Thank you all for the well wishes and congratulations on my last post about baby #2!

We’re definitely excited.  My first doctor’s appointment isn’t until October 6, so I don’t have an official due date yet.  Sometime next May seems to be a good guesstimate though, as we first learned about the pregnancy with Jack-Evan in early September as well (2007).  My LMP this time was in early August (it was July 31 with Jack).  So the timing is exactly the same from what I can tell.

By the time this baby arrives, Jack-Evan will be 24 months old.  Two years feel like a perfect age gap for siblings!  It’s what we’ve always wanted for our kids, although we’ve never “planned” it that way.  We just let what happens, happen.  So far, it’s happening nicely.

How it happened?  (Oh no, not that!)   What I mean, see, we left for Upstate New York on Sept. 9 for a week visit with my husband’s family.  I knew then that I was *almost* late, and I had the strange feeling that I might be pregnant.  I let Kevin in on it a day or so before we returned to South Carolina.  Well, *it* never came, and by the time we finished the 20 hour car trip back home on Tuesday, Sept. 15, we were so anxious that Kevin headed to Walgreens that night to pick up a pregnancy test (at 9:30 nonetheless!  Bless his heart!).

Well, Kevin started some popcorn whilst I took the test (with Jack-Evan playing at my feet, of course.  No privacy for poor Mommy.)

One blue line appeared immediately, but the next line didn’t show up.  My heart sunk.  (Kerplunk).  Oh well.  Not pregnant, I thought. No big deal, right? (Wrong, I was devastated)

I put the test down, stood up, sighed, casually picked up the box and noticed that the line that had appeared immediately was the “yes, my dear, you definitely are pregnant” line.  I grabbed the test, and ‘shore nuff, the 2nd “control” line was now coming in strong.

I seriously started shaking.  I mean, 23 seconds ago I was disappointed that I wasn’t pregnant.  Now that I WAS, here I am, shaking in fear like a leaf in October.  I yelled out to Kevin, “Are you watching wrestling???” (a throw back to what he was doing the night I told him about the pregnancy with our #1,  Jack-Evan).  He said, “Ummm…nooo.” Then he ran into the bathroom and asked “Why???”.  I silently showed him the test.  Of course his next words were “Are you sure?!”   Then he started sniffling his nice, sweet man-tears.  He was crying and I was scared to death.

He was far more excited than I was at that moment.  And I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate anything I was feeling to him.

I’m not sure why fear gripped me so hard during those few seconds.  I suppose it was the shock.  Well, “shock” not in a sense that I wasn’t expecting the outcome (I was and had thought so for a week), but “shock” as in “Wow, this IS reality and my life is about to change yet again.”  The deep fear, I suppose, may have also come from the fact that since this is my 2nd time around, I KNOW all of the pain I will endure and the trials.  My fears during pregnancy #1 were mainly shadow fears, the kind where I was so new at it that once something happened, it was over and done with. I could easily pass off all of those fears as pretty much “unfounded” for the most part.  But now, I DO know how terrible contractions & labor & crowning feels.  I DO know how my body may be reacting throughout this pregnancy.  And now I have 8 months in which to anticipate everything I KNOW will happen.  Tiredness, numerous needle pokes, mind-numbing doctor visits, and excrutiating pain – it’s all very real, and the memories of my last pregnancy woes all came crashing down on my harder than a kamikaze fighter.

Also, the thought of change was part of it too.  Here we are, settled into our routines.  Jack-Evan is my little star, my main squeeze, my little hambone that makes me laugh during the quieter moments when he’s not erupting into one of his famous temper tantrums.  He’s my little poopie head, you know.  My “Tooter” (as we usually call him! He answers to that better than “Jack”!).  Having another child is not just something that is a part of mine and Kevin’s life – it will also change Jack’s life forever.  Our decision to expand our family will impact him, and he doesn’t even know it yet.  His life will change.  Our lives will change.  Routines will change.  We will have to yet again find a new “normal”.

So anyway, the reaction I had that night was so deep that Kevin even half-jokingly accused me of not being excited and happy.  Perhaps it was the look of blatant fear in my eyes? Or maybe it was because I wasn’t joining him in the happy dance he was doing with Jack-Evan.  I was just standing there, frozen, with a bajillion thoughts erupting in my mind.  Of course I was excited…. in my head.  In my head, I desparately wanted another child.  Being an “only child” (and hating it my whole life!), my highest goal in family planning was to have at least 4 children.  But my logical thoughts and dreams for the future took backseat to the terribly deep feelings of dread that my body dived into that night.   It was just pure, raw emotion that swept over me.  I would have never ever expected to feel that way!  And I’m almost ashamed to admit it for fear that I would be perceived as a terrible mother!  I mean, only mothers who hate children and never want more, feel their hearts sink to China upon learning of another pregnancy…..right?  Well, at least that’s what I’ve always figured.  But nonetheless, that’s what happened to me.  I mean, I know the flip side of pregnancy too – the outcome, the beautiful baby awaiting me in the end, the joyous feelings of seeing new life arrive.  So how can I explain my primortal reaction?  I can’t.

In the week since learning of the new baby though, those initial feelings have subsided, and have been replaced by the typical excitement that washes over expectant moms.  I’ve once again found myself stopping on TLC when I catch a sniff of “A Baby Story” wafting by the airwaves.  And once again, I found my buggy pulling me haphazardly towards the pretty pink (or blue?) baby outfits that are just oooohhh so darling.   I’ve also been cleaning like mad the past few days!  Just today I shipped 4 big bags full of stuff to the Goodwill.  We’re clearning out our guest room (more like “junk” room!) to make way for either a nursery for a girl or a play room for Jack (if we have another boy).

As for prenatal care this time…..  With my 1st pregnancy, I was quite naive.  Back then, I started out the 9 month journey with the assumption that doctors knew best.  I ended with the knowledge that if you do not take control of your own pregnancy, things can (and will) turn out quite unpleasant.  So this time around, I have decided to utilize our state’s only natural “birthing center” and a midwife.  (My unpleasant experiences with prenatal care during my 1st pregnancy will probably come out in future posts, so I’ll save my ranting and raving for then.)  I’m not sure yet if I want to go with natural / waterbirth (something the center offers) or epidural at the hospital next door with this one yet, but at least I’ll have the option of what I want to do.  This time I KNOW I will be “in control”.  And that means a lot to me – expecially after having the doctor try to force pitocin into me to speed up labor at 8 CM dialated – when I did NOT need it.

Anyway, thanks again for all the well wishes!  It’s great to see I still have some loyal reader friends here.  I must be going now though.  I’m quite nauseated and dizzy….. unlike my 1st pregnancy (where the sickness totally passed me by), I have experienced morning-sickness-at-night for the past 2 weeks!  Tonight seems to be the worst.  Guess that’s what I get for staying up after midnight though, I suppose.

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Have I mentioned before that my practitioners are female?  At the OB office, I have 2 regular female doctors and then there’s “The Big Guy” as I think of him.  Dr. Reynolds.  He always seemed mysterious (probably because I never met him) and the only thing I knew about him was that he would be delivering my son! 

So…I was excited when I learned I would be meeting with him during my 4th visit. 

What wasn’t so exciting was what happened to me just a few days before my appointment.   We were at church the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving and before my appointment that week when I suddenly became very faintheaded during worship singing.  I sat down quickly to try to overcome the “spell” I knew was coming on but it didn’t help.   Within 30 seconds I started losing my hearing and my vision, I felt nauseated, and also lightheaded.   I was on the verge of passing out!   I went as quick as I could to the back hallways of the church. 

Luckily I didn’t go completely out, but it really scared me.  I’ve had “spells” like those before a few times in my life but not without a known trigger (smelling blood, getting too hot, etc.).  This time it seemed like it came from nowhere.

Well – at my appointment a few days later you can be sure I had a lot going on my mind.  Unfortunately, it was discovered during my routine blood pressure check that I didn’t have a lot going on in my BLOOD though!   My blood pressure that day was 70 over 50.   Doctor Reynolds (during our meeting!) laughed when he first looked at my chart and said that wasn’t enough to keep me from passing out.   As you can imagine, I immediately launched into my experience the previous Sunday.  

He calmed my fears somewhat by saying that low blood pressure in my case was a sign of a good, very strong connection between me and the baby.  It’s just that sometimes the mother’s body is working so hard to take care of the baby that when confronted with the choice of traveling to the tip top of the mom’s head versus traveling a few inches over to the baby, it will more than likely choose the baby in those instances (and, thus, that’s when I pass out).  He concluded that a combination of loss of fluids (I had diahrrea bad that week…eww) and low blood pressure is what made me pass out – and so I was taken off of my prenatals for a few days and instructed to get as much liquids in me as possible and get all “dried out” again.

His final warning for me was to be careful driving places alone (in case another spell comes on)….

…and to keep my head away from church pews….just in case. 

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