Ella Grace...part 1

I left off of my last post with getting our latest pregnancy test. Like I said, I think that Ella Grace needs her own post so I am going to catch up on the last 6 months...what A and I have been calling our “New Normal”

The timing of a pregnancy was not good. A had lost his job only a month before and money was tight and we were tense. Things hadn’t been going great in our relationship due to all of the stress of him being jobless. As the magnitude of another positive test sunk in I got more and more scared, but more and more excited. A wanted us to keep the pregnancy to ourselves for as long as possible because of our previous losses, but I was determined that THIS was our time. I just knew that God has a sense of humor and that because we weren’t trying and were BROKE, this baby was going to stick. I also felt strongly that I wanted to celebrate every single day of this baby’s life. If nothing went wrong then I wanted to know that I spent the first 12 weeks celebrating with our families and not being scared. I was sick of letting fear control my life. On the other hand, if something did go wrong then I wanted us to have our support system. We told everyone and of course everyone was excited. A little nervous and a lot surprised, but excited!

At our first appointment everything looked great. We had a heartbeat and there was no reason to think anything was wrong. Second appointment went the same. She had a heart rate in the 160s and was growing right on schedule. As we surpassed the 12 week mark and made it into our second trimester I was more confident in this journey. I had read all the stats and all the books and I knew that our chances of losing this baby after seeing her heartbeat decreased and after making it to the second trimester they decreased even more. My doctor was confident and I was starting to really feel like I was going to be a Mommy!!!

Our EDD (estimated due date) was 07/14/10, the day before my 27th birthday. This due date seemed so relevant. In 08 when we were trying to get pg I was convinced that I needed to have a baby before I was 25…our second loss (NuNu) was due the day after my 26th birthday. Once again I felt it was God’s sense of humor and way of telling me that it was all going to be in His timing, not mine. So the fact that Ella Grace was due before my 27th birthday seemed to be Him telling me the same thing.

Ella Grace is the first grandchild on both sides and there was much debate about her being a girl or a boy! My MIL is the youngest of 5 and she has 4 older brothers. A has a younger brother. I have one sister (Ninny Boo), but my aunt has 6 grandsons! Everyone felt pretty certain that she was going to be a boy, but most everyone was HOPING for a girl. Since there was so much allure surrounding the gender of this baby I decided we would hold a “Gender Reveal Party” (or a “Sex Party” as my more fun friends like to call it). I invited about 30 of our closest friends and family to my parents house on the day of the “Big” ultrasound. Our plan was to have the U/S tech write the gender on a piece of paper and seal it in an envelope. My precious friend, Sara, was going to open the envelope and bake a cake dyed either pink or blue then ice it in white. At the big party A and I were going to cut the cake and we were all going to find out together. At the time it seemed like such a great idea.

I was so nervous about the u/s. After our previous losses every doctor’s appointment held the potential to be devastating so I would dread it. I cried the night before the appointment and told A about my fears. We talked about the fact that it wouldn’t matter in the least if there was something “wrong” with the baby. We would love it and raise it and our lives would be blessed by this child regardless. Our appointment was first thing in the morning and it is a day I will never forget. We got right in with the tech and went on to tell her about our plans for the party that night. She was the same tech who had diagnosed our blighted ovum and was genuinely happy that we had made it back to her with another baby. She thought the party was an excellent idea and couldn’t wait to be a part of it.

I lay on the table and as soon as she put the wand on my stomach she knew. She put her hand on mine as I lay there staring at the screen and said words that I will never forget, “Guys, we have a problem. There is no heartbeat.” My whole world crashed. She got the doctor and had him come in to verify and of course he agreed with her. He continued to explain that our baby had “cystic hygromas” around her neck and that he suspected something along the lines of Turner’s syndrome. I don’t think I really remember anything he said except that we would have to deliver this baby…soon. All that I could think is that I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have my bag packed and we hadn’t done any birthing classes. I wasn’t ready to deliver a baby. I still had 19 weeks before I had to really do that. He scheduled the induction for the next day and we were to be at the hospital at 6 a.m.

We left his office and got to the parking garage where I completely fell apart. I called my mom and told her, “Mom, we lost the baby.” She was so confused and was anticipating such good news. I asked her if we could just go to her house. A called his family and we all met at my parent’s house to cry. A was so strong and did his best to explain to everyone what we had learned. They were all devastated by the news that their grandbaby was gone and their hearts were broken for us that we would have to deliver this baby that we could not take home.

The next hours are a haze. I remember sitting at my parent’s house staring at the window and crying intermittently. I recall church members and friends coming to visit us and offer their support (I didn’t even understand how they all knew, but A had been so strong and had made all of those terribly hard calls for us). I remember talking to A and my in-laws trying to make the decision if we would actually bury the baby and hold a service. I remember thinking that my life was going to be forever changed by this baby, but not in the way we had hoped!

This is getting long so I will stop for now and tell the story of how we met Ella Grace later.