Pregnancy update.

My current pregnancy has been an emotional roller coaster ride. Last fall, we started talking about having another baby and when we would start trying. We decided to just go for it and were so excited to see that positive test right before Christmas. I had been testing for a few months before that and my heart would sink every time it was negative. In December, I wasn’t late yet and really wasn’t stressing about testing like I had been, but I came down with a bad sinus cold and wanted to get Sudafed from the pharmacy. I decided I should take a test before I bought it because if I was pregnant, I didn’t want to take something potentially harmful.

I took the test on my lunch break at work, glanced down and sure enough, there was a second pink line. Wait, was it really there? Or was I just imagining this after wanting to see it so badly? I hid the test in my coat pocket and kept pulling it out the rest of the day, just to see if there were still 2 lines. Yup. There were.

I took another test the next day and again, two lines. OK, maybe this is actually happening?

I decided it was time to tell my husband. We were in our living room with Spencer, watching the finale of Survivor (which is one of the few shows we watch together). I shot him a text… “hey, I need to tell you something important but I don’t want Spencer to know yet.” He looked up and mouthed, “are you pregnant?” I nodded and he quietly replied, “and you choose to drop this bomb on me during the Survivor finale?!,” a response that is so perfectly Jordan and still makes me laugh.

I looked down at Spencer then and started tearing up. How is my baby going to feel about having to share his parents? His whole world is going to turn upside down and what if he resents me for it? What if he thinks I don’t love him as much anymore? How can I even love another baby as much as I love him?

It was the week before Christmas when we found out I was pregnant. I wanted to keep it a secret until I could at least get to the doctor and confirm a heartbeat/viability. I was still having trouble accepting that an actual baby was quickly starting to form in my womb.

However, the next day, my boss walked into my office. She said she had been praying for all of the staff, like she always does, and she felt like God revealed to her that I was going to have a baby. “…Are you pregnant?” I was so shocked that I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Yes, but… I just found out two days ago. We haven’t even told anyone yet.” She was so excited and I was trying to be too – not that I wasn’t happy about the news, but I was protecting my heart from being excited before I knew for sure everything was ok.

We decided to tell a few people around Christmas… we shared the news with my husband’s parents and siblings that day, and a few of our close friends in the weeks to come. All of my coworkers knew. We were able to see a heartbeat by mid-January and decided to tell the rest of our world about this little blessing on my birthday, January 28.

I had nausea, sure. Some vomiting here and there (and I do mean that literally… there was never any warning when it happened, so I threw up in the kitchen, on our landscaping, in my car…). My worst symptom at first was the fatigue. My gosh, I could not stay awake for anything. I would manage to get through the workday, pick Spencer up from daycare, fix a quick dinner, and it would be lights out before 7:00. If I sat down at all, I would fall right asleep. I mostly blame my pregnancy for the fact that I basically slept my way through the months of January and February, but this season was also my absolute busiest time of the year for work as we prepared for our huge fundraising gala in March, which didn’t help. In mid-February, I also came down with the worst case of bronchitis I could remember in my lifetime. It. Lasted. For. Ever. I didn’t stop coughing until April, no exaggeration.

A few weeks after the pregnancy test, before we had announced, I was praying about the baby and I felt like God laid a name on my heart. Shiloh. Hmm, ok? I went home and told Jordan, “hey, if the baby is a girl, I already know her name. Shiloh Michelle. I feel like that’s what God wants us to name her.” We never even talked about other girl names. I had a whole list of name options if the baby was a boy, but I knew this one wasn’t. (A mother somehow knows… I never really thought of girl names when I was pregnant with Spencer either, because I felt like he was a boy from the beginning). We did an early gender scan in March and sure enough, baby was a girl. We took Spencer with us for the scan and told him he was going to have a sister named Shiloh. He started getting excited at that point – up until then, he had been very, very opposed to the idea of a sibling.

At church the next day, I could hear him in his classroom after I dropped him off, yelling “I’m having a sister named Shiloh!” If anyone would ask him about the baby, he would immediately start talking about his sister, Shiloh. Even now, he hugs my belly and kisses it goodnight, and refers to the bump as “my Shiloh baby.”

Our huge fundraiser happened at the end of March and went incredibly well – the hard work and stress leading up to it were worth it. The next morning, we were counting donations at the office and praising God for providing exactly what we needed through the event. After lunch that day, I received a call from my doctor’s office. “We got a positive marker back on your blood screening for Down syndrome. This doesn’t mean your baby has it, but we recommend being seen by a MFM for a level 2 scan and coming in for more accurate bloodwork as soon as you can.”

I left early and went straight to the office to have my blood drawn. I knew that the Sequential Screen (the initial test they did) had a high rate of false positives and our chances were good that there was nothing at all wrong with Shiloh. Even if there was, Down syndrome was not the worst news I could imagine. I tried to put it in the back of my mind for the next week while we waited for the more accurate blood test to come back. When it did, it confirmed that she did not have any detectable chromosome disorders. The doctor still recommended that I meet with the MFM to rule out any issues that might have caused the marker on the first test.

During the first scan, Shiloh was being very uncooperative. I wasn’t surprised – I had had a few scans up to that point, and for every one of them, she was in a bad position or would turn away from the probe (with the exception of the gender scan). The tech got most of the measurements she needed but said I would need to follow up in a few weeks so they could get some more pictures of her heart. During the initial scan, they also measured things like her growth, my fluid level, and my cervix. Everything looked great.

I went back two weeks later and they got the additional pictures of her heart that they needed. However, I noticed the tech was spending a lot of time on my cervix. I was watching on the screen and thinking hmmm, I don’t think it’s supposed to look like that. I remembered my measurement from 2 weeks ago was 3.5-3.8 cm. The measurement she was typing today was 2.0 cm, 2.2 cm. The top looked very u-shaped compared to my previous scan (aka funneling). I made a comment to her… “is my cervix too short?” and she just said the doctor would discuss it with me.

After that scan, my doctor said I needed to start taking progesterone every day until I reached 34 weeks. They would keep monitoring my cervix for changes, but there wasn’t much else I could do besides try to take it easy and not stress.

I took the progesterone for 10 days before my next check-up, which was a few days ago. I walked in fully expecting that it would either be the same length or possibly a little longer. Instead, it was barely over 1 cm. I started crying as soon as I left. Not just about the thought that she could possibly come early, but about the thought that I could go into labor, period. You see, my first birth was very traumatic and ended in an emergency c-section… I had already talked to my doctor about a scheduled c-section for this baby and had set my mind on that. Labor/VBAC was not something I was willing to even think about. Yet, the doctor’s office kept saying that word… “signs of labor..” “if you go into labor…” etc.

This week I have been trying to deal with some obvious emotional and spiritual struggles. I am recognizing that as much as I like to think I am trusting God in every area of my life, I am still very much holding on to my desire to control and plan things that really aren’t in my control or part of my plan. I am still obviously traumatized from Spencer’s birth and have not made peace with that. I am still having anxiety about growing up without a mom and something happening to me that would cause my own kids to go through that as well.

I’m now on checkups every two weeks to monitor my cervix shortening. I may not get to plan how or when I deliver this baby, again… but women rarely do. God has a perfect plan for me, for my children, for my family, and I pray for the peace to accept whatever that is.

Maybe that’s why God laid the name Shiloh on my heart after all.