simms turns 3 — touch of gray

rather than sit here and blog about how fast time goes by (which it does) and how sad i am that my first baby is already 3 (which i am) i thought i would fill everyone in that just recently started following my blog about the story of how simms came to be. plus, since i have been terrible about doing baby books, the kids can have my blog to look back on one day! so guys, if you don't want to hear about girl stuff, you can exit the blog now. ha!

after a couple of years of being married, cal and i were ready for kids (we thought.) i tried for a few months to get pregnant with no luck. i was talking to my cousin andee about it and she offered to give me her clear blue fertility monitor. i had been doing basal temp monitoring, i bought the membership to fertility friend, and was super in tune with my body to know when i would even have the slightest cramp to know i was ovulating. but somehow, i still wasn't getting pregnant. so my cousin passing off her $200 fertility monitor to me was really exciting (while I'm thinking about this, who is the last person i let borrow it?!) we definitely couldn't afford it. well i got pregnant the first month of using it. it was spot on about ovulation days. i went to my obgyn for the normal 8 week appointment, everything looked fantastic, beautiful heartbeat, etc. at 10, almost 11, weeks i started having cramps. they turned into the worst cramps i have ever had in my entire life. its the only time i can ever think of having pain be at a 10 on a scale of 1-10. i was literally having diarrhea and throwing up from pain. i was also bleeding, a lot. i couldn't get off the bathroom floor. i made cal call an ambulance and we headed to the hospital.

honestly, the whole day at the hospital was a blur. but i remember them doing an ultrasound and me asking "is there a heartbeat?" the nurse wouldn't answer. right after she left the room, i felt a big gush of blood. i don't know how else to word this but the baby came out. i looked down and saw it. it was tiny and so obviously a baby. after i passed the baby, the pain completely stopped. i knew what had happened. i didn't need to wait on the doctor to tell me. i just wanted to leave and go cry. the next person to come in was a nurse. i told her about the baby and she scooped it up with one of those cups you pee in. no joke. she looked in the cup and said "yeah that does look like a baby doesn't it (while she shakes the cup around)... i think i even see a hand?! i'll take it out to show the doctor" if i hadn't been in so much shock, i would've hit her across the face. that was our precious baby that we had prayed and longed for sitting in a pee cup. lifeless and she shook it around joking.

we left the hospital a total wreck. i felt like such a failure. i wanted answers. i wanted to know why i could lose a baby at almost 11 weeks after a healthy ultrasound. i was almost to the "safe" place where people announce on Facebook. we started trying again the following months and got pregnant not long after….. only to miscarry AGAIN at 5 weeks.

my amazing obgyn, craig myers, sent me to a reproductive endocrinologist, dr. doody. my mom's best friend worked for dr. doody for YEARS, so i knew this was definitely the place i wanted to be. we spent several weeks doing tests and everything looked good except 2 blood tests. i have two clotting disorders, pai2 and mthfr. dr. doody felt pretty confident this could play a role in keeping pregnancies. because of my disorders, he wanted me on a daily baby aspirin, folic acid, and norwegian fish oil. he felt like clots could form in the umbilical cords, killing the babies. he also said that once pregnant, he wanted me to do daily shots of lovenox (another blood thinner.) he also said to get rid of all lubes because even the ones that claim to not kill sperm (like pressed) do! after the second miscarriage he told us to take a month off from trying and let my body rest.

well. whoops. i guess it only takes one time. i got pregnant that month…with SIMMS. i gave myself shots everyday of lovenox, until the last couple weeks when i switched to heparin. the pregnancy was actually very smooth and left little to complain about. the worst thing was the puppps that i developed around week 35ish. its a HORRIBLE itching rash. imagine your body being covered in poison ivy for weeks on end. i actually ended up curing it with some insane routine that worked for me (oatmeal baths, dandelion tea, coconut oil, and grandpas pine tar soap)… i have no idea which thing worked and so i never stopped doing any of them. haha!

also around week 35 i started chugging a pitcher a day of red raspberry leaf tea. they say it helps basically give the uterus a work out and tone the muscles. it definitely triggered more braxton hicks but thats how your uterus prepares for labor! this is a great study on it, if you'd like to learn more! in addition to my tea, i also got an exercise ball and was constantly doing figure 8's on it (to widen the hips.) i walked everyday, ate spicy food, the whole 9 yards. on sep 2 at 38 weeks, after a night of roosters to go food, i woke up out of a sleep around 1:30 am thinking i had peed my pants a little. i told cal and we wondered if maybe it had been my water?? i was like "well, i'll stand up and see if we see a big gush." nothing happened when i stood up. so i walked around the house. still nothing.

my biggest fear was getting to the hospital and being past the point of being able to get an epidural and being forced to have a natural birth. i wanted every drug i was allowed to have. i never wanted to feel anything that resembled the pain of the 10 week miscarriage. the only thing i wanted to feel at birth was…well…happiness i guess! i told cal i couldn't figure out if i peed or not. it didn't smell like pee. i changed my underwear and told cal i would just feel better to go get checked out. we grabbed our pre packed hospital bags and headed to parkwest hospital.

in triage they asked to swab my underwear to check for amniotic fluid. shit!!!!! i had changed underwear!!! i was freaking out that i didn't have those underwear on anymore but the nurse said they could do a cervical swab to check. they did that and the result came back negative. i was mortified. had i literally just gone to the hospital for peeing the bed at night!?!? i begged her to check one more time and it was POSITIVE. she said they were admitting us and i was dilated to 4 and it was time to have a baby!!!!!!!!!!!!

we waited until the morning to call and tell the family, so everyone could sleep. i got my epidural as soon as they'd let me have it. i felt great and all my family came in morning. when i think back on the happiest i have ever been, this day was it. i wasn't very nervous, i was just excited. thrilled it was FINALLY my turn. i had waited so long for that day. my best friend, hallie, came with a cookie cake to celebrate simms's birthday and she was ready with a cooler to haul off my placenta for encapsulation. the biggest hurdle is that they wouldn't let me have any food. i've never been so hungry in my entire life as i was that day. i progressed slowly until about 5pm and it was getting close to pushing time. the nurse asked me to do a practice push and when i did she yelled to stop or she would be delivering the baby herself. haha. she called for the doctor to come in and simms was out in 5 pushes at 6:24pm. simms abram davis was 7 lbs 7 oz and 20.5"….

everything was PERFECT. the only way it could've been better was if my doctor had been there to deliver me that day. but…thats just if i'm being picky ;) dad was quick to bring in all the food I wanted (2 bowls of Mac and cheese from outback) and i ate it all as fast as I could. my sweet friend, jennifer crook, took these hospital photos for me and i couldn't be more grateful for them. if i have one suggestion for new moms, its to get hospital pictures! you'll forget all the little details (like you did on your wedding day) and its a treasure to have them. i have tons of photos like this that i took after we got home…but i treasure the hospital ones the most.