Dear Family and Friends,
Zac and I had our anatomy ultrasound last Monday. It’s the big one where the technician checks the baby for defects, anomalies, and takes measurements of all his/her body parts. For those of you who have done one recently, you can understand how nerve wracking it can be. Especially since we didn’t opt for any early testing, seeing our beautiful baby very much healthy and typical was a HUGE relief. He/she got the award for wiggliest baby of the day and while they did eventually see everything they needed to, this baby gave them a run for their money. For myself, who has been feeling super frequent baby kicks for over a month now, it all makes sense. This kid is active!
As you might have gleaned, we don’t know the gender...yet. Being the HUGE planners that we are, we of course want to know. But we are waiting to reveal this baby’s gender at Everett’s birthday party next Saturday. We wanted ourselves and our families to find out together. So a close friend has the envelope with the baby’s “goods” and Everett will open a present, prepared by her, with either pink or blue balloons. It’s going to be awesome! Another reason we chose to wait to find out (we’ve been waiting almost six weeks since our doctor said he knew) was because we really wanted to appreciate that this baby is healthy. Going through our journey with Everett, we learned that gender really isn’t what is important. Health is of utmost concern. We just wanted some extra time to focus on that blessing before getting caught up in everything pink or blue. So what do we think it is? Our money is on blue. My mom and several close friends are feeling pink. Either way, we will be given what we are meant to have...we couldn’t be happier either way. And that’s the honest truth :-)
I am 20 weeks along now and we shall lovingly refer to the next six weeks as the “we are absolutely terrified” part of this pregnancy. In this last week our anxiety levels have skyrocketed. We are entering the period when an incompetent cervix (if that’s the problem) would manifest itself. But so far everything is looking great! We are also getting close to the window of “viability” for this baby. Our local NICU will attempt to resuscitate a baby at 22 weeks gestation per the desires of the parents. At 24 weeks gestation, every baby is given a chance. That window of 22-24 weeks is a timeframe that couldn’t come and go fast enough. We’ve discussed what our plans would be if this baby came that early, but I can’t even imagine having to actually make those decisions. And part of me hates that, given our history, these are conversations we have to have. Yuck!
In addition to our general anxiety, Everett’s birthday is coming up next Thursday. Our little man will be FOUR years old (how did that happen???). Everett’s birthday has always been a day of emotional dichotomy. But newly added is that our miscarriage happened on Everett’s birthday last year. Yup...how’s that for timing? So October 10th was and continues to be a bittersweet day for us. We are hoping this year, the day involves nothing but happy smiles from our little man and a whole lot of cake.
Zac confessed yesterday that he’s been thinking a lot about the NICU. He was in LA for work and anytime we are down there, CHLA seems to call out to us. Zac actually drove there by accident/habit once a year ago on his way to training. He made it into the parking lot before he realized that CHLA wasn’t his intended destination. It’s been on my mind too. While we, of course, prepared ourselves that having another NICU experience might be in our future, I think it is finally sinking in that we really could end up back there. Just typing that makes me nauseous. I told my doctor yesterday that I thought we were more prepared than this. But now that we are in the thick of “possibilities,” it’s all just a little overwhelming. I knew it would be hard to carry another baby, but I never imagined it would be this hard. We are really trying to stay positive...and the vast majority of time we are exceedingly hopeful. But the tight rope between hopeful and realistic can be a hard line to walk.
All this being said, any prayers and good thoughts in the coming weeks are much appreciated by us and our families. We are all stressed (grandparents included) and will be sticking close to home and to each other. We are keeping the hope, faith and love. Life, as always, is good.
With Anticipation,
The Bollinger Family
No comments:
Post a Comment