosis in April. Everyone was great at MDA and took really good care of the baby and me. Someone came to check the baby's heartbeat before and after surgery (it took about 10 minutes to find the heartbeat with the Doppler after the surgery, which was the most terrifying moment of the whole day!) and I was back home and resting shortly after noon that day. My new scar is pretty big, but I'm thankful for it and the fact that we caught this thing so early. I hope it will remind others to keep an eye on anything unusual on their skin and to keep themselves well protected in the sun.

It has been a week since the surgery and the arm is doing well. It's still a bit sore but is healing up nicely. I'll go back to have the stitches removed in about 2 more weeks. The pathology report should be back within the next week or so, and we're hoping that all margins will be clear and that this whole thing will be over!

June 6 - We celebrated 14 years of marriage on the 6th of June. My mom had stayed until the day after the surgery and then my sister-in-law came to help out with Lily for the next 4 days. This was a tremendous help as I continued to recover, and it also meant that we had a babysitter for our anniversary on Wednesday! It's a rare treat for us to go out on a date these days. We enjoyed a nice dinner and trip to the bookstore while Lily played with her aunt. When we got home around 9 PM, she was all tucked into her bed and fast asleep. We were really proud of our big girl!

(The hubs and I on our date. Not the greatest pic of us, but oh well. :))

Quite a lot has happened and changed for us over the past 14 years. There have been lots of ups and downs and life has thrown us some curve balls, but I'm beyond thankful to have my amazing, supportive husband to walk beside me through it all. Truly, I have no idea what I would do without him!

That's what we've been up to for the past several weeks. Tomorrow I'll be 15 weeks and my first OB appointment (since graduating from the RE) will be Monday. Things seem to be settling down a bit and we're looking forward to a (hopefully) peaceful and uneventful summer!

Graduation

It's the time of year for graduations and for celebrations. Friends, we've graduated! Yesterday was our last ultrasound with Dr G and the end of our time with the fertility specialist for this pregnancy. We've been "promoted" to the regular OB, which is a big milestone for us to reach. I'll be scheduling my first visit with my same OB from last time, Dr R, in the next couple of weeks. It feels wonderful to have made it to this point. I'll be 11 weeks on Sunday and the second trimester is just around the corner. Praise God!

Out of seven previous pregnancies, only one of our babies ever survived for this long in the womb. She lives and breathes, walks and talks, and is currently sleeping in the bedroom down the hall. I'm still amazed by that. It makes me feel very hopeful and excited about pregnancy number eight as the days and weeks pass. With the skin cancer and the pregnancy happening all at once, there have been more doctor's appointments and trips to the big city in the past two months than we usually have in a year. Rather than complaining, though, I'm thankful in a way for all of the activity. That, in addition to taking care of a sweet toddler every day, has kept my mind occupied and my worries mostly under control simply because there has been so much to do. The first trimester has practically flown by, which has never happened to me before.

Our little one looked fantastic at yesterday's appointment. Ultrasounds will probably always make me nervous, but each time we have one with good news it's like a balm for our hearts that were hurt by so many bad ones. The first thing we noticed when the baby came into view was how much he or she had grown. That little body (still less than two inches long) almost filled up the screen, and we were thrilled to see a busy and active baby with legs kicking and arms waving! It was adorable, and all we could do was smile at each other during the exam. Baby is still growing right on track and looked normal for 10w4d. Heart rate was 170 bpm.

We have a bit of a crazy schedule over the next few weeks, so I expect that the rest of May will be gone in a flash. This weekend is full with family in town and birthday plans for my sister-in-law. Next Thursday we'll have one more ultrasound for the first trimester screening test. On Friday we'll head north to attend my mother-in-law's retirement party before heading back south to vacation with my sister's family at the beach for a week. After we get back, I'll have my pre-op appointment on May 31 and the melanoma surgery (finally!) on June 1.

I'll be welcoming a bit of a slower pace by then I'm sure, and I'm very much looking forward to settling into the second trimester with most of my worries put to rest. Thank you for all of your continued support, sweet comments, and precious prayers!

For those of you who are bracing yourselves for another tough Mother's Day weekend, please know that you're in my thoughts and prayers. I'll never, ever forget what that felt like and I'll always remember to pray for those who are hurting from infertility and loss, especially on that day. Much love to all of you!

Amazed

Today was my appointment with the maternal fetal medicine doctor. This was the visit that the melanoma surgeon wanted me to do before we schedule the surgery, just to have the baby checked out and all of my questions answered before we move forward.

It was a great experience from beginning to end. I felt an immediate rapport with this doctor when I spoke with her on the phone last week, and she was just as kind and friendly in person. We had to drive about an hour to get there and we arrived about a half hour early but didn't have to wait long before we were called back to start the ultrasound. I'm still amazed hours later as I sit down to try and put the experience into words. I had a couple of 3D ultrasounds during my pregnancy with Lily and they are always pretty amazing, but I've never had the experience so early on in a pregnancy before. I think that's what was so awesome to us today, to see so much of the miracle of new life in such detail at a little over 9 weeks. It served as a wonderful display of a God who performs miracles and whose timing is always perfect! I've been in awe of Him all afternoon.

My eyes filled with tears as we saw that tiny, perfect baby on the screen. We saw his or her heart beating, and brand new little arm and leg buds. For the first time in this pregnancy we saw the baby moving around, too, which was the next big milestone we were hoping to see at next week's ultrasound. It was a very special moment, and at one point I exclaimed, "Wow!" and Lily echoed the word back in her sweet little voice. :)

After we got a good look at the baby and all of the appropriate measurements were taken (baby is growing "right on target," which is music to our ears), we sat down with the doctor for a while to talk about everything and ask any questions we had. I found out a few days ago that they will not have to test the lymph nodes around the melanoma site, which is great news. The doctor today cleared me to go ahead with the surgery whenever we can get it scheduled. I still have about three weeks to go until the second trimester, so it shouldn't be too much longer before we can get it all taken care of.

I have to honestly say that today is the first day during this pregnancy that I've begun to feel RELIEVED. We still have some relatively small hurdles coming up, but I'm starting to let myself believe that this is going to happen and that it will be okay -- that this baby will survive growing in my body and actually come home to live with us. I'm trusting, believing, and hoping. I saw this quote on a devotional site this week and loved it: "Trust (in God) chooses faith over fear, confidence over cowardice, and power over panic." That's exactly what I want to do!

**I never want anything I post here to cause any additional pain to anyone who is hurting from infertility or miscarriage, which is why I've always refrained from posting ultrasound images, pictures of pregnancy tests, or belly pics on my blog. I want to make a picture from today's appointment available for you to see if you want to, though, so I'll attach it through the following link. It's the image that left me feeling completely overwhelmed -- in a good way -- today: Ultrasound Picture

Still Good

It's a busy Friday here as we're getting ready to head out of town to celebrate my sister's birthday. I wanted to write a super quick post about the ultrasound yesterday so everything will be up to date.

We're so happy that it was good news again at yesterday's appointment. You know, with this being my eighth pregnancy and even after the last one was a success, I'm still a nervous wreck each and every time. I don't think anything can make a person forget the sad memories of hearing bad news in rooms exactly like that one. My heart is always in my throat as we wait to see that fuzzy image come into focus and especially as we wait to see that little fluttering heart.

Our little bean is growing normally and everything was looking right on track for 8w4d. Heart rate was 179. We were able to take deep breaths and are now focusing on the next appointment in two weeks, on May 10. Having lost a baby before at close to this stage in the game, 9 weeks, I'm very anxious for these next two weeks to pass by without incident and hopefully still see that growing little miracle the next time we go see the doctor.

Today I'm resting in the fact that it's good news! Praise God!

As a side note: We haven't been working very hard to get Lily to realize that there's a new baby coming just yet. During our prayer time every night before we put her to bed, though, we pray that God will protect the baby brother or sister in Mommy's tummy. At 19 months we weren't sure how much she might understand. Today I thought I'd see how much she might remember. I asked her, "Where's Mommy's baby?" To my sweet surprise, she patted my tummy. It brought tears to my eyes and filled my heart with so much joy! My precious girl knows more than I realized.