Ready for a New Beginning!

So 2011 definitely wasn't the year we thought it would turn out to be... actually the complete opposite. I'm more than ready to start a fresh year tomorrow! It's going to be a much better year I hope! ;)

Let's see... in 2011:

January - I ended my in home Pampered Chef business due to our upcoming arrival of "baby" and the fact that it was getting hard to keep active. I also felt the baby move for the first time.

February - We celebrated 8 years of being together and I celebrated my 29th birthday. Then on Valentine's Day Craig was finally able to feel "baby" moving from the outside. And on February 25th we found out that "baby" was a boy, whom we would eventually name Noah!

March - We celebrated my husband's 29th birthday. We also had another ultrasound done to confirm he was a boy and to look for the rest of the things they could find in February due to him being very stubborn and not wanting to cooperate. They also tried to get us 3D pictures but he was again uncooperative and we didn't get great pictures of him.

April - The end of April, I had my baby shower and was overwhelmed by the love and gifts everyone had for us. We were pretty much ready for him to come after that!

May - Parts of May started to get hot and I started to be miserable and a little swollen but all in all, it wasn't a very eventful month either.

June - We celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary and also found out that Noah was weighing approximately 5.5lbs and still had about 4 weeks to go. I thought they were totally wrong because they estimated him to be 5-6lbs when he was born.

July - Of course this was the month that our little angel was due... I just realized I don't think I ever really told his "birth" story on here. I guess I can do that a little bit now even though it's not such a happy one... (feel free to skip "July" if you don't want to know, even though I think all pregnant women should be aware of this condition - see October to find out what really happened and be aware!) I went to the doctor's on July 15th (his due date) and was finally scheduled to be induced the following Friday (July 22nd). But on the morning of Wednesday, July 20th I started having some awful back pain. I thought I was starting labor with the amount of pain I was in. I wasn't really having any steady contractions but I was having a few. This was at 9am and I was at work for my last day before maternity leave. So I called my husband but he was in the middle of something at work and it wasn't an emergency yet. So then I called my mom to come get me. I wasn't even going to attempt to drive at this point. So I went to my mom's house around 10am and the pain just kept getting worse. I knew that day was going to be it... I was going to end up in the hospital at some point that day. I was excited yet very scared! So I called into the doctor's office to tell them what was going on... they told me to walk around for 30 minutes and call back if the contractions didn't go away. Well, like I said, I wasn't having very many and they weren't timeable but I was in tears with pain from my lower back. Then my water broke so I called them back again and told them. (By this time, my husband finally came from work). So we headed to the doctor's office to be checked... I was 4cm dialated... definitely in labor at that point. So by about 11:30 I was in labor and delivery. They started hooking me up and getting ready to do a c-section (I think) at this point. Then the worst words that will ring forever in my mind were spoken by the doctor... "There's no heartbeat". I started crying even more then about 5 minutes later, I was being put under due to all the stress in my body. The doctor just knew something wasn't right so I was put under right away. I guess there was a point that the doctor knew my life was in jepordy as well, which is very scary to think back on. So Noah was stillborn (or born sleeping as a lot of people refer to it) at 1:45pm weighing 7lbs 3oz and was 20.5 inches long. Very normal size baby compared to his mommy and daddy when they were born. :) And from there I don't remember much about the next couple days of being in ICU. I do remember that when I finally came around, my first words to my husband were "he didn't make it did he?" He just shook his head. I also remember being weighed and weighing 50 lbs MORE than my original weight... I only gained 23 lbs while I was pregnant! I also remember that about 2am they came and asked me if I wanted to hold Noah. I did but don't remember a whole lot of it. We also had him baptised on Thursday, July 21st. A good friend of ours (who also married Craig and I and does all of the funerals in our family) came and did it for us. Everyone got to hold him again that day. Thinking back on it, I realize I (the mother) held him the least. Everyone else got to hold him and such while I was in surgery and they were trying to get me to wake up. I also remember not being able to move or get out of bed. I was in bed and had no food for 6 days... that was the worst part.

Then on Wednesday, July 28th we were scheduled to have our "special" dinner that the hospital does for new parents and then I was to finally leave the hospital when about 2 hours before, my c-section incision decided to reopen due to a blood clot which is partly what caused everything to happen with Noah. So I ended up having to get that taken care of before dinner and then was rescheduled to leave the hospital the next morning. So on Thursday we headed to the wound center at 8am to try this new vacuum that was supposed to close my incision really quickly. It was such a pain to do but it was so much less painful and easier on me.

So then on Saturday, July 30th we finally had Noah's funeral... the hardest day of my life by far. Never in my life did I think the first thing I would do as a parent was bury my child.

August - I spent a couple weeks staying with my mom because I was unable to move or do anything for myself... and when I say anything, I mean EVERYTHING! Like showering or going to the bathroom or just simply sitting on a chair. I couldn't do anything without help. My brother also came home on leave from the military which was nice. He was so scared and ready pay a couple thousand dollars to come home early when he found out I was in the hospital and that we lost Noah. So it was nice to be off work while he was home but it wasn't the situation I had in mind. He was so excited to meet his nephew. I also got my wound vac off and my incision was healed in about 5 weeks! The old way of closing an incision usually took 3-4 months! We were amazed and I was finally getting to where I could do things for myself again.

September - My brother left for his next base... Japan. And on September 15th I finally went back to work after 7 weeks off. It was such a hard thing to do but I was more than ready. I was tired of being home by myself all day. I also had a few doctor appointments with the doctor that did my c-section. She told me more details about my delivery day. It's so scary to think that something like that could happen in such a happy and exciting situation. She said that it took them hours (which is NOT normal) to get me to come to after surgery. I just wouldn't wake back up. Then while she was stitching me back up, she said that all my "numbers" dropped so she had to quickly get me closed up the best she could or I wasn't going to make it. I was losing major blood quickly. Very scary to think about!

October - We went to Hershey to see a specialist. We wanted to get a second opinion on everything that happened. It was the BEST thing we've ever done! They originally told me that I had HELLPS (hemolytic anemia, elevated liver enzymes and low platelet count) basically is a very serious and undetected form of pre-eclampsia. Come to find out from my sister-in-law that it's about a 0.2%-0.6% chance of this happening! Well, after learning more about it since I thought that's what I had for the last 3 months, there's a 25% chance of this happening in all other pregnancies I would have. VERY scary! They would also be taking all other babies at about 36 weeks to try to avoid this. After seeing the speicalist, we were relieved to find out that it was a placenta abruption due to a common infection in most pregnant women plus a blood clot that pushed the placenta away from Noah. He said that a lot of pregnant women get an infection due to being "open" (dialated) for so long. It is very common and typically is not harmful and goes away after the baby is born. He came to that conclusion based on a few things. First off, there are 2 symptons of HELLPS - High blood pressure and protein in urine - I had neither of these at all. Plus the signs for pre-eclampsia which I didn't have either. Plus he said that Noah was a good size baby especially for someone my size. He said typically the baby won't grow normally the last month or 2 of the pregnancy. So the odds of what happened happen was 1% chance... still a VERY slim chance. He said that it's very unlikely that it will happen again because my chances of this happening do NOT go up and the next pregnancy would be a fresh start. VERY reassuring to us! My doctor also told me that I would still be watched a lot closer and go more often the last 2 months or so. She's not fully convinced of his findings but I read more about HELLPS and I had NOTHING that they described so I'm with the specialist that it wasn't that. So he just said to wait 6 months to start trying again.

I also started my Tastefully Simple business and got a job working at Hickory Farms in the mall for the holidays. I was trying to get through the holidays by keeping busy. It worked for the most part.

November - Nothing too eventful there. November 9th was the day last year that we found out we were expecting so that was kind of a hard day for me. We also started really thinking about trying again. We didn't think we'd start trying again until Spring or Summer but I think we've decided to start in January when I was told it was ok to do so. Also the pharmacy started messing up my perscription so we decided I would just go off of it the end of November when I was done. They did this 2 months in a row... not sure how hard it is to take a pack of pills, slap a sticker on it and put it in a bag (I watched them do it when I went to pick it up 2 days AFTER it was to be done).

December - This was the 2nd hardest time of the year with it being Christmas. We were so excited to have him this Christmas espeically since we told our parents that we were expecting on Christmas day last year.

We didn't celebrate any weddings in 2011 but we did have some babies born to friends and family. Of course, it's still hard to be happy for them even though I truly am! It's just hard to see and hear about newborns. Toddlers... we're ok with them though! :)

So here's to a new start and (hopefully) a GREAT year with an addition to the family... FINALLY! At least I'm hoping and praying for a great pregnancy like last time but a MUCH better outcome. Who would have thought, I'd go through the greatest pregnancy known to man, just to have my world come crashing down at the end???

COME ON 2012!! Treat us better than 2011!