Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Our Story

My husband and I met in High School and started dating when I was a sophomore, he was a Senior. After high school he went off to vo-tech, and I was still in high school. After I graduated, I attended a semester of college. I decided college life was not for me and we got married.
Only two months after we got married we found out we were expecting a baby. What a surprise. Everything seemed to be going well until our routine sono. At the sono we were informed that the lymph nodes in the baby's neck were swollen, and there was fluid around her heart. We were sent to a specialist 4 days later. The specialist did another sono, and the fluid had increased around the heart. He told us this rare condition was called Cysitc Hygroma and that it was fatal. Cystic Hygroma happens only in girls for whatever reason, and is very very rare. Most babies do not make it to full term and of the few that have, 12 hours is the longest one has ever lived outside the womb.
We returned to the hospital 3 days later and our baby barely had a heart beat, and induction was started. The induction took 3 days and at the beginning of the third day we learned that our baby had died in womb.
Deciding to conceive again was not an easy decision. What if we had to go down the same road again? Would we ever be able to have children? It was a very scary decision. But after talking with the specialist, and him telling us it would be very very rare for it to happen again, we decided to try again. That brought Madison into our lives. She is now 9 years old. My pregnancy with her went very smooth until the end. I was in preterm labor at 32 weeks. Spent the first of 4 weeks in the hospital, and the last 3 on bed rest. She was born early at 36 weeks. She did well at and after birth. As I said she is now 9 years old and i the 3rd grade.
Eightteen months after Madison was born came Dylan. My pregnancy was very smooth with Dylan. He was delivered a big (8#, 9oz) baby boy at 38 weeks. I did hemorrhage one week post partum with him, but it turned out only to be an artery that was not quite healed and the stitches were dissolved. He is now 7 years old and in the 2nd grade. He is enrolled in the gifted program at school and is the youngest one in his class.
After Dylan I unexpectingly became pregnant again, and to any unknown reason that baby was miscarried.
We decided to try one more time. I got pregnant without much trying. Things just did not seem to be going the way we wanted them to. I had lots of spotting and cramping in the early weeks. By the time I was 10 weeks I had had about 6 sonos. At first it was thought that I had a placental tear. This was very scary for us. We were told that at anytime, for anyreason, I could start bleeding and would lose the baby. My sister -in-law had just lost a baby due to a placenta tear about 6 months earlier. They continued to monitor things. Between the lab work and the sonos, they had changed their mind. I was told they thought I may have a molar pregnancy. For those of you who do not know what that is, a fetus never really developes. You are pregnant, but the fetus is more like a cancerous growth. The placenta is a bubbly texture, and the baby never forms. After a few weeks of worrying about this another sono ruled out a molar. At that point is was decided that the area they saw that they thought was a tear was a twin gestational sac demising. After the demise, the rest of the pregnancy went well. Sydnie was delivered at 37 weeks, and was healthy. She is now 4 years old. She goes to preschool and loves it.
After much descussion, we decided one more and that was it. So that brings us up to where we are now. I am going to try to update this blog for family and friends that we do not often see so that they may follow the progress of the pregnancy and the family.