Bébé Maybe

It just keeps getting better! Watching her gradually become more alert is so fun. At 5 weeks old, she smiled at David for the first time. It was the first time he'd gone into the office since she was born. When he came home and went to say hi to her, she was happy to see him. :) At 6 weeks old, I got my first smile. It was after the 6am feeding. I put her down in the crib to go grab something. When I came back she smiled when she saw me. :) Both were heart melting moments. <3 She's still pretty sleepy but she's starting to smile more and more. It's usually around dinner time that she's the most awake. Sometimes she'll start getting wiggly and it seems like she wants to play/interact. I've started putting her on her play mat for tummy time when that happens and usually read her a book. I was expecting her to be eating more at this point, but she's still on the same schedule that she was at 1 month old. 3.5 ounces every 3 hours, like clockwork. I can te...

It's been one year since the worst days of our lives. I've already written about what happened, but it's therapeutic to keep writing about it and I wanted to include some more detail.  I saw someone else who'd lost a baby think of it this way- on their birthdays, don't think of it as another year without them. Think of it as one year closer to being with them again. That's what I'm holding onto. One year closer to being with my baby Christian David again someday. I don't know how I could get through this anniversary without having his 6 week old baby sister here in my arms. This year we have survived a lot of horrible things, gotten through the stress of another pregnancy, and have done a lot of healing. I pray that we can continue to heal from our great loss while at the same time find great joy in the miracle of our daughter. February 9th, 2021 PPROM I started feeling weird the night before. It was a pressure feeling. I thought it was either growing pa...

When my parents were over the other day, I was asking if I acted like Magnolia does as a newborn. But... shocker... that was a really long time ago and they don't really remember. So here's my attempt to document a little bit of what our first month with Magnolia has been like. We can't believe she's one month old! In general, I would say she is more chill than I expected. That might be because I tend to expect the worst, but for months I was researching what it's like to have a newborn and it seemed pretty common to expect a lot of crying and the baby not wanting to be put down. Well, in her first month, Magnolia has hardly cried and 95% of the time doesn't mind being put down anywhere, anytime. She squawks sometimes when we're changing her, and starts to make noises when she's hungry... but I think she's only actually cried maybe 3 times? And every time it stopped as soon as she was more comfortable. One of the biggest perks for me is that since Da...

After my first hospital visit at the beginning of December, my doctor thought it was best/safest to induce at 37 weeks.  I had some high blood pressure readings and with my history (taking so long/so much to get to that point), my doctor thought it was best to get baby here as soon as it was safe for her. I wholeheartedly agreed! I'm fairly surprised I made it to 37 weeks without going into labor naturally- especially after needing to get my cerclage out early due to bleeding/contractions at 32 and 34 weeks. But ultimately I'm happy I made it to 37, and that Magnolia had those extra few weeks to grow and develop. The date and time were set- December 29th. We spent the day relaxing, packing, and doing some last-minute preparations before checking into the hospital at 7pm. My first dose of induction medication (cytotec) was at 8:30pm. I started feeling contractions at 9:30, and by 11:00pm they started to get painful and were at least every 2 minutes. At some point they started pi...

I am extremely thankful that this pregnancy has been very uneventful up until the third trimester. After the years of infertility and loss leading up to this point, my coping skills were just not not strong enough to deal with much else. Unfortunately, there's been a bit of excitement and a few hospital visits over the last few weeks. The good news is that little Magnolia has had no issues and was not bothered at all by anything going on. I got up to pee at 4am (as one does in the third trimester) on Sunday December 5th. I was 32.5 weeks pregnant. And I saw bright red blood... which is very scary to see when you're pregnant. I woke up David and we went straight over to the ER after getting dressed. By 4:30am I was hooked up to monitors checking on both me and baby. I was extremely relieved to hear her heartbeat <3.  I was extremely stressed and had very high blood pressure. I couldn't feel them, but according to the monitor I was also having contractions every 3-4 minute...

I love names, and I've had a name list for years... long before I got married. :)  The list has of course changed over time, but during our years of infertility we had a lot of time to think and had some girl names we were pretty set on. We have boy names we like too, but for some reason they've always been harder. We didn't find out that Christian was a boy until the 20 week ultrasound, so we had been debating both girl and boy names for him for months. Getting pregnant with this baby just 3 months after our devastating loss made me want a fresh start. So although there are names we've loved, carefully considered and debated for years... it felt right to choose a name that we never considered for our first baby. One of the first bright spots/glimpses of hope for the future I felt was on our trip to the south in March. Magnolia Plantation (just outside of Charleston, South Carolina) was one of the most beautiful places we had ever visited.  I remember sitting on a bench...

It has been such a long road to get here. When this baby is born, it will be right around the 5 year mark of trying to have children. We were 24 and 27 when we started trying and will be 29 and 32 when we {hopefully} finally get to bring a child home.  So much waiting and heartbreak, so many tears and needles. 276 needles, to be exact (that's the amount of shots it took in the last year to get to this point).  'Rainbow baby' is a term for a baby born after a loss, which inspired this little art project made with some of said needles. I filled up all of these sharps containers in 1 year! This baby's story actually started in July of 2020. We ended up with 3 precious embryos from our first round of IVF, and this baby was one of them!  Our extra embryos are all frozen until we're able to transfer them and hope and pray that they stick around. It's kind of cool to think about how this baby was already created and waiting since last year. <3 We knew immediately af...