pregnancy

Getting Ready for Baby #2: Phase 01 Update

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I’ve hit a road block that’s holding me up with moving on from Phase 01. Here’s my update:

PHASE ONE: PLANNING

  • Take stock: I need to find LB's old things in our attic and go through them. Clean up whatever I want to reuse and donate the rest (this is our FINAL baby). Done! I got all the boxes of LB’s baby stuff from the attic and went through them. I’d say about a quarter of it I donated and the rest I washed and have it waiting to be put away.

  • Get Organized: Then I need to organize LB's room to accommodate LB2's stuff. LB2 will be sleeping in our room for at least the first 6 months, but ultimately we plan to have the two kiddos share a room. Here’s the road block! I ordered some cube shelves from Target and it is setting in its box waiting to be assembled but apparently we’ve lost every single screw driver we own. Mr. LL keeps forgetting to bring home one from work and I’m about to just go buy a new one because it is driving me crazy.

  • Sleeping Arrangements: Like I said, LB2 will be in our room at first and I need to figure out if a pack-n-play will fit in there or if we need a bassinet. I’ve determined that a pack-n-play will work just fine, BUT ideally I’d like to have a bassinet in our room for space reasons. However, this will just have to be determined closer to the end of my pregnancy when I see how much money I’ve saved up to buy the pieces we “need” for LB2.

I’m hoping that by September, I can move on to Phase 2.


Real Talk: Amniocentesis and "Geriatric" Pregnancy

Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

As I write this, I am 20 weeks pregnant with our second child. This pregnancy was not 100% planned. I was ready to have a second child earlier this year, but Mr. LL wanted to get some of the bigger home renovations done this year, before an infant was in the house, and so we had agreed to wait. Then I had issues renewing my birth control because my OB/GYN was on maternity leave and well, you see where this ended up..

So being pregnant during a global pandemic has not been ideal and has added some extra anxiety and stress to the whole ordeal. I’ve definitely felt more depressed this pregnancy and generally apprehensive and worried over the whole affair.

A few things are different this time around and not because of the pandemic.

I’m 35 years old this time. What does that matter you may ask? Well 35 is when they begin to call your pregnancy “geriatric”. That’s right. I’m 35 and considered f***ing geriatric by birthin’ standards. This means I’m “high risk” for things like genetic defects in the fetus, low birth weight, premature birth, other complications, etc.

I’m heavier this time. Hey, my body doesn’t bounce back like it once did and at the start of this pregnancy I was probably at my heaviest if not close, so that is also a tally against me in the “high risk” column for this pregnancy.

So with these two factors, when I took my NIPT (Non-Invasive Prenatal Test - which is just blood work) and it came back as “unable to run” because there wasn’t enough fetal DNA in my blood stream it made me worry.

I took the NIPT again and failed it again for the same reason. Now I started to panic.

Basically, at this point, I had one option for any kind of prenatal screenings and that was to have an amniocentesis done. Scary as that was, to me at least, in-and-of-itself there was the added stressor that Mr. LL would not be allowed to go with me to hold my hand. Yeah, during this pandemic, no one but momma is allowed at any and all doctor’s appointments.

I didn’t have to take the test but my doctor encouraged it since I have the “high risk” markers and no results can be a red flag that something is wrong (tbf, she also said it could be nothing). So, being the always-wants-to-be-prepared person that I am, I opted to have it done. If I needed to plan to raise and support a child with special needs and this test could tell me about it then I would like to know.

What is amniocentesis? Well, it’s when they take a very big needle and stick it in your stomach all the way down into your uterus and get a sample from the amniotic fluid around the baby. It really, REALLY, REALLY f***ing hurts. They had to do it twice on me, because the first needle WASN’T BIG ENOUGH. It took me a full four days to recover from it. The area where it happened felt tender and sore so I just rested. But I mean, I survived. Sure I cried the whole time, was terrified and in pain but it is what it is. Not everyone has as bad an experience as I did (I hope).

Then you wait for at least two weeks to get your results. I had an appointment my regular doctor exactly two weeks from the date of the amnio and they got the results while I was waiting in the exam room. Those two weeks were stressful and I worried about my unborn baby the entire time. The week of my doctor’s appointment I was a mental void. My brain basically shut down because I think I would have just worried and stressed the whole time if it hadn’t.

So what did the results say? I have a perfectly healthy baby (gender being withheld) growing inside of me. Thank The Goddess.

Getting Ready for Baby #2: Challenge!

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This week I will hit the 20 week mark in this pregnancy! Halfway done now! With that said, and with starting back up with the blog, I thought I’d dust off the “challenge” I gave myself last pregnancy. We haven’t really started getting ready for this kiddo yet, aside from the doctor visits and making a registry on Amazon, so I’ve tweaked what I did last time around to fit this pregnancy. (You can read the kick-off post to the original challenge here and the final post here).

There will be four phases. The breakdown is roughly: Phase One - Planning; Phase Two - Gather; Phase Three - Needs; Phase Four - Final Prep. Last time I checked in weekly with my progress, but I’m not going to promise that frequency this go around.

So, let’s get started…

PHASE ONE: PLANNING

  • Take stock: I need to find LB's old things in our attic and go through them. Clean up whatever I want to reuse and donate the rest (this is our FINAL baby).

  • Get Organized: Then I need to organize LB's room to accommodate LB2's stuff. LB2 will be sleeping in our room for at least the first 6 months, but ultimately we plan to have the two kiddos share a room.

  • Sleeping Arrangements: Like I said, LB2 will be in our room at first and I need to figure out if a pack-n-play will fit in there or if we need a bassinet.