Thursday, May 23, 2013

a tiny bit of good news

can i tell you something awesome?

i've been keeping a little secret.

a teeny, tiny little secret.

an adorable little secret. with a heartbeat, and arms, and legs, and fingers, and toes, a big ol' tummy, and a much bigger nose than i ever remember kahree having.

the hardest secret to keep. a secret i wanted to share every minute, every day. every day that my middle got rounder, every time my brain failed me yet again at an embarrassing moment, every day i wanted to apologize to everyone for my nausea and lack of energy, every day that i just wanted to tell all the people that i love "i may have good news!"

but i didn't have good news yet. we had a lot of fears and worries and no for-sures. so we waited until we could share our secret with some amount of surety.

well. yesterday, we got good news. such lovely news. and now i can tell you all about my little secret.

this new little baby is probably a miracle. a confusing, heart-wrenching, mysterious little miracle. i am currently over 12 weeks into this new pregnancy, almost done with the first trimester. i'll help you with the math a little bit: my emergency surgery for my ruptured, ectopic pregnancy in february was 14 weeks ago yesterday.

shocked? surprised? us too.

but happy? of course!

we were going to wait for a long, long time before trying again. in our hearts we felt like we were to wait at least a year before trying to have another baby, to give my body time to heal and give myself time to regain some courage. so let me just say right now that we weren't trying. we were actively NOT trying. i'm still a little bewildered that this tiny child managed to sneak in like this. the doctors told me to wait for at least two normal cycles before trying again. i didn't even get one. i went back in to see the doctor two months after my surgery because i was afraid that there was too much wrong with my once-exploding insides and i wasn't even ovulating anymore.

not quite. i just had a 6 week, 3 day old baby in there. wiggling around looking like a little jelly bean, heartbeat flashing like a mini lighthouse. in my uterus right where it belongs. strong and steady. and i didn't even know. craig suspected, especially the night before when i demanded a burger from wendy's and wolfed it down savagely. but i said there was no way. it was impossible.

if i've learned anything from this whole experience it is that i am definitely not in charge here, my own plan for my life does not take precedent over God's plan for me and my family. and He wants me to be happy after all.

are you surprised i kept so tight-lipped? i feel at least a little terrible because of how many lies i had to tell to keep this a secret until we knew for sure everything was most likely going to be okay. i had to look some dear friends in the face and lie through my teeth! some friends i told i wasn't pregnant before i knew i was but for most part i just had to respond to loving inquiries with some well worded half truths or no truths at all. i was actually surprised by how many people asked and how hard it was to keep everything a secret, i'm surrounded by some very loving people. so just in case i lied to any of you and you happen to be reading now i want you to know i really did want to tell you and i promise i'm mostly sorry. but i'm also very comfortable exercising my right to a little privacy, especially in the face of so much uncertainty. i just didn't know yet if everything was going to be okay.

there were more than just a few concerns, none of them matter much now. i really feel like we're out of the woods for the most part. i caused some concern from being pregnant so immediately after my surgery [the pregnancy technically "started" two weeks after my surgery but there wasn't a baby growing in there until almost a month after, pregnancy is funny that way]. i had a special chemotherapy shot after my surgery and my estimated conception date [because i have no clue how or when it could have happened so the doctor had to guess for me, goodness gracious] wasn't even a whole month later. so there were worries that there could be some potential deformities caused by that. of course chances were so, so slim but i wasn't feeling super confident with my odds at the time. the chance of having a ruptured ectopic pregnancy is also very slim, but i experienced that. and becoming pregnant immediately afterwards? i don't even have a clue what those odds are. so you see what i'm saying, i was worried enough for myself and all of you and everyone else i love. you didn't need to worry too.

but now we have good news! my baby still had a heartbeat and was growing right on schedule yesterday afternoon when we got to see him [according to craig] or her [according to me]. my baby has only the correct amount of limbs and no obvious abnormalities. in four weeks we'll know if spinal bifida is going to be something we need to deal with. i'm a little concerned about that because i had to stop taking all forms of vitamins and folic acid after receiving my chemotherapy shot and i didn't start taking prenatals again until halfway through week 6 because i didn't know i was pregnant. so lets keep our fingers crossed for that. and four weeks after that i will go to a special clinic and get an extra long, detailed 20 week ultrasound where they will look at everything from head to toe. as long as nothing is wrong i plan on enjoying that to the fullest. i just love ultrasounds.

these are obviously ultrasound pictures, and they are so great. but i wish you could see the detail craig and i got to see yesterday, everything is so much clearer on the screen. i wish you could see how big that nose really is. and how much those legs move. and how i'm so sure those hands were being stuffed into that mouth. and how that lighthouse of a heart goes flash, flash, flash. at one point the ultrasound technician needed to take a measurement that wasn't visible at the moment and she tried to get little baby to move by roughly pushing down on my stomach a couple times. that baby flailed, and kicked, and punched at me with such a fury, i have never seen anything so funny in all my life.

are you excited? i'm trying to be. it's hard when i spend so much time worrying instead. i don't want to give this one up. but i'm not in charge, as we can clearly see. but it'll get more and more real between now and December 3rd. can you believe i may be having a baby this year after all?

i think that's a miracle.

p.s. remember how i ran a half marathon the other day? and how it turns out i was almost 12 weeks pregnant at the time? yep, that happened. running is a lot harder when you're hungry and tired and nauseous! thankfully i was only feeling sick for about 3 weeks, mid week 6 to around week 9. this was my very first time with any sort of morning sickness and let me just say...that stuff stinks. i didn't throw up but man, did i want to. now i'm feeling less tired and mostly normal again, thanks to YOU, second trimester, you good looking thing. now i can finally stop trying to hide my chubby tummy and lying to everyone in sight and start enjoying this.

2013 is starting to get awesome.

2 comments:

  1. So so happy for you guys!!! Like so happy!! Can't stop smiling happy! Can't wait to start seeing those preggo pics on Instagram (hint, hint!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. So happy for you guys and your new little blessing. You guys deserve the best.

    ReplyDelete

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