Our Heartspun Homeschool: A little Rainbow...

My maternity photo- This is pikes peak in the background.

I hate that I am on a once a year blog updating schedule.. but here we go again. Soooo much has happened in the last year and a half. Ready for a whole lot of information??? Here we go...

Two years ago I had surgery for blocked Fallopian tubes and endometriosis removal.. A month later we were pregnant with one try on fertility drugs.. we were pregnant again and we were nervous!! Last time I was pregnant with my sweet Timothy and he passed away at ten weeks gestation and we were heartbroken. This time we were cautious. I had a new amazing dr. I went for my 11 week scan and all was well, what a relief! We found out we were having another little boy and planned to name him Oliver, after my dad's great grandfather. Unfortunately at my 14 week check up the Dr could not find his heartbeat and we found out he had passed away. We were devastated again. At that point I was done. Done hoping and done praying. I focused on our foster babies and we were moving at the time so I just put it out of my head. I probably didn't deal with it in a healthy way and should have gotten some help, but alas..who has the time.

We focused on our kiddos, foster kiddos and moving. At the time we moved we had 7 kids in the house altogether. I love our new house and I love living in the city again. Its amazing being 5 minutes from a grocery store and one minute from a 7-11. Ha ha.

I went for my yearly check up at my Dr office in August of 2018 and Dr. B asked me if I wanted to try again. He would give me more fertility medicine (Henry was conceived with fertility meds as were Timothy and Oliver) I said no I am done. "If God wants me to have a baby I will just get pregnant on my own" and I kid you not I was back in his office in September with a positive test. I had just turned 39, Jeff 44 and we were having a baby. Yikes. I was SCARED. I kept my pregnancy hidden from most people for almost the entire 9 months. We had our blood work to tell us gender but we didn't want to find out that soon. I just knew it was gonna be over at some point and didn't want to get my hopes up. I had 9 months of fear. I had ultrasounds every month and was watched very closely. I was on progesterone the first trimester and some of the second, I took baby aspirin the entire pregnancy and my thyroid was watched on a monthly basis. It was discovered at my first appt that my thyroid levels were high so I immediately went on levothryoxine. I was on it when pregnant with Henry but not any of my losses so this seems to be the missing link as to why our babies passed away.

My friend Samantha helped us do a gender reveal on Christmas Eve, so that was super fun. We found out we were having another boy. (that's four boys in a row people!) I still hadn't come to terms that this baby was going to live and be born alive. The last month of my pregnancy he was measuring possible IUGR so the Dr gave me some medicine to mature his lungs. The day after the medicine I didn't feel him move for hours and I became panicked. Jeff took me to the hospital and we prayed a lot. We had an ultrasound and all was well but he still wasn't moving good. Finally he got back to normal and I was ok to go home and try to relax. The Dr decided to induce me at 37 weeks because he still didn't feel like our little guy was growing right.

We showed up at the hospital the morning of May 9, 2019. Going into the room and seeing the baby warmer still seemed surreal to me. It still didn't feel like I was going to be having a baby. Yes this baby had been inside me moving and grooving constantly and yes I knew I was pregnant but I just couldn't comprehend I was actually going to get to bring him home. Things went fairly slow for labor, but little man was doing good. I stayed at 3 centimeters forever. They kept increasing my Pitocin, so it started to hurt after a few hours. I decided to get an epidural. (I was trying to go without but it was taking forever) The anesthesiologist came in and did his thing, Jeff was standing in front of me and after a couple minutes while I was having to sit completely still he started falling backwards and I just sat there and watched my husband hit the dr chair and then hit his head hard on the concrete floor. The nurse stepped over him to get to me to stand by me and called for help. They were able to get him awake and moved to the couch. After the epidural was in, things moved pretty fast, but that darn thing didn't work. I could feel everything on one side. Jeff was able to pop back up and be next to me, and our little guy started coming out on his own. The nurse started calling for my doctor, almost too late. He was assisting in a C section and she said if he wasn’t there ASAP it would be a nurse delivery. The on call dr did show up about the same time my dr got there, he ran the entire way he said. He had goggles on, which even in all my pain made me laugh. Then my body relaxed cause he was there and I didn't even push, he just came out. When I said I was having a lot of pain and the epidural wasn't working they had tried to fix it and when that didn't work they put drugs in my IV to try to help. The baby's cord was short so they couldn't put him on me until it was cut. I still kept waiting for them to tell me he was dead, I kept thinking he wasn't going to cry. But, he cried and he was great! They gave him to me but I couldn't hold him cause I was so out of it from the drugs. So I told Jeff to hold him cause I didn't want to drop him. I was also still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I had a baby and he was ok. I was out of it for a while but finally slept it off and felt better later in the day. I was so happy to see my other kids too.

Zachary Aaron weighed 5lbs 14 oz. We stayed at the hospital 3 days I think. He had jaundice really bad. We have two different blood types and apparently when that happens the baby can get jaundice real bad. He was our first baby to have it. We got cleared to go home but within a day or two we were readmitted. We were there another two days to get his levels down again. Then we finally went home. At one month old we found out he was tongue tied and had to go to Denver to have that revised. Our breastfeeding journey started off rocky but we are still going strong and he is one week shy of 10 months old now.

So there you have it, the birth story of our rainbow baby Zachary (please don't call him Zach)
He is such an unexpected blessing in our family and we love him to pieces.

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy.