Ch-ch-ch-changes!

My oh my how Elizabeth is changing. She now says 3 words pretty well on mostly on command. 'Bear' is her favorite, especially when we reference her dog, or she sees him when she gets home. 'Bye' while waving is just too cute. And now 'Up' is in her vocabulary. She can say Up really well sometimes, but we are working on the association of the word and the action, as we try to tell her to say 'Up' for us to pick her up. A work in progress, but so much fun!

Here she is saying Bear and Bye!

Now i'm just trying to figure out what word to work on next. She is diggin the B's so I was thinking of Baby, and she watches our mouths very closely when we tell her Love You, so maybe she will form her own version of that saying.

She LOVES to kiss mommy. If our faces are close she will open her mouth and give me a big kiss on the lips or cheek. The other night all 3 of us were on the couch and Mark leaned over to give me a kiss. Elizabeth watched, and without hardly any hesitation she opened her mouth and leaned into mommy to give ME a kiss. She just couldn't be left out!

We are still not crawling yet, and it seems to be an issue with her moving her legs, and not her hands like we first suspected. At my parents over the holidays we were moving her legs and she moved her hands in sync, but when we stopped moving her hands, she just flopped back onto her belly. Oh well, it's probably for the better.

Life seems to be moving a lightening speed right now, but it is so much fun to watch her personality shine through and learn new things every day.

It is finished.

After almost a week of a roller coaster of emotions and hopes, I was injected with Methotrexate yesterday to rid my body of this pregnancy. Even though I had started bleeding on Thursday, my HCG levels almost quadurpled from Wednesday to Friday.

After a very long weekend, which included an overnight stay at the hospital after I passed out after dinner downtown, my levels had risen, but only slightly. After 2 more tests in the last 2 days, it was determined that they were leveling off instead of going one way or the other.

I knew this pregnancy was not viable, but it doesn't make this process any easier. My doctors will never be able to effectively classify this pregnancy as ectopic, molar, chemical ... we just don't know as there was never anything on an u/s to let us know where it was.

It makes things a little easier to come home to a little girl who doesn't mind a little snuggle time (especially when I wear a sweatshirt with strings ... she will sit still in my lap forever chewing on those things!) and has the cutest little toothless grin!

I am thankful that I am here, that this wasn't something that turned out life threatening and that I have some wonderful doctors who truly care about me (my perinatologist called my OBGYN from New Mexico to check on me and personally called me yesterday when he learned the pregnancy was to be terminated). I am blessed.

Oh what one weekend will do!

Over the weekend Elizabeth started army crawling! She still gets up on her hands and knees, can't go anywhere, so she flops back down and army crawls. She had to REALLY want something, so food, or mommy were her main subjects this weekend, but I imagine it will expand soon. She was also trying her darndest to pull herself up onto the entertainment center which was hilarious to watch. I helped her get up on her knees and she was trying SOOOO hard to get up onto her feet! Only a matter of time.

This weekend she also started waving and saying buh-bye. And not just something that SOUNDS like buh-bye, she has said it so very clear multiple times! The "i" sound is one that I had not heard, or heard much of lately, so when she said 'bye' while waving, I couldn't help but be so very proud! She was waving to herself in the mirror on the way home as well! Too cute! :o)

Happy Birthday to me ... :o(

For the few of you who actually read this, I am writing this more as a healing process for myself more than anything.

As most of you know, I am on lifelong blood thinners for 2 DVTs before the age of 25. With this, I have to be extremely careful, and on top of my menstrual cycles to cease my oral blood thinners and switch to injections due to the damage the pills can do to a developing fetus. The implications are so severe you can hardly find anything written describing the side effects of the drug. With this, I have to watch my cycles very closely and usually have a stock of pregnancy tests if my cycle is getting too long for comfort.

A week ago yesterday I was on cycle day 34 which seemed a little long to me, yet I didn't seem to have any symptoms of being pregnant. I took a test to be sure, and to my surprise, a second line was there. I was pregnant. I took another one at work that morning and it was positive as well. The doctor was called and an appointment was set to confirm pregnancy and get things rolling to get the drugs I needed and appointments set.

It was all a whirlwind for me as I wasn't expecting this pregnancy, at least not yet.

Fast forward to yesterday. I went to my perinatologist (my high risk OB) for my early viability ultrasound. Due to how early it was in the pregnancy, they usually do an external u/s and then an internal to look for any heartbeat or yolk sac. An intern did my external u/s and something just didn't seem right. She seemed to be over pretty quickly and brought in a more experienced tech to take a look. They found, what they called, 'free floating fluid' outside my uterus, which was most likely blood. They were also trying to figure out what was on one of my ovaries. They started the internal u/s and found the mass along with no baby, no heartbeat, no sac.

My doctor came in and gave us the news that it looked like I had a ruptured ovarian cyst which has caused the blood in my abdominal cavity. Nothing to be concerned about as the amount of blood wasn't enough to be life threatening, and other than continuing to be uncomfortable, things should take care of themselves (he also that I was freakishly immune to pain, as most people who this has happened to would have been in excruciating pain, and I just thought I had bad gas pains). As for the pregnancy, there are 2 options, 1) it's just too early, and we should be able to see something next week or 2) there is/was a fertilized egg, but it has implanted somewhere outside the uterus, in other words, an ectopic pregnancy.

I had prepared myself for things to not be right. I did that with Elizabeth as well. In fact, I think I prepared myself even more this time around because I just didn't feel quite right, I didn't FEEL like I was pregnant, but when you are working full time and taking care of a 9 month old when you get home, you kinda push things to the side. Even though I prepared myself, this news was not easy to take. I had held out that glimmer of hope that it was okay, even though the thought of another one in 9 months was a lot to digest (space, money, effects on Ellie, etc).

I was uncomfortable last night, quite a bit of bloating from the rupture and exhaustion for the emotions of the day. They took blood yesterday to measure my HGC as well as my white blood count to determine if it is ectopic. But as of this morning I know we lost the pregnancy. I started to bleed, and not just a little from the internal u/s, this baby is not meant to be.

I am okay with this. As much as I may cry and wish that this didn't happen, everything happens for a reason. God has a plan for our family, and we have a BEAUTIFUL baby girl at home. All I wanted to do when I woke up this morning at 4am was to go and get Elizabeth out of bed and snuggle with her in the rocking chair (I think she would think it was play time instead of go-back-to-sleep-in-mommys-arms-time). Heck, it took up 7 months to get pregnant with Ellie, and look how quickly it happened this time. It will happen again, this just wasn't the right time, and this baby wasn't healthy.

Today is my 29th birthday, the start to my last year in my 20s. Maybe I'll have another baby before I turn 30, or maybe God has other plans. Either way, I'm thankful for what I have been blessed with so far, and I can't wait to see where life takes us all in the years to come.

Crawling? Not so much.

Elizabeth just doesn't want to crawl. She will get up on her hands and knees and then flop down on her belly, but if you stand her up next to her music table, she will stand there forever. Her new thing is to let go with one hand and reach towards mommy. Good thing I sit behind her, otherwise that poor girl would have bruises all over!

We will continue to work on crawling, but she is sure anxious to pull herself up and stand by herself. Just have to get her little brain to work with her chunky little legs and tell them to MOVE! :o)

I really do LOVE my baby!

Did my last post make it seem like I don't want to be a mommy anymore? That was not the point of writing that post if that is how it came across. I absolutely LOVE being a mommy and my daughter is the most wonderful little creation, but that doesn't mean that I don't get tired, or exhausted, or a little irritated at the fact that she is all about mommy right now, and mommy needs some time to herself or with friends.

I guess it's just another one of those phases again. Maybe she will grow out of her 'mommy' stage and move on to daddy in a little while so I can leave the room and not have her start to scream, or will take a bottle from daddy or papa like she does with mommy, or eat breakfast or lunch when daddy is feeding.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I step in too often to take over because she isn't eating or doesn't want it. Maybe I should just leave the house when Mark tries to feed her? Stay in the back of the house while he gives her a bottle? Do some yardwork or clean the garage while she's playing on the floor with daddy? Maybe it's not her, it's me.

Lonely

I'm starting to realize that being a full-time working mommy is lonely. Maybe I'm not doing enough to 'get myself out there,' but this weekend is perfect example. Saturday was spent toting Ellie to her Grandma and Grandpa's to do some 'trick-or-treating.' We got home and after trying our darnedest to get her to nap some more, got her up to get ready for our Halloween party that night (we were bringing her and had planned on putting her to sleep upstairs at our friend's house).

While I was holding her I noticed she was warm and checked her temp. She was running around a 102' fever. As I sat there with her in my arms I knew my party plans were over, the costume I was so excited to debut was going to sit on the back of the chair the rest of the night, and the yummy dip I made was going to be consumed by everyone, but me. I sat at home on Saturday, checking in on Ellie every half hour or so to make sure her fever wasn't getting any higher and making sure she was adequately covered for when her fever broke. I caught up on some of my TV shows that Mark doesn't like watching and talked with my mom for over 40 minutes while she drove home from Portland. I folded clothes and put away dishes, but all I wanted to do was to be social, to laugh with friends and have a drink or two. Instead I had a bag of steamed veggies, a bowl of soup and a Mikes Hard Margarita while watching 'Teen Mom.'

I don't know if a big part of my loneliness is the fact that all my friends from growing up live further south or that I haven't made it a priority to make friends up North? I am a part of a Bunco group that plays once a month, and that, currently, is my only 'girl-time.' I hate for this post to be a pity-me, but it is hard being a working mommy. Honestly, if I wasn't working, I would go to a local MOPS group (VERY few meet in the evenings up north, they seem to all be in Seattle), I'd probably still be going to my mommy group at the hospital weekly, and would have play dates with Eli (our neighbor boy who is about 5 months older than Ellie) or other friends who are lucky enough to be at home during the day.

It's just hard, and I just need to work on finding ways to fix my loneliness or just suck it up and deal with it.