Mothership Confessional

I'm writing this up from the hospital on day 2 of recovery...can you believe it?! Things are totally different this time! We checked into the hospital at 9 am on Monday morning. Not going to lie...I was fighting the tears saying goodbye to Ava - it was crashing down on me that life was about to change and that things would never be the same. I was so nervous and excited and my heart was pounding as we walked in! I hardly slept the night before. I spent about an hour and a half in the recovery area hooked up to an IV for fluids and then they monitored Liam for about another half hour. It was kind of a long, boring 2 hours - it was hard to keep my mind occupied! Then they came back and told us it was time to go! We walked back to the OR and I got my spinal while Chris got dressed up. It's crazy how fast the spinal works - I felt the warmth race down my leg, into my buttocks, and then the other leg. It happened so fast I was pretty numb before I could even lay down on th...

We have finished eating our freezer meal stash, I'm working dinners around what's left in the pantry, and I've halted trips to SAMs Club. It's moving time! Time to start packing up our lives once again to move on to the next adventure! Fort Campbell was the first duty station Chris and I were at together, and it was a good 3 years. A  great  3 years, actually... Fort Campbell is where I learned how to live this Army life as a supportive wife, and how to not complain about things that cannot be controlled. I learn more about this duty every day. This is where I learned more about myself as an individual and had a tremendous amount of personal growth. This is where I went out on a limb and chose a different career path . As it turned out, I loved it! This is where I learned that your morning coffee makes you poop. (true story, people!) This is where I learned how to fold jeans in a nice, neat stack and how to fold shirts faster than I ever t...

I'm writing up this post early, not knowing if I will even be able to publish it on Friday or not. So I think I will update this post a day at a time, and we'll just see how far it goes! (Actually, I work on all my posts throughout the week, or else pregnancy brain would cause me to forget all the new things that happened!) I'm not sure if I will be posting too often after Ava's birth. One, because I will obviously be busy/tired/exhausted/unavailable. And two, because I don't know how I feel about plastering photos of her on the internet where anybody  can access my posts. I get a ton  of spam comments (fortunately Blogger is able to block them from ever being posted) and a lot of random spikes in traffic on my site and traffic trends that make me think weird things are going on. I want to keep it a public blog, so I'm thinking that I may not post too much more about my private life on here. I wanted to have my fertility and pregnancy stories on here to...

Is it really?! 38 weeks?! I know we are being incredibly inpatient, but Ava, darling...we are wanting you to join us so badly!! I have been feeling a lot of different emotions this week, and they usually come in this order: Excitement. I can't wait for Ava to be here, to see her eyes, to hold her, to admire her hair, to watch her while she sleeps, to watch her daddy with her . This wait has to be one of the most unbearable waits ever! The house is full of baby things, just sitting...waiting. I find myself spending a lot of time just staring at them, imagining what Ava will be doing in each of these baby things, what she will look like in the car seat carrier, which motion on the swing she will prefer, and I can even visualize her flailing arms and legs when she will get her diaper changed on the changer (for some reason I am imagining her hating  getting her diaper changed!). So much eager anticipation! I think about how exciting these changes will be. And the...

33 weeks...that puts the countdown at 6 weeks, 6 days. Well, not exactly...!!!! I had my ultrasound and 32 week appointment this week. The ultrasound revealed her amazing  growth! She went from being in the 45th percentile at my 20 week scan, to the 53rd percentile at 28 weeks,, to the 63rd percentile at 32 weeks! She's doing great!! That dang kidney of hers is still slightly  inflamed, but my doctor said it's barely noticeable, but still present. It has improved! And...Ava is now breech. So we talked a bit about her position and both of us think the likelihood of her turning for delivery is slim. It's possible, but not likely considering the fact that I have a bicornuate uterus, she has been in one (transverse) position the whole time, and now she is breech. So I was asking if a c-section for me would be done at the full 40 weeks, and she said we would schedule at 39. So the next thing I knew, we were scheduling her c-section! My doctor was totally fine with...

I have debated for a long time about whether I wanted to include a post on my blog about the journey my husband and I have been on to achieve a pregnancy. It's quite personal. And some people may think that it's too much information. But without the other blogs I came across during my research, I would have felt MUCH more helpless and alone. And my hope is, is that another woman will stumble across this post and find comfort and hope in hearing someone else's story. Now, I will go ahead and include a disclaimer: men may find this post frightening as you will probably read way more than you ever wanted to know about the female body. It's nothing embarrassing, its just biology. I will warn you again when things get personal. For now, let's rewind the clock back to June 6, 2009: the day Chris and I got married! We both had talked during our dating years of if we wanted kids, how many, and when we wanted to start trying. We both agreed not to start trying righ...