I'm not sure if I am resuming blogging to find an outlet for my grief and sanity or to help others who find themselves in the devastating circumstance that I did.....or maybe for both.
Catch up: The past year and a half was mainly spent working, traveling, and starting a master's program. I am still working two jobs....inpatient pediatric nursing and legal nurse consulting. I started an online Master's program in Nursing Leadership and Administration in August 2014. Greg and I took trips to Venice and the Adriatic Coast (via a cruise down the coastline) in May/June 2014 and to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Luxembourg in April/May 2015. The biggest change of the year.....I am currently SUPPOSED to be 6 months pregnant.
Supposed to be. What a hellish ride my first pregnancy was. Greg and I started talking about being ready to start a family in the summer of 2014. I got my IUD removed in September of that year. However, being me...I initially freaked out a little and took oral birth control for the rest of the year. I focused on healthy eating and ramped up my workouts. I turned 30 in December of that year. For some reason, that milestone made me feel officially ready to start trying to get pregnant.
Being the pessimist I can sometimes be, I thought it would take us at least 6 months to get pregnant. Ha! We actually got pregnant the first month trying in January, but lost that pregnancy to a chemical pregnancy (a very early miscarriage before most people even know they are pregnant). I was OK with the chemical pregnancy as I am pretty well educated in the fertility process and understand that MORE than 1 in 4 pregnancies will end up in some sort of miscarriage.
The very next month, February, I officially got pregnant. Early pregnancy was quite easy for me. I felt almost guilty for how fast we fell pregnant and how little symptoms I had. I never had full blown morning sickness.....I would feel a little queazy with some indigestion if I didn't eat at least every 90 minutes but I never even threw up once. The biggest early pregnancy symptom I had was extreme fatigue. But, I never missed work and even kept up my workout schedule which I feel really helped keep all my symptoms at bay. I did feel like I started gaining weight quickly, but I also went on vacation to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Luxembourg between weeks 10 and 12. Since I couldn't drink....we ate a lot! For as slim as the Dutch are, they sure eat a lot of fried foods and cheese! :)
At 8 weeks we had our first ultrasound. The little nugget was there with a healthy heartbeat! We went in for our 12 week appointment just a few days after we got back from vacation. We brought my mom along for the scan to see the first pictures of the little nugget actually looking like a baby now instead of just a jelly bean. My OB offered first trimester prenatal genetic screening at that appointment. Neither Greg nor I had any family history of genetic diseases, but working as a pediatric nurse for the last 8 years I knew I didn't want to bring a child into the world with any known disease that would cause a lack of decent quality of life. I see too many children suffering every single day. I couldn't knowingly put my own child through that. Greg felt the exact same way. So we had the genetic testing done through a company called Progenity.
Two weeks later....the nurse emailed me to let me know the results were back. I called the office and asked her if she could wait to tell me the gender until Greg could conference call in with me (we were both at work that day). She said no problem and then told me the baby results were OK chromosomally but my blood work indicated that I was a carrier of SMA or Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Later that day, Greg and I conferenced called the office and found out we were having a BOY! :)
SMA is recessive genetic disorder in which if someone has SMA they lack the gene that allows for proper firing of motor neurons responsible for muscle movement. Most babies affected with it appear normal at birth, but then start missing milestones like head control and sitting up. The disease is progressive and eventually babies lose the ability to breath. SMA has a 95% fatality rate. There are 4 types of SMA that are determined by severity. Most babies affected are type 1 and typically die between 6 months and 18 months of life.
Since I was a carrier of SMA (not affected by the disease but carried only 1 gene to pass along to my baby, not 2), Greg needed to get tested to make sure he was not a carrier. During this time, we found out that 1 in 40 people are carriers of SMA. During the 2 weeks it took to get Greg's results back, we were a little concerned but not too worried. What were the chances BOTH of us were carriers of this?!
(I just realize this got super long and I will stop here for now.)
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