Sugar & Spice

I am thrilled to share that we welcomed a healthy, screaming, beautiful baby girl on Monday, April 16th at 8:41 AM.  She weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces and is perfect.  She has a head full of dark hair like her sister and as I type this, she is resting on my chest and I am pausing to kiss her head every 30 seconds or so.

Is it just me or do newborns smell divine?  There may not be a better scent than that of a newborn baby.

Despite big sister B's requests to call her Latte Shop, Coffee, Stop Sign, and Canopy, we have named her Claire.

My c-section was mercifully uneventful. Unlike when B was born, I walked myself into the OR, got a spinal/epidural combo, had some moments of feeling absolutely terrible and like I was about to pass out, which were fixed by some sort of concoction the anesthesiologist gave me by IV, and then we started.  I was prepared with a Spotify mix called C-Section Tunes that will most certainly go viral (ha), and Claire was born to the song "Show me love" by Robyn, which seems fitting.

Our journey to have babies started almost exactly five years ago.   Since then, I've had five pregnancies, two miscarriages, one stillborn daughter, and two incredible blessings in Baby B and Baby C.  I've been staring out the window at the spring blossoms on the trees remembering spring of 2013 when I thought I'd never have a child... and remembering spring of 2014 when Q had just died and I couldn't fathom feeling happy again... and spring of 2015 when I had B in my arms and was so filled with joy... and spring of 2016 after my first miscarriage when I realized how much I wanted to have another child... and spring of 2017 when we were in Japan and I'd had yet another miscarriage and was doing my best to stay positive, get healthy, and enjoy our travels amidst sadness, disappointment, and even some anger.

And here we are.  Thanks for following along on our journey.

(By the way, it was so fun to be surprised by the gender.  I was convinced we were having a boy and I'll never forget Rob's voice saying "It's a girl!"  More on the actual birth in my next post.)

Sugar & Spice...

and everything nice!

It turns out our little nugget (I'm still working on a nickname) is a little girl!  After asking my doctor's office to mail my results on Friday, I then made my husband call back and ask for them to tell us over the phone.  The office was so confused that they called me to be sure this was okay and just told me on the phone: "The results show that the fetus is female."  So typical of the doctor's office to make the best announcement into something so clinical.

A little girl!

A little sister for L.

And that was when I started crying on the phone.  The poor nurse who called to share the results...

They were tears of joy and tears of sadness.  I am thrilled we are having a girl. I would have been thrilled about having a boy, too, of course, but I'm so very excited.  And I'm also really sad.  I'm sad that we don't already have a daughter that this new little baby could meet.  I worry that this pregnancy is like my last one and that everything is going to go catastrophically wrong after going so well in the beginning.

But mostly, I am just really, really excited.  I imagine what this Christmas will be like as I will likely be induced a few days after Christmas.  And I imagine a New Year's Eve with our new little girl, unlike last year when I was induced and R and I spent the night separately waiting for our stillborn baby to arrive.  I feel guilty about letting myself get excited, but then I love how happy this little baby makes me feel.

This may be the most incoherent post that I've written, but my feelings are pretty jumbled and that my worried about "jinxing" this pregnancy will not go away, no matter how often I tell myself that there is nothing I can do to make things go well other than what the doctors instruct me to do.

And just in case you missed it (and because I love saying/writing it)... a GIRL!

Finding Out Gender after a Loss

With my DOR, if we make it to 12 weeks with this miracle pregnancy, we'll get a Maternit21 test done.  Part of the results include being able to find out the gender of the baby.  With L, we found out she was a girl just after 12 weeks (on my 33rd birthday, in fact).  I didn't care one way or the other before we found out... in fact, when my husband read the card and announced she was a girl, my first thought was "I hope I don't pass along my fertility issues to her."

But after losing L, I have a vision of what our family was going to look like with her in it.  When I think about our family, I think about us having a little girl.  Of course that little girl is L, so any future baby would be different, but the idea is there.  Truly, all I want is a healthy pregnancy and living baby at the end... but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to thinking a lot about the gender of this baby.  How will I feel if it is a boy?  Or if it is a girl? Should I find out early again?  Should we just be surprised if we get to that point?

Has anyone grappled with knowing the gender after a loss?  Any thoughts or advice on finding out vs. waiting?  Ultimately, I know that if I get to hold a living, breathing baby in just over 7 months, I won't care at all.  But in this time period of waiting and over-thinking, I'm seemingly obsessed.  I'd love to hear from anyone who has been through something similar.