What I wish I knew before I got pregnant

I can’t believe I am sharing this!

I always had this fear since I was around 19 that I was going to have trouble getting pregnant. I remember telling stupid boyfriends I had along the way that and my mom. Everyone thought I was crazy. That stupid phrase that still gets me today is “Oh you’re young – you have plenty of time!” I wish I had time! Who knew that my time at 27 I was going to be told that I was running out of time compared to most women. I am now 30 and I have gained so much confidence in this area because I went through so much pain since 27 with this whole ordeal that I want to share my story and inspire my friends, family, or anyone I meet. I truly feel there is not enough women out there sharing their story or talking openly about it. It really bothers me that after what I went through and sharing my story about miscarriages or IVF that I finally hear other people tell me. I know not everyone wants to share their personal business and I felt that way too in the beginning, but I would hate for anyone to have to go through what I did. After sharing my story with some women I am glad to have people reach out to me to guide them or support them.

By 28 I had two missed miscarriages and 1 chemical pregnancy. A missed miscarriage is when you are pregnant and have a heartbeat. It is after hearing the heartbeat for the first time and a few weeks later you go in to hear it again and the heart is no longer beating, but you still have your pregnancy symptoms and no bleeding. It’s when your body has not understood yet the little embryo is no longer living. I say embryo because most out there do not consider it a baby even though I did and I got corrected multiple times. MEAN! It’s amazing the way people talk to you during and after a miscarriage. I think no one knows what to say even doctors unless they have personally experienced it themselves. After having one miscarriage that landed me in the ER and thankfully my sister-n-law lived right down the street to take me because I was screaming and in tears from pain I would have never understood what almost over half of women go through sometimes. I really don’t like thinking back to that day of sitting in the ER in so much pain they make you wait with everyone else while you are bleeding onto their seat in the ER. Yes that happened. I even want to share the gross details to help people understand how not only painful it is, but the emotional rollercoaster you go through from witnessing your own self going through that. I never wanted anyone else to know and even stayed quiet with some of my friends. Who knew that sharing what I had gone through would only help me go through it. I’ll never forget my two sister-n-laws who sent flowers and even took me to the doctor to just be there for support. I mean how lucky am I to have one take me to the ER and listen to me scream and the other one come over to take me to the doctor check up just to sit there for support. I could seriously cry right now just thinking back to that day and how much it meant to me.

I had Kaiser at the time and thought the world of them until all of this. It was then I learned that phrase of you’re young you don’t need testing or we wait until three miscarriages to do testing. How stupid! I finally believed that other saying that  “you know your body.” I knew something was wrong. I pushed through doctor after doctor there until I finally got one of them to listen to me and do more testing. I was so embarrassed for announcing my pregnancy to family and friends to only have to tell them there was no baby anymore. After doing basic testing – they had not found anything. After doing my own research I learned of the proper testing I needed and they wouldn’t do it. I was too young and it was so common to have miscarriages they wanted me to just continue on. There was no way I was going to even attempt to try to get pregnant after the last traumatic ER experience.

Meeting her

I won’t say her name, but I had met this women through one of my husbands friends. He told me not to mention our business because she was a fertility RN. I agreed to not share any of the events we had been through, but anyone who knows me knows I have a hard time not talking and sharing too much information. It was when we were left alone at a Christmas party we were drinking wine and talking about her kids. She asked me when we planned on having kids? I immediately thought well I’m not bringing it up she asked. HAHAH! We spent most of the night talking about my story. She was so kind she offered to speak to her fertility doctor about me. He agreed to do a free consultation. I even got the I am too young to have any issues and he did not recommend IVF. He said we both could do a few tests to prove it was not necessary.

The call

I’ll never forget that call. The call of being told to come in to discuss our results because there was stuff that came up that was important. I won’t go into detail about the issues because that would be too long, but I will sum it up where my time is running out. The amount of eggs and quality I had left was that of a 40 something year old. Not to mention I have MTHFR; which I needed to be on a blood thinner when I got pregnant and also have folate instead of folic acid. My body was not able to take in synthetic form. Folic acid plays a major part in getting pregnant and staying pregnant. That was the day I was told you really should do IVF asap if you plan on having a family.

I’ll talk in another blog post about my IVF experience because that too was a roller coaster. I wish I would have known about how common miscarriages were before I got pregnant and the process of getting pregnant. I never knew how hard it was to get pregnant until I actually started trying. I always saw all these happy posts about being pregnant and thought I could too end up like everyone else. I’m glad I waited to enjoy married life for a while and get into my career, but now everything was becoming so rushed that my time was running out. Deep down I wanted to believe what everyone told me that I was young. After what I went through I do not take any baby I see for granted. Each one is truly a blessing!

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XOXO 

Allison

Don’t break my heart

Kennedy had her 3 month check up with the children’s cardiologist. Many that I talked to through my pregnancy towards the end knew that she had narrowed fetal ductus arteriosus. This was extremely difficult to here because it meant they could induce me early and she would be born way ahead of time. Our OB wanted to keep her inside the womb as long as possible. He kept saying to me that inside the womb was the best incubator to keep her healthy and not in the NICU. What is extremely difficult about this is that there is hardly any research besides case studies to read on the internet. Normally when you hear about a diagnosis a lot of people research on the internet. Apparently the Children’s Heart Center here in Nevada is excellent and way ahead of a lot of places with detecting this early.

Many asked me how she got this? A lot of research is still being determined, but for the most part they have gathered that when the mother eats too high of an antioxidant diet this can lead to this, but not always the case. They then put you on a special diet to help this valve stay open. You must eat a low polyphenol diet. If anyone knows about food the whole world pretty much tells you to eat a high polyphenol. It is extremely uncommon to eat low polyphenol foods since they are unhealthy.

Kennedy’s valve was closing inside the womb. The valve is supposed to close, but not until the baby is born. When it closes inside the womb it’s not good. It can lead to heart issues and worse case scenario death inside the womb. Horrible! I began going into the doctor to be monitored twice a week.

I was put on this special diet to pretty much as my doctor told me “I need you to eat like crap. You are eating too healthy.” Isn’t that crazy? I think I eat this way because I have celiac disease and cannot have gluten. Therefore, I do not eat carbs like everyone else. This diet was extremely challenging because it wanted you to EAT everything I couldn’t have! Jeff and I spent $130 dollars for me to meet with a dietician for ONE HOUR to help me figure out what to eat because I was in tears because I couldn’t eat anything and I was afraid to even kind of cheat and hurt Kennedy. I stopped eating fruit, vegetables, smoothies, salads, juices, tea – pretty much anything that was healthy.

After being on this miserable diet for two weeks my numbers started going up instead of down. I was the first patient ever to be taken off the diet because my numbers went up. I believe this was because I can’t eat gluten like they wanted me too. Kennedy was born at 38 weeks. I was scheduled to receive induction on Friday March 24th at 4:00AM because I was getting contractions, dilated 4 cm, and the valve was closing. However, I checked in March 23rd because my contractions got too bad.

This week I took Kennedy to the her cardiologist for a recheck. When Kennedy was born this doctor came to meet her and gave her two different tests an ultrasound on her heart and an EKG. We were told to bring her in at 3 months to redo the tests. They looked at her fetal ductus arteriosus and found another issue the patent foramen ovale aka PFO. Good news or bad news?

Good news! The ductus has officially closed as it was supposed too. Her PFO went from being open from 4-5mm to 1mm. The doctor was very happy to see the number go down. He said the amount it was open when she was born is where they worry. Kennedy will need to go back into see him when she is 2 years old to recheck this. This doctor was extremely nice and said if I was worried I could come back in at 6 months for a recheck; however 2 years was better because it would show better progress.

What if it doesn’t close I asked? All in all she will be okay. If it doesn’t close she will be limited to doing activities like scuba diving, heavy weight lifting; etc. Things like this he said won’t be too bad. He didn’t want to worry me and said we would discuss that later if it did not close. I am extremely relieved to hear she is okay. After spending the past 3 months with her and then 9 months in the womb – I seriously cannot imagine anything happening to her. It’s when you a have a child you realize so much more in life and you can instantly relate to families who lose their loved ones to horrible accidents or cancer. I was able to sympathize before, but never show empathy. Now I can instantly tear up when I see these horrible stories.

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xoxo Allison