Hi friends! Looks like I blogged in 2018 a total of...zero times. I did start a lot of drafts, but none made it to publishing. I'm hoping to maybe get back into blogging (like, at least more than zero times in 2019), but I realized that until I can give any life updates, I need to post SOMETHING about baby #2's arrival. According to my blog, I'm still 9 weeks pregnant with her, but she is now 15 months old. So here is the completed version of her birth story that I attempted to write last year.
In order to tell Livvie's birth story, I need to record her pregnancy. It was hard to write about during it, harder to write about it after it. I'm feeling less connected to it now- it is a hazy memory of misery in my mind. I know it was awful, but I can't quite remember just how awful. I guess this is how people have more babies, as the memories are slowly swallowed up by the heavenliness of the baby outside of the womb.
The most difficult part of my pregnancies is the depression. Depression is a sneaky, sneaky thing, so sneaky that I couldn't even name it with Abbie. It wasn't until I started to feel similar with Livvie that I remembered.
When I was pregnant with Abbie, I was in the midst of a study in which we completed a "prayer of examen" every week. We listed off the things giving us life, the thing that were not giving us life, what we were learning and what we thought God was speaking to us through it. I was always confused by the fact that I could never think of the good things. I was pregnant after 7 long, long years of infertility, and yet nothing made me happy. I was always melancholy and "blah", despite all the good we were experiencing. I just chalked it up to having a hard pregnancy, but when I got pregnant with Livvie and felt the distinct shift in my emotions at 7 or 8 weeks, I could finally put my finger on the problem. Being aware of it helped. But I was already on an antidepressant (I have been on one for 13 years), so there wasn't much that could be done about it.
Then there was the constant nausea that lasted until 20 weeks. The exhaustion that never went away. And when I hit 24 weeks, I started getting so huge. It was July and I was hot and miserable. I had to move into the guest room because it was cooler, so Tom and I saw less of each other. I had a toddler who is glorious but never low maintenance, and she needed to be carried everywhere. And I got the worst, most awful case of restless leg syndrome. I barely slept. Most nights I wouldn't drift off until 4-5am. I spent every hour until then pacing the house, trying to calm my legs. It was torture.
Thankfully, someone recommended I take iron supplements to help with my legs. I was already taking magnesium, but it didn't help much. The iron, though, did help! It was actually pretty miraculous. Unfortunately, I didn't realize it until 34 weeks, so there were several months of hell trying to survive on very little sleep.
Then my blood pressure shot up in the third trimester, requiring twice weekly NST scans. This meant driving 30 minutes to the doctor, and it would sometimes take up to an hour to get a good reading on Livvie. The girl was insane in the womb. Never stopped moving. Every time they found her, she would roll over again and it would take another 10 minutes to find her. I loved that she moved so much because I rarely worried about her, but the girl was crazy!
For some reason, Sundays ended up being my hardest days. Probably due to taking care of Abbie all day Saturday. Tom was also training for a marathon, and he did his long runs on Saturday, so I had all of Saturday morning with her. And if you watch my instastories at all (@rebeccarich05) you know that she is still the busiest child. She doesn't stop. So by Sunday morning, I would sit in church in misery, looking around at all the people wondering how on earth they existed. Why would anyone want to be pregnant ever? I realize now that most women don't have it as bad as I do. Some even love pregnancy. And that is hard for me to come to terms with, because I so wish I loved it. I worked so hard to get there, and then I barely survived it.
I see women have similar ailments to mine and still seem to enjoy pregnancy, so I've come to accept that my prenatal depression is the most difficult part of pregnancy for me. If I didn't have that, I think I could endure it. I think all of it would feel worth it. It's a wake up call on just how much depression can destroy your perspective, your joy and your hope. I was living the perfect life- an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter and a second baby on the way after years of barrenness, a great community and financial stability, but life felt so grim. And every day felt like a year.
But, though it seemed to take nine years instead of nine months, we finally got to the night before THE DAY. October 10th came. I had made it. Due to my blood pressure, my c-section was scheduled for 38 weeks. Livvie was measuring a full month ahead, so I wasn't sure I'd make it to it (and I was more than willing for her to come early!), but despite making me miserable, she was happy and comfy in the womb. Girl had no intention of coming out (and she wasn't too pleased when they took her out!). But whether she liked it or not, we were meeting her on October 11, 2017.
The night before the c-section felt surreal. We played with Abbie, soaking in the last moments as a family of three. After we put her to bed, both Tom and I snuck into her room to rock her an extra time. We went to sleep and set our alarms for early the next morning. And though it felt like moments later that our alarms went off, I've never jumped out of bed more ready to start the day!
Our c-section was at 7 am, so we had to check into the hospital at 5 am. The nurses got me checked in and hooked up to an IV, the anesthesiologist came in to explain the procedure and pain management and then my OB came in to tell me the show was almost ready to start!
Being wheeled into the OR was different and scarier this time, mainly because I was much more "with it" than I had been after 20+ hours of labor with Abbie. But my OB held me steady while they put in the spinal block, and then we were ready to go. Another doctor came in to help, and they joked about how big the baby was going to be due to my very large belly. They were all guessing about 9 lbs.
I started to feel all the pulling and pushing that goes with a section, and then the doctor told Tom to get his phone ready because the baby was about come. Tom started taking a video, and I'm so glad he did. I've watched it so many times, hearing the doctor say "Here we gooooo!" and then "Holy crap that's a big head. Seriously, that's a big head!" And then my gorgeous, breathtakingly beautiful baby came out screaming. She was huge and purple and glorious and MAD. "She is BIG" was what everyone kept saying. It took a few minutes to weigh her because she had swallowed some fluid on the way out, but they eventually let us know that she was TEN POUNDS even. My big girl! No wonder I was so miserable!
We were wheeled back into our room, and they brought in the NICU doctor to check her out since she was so big. They did several blood sugar checks just to make sure all was good, and she passed them all. They also monitored her closely because she was wimpering a lot. It was adorable, but I guess it could have meant something serious with her breathing.
She had swallowed so much fluid that she wasn't interested in latching or eating for several hours. I got nervous, thinking she might have issues, and I was also having a hard time remembering how to feed a floppy newborn since my last experience had been with a strong toddler. But one visit from the lactation consultant and we figured it out. She latched and has been a pro ever since. This girl did and still does love to nurse!
Tom picked Abbie up from daycare and brought her to the hospital. She was immediately obsessed with her baby sister. She had just started speech therapy at this time and her speech was still a jumbled mess, but she babbled and babbled on about her baby sister. While I was looking forward to my days resting in the hospital, it was harder to stay there knowing that Abbie was waking up in the middle of the night asking for her mommy and baby!
Livvie is now almost 15 months old, and she missed out on the monthly updates I did for Abbie during her first year. I guess that is how things go with the second baby. But she was and is the most glorious baby! Despite her craziness in the womb, she is chill and easygoing. While I could barely keep up with Abbie at this age, Livvie is more content snuggling on the couch with us and still loves to nurse more than anything else in the world. After Abbie, I didn't think it was possible for us to create an "easy" child, but Livvie is most definitely our easy one (or as easy as a kid can get coming from me and Tom!). I love this girl with all my heart, and I'm so thankful our "lucky embryo #3" made it earthside into our family.
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