Focusing on the positives

How did I get so lucky?

Really?

Since being put on bedrest, Jared has gotten Wyatt up and dressed in the morning, and takes over everything as soon as he gets home. Won't let me vacuum, clean, do dishes, pick up, do laundry, go grocery shopping. When Jared's out working, I literally do the minimum with Wyatt while laying down as much as possible. And with ALL of that going on, the house is completely picked up and clean every night before we go to bed.  He lectures me if he sees me up doing anything, even just bringing a plate back to the kitchen.  He brings me water whenever he sees that my Nalgene is empty.  And you know what?

 

He hasn't complained ONCE.

 

The other night I was even a big whiny pants and wanted chili fries from Tommy's.  Mr. awesome pants went and got them for me.  Stopped working on his RC Truck and picked them up for me, didn't get anything for himself because he wasn't hungry.  100% did it for me.  The man has picked up some tricks since our last Merry Go Round.  I remember begging for Chipotle for weeks and he refused to appease me because it would take 15 minutes to get there.  Luckily Chipotle has expanded in our area and we have not 1, but 2 close by :)  AND a Panera Bread.  I LOVE PANERA!!!  Ok, can you tell I'm pregnany?  I just spent an entire paragraph talking about food haha.

 

So other than my awesome amazing hunk of a husband being everything a woman can dream of, I have even more great news.  I got the OBGYN that I've always wanted!!!  Dr. Morrison retired just before my last pregnancy, and then came out of retirement shortly before we lost Michael.  Since my current dr. was out of town, Dr. Morrison performed the cerclage.  {One of the many miracles that we were shown during that time in our lives.}  I was nervous that he might decide to retire again before I became pregnant again, but he hasn't!  I called today and have an appointment to see him on the 27th.  Eeeee!!!!  I'm so excited!  To add to the awesomeness of everything, I went in to fill out all the paperwork AND HE REMEMBERED ME.  Even asked me how everything turned out from my last pregnancy.  So I filled him in really quick on my awesome little guy :)

 

Do you know what else makes me feel awesome?  My friends.  They have been beyond caring towards me about this whole bedrest situation.  Sending text messages to check in on me, arranging plans so that I can hang out with them on ladies night {I mean, who wouldn't want to bask in my glory though right? ;)}  Offering to bring dinners over if we need it.  A couple of years ago I honestly felt like I didn't have any real friends that lived around me, and now I have not one, not two, but a group of ladies that I get to call my friends.  I'm truly a lucky girl.

 

So here's the pregnancy update.

I've been on bedrest for a week now.  I'm being really strict with myself and only getting up when absolutely necessary {which is more than I'd like when there's a needy 2 year old running around}.  Wyatt has been a relatively good boy but might be going slightly crazy from lack of outside time.  I actually feel really bad about the outside time part because the last few days have been amazing Wyatt weather :/  I wish he felt comfortable running around out there by himself.  The backyard is fenced in so I know he'll be safe, but he refuses to go out there unless someone is with him.  Anyway, I'm being really strict with myself on staying laying down and drinking lots of water.  I've gotten to  where I'm spotting only a couple of times throughout the day.  I'm cramping a lot less too which is awesome.  I'm really hopeful that things will start looking up.  I feel really guilty about not being able to pull my weight around the house and I want to be able to get back in the game.  But baby first.  This girl will be following all the dr.'s orders to a 'T'!

 

Oh, and I think my due date was actually calculated wrong.  I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be the 18th, which would put me at 7 wks 5 days. :)

Here's my baby bloat! {aka ice cream from the last 2 months and gas haha}

 

Bedrest already?!

Wednesday was a busy day for me.  I went a few different places, always running late because I currently suffer from mommy brain AND pregnancy brain and had to go back in the house 3 different times for things I forgot and then had to go back home to get the rest of the things I forgot.

6:00 rolled around and I finally got home to make my family dinner.  I ran to the bathroom and, red.  There was just red.  I started crying, Jared came in and hugged me, and then I put a call in to my IVF dr.  The after hours line informed me that another dr. was covering his calls for the night.  Perfect :(  I was told I should receive a call back within the next couple of hours.

 

I've been taking it so easy.  Jared doesn't allow me to do any housework other than making dinner.  I rarely pick up Wyatt.  But I know exactly what caused the bleeding.  When I went back home to get the things I forgot, I didn't want to unload Wyatt from the car, so I jogged into the house and jogged back out to the car.  Evidently that little bit of activity was too much for my body to handle.

About an hour later I got a call from MY doctor!  I don't know what happened, but he somehow got the message about what was going on.  He told me to take an extra progesterone and to come in first thing in the morning, I didn't need to make an appointment or anything.  He told me that there was an 85% chance that everything was going to be okay {since we don't have to worry about there being any genetic abnormalities that might cause a miscarriage}.  The odds were definitely in my favor :)

 

The next morning the bleeding had turned into brown and pink spotting so I was hopeful that I would get good news at my appt. I got there at 8:15 and they got me back to see the dr. about 30 min later.

Dr. Wilcox came in, confident that everything was going to be fine, and got started on the ultrasound.  This is what we saw

Baby is okay!  The heart rate measured at 135 and the dr. told me he couldn't find anything that might threaten the pregnancy.  He could see some fluid around the sac and he also noticed that baby has implanted just above the cervix.  Last pregnancy, after I delivered Wyatt, I was diagnosed with an Incompetent Cervix.  Unfortunately, since baby implanted just above the cervix bleeding will be common.  I was told that I needed to be on bedrest for at least the next 2 weeks.  I'll go back in on the 13th for another checkup.

the drama

I was so excited to share all of my good news that I forgot to include the drama!

With doing IVF I have a gagillion things I have to remember... mainly drugs.  I have to take each drug for a certain amount of time.  Follistim, Menopur, Estrogen shots, then patches and pills, doxycycline, methylprednisolone, endometrin, progesterone lozenges... you get the point.

After the transfer I only have to worry about taking a few of those.  The progesterone lozenges are the worst.  They're these grape flavored squares that have to be placed under the tongue to dissolve.  Yucky tasting and uncomfortable.  So I finished the whole bottle of like 50 of these things on a Monday and for some reason thought I was done taking them.  A few days later {Thursday} I started spotting brown and pink and started cramping.  Yikes.  Jared and I decided I should probably take it easy, so I laid down on the couch pretty much all morning while Wyatt played around me in the living room

Several hours later I jumped up to help him with something and I immediately felt weak, nauseous, dizzy, had intense hot flashes to where I pretty much stripped off all of my clothing, it sounded like the ocean was in my ears and I felt like I might faint at any minute. 

My first thought was, oh my gosh, is this was morning sickness feels like?!  I had to sit down so that I didn't fall over and after a few minutes I decided I might be dehydrated because, oops!  I hadn't drank ANY water at all that day.  I made it to the kitchen and got 2 sips of water down before I felt like I was going to pass out again.  I started to sit down on the floor when my whole body started shaking and bam.  A few seconds later I woke up laying on the floor.  I think I laid there for about 5 minutes before I felt ok-sh attemping to stand up again.  I drank more water, grabbed my phone to call Jared and made it to the couch.  Luckily he was working close and was able to come straight home. {I later learned that what I experienced is called Hypovolemia}

  Jared decided to put me on his own type of strict bedrest and pretty much forbid me to do anything but what was absolutely necessary for Wyatt.  After about 45 minutes of laying down and sipping water I felt MUCH better, but the spotting went on for several days.   Monday came and I went in for my second blood test.  My progesterone dropped to 6.  What?  That can't be right.  But the nurse that gave me the results didn't act like there was any reason to worry.  It continued to bother me so I called back the next day to inquire about it.  The nurse said the results were pretty low but that I'd be in the next day for an u/s and they'd see what was going on then.  But I pressed it until we were finally on the same page.  Turns out I should have refilled the prescription for the lozenges and should never have stopped taking them.  She called it in and I immediately went to pick them up.  I'm on an increased dose to try and more quickly raise my progesterone lever and after just 1 day of being back on the lozenges I felt almost 100% better.  After a few days, the cramping and spotting completely went away.

While I was upset about the misunderstanding with the meds... I'm really glad that everything was figured out and that we're back on track. And I hope I don't ever experience Hypovolemia ever. again.  That was awful.

Wyatts fundraiser

 During the month of April I decided to run a fundraiser for Wyatt.

I named it 'Help Wyatt Beat the Heat' and sold jam in an effort to raise money to purchase a cooling vest for him.  

I figured out that I needed to sell somewhere between 60 and 80 jars of jam to raise the money that was needed.   ...before the fundraiser had even officially opened, we had pre-sold almost 70 jars of jam.  WOW!  Friends shared with friends and there were several individuals that either didn't like jam, or weren't local but still wanted to help so they made direct donations.

The love and support that has been shown towards my son has absolutely blown me away.

At the end of the month we are close to breaking 150 jars of jam sold.  That's a lot of jam!

I was about to order Wyatt's vest when I learned that my sister-in-laws cousin-in-law worked at a medical supply company and wanted to see if she could get the vest at a wholesale price for us.  After a few days my sister-in-law told me that she was unable to get a lower price on the vest than what it would have cost me, so she just bought it herself and it was on it's way to Wyatt.  WHAT?!  She wouldn't let me send her the money for it.  I was told 

"It is my pleasure, I just really felt that I needed to do this for him."

It's a rare time that I find myself without words.  But that was one of those times.

Thank you SO much to all of my family, friends, new friends, and friends of friends that helped support Wyatt with this fundraiser.  With your help we were able to raise almost $1000!!!.  I've got some pretty good jam, but I know this was all for Wyatt.  He's a special little guy and I'm so lucky that I get to be his mom!
And since we didn't have to spend the money on a vest, every penny that we raised has been put into a savings account to help us get to the FIRST {Foundation for Ichthyosis and Related Skin Types} Family Conference in 2016 where we will be able to learn more about Wyatt's skin condition, and Wyatt will be able to meet and play with other children affected with ichthyosis.

Between airfare, conference admission, hotel, rental car, food, I'm figuring we'll need around $3500.  Because of the generosity that has been shown to our family, we are almost $1000 closer to making that trip happen.  Thank you so much!!!

I had Wyatt try his vest on to see how it fit and he was NOT impressed haha.  He was much more enamored with the bubble wrap, but he'll learn to love it I'm sure :)

The transfer and pregnancy test results

So the embryo transfer was on April 2nd!   

Wyatt went over to his Auntie's house for a couple of days.  This was so I could just lay on the couch so that little embryo could burrow in.  It's important to not do anything or stress out about anything at all during that first little while.

Here's a magnified view of the embryo before it was transferred.  It's already starting to hatch!

After the transfer Jared picked up some PF Changs for me to gorge on and he went off to work.

At first I was like, OMG SILENCE!!  This is amazing!  la la la la la I can do whatever I want.. as long as I don't get up.  That lasted for about an hour before I was like holycrapiamsofreakingboredoutofmymind and howdidisurvivelikethiswheniwasonbedrestfortenweeks?!

Being a mom has changed me.

When Wyatt came home I was all excited to see him and he didn't want anything to do with me.  I think he was made at me or something.  Sorry kid.  He warmed up the next day though.

 So now I just had to wait 2 weeks for a pregnancy test.  Two whole weeks.  These two weeks always seem like the longest two weeks of my life.

During this time, Wyatt got a fungal infection in his diaper.  Oh the joys of Ichthyosis.  So he had a lot of naked time {which I was totally cool with because baby butts are the cutest}

 He had naked time in the pool

 Naked time playing running around the yard

 Naked time helping daddy plant an avocado tree

The kid loved being naked

Naked time plus Clotrimazole really seemed to really help the infection clear up.  Yay!

Here's a couple of bath time pictures since those ones are always the best

I love his personality!

So 5 days after the transfer I was super anxious and cheated.  I took a pregnancy test.  Then I took another on Wednesday morning.  Then another on Friday.  Finally I went and got one of those yes/no pregnancy tests so that all of the guesswork was taken out and

I'm so flipping excited to be a mom again!!!  We do know the gender, but want to make sure the little bean decides to stick around before we share.  We'll reveal the gender around the end of May.

As of now, I am 5 weeks and 5 days pregnant.  We got our first peak at what was going on in me on Wednesday

It's still too early to see a heartbeat {It's not strong enough to pick up on an u/s yet} but the dr. was able to see a yolk sac and cardiovascular tissue.  Hooray!!!

The next appt is set for a week and a half from now. :)

My family is so blessed!