Needed an advent
Little doors counting down days
Dispensing candy
Today Ike-a-saurus is 40 weeks! He's made it to term! 6lbs 5oz, 17 inches. He's still on the midgety side of things, but lord o lord how he's grown!
A recap for those with the 1001 Things That Can Go Wrong With Your Pregnancy bingo cards:
Early march, 2008: WHAT?! PREGNANT?! Call bff in state of shock, catch her on her way to Target, keep her on her phone for 45 minutes while she sits in her car. Go through rapid-cycling stages of denial and acceptance
April, 2008: make it past first trimester only to start bleeding. Everywhere. It stops after a morning. Subchorionic hemorrhage discovered. Partial bedrest of the "don't do anything crazy" variety is imposed.
May, 2008: a hell of a lot more bleeding, trip to ER. Stupid blood clot. Partial bedrest continues.
June, 2008: bleeding never really stops. Baby is fine, though he has a single umbilical artery and we worry about it. Go see a perinatologist, he says all is well, other than the fucking clot (not his exact words).
July, 2008: make it to 20 weeks – July 1st – then, water breaks. Or does it? Go to L&D repeated times, see my doctor repeated times, tests are negative for amniotic fluid, fluid level is OK. And then suddenly it's not. But tests are still negative. WTF? Use highly technical Dixie cup to catch next gush, bring it in to doctor… Positive.
Freak out.
See perinatologist. He recommends termination. He says I will get septic, the baby won't properly develop lungs. If I make it another two weeks – which he assures me there's less than a 10% chance of – I could be putting my life at risk and selfishly gestating a baby that will die in or out of my womb.
Go on complete bed rest at home.
Freak out. A lot. A lot a lot.
Decide that doctor has a not great bedside manner. Decide not to get septic or terminate.
Sit in bed and cry.
Worry a lot.
Take shitloads of abx and tocolytics.
Cry.
Watch beverly hills 90210.
Cry, but this time because brenda wore those awful suspenders.
Start bleeding again, along with gushing amniotic fluid, go to hospital at 23 weeks, 6 days.
Admitted for the duration of the pregnancy.
August, 2008: complete bed rest in hospital. Baby is transverse breech, but doing pretty well.
Contractions start big time.
Lots of terbutaline shots, steroid shots, one shot of stadol on a bad day, shots shots shots.
36 days of shots later… Isaac is born! 28 weeks, 2 days gestation. He is 2lbs 5oz and 12 inches long. He is tiny. Really, really tiny. But he's only on the ventilator for 24 hours. Only on CPAP another 24. Then it's nasal canula all the way.
His lungs DID grow.
He DID get born.
September, 2008: NICU nicu NICU. Bradys, desats, apneas, PICC line, learning how to eat, how to poop… how to be a mommy in two places at once
October, 2008: more learning to eat and poop. So much driving back and forth to the NICU. So much pumping.
10/20: he comes home at exactly 8 weeks old, 36 weeks gestation.
November, 2008: we learn how to be a family again.
Today is his due date. Today is when everything was supposed to start. Instead, it all ends and THEN it starts. Today he is officially a newborn. Today I am not supposed to be pregnant.
Today.
I never thought it would come.
40 weeks.
Today.
It's here. At last.