Photos of Skyla :)

Hope this makes up for keeping you all waiting so long!!!


trying link again
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2128728941

So sorry for tthe suspense!!!

We just got home a couple of hours ago. Skyla was born Easter Monday night at 11:04 pm after a 30 hour induction (25 hours of labor) and was eventually born by c-section.

She is beautiful and perfect. She weighed 8lbs 3oz, 19 1/4 inches long and is an absolute angel who looks just like her mama!!!

More details and photos coming later.

So much can change in a year (Forgive me for rambling)

Last year on this day (Stella's due date). I was living in Arizona. Far from all my friends and family (except for Charles and Chip) and felt so isolated and alone. I spent the whole day in bed crying. I had so hoped to be pregnant again by her due date, but it just wasn't happening. I had started wondering if I'd ever be pregnant again. Last year today I was in the utter pit of dispair.

Now here I am 365 days later.We are living back in North Carolina. I will be spending the day in bed again but for all different reasons, because I am pregnant and on bedrest. By tomorrow night or Monday sometime I will be holding my new daughter. We will have come full circle. Any tears cried this weekend will be tears of joy. I still feel Stella's loss, but this year we are so full of joy surrounding Skyla's arrival, that it really helps me come to terms with her loss. We will always mourn Stella, but we can't change what happened. We can only welcome Skyla into this world and be grateful that we got a second chance at bringing a new life into this world.

The weird thing is we have decided that Skyla will be our last child. I have today and tomorrow (and maybe some of Monday) to be pregnant .. and I will never be pregnant again. This is an odd thing for me because for the last 4 years of our lives things have revolved around getting pregnant, being pregnant, having a son, being post partum, deciding to get pregnant again, getting pregnant, miscarrying, trying for a year to get pregnant, hoping to stay pregnant, and now getting prepared for delivery again.

In most ways I am relieved. Never getting pregnant again means never having to deal with the possibility of miscarrying another child, never having to deal with that fear and devistation that came with my miscarriage. It also means not having to deal with the hard pregnancies that I have. Each time they keep getting worse and I am terrified to go through another pregnancy again after how rough Skyla's has been.

On the other hand never getting pregnant again means never again feeling those first kicks, never again knowing the joy of carrying a tiny miracle inside me again. Never wondering again whether the baby will come out looking like me or Charles or some relative back 2 generations ago. It's a bittersweet conclusion we came to, but it feels like the right decision.

I feel like though at this point I will have a healthy little boy, and a healthy baby girl (assuming everything goes perfectly with delivery .. I can't even consider the alternative right now) and I will have survived 2 high risk pregnancies, how can I ask for more?

Most of the time when you come to a point where your whole life changes you don't realize it ahead of time. The amazing thing about having a child is, you know ahead of time your life will never be the same, but you don't know exactly how everything will change. It's exciting and freightening at the same time.

Skyla's U/S pics !!!

My best friend scanned all of Skyla's ultrasound photos for me yesterday and put them on a disk. I am so excited to finally get to show her off!!! We got one last u/s photo yesterday. Guess what it's of? Her headfull of long hair!!! I can't wait to meet her in a few days. If you would like to see Skyla you can see the photo album of her ultrasounds here.

The Sweetest Thing Happened Yesterday

After my Dr's. appt I was waiting for the elevator to the parking garage (it was taking an unusually long time for it to come). I was having some contractions and was rubbing my belly. This really sweet older black man (he was a tall guy reminded me of a cuddly teddy bear) standing beside me looked at me and said "You look like you are in pain.". I said "Yep. I feel like I'm gonna explode .. but that's okay .. because we only have 3 more days before she is being evicted. So we are almost home." We proceeded to talk as we rode the elevator up to the 5th floor parking garage. We both got off the same floor and our vehicles ended up being parked right side beside each other (what are the odds of that?). When I got ready to get in my car he said to me " I know you don't know me from Adam's house cat, but I want you to take this and buy your baby something from me" and put a 20$ bill in my hand!!! I was so surprised. I told him he didn't have to do that. He said "I know but I want to." So I thanked him and gave him a hug. He was such a sweet man. So last night when I went shopping with Melissa Skyla's gift from him ended up being a cushy pad with head rests for Skyla's carseat, covers for her straps to protect her little neck from scratches, and a crib sheet and some velcro bows for her hair :)

You hear so much about people being bad this day and age .. I just thought I would share my experience with running into a really sweet person.

We will be taking the laptop to the hospital

So that we can take as many digital photos (at the highest resolution) as we want and just download them straight to the computer and then take more. We are also hoping that we might be able to pick up some wireless internet connection at the hospital that will allow us to get online and update things.

You can keep a look out for updates on Skyla's webpage that I made for her.

I have been having a Pamper mommy day today. Took a 45 minute long bubble bath. Shaved my legs (a feat in itself when 9 months pregnant) and even gave myself a pedicure and painted my toenails a shell pink color. I'm feeling human again :)

I figure I might as well do it now while I can .. once Skyla is here and having Chip too .. there is no telling when I will get to take a bath again .. lol .. I will probably be lucky to get more than a 5 minute shower in.

I am getting soooo excited. Only 5 more days until the induction. My best friend is predicting that Skyla will be here by 11:45 Easter night .. so we will see if she is right. I can dream right???

Oh and check out her outfit for her hospital photo. Hers is the pink one.

Easter Bunny isn't bringing chocolate this year..

But he is bringing a baby !!! My BP was perfect when I went in for my NST despite being a little wonky this morning. Only problem was I had gained 4 lbs in 1 week time. My NST was perfect though. Then they sent me for an u/s to check Skyla's amniotic fluid like they do after every NST.



Normal amniotic fluid is graded on a scale of 6 points to 24 points .. anything under 6 is considered too low .. any thing above 24 points is too high. Skyla's amniotic fluid was 31 points(it jumped from 21 points in only a week). Which explains where all this extra 4lbs came from. So I have developed Polyhydramnios. Good news is .. BP was great .. and absolutely no protein found in my urine.. so I am not pre-eclamptic. But after Dr. saw the results from the fluid check and the weight gain she decided baby girl needs to be evicted. If I don't go into labor by Sunday I have to go to the L&D at 5 pm Sunday night and will be induced. Skyla will probably be here one way or the other Monday the 28th sometime.



The Dr. and I talked very seriously about the whole induction thing .. because all along I have been under the impression that induction wasn't the way to go after having had a c-section. Dr. said that as good as I am doing she saw no reason to jump straight to the c-section. She said being induced wasn't optimum for VBAC but she said it didn't total shoot it down either. She said she has many patients that still go on to have their VBAC even with being induced. She said they would watch me like a hawk to make sure nothing like uterine rupture would happen. She said worst case scenario we end up with another c-section, best care scenario we end up with a VBAC.



I have been reading on the Polyhydramnios and it says that it can cause you to go into labor itself because your uterus just gets too full to keep it all in .. so there is still a chance I will go into labor between now and Sunday on my own .. which would be great. If not .. Skyla will be getting her eviction notice Sunday night.

38 weeks !!!

Wow .. can you believe I only have 2 weeks until my due date??? Thank goodness! I am the most emotional and cranky pregnant woman ever I think at this point. I think I have been hanging out with my 2 year old too long !!! I actually cried and threw a tantrum over shampoo this morning (Don't ask).

I don't know if I have ever discussed how pregnancy effects me mentally before. If I haven't it's pretty screwed up .. when I am pregnant .. it's like being bi-polar for 9 months. I can be happy as a clam one moment and then crying like I lost my best friend the next minute, with really no rhyme or reason. This ofcourse means poor DH never can tell what my mood will be like from one moment to the next. If it tells you anything the first test I took with Skyla turned out negative and I sat and cried. Charles's looked at me and said " I don't care what that test says .. I know you are pregnant! You are only this psycho when pregnant." He wasn't exaggerating. Oh and the bad thing is after 36 weeks it only gets worse!!! So at this point I can't wait for delivery. We know at the very latest she will be here in 3 weeks, because Drs. will not let me go over 41 weeks because of my PIH and the fact that Skyla is probably going to be macrosomic.

Luckily after Chip's birth I didn't have any PPD ..thank goodness. I did have one or two days of the baby blues as the hormones started dropping, but compared to the 9 months of mood swings during the pregnancy .. it wasn't so bad. Hopefully with Skyla I will be just as lucky and skip PPD.

I nested really bad yesterday. I broke my bedrest .. but I made sure to rest lots and take my BP constantly and made sure to keep it under control. I just had to sort and wash her baby clothes and her cradle bedding. Dh has been good about doing most everything since I have been put on bedrest .. but when it comes to baby clothes and baby bedding he is clueless.

Only a week until Easter, and only 6 days until Stella's Due date anniversary. I am hoping and praying that Skyla makes her arrival before then. I think it would be so awesome for her to be here for Easter .. a time of rebirth and healing. So if you ladies want to start sending some labor vibes .. we definitely won't turn them down!!!

A Tribute for Stella (our Angel baby)

(Back to regularly scheduled blogging)

What should have been Stella's 1 year old birthday (had she been born on her due date) is coming up in 9 days. I really thought being pregnant that it would make it not such a big deal. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Just because I am pregnant now, it doesn't make me any less aware that I should be getting ready to celebrate our 2nd child's first birthday here in a little over a week.

Side Note : Since being on bedrest I have taken up a new hobby : Digi Scrapping. It really has helped me keep from losing my mind while on bedrest the past 14 weeks. I was never organized enough for paper scrapbooking, and even if I was .. there is no where to do it here at the house that Chip wouldn't get in to it. With doing it on the computer I can keep everything organized and I don't have to worry about Chip getting into it and messing up my supplies.

This week I did a Digi Scrap Page for Stella. I cried while doing it, but it turned out so beautiful and I really feel like it was a good way to honor her memory. Very theraputic.

For all of my friends that have lost children .. if you haven't done something to remember your angel(s), I highly recommend it. I think it really helped me deal with some of the pain I have been experiencing as I get closer to March 26th.

So I will stop yapping already and show you Stella's page. This is actually a shrunk down jpg format of it. The actual page is much larger and made to print out 12"X12". Eventually all the pages I do I would like to print out and put in an album.

For the anonymous poster who keeps posting

Since you want me to defend myself (not that you deserve it).. here it goes:

For one the Dr. that made the comment about my weight .. if she had said hey your overweight .. blah blah .. that would have been fine. I mean geez you act like you are the only person whose ever told me I was overweight. I can promise you there are plenty of assholes out there who like to point out the obvious. I guess you think just because I am plus size I am blind and deaf too.

The comment she was made was about us not hearing our baby's heartbeat till late in the pregnancy .. which is because I have an anterior placenta .. which means in the front of the uterus rather than the back .. which is known for causing it to be hard to hear the heartbeat. She blamed it on my weight rather than the anterior placenta. Which I know for a fact is not true .. because I actually weigh less this pregnancy than I did with my son and we heard our son's heart beat way earlier.

Oh and as for my comment about eating at the Valentine Party .. I was mentioning not telling my dr. because of the sodium content of the food. I am on a low sodium diet because of Pregnancy Induced Hypertension. I have been very good about staying on my low sodium diet since I had to go on it at 19 weeks. Oh and the actual portions I had were pretty small, my soon to be 3 year old ate more than I did. But after not having sodium for awhile .. I felt like it was alot. Sorry to give you the wrong impression. I am sorry if it totally bugs you that I fell off the wagon one day for a party. I have perfect blood pressure when not pregnant but for some reason when pregnant it goes through the roof. Which before you comment why this will be my last pregnancy. I am sure you will be glad to hear it since you seem so against me.

Oh and as for cheating that one day .. okay so I have occasionally eaten not perfect every day of my pregnancy. I have tried really hard to eat extremely healthy. So much so infact I am 37.5 weeks pregnant and have gained exactly FIVE lbs. And that's with having been put on bedrest at 23.5 weeks because of the BP. So you can go jump in a lake complaining about me "feeding my face." Oh and that's with me carrying a baby that probably already weighs around 8-9 lbs (which doesn't come from me before you start jumping to conclusions.. my skinny husband's side of the family makes BIG babies .. his grandpa weighed 15lbs at birth they come out big .. but then the are tall and skinny as they grow up. My son was 9lbs 1oz at birth and is now a string bean at almost 3). I have technically actually lost weight while pregnant.

It must be nice to have nothing better to do in your life than to go around and pick on fat pregnant women. I hope you are proud of yourself. You don't even have the guts to post your real name or anything.

It's obvious you don't like me, you find me fat and disgusting .. that's perfectly up to you. Everyone has their opinions. I can't change your opinion of me. I am not forcing you to read my blog. I don't know you. I don't care to know you. Go away already.

As for the rest of my blog readers. I am really sorry that you all have to be exposed to this. It's a shame that it's come to this. I guess I should be the bigger person and ignore this person, but I guess they caught me at a weak moment tonight. Lots of love to all the nice sweet wonderful people I have met through my blog!!!

I think Skyla is going to be LONG (musings from the pregnant mind)

She has been dropped for about 2 weeks.. but the last couple of nights .. she is kicking me so high that my breasts are literally jumping from it. I guess she is going to be like Chip. They told us he was only 20" at birth and everyone looked at them like they were smoking crack. At his first Dr. appt they measured him and he was a few centimeters shy of 24"!!! They just didn't stretch him out.

I was doing the math last night. Chip went from weighing 6lbs 14oz at his 36.5 week ultrasound to being 9lbs 1oz at birth 3 weeks later (his ultrasound the day before birth judged him at 9lbs 2oz so the lady was right on the money with him). So at 34.5 weeks Skyla EFW put her weighing 6lbs 10oz and it's been almost 3 weeks .. if she grows at the rate Chip did .. she could be getting really close to 9lbs at this point. ACK.

The really screwed up thing is .. I was having loads of contractions before I hit 37 week mark on Sunday .. and since then .. you guessed it .. I have not had one single solitary contraction!!! BLAH!!!

I so hope to go into labor sometime soon. I don't want to be pregnant for 3.5 more weeks (that's the deadline the Drs. have given me that they won't let me go past)!! And I don't want Skyla to be like 11lbs or anything insane at birth.

Full Term Today!!!

Woo hoo!!! My due date is only 3 weeks away .. that means Miss Skyla can show up at any time now. At the very latest she will be here in 4 weeks. I'd do the happy dance .. but don't want my BP to get high LOL. I can't believe how fast this pregnancy has gone by. I swear it doesn't seem like long ago at all that I was thinking I was never going to get pregnant again, and now she's almost here.

I just can't wait to see her for the first time. I can't wait to see if I am right and she is going to look like Chip. I can't wait to see whether she will start out with dark hair like me and Chip, or come out cotton top like her daddy did. With her being the first girl grandbaby on either side I know she is going to end up spoiled rotten I can't wait.

Not to mention I am quite excited about the prospect of being off bedrest and my BP being back to normal so I can eat not quite so strictly.

Belly Pics Galore :)

Yesterday after I had my NST and US (both of which were perfect. Skyla is behaving and she has plenty of amniotic fluid and she is in prime birthing possition !!!) I went over to my best friend Melissa's house. Melissa is extremely handy with a camera and we had a ball breaking in her new one!!! We took like 100 or so pics and deleted probably 25-30 of them and here are the rest (I am plus size mom so if you have a problem with that .. might want to just keep on going):

http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2129684805
Because of some rude people I have password protected my album. If you are one of my friends and blog readers just email me I will be glad to give you the password. It's a shame I have to do it this way, but there are too many asshats around and I choose to prevent them from further trashing something I feel so good about.

I am so happy to have these pics. When I was pregnant with Chip I never got any decent pregnancy photos and I have always hated that. At the time I felt way too fat and unattractive to want to have my photo taken. Stupid me. I have definitely learned a thing or too since then!!! (To the asshat who left the message yes I have learned something. I have learned just because others are too small minded and petty to see anything other than disgust doesn't mean I can't love my pregnant body .. fat or not. But thanks for catching my typo.)

You should have seen us trying to do our photo shoot with Melissa's soon to be 3 year and her 1 year old daughter wanting to get in on the action. It was hilarious. At one point the girls were on the floor pretending to be cats and "meow"ing to their little hearts were content. It's very hard to keep a "serene" look on your face when you want to crack up!!!

And then there was my friend Melissa (a klutz of the worst sort) jumping up on the top of her table or in a chair or on her couch because she wanted to get just the right angle. I informed her she was totally not allowed to fall and break her neck because I didn't want to have to be the one to explain it to the EMTs I would have to call if she did!!!

Luckily no one was injured in the making of these photos and all of us had a blast!!!

An apology

Sorry I haven't been around much lately to blog. These days I am so miserable (I hurt all over) and just so tired of being pregnant that I haven't got a whole lot to say about it. I am just ready to hold my baby girl. All though she can't come yet. We have had the sickies at our house the last two weeks!!! Chip and I caught a cold. Mine turned into an upper respiratory infection what fun! Then when Chip and I got better Charles came down with the cold. Charles was finally feeling some better when all of a sudden Chip starts coming down with spots all over!!! I was super mad because we thought they were chicken pox and here Chip has had the vaccine already to prevent the chicken pox. Well the spots kept getting bigger and bigger and were starting to all run together. I was freaking out last night thinking we should take him to the ER. Charles had been researching online and said that we were doing everything suggested for child hood rash or chicken pox, and that every thing we read said there was only one really dangerous rash for kids to get and his didn't have any of the signs of being that rash. So we compromized and decided that if Chip wasn't doing any better today we would take him into the Pediatrician. Well we got up around 4am to check on him .. and suddenly his spots were fading and no longer raised and welted looking. Today he has acted like a different kid. He has been eating and drinking more and playing and been alot more demanding than the last couple of days. So we ended up not taking him in. Apparently it's just a garden variety child hood viral rash. What fun. We figure odds are he got exposed to it when he went to a valentine party on the 14th (they say these things have like a 2 week incubation period) and it was exactly 2 weeks since the party and he hasn't really been around other kids since then.

There is nothing like having a sick child. To me its 10 times more painful than being sick myself. I would take any pain or illness to protect my child from feeling bad. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way.