Continuing my pregnancy.

My pregnancy continued beautifully! I let some of my closest patients know and while Jen did a great job at not telling or discussing my pregnancy with the ladies is the office she slipped a few times with several patients who I wasn't particularly interrested in sharing with.

I remember when I was pregnant with my son. It was an easy, beautiful pregnancy. I never had morning sickness. I mean, I guess it wasn't that amazing that I gained about 60 pounds but I felt great. I thought I looked great but jeez! Looking at some of the pictures from that time I looked so rough. This pregnancy, I knew would be great and a breeze. Everytime I saw my doctor and they asked how I was my response was always my best one-liner "I'm fantastic! I handle pregnancy like a horse." I thought it was hilarious and we would all have a laugh. Thing went really well.

One morning around 9 or 10 weeks, I don't really remember, I woke up and went pee as usual but when I wiped I noticed some light brown discharge. Around 5-7 wees along in my son's pregnancyI had some brown and light pink spotting that scared me but this time I just figured that as long as it wasn't dark pink or red it was no biggie. It continued almost daily until 13 or 14 weeks. I remember telling my temporary OB about it and she said it was probably implantation bleeding or bleeding from the placenta taking over for the yolk sack. I didn't really believer her. I thought it was from my prenatal vitamin because I was taking some vegan, all natural prenatal so I switched to an all-in-one DHA and prenatal and 4 days after, the spotting stopped. I moved on and continued to enjoy my pregnancy.

I remember at my 12 week scan hubs and I took our son with us to the actual ultrasound. I wanted so bad for Noah to be part of this experience and see his baby sibling from the beginning. I wanted him to anticipate and love this baby just like I did! He wasn't interrested. Everything in the ultrasound looked great. Always. Our baby was a cute, stubborn little thing. At the end of the ultrasound our tech even switched over to 3-d and as soon as the image cleared I hollered "look it's baby spiderman!" For me that just congirmed it was a boy. I mean how many girl spiderman's, spidermen?? do you know? From that moment Noah referred to the baby as baby spiderman. At the 12 week ultrasound we also learned that I had an anterior placenta. It really doesn't make much of a difference, I suppose but I hated it. I couldn't feel my baby move and didn;t really have much hope in feeling the baby move until I was over 20 weeks. I still knew my baby was in there and I loved every minute of it!

My pregnancy kept trucking along. My belly started to poke out above my belly button and I thought itwas a little high just because I carried low when I was pregnant with my son. It didn't bother me I just loved rubbing my belly! Around 17 weeks we went for a gender screen and SURPRISE!!! It's a girl! I was so shocked.  I had been pretty sure that I was carrying another sweet boy. I was so shocked, in fact, I told our amazing sonographer to please check again. Our baby girl was stubborn but after about 15 minutes we got the shot we were looking for! Wow!! A baby girl. I started thinking dresses, bows, glitter, cloth diapers, girl baby legs!! Wow. Could I really be having a girl? Once I knew, I decided that I had a new secret. I swore the hubs to keep it and I basked in my baby girl glory!

I had so many hopes, dreams and fantasies about what life was going ot be like with my baby girl. I knew, before I was pregnant, that she would be Clara Lynne. I talked to her all the time. I rubbed my belly. I loved to look at my belly first thing in the morning. I would roll over onto my back and look at the lump. She was usually on the left side of my belly. A squishy ball that would slowly move and shift into more of a flat squishy baby bump. Of course I couldn't feel much of anything because of the placental position but I knew she was in there and she was doing well. "For this child I prayed" 1Samuel 1:27.

All of my happiness and joy was teetering on the edge of something bigger than myself. I never felt the calm before the storm. I sat like a duck in open waters, completely oblivious to the storm that was coming. . .