27 wks 4 days- Lucy

As I mentioned yesterday, we do have one "baby" already. Our Lucy-girl is a 9 year old black lab.

The thing about Lucy is, she is very unique/odd. She lets me dress her up, put things on her head, and take millions of pictures of her in humiliating situations. Some of my favorite Lucy pics are included below. 

When we were admitted to the hospital for my cerclage, our friends Rocco and Laura had to go to the house and pick up Lucy to dogsit indefinitely. When we got home from the hospital we thought about sending her to my parents house in northern WI. When it came down to the time she would leave us, we got too sad and kept her with us. After all, she LOVES lying on the couch all day :)

However, after our second hospitalization (I will fill you in on that soon) and therefore second pick up by Laura for indefinite dogsitting, we decided it was time to send her to her dog-grandparent's house...where she remains.

She loves to read

She REALLY LOVES her polar bear

She loves to whitewater canoe, just like us.

Halloween 2013, she was a big-horned sheep

She is (obviously) the captain of the floatie, Sean is the deckhand

This is literally just a teaser of the cuteness and craziness that ensues with Lucy around. I haven't even begun the stories of her furniture rearranging. I will save that for another time though. Basically, we just miss her so much through all of this, even though she is having a ball and being spoiled rotten. 

I was informed that her new bed wasn't soft enough, so my dad put another dog bed beneath it! She gets to run rampant in the woods and play/put up with my parents dogs all day long. I'm sure she is getting lots of snuggles and love, but I am excited to have her back here with us in a few months.

27 wks 3 days

Sean is taking prerequisite classes for Pharmacy school, so on Monday and Wednesday night he doesn't get home until 10 pm. This semester he is taking Botany, which sounds fun to me. He looked at potato cells under a microscope. I am hoping he will learn how to grow awesome things in our garden this summer. My mother-in-law said that's not what you learn in Botany...but I'm still hopeful.

When he got home from class last night he declared he thinks he has a cold. I have become quite the germa-phobe (as well as hate seeing Sean sick :)... I guess) so I was like DRINK WATER. STAY AWAY. etc. He drank a huge mug with double teabags of echinacea tea, took a swig of Nyquil and we went to bed early. This morning he feels pretty good so maybe it was a fluke.

Last night Sarah and Dave got here after we went to bed. We woke to smiling faces and a fridge full of local, organic produce. Dave is a COO for a local food distribution company for Chicago grocery stores and restaurants called Local Foods www.localfoods.com. Sometimes just being with them makes me feel healthier! Dave and Sean went off to work and Sarah logged on to her computer to work from home. Sarah is an education researcher at the University of Chicago, and lucky for me, she can work from home sometimes.

Dave and Sarah

Tracy Watson came for a little visit too. It is always a whirlwind with that crazy, wonderful woman. She is a ball of positive energy that I am lucky to get wrapped up in every couple of months! A handsome Doctor joined her household this summer and I loved hearing about their adventures.

Tracy and Doctor Watson

Another exciting thing that happened today...the carseat came! My aunt and uncle gave it to us. It's funny how excited I have become over all these baby things; carseats and rocking chairs and cloth diapers, oh my! Getting baby gifts makes this feel more real. It reminds me that there really is a baby growing inside me and he is going to survive.

Speaking of Baby Moore...last night I was lying on the couch (surprise, surprise) and all of a sudden this appendage sticks up out of my abdomen. I think it was a hand, but whatever it was, it was the end of something. I pushed down and could almost grab around it. It was the craziest feeling to think I was almost holding my little boys hand. 

Nausea, heartburn, bed rest and fatness aside, being pregnant is as fun and magical as I thought it would be. A little person is growing and developing beneath the drape of my skin and someday he will suddenly be part of our lives... forever. I like to think about how in a short time I will be cheering him on as he takes his first steps and tells his first jokes ;), in a few years I will be sad to send him off to preschool, in 15 years we will start teaching him how to drive, and someday his wife will be pregnant with his own child. My corny-story meter is alarming right now, but basically the circle of life certainly blows my mind.

27 wks 2 days- Friends

My pregnant friend Pam came over today to plan our other pregnant friend Babs' baby shower. It is fun to plan everything. We are choosing to get on this early since both Pam and I are due in April and the shower is mid-May. It is so weird to not have any idea how old my baby will be when the shower happens. With every day that we get farther into this pregnancy, I become more confident that we will make it to term. Sometimes I get jealous of other pregnant women who take their health for granted, assuming they will deliver on their due date or later. That being said, it has been so much fun to be pregnant at the same time as so many of my friends.

Here is a pic of my college buddy Jana and I when she came to visit last week. We even had matching sweatshirts on!

Although staying in bed/on the couch is hard to stick to and boring, I have had so many visitors, which breaks up the day very nicely. A friend set up a visit sign up sheet online which has been helpful since a lot of people want to bring food, and this way it is split into one or two meals a week. I never was the cook anyways (lucky me!) but with all of the extra chores and responsibilities Sean has, it has been nice for him to not have to worry about cooking on top of that. Our families have been visiting a lot too. Sean's mom is the cleaning fairy and will scrub down the entire house whenever we request help. My family is VERY adult ADHD, so they have done a bunch of house projects. My mom even painted an arctic mural in the nursery (pictures of that to come!) 

Me, my brother Sam and my parent's dog Tater Tot

Ever since my readmission for contractions at 23 weeks, we have had to regulate how many visitors come so it doesn't get overwhelming...a problem we are lucky to have! Sean and I are both very social and people-pleasers so we have a really hard time telling people that we need a break from visitors, but we are starting to get better at it. It makes it easier that it is for the baby, and we just have to do whatever we have to do to keep him in and my cervix on lock down :)

Our good friends Sarah and Dave are coming tonight from Chicago and staying through the weekend. Sarah and I went on a 55-day canoe trip up to northern Canada about 10 years ago. Dave and Sean have been friends even longer. We all worked at summer camp together too, so the 4 of us are "thick as thieves" as Sean likes to say. We even have matching black labs! 

Lucy (our baby) and Luna (Sarah and Dave's)

27 wks 1 day...Looking back at week 20

Today marks 27 weeks, 1 day pregnant. Most pregnant women at this point feel like their pregnancy is starting to be real. Registries are started and signing up for birthing classes is on the agenda. Dads to be begin to do more work around the house, perhaps?

For my husband Sean and I, this is a time we only dreamed we would make it to. We are so lucky to still be pregnant right now and keep praying to whoever will listen for just one more day of Baby Cooking. My "Dad-to-be" has been doing everything around the house for the past 7 weeks. 

Our story starts way before all of this craziness began, and we all know I love to digress, but this chapter of our lives, known as Operation Keep Baby Moore in Utero (O.K.B.M.I.O.) began at exactly 20 weeks. 

After working all weekend in the NICU, Sean and I went in first thing Monday morning for our 20 week ultrasound. We already knew our baby is a boy, but were so excited to see how big he was. I was particularly nervous about finding things wrong with him, however I felt pretty good about this appt and had been excited all weekend.

The ultrasound tech brought us in the dark room and began measuring. Everything looked great and she kept explaining what she was measuring and why he was perfect. He was big- (13 oz), his spine looked great and he even swallowed while we were watching him, so we saw the amniotic fluid pass down his throat. then...he sucked his thumb! He is truly adorable, all 13 oz of him! The tech then left the room to get Dr. D. 

The Dr. looked at the pictures, complimented his good looks ;) then said, "Hmm, I see what you mean." (Insert record-screeching sound here) I knew this was bad, WHAT do you mean??? She looked at me and said, "It looks like your cervix is open. I need to do an exam with the speculum to see how bad it is." Bile rose up my throat as I took my pants off and sat under the sterile white sheet, my stomach still sticky from u/s lube. I looked at Sean through burning eyes (no tears yet) and said, "This is not good. Its way too early." He knew already though.

The Dr. returned and inserted the speculum. A quick look was enough to diagnose the problem, "Can I show Sean," she asked. Sean looked and saw not only my open cervix, but bulging bag of amniotic fluid hanging through. She closed my legs back up and looked at me with that death/sympathy look and explained that this is pretty much the end of the road. We would TRY to put a cerclage (pursestring stitches in the cervix) in, but there wasn't much hope, it is very bad. I felt in shock. I was so angry and maybe sad, I couldn't believe after all we've been through that this was IT. The worst part was that our baby boy was perfect, growing, developing and kicking, but we were still going to lose him. Sean's reaction was to hyperventilate when he heard the news. He started to faint as the u/s tech and doctor grabbed him and put him on the exam table, pushing me into the corner, sheet wrapped around my waist. He came to and they brought us to another exam room to speak with Dr. S., who would do our surgery. As I walked away with the nurse, I turned to look at Dr. D, and she was nodding her head at the tech, the unmistakable look of being sorry to see a family lose a baby. 

In the exam room, Dr. S. gave us the rundown for the day and told us there was a 50% chance he would break my water during the surgery, and even less chance of getting the stitches in, but he was going to do his absolute best. He called this his "Hail Mary Pass," but it gave us a ray of hope at least. I would be under general anesthesia so I wouldn't make any movements, the rest of the day I would be in trendelenburg position (head below feet lying in bed) with a catheter and iv in all day in my antepartum room. I would get 48 hours of both antibiotics to prevent the amniotic fluid from becoming infected and Indomethacin to relax my uterus and prevent contractions. My sister-in-law Clare stopped by our house to pick up some necessities and came to sit with us and wait. A chaplain came in and offered to give the baby a blessing, to which we said, "Well, that can't hurt. We would appreciate it!" She laid her hands on my belly and said a prayer for our little guy. 

About 8 hours later, they were ready to take me to surgery. Sean and Clare came with me all the way to the Operating Room. Saying goodbye was hard, I tried to be strong, but tears were streaming down my face as they wheeled me into the freezing cold room. I prayed every moment that this would work, but knew that this may be the end for our little boy. My water could be broken and it's just too early for him to survive. I was so glad that Clare was with Sean, as he was probably more upset than I was, and he wasn't getting sedated in the next couple of minutes. As the anesthesia was being pushed into my iv I laid still, waiting for the meds to take over, and the nurse came to me, looked me in the eyes and held my hand. It was a tiny act of kindness, but I will never forget that. 

I came to in the recovery room as people bustled around me. Dr. S. came in to tell me how things went, and he said he initially didn't think he'd be able to get the stitch but drained 1.5 L of fluid off of me and "shook my cervix like a knapsack!" My amniotic sac slipped back into my uterus and he was able to carefully place not one but two stitches! Sean said when he told him the news he looked like he had just won the super bowl. Several people we have run into since that night that were in the room for the procedure have told us how lucky we are that it worked as well as it did. Believe me, we are thankful. 

So that was day one...and now we are 7 weeks further along! Sean told Dr. S. the other day that we are getting greedy now and just want more and more time. 

He smiled and responded, "Me too."