Pregnancy: Miss Cora Carolina

I haven't posted on here in a really long time, but this seemed like the easiest format for what I wanted to do. I wanted to write down the story of how little Cora came to into this world. I wanted to start out by documenting my pregnancy.

Justin and I got pregnant after 6 months of trying, 3 months of sporadic fun and 3 months of a concentrated effort. In no way would I want to lessen the struggles that people go through that experience infertility, but the disappointment of not being pregnant month after month is definitely heartbreaking. During the time I spent trying to get pregnant, I became an expert on all things fertility, driving Justin to near insanity, I'm sure. The morning of July 15, I woke and took a pregnancy test because my BBT was still at a peak after 15 days, which was the limit I set for myself to wait to take yet another pregnancy test. I used an "internet cheapie" test and it came back positive. Frantic, I ran out to the car to grab one of the First Response Early Result tests that are quite a bit more expensive to confirm, hardly daring to believe it to be true.

When that came back positive, I had to tell someone. I had planned out the best way to tell Justin that I was pregnant with the "New Dad" Willow Tree Figurine.

However, that didn't go as planned as I burst into our bedroom saying "Justin, I'm pregnant." seconds later. Later that day at work, I still collected the figurine and brought it home to him. We went to Cafe Niche that night and enjoyed one of my last meals before morning sickness hit hard. Justin and I had decided to wait to tell people that we were pregnant until I was 12 weeks along. Unfortunately, that didn't quite go as planned. The morning sickness hit hard at just 6 weeks and was unbearable and obvious that something was going on with me. Also, we had a planned camping trip with a group of friends where it would be very obvious that something was going on if I didn't show. We broke the news to my parents and Justin's and then I gave him the green light to tell his friends over the weekend. We ended up announcing when I was 10 weeks along.

My "morning sickness" lasted for about 7 months all day and night and even up to 8 months, I would have moments where I would suddenly become very sick and throw up everything I ate. It was not fun, but I was very happy to be pregnant and besides feeling ill felt relatively well physically my entire pregnancy. In total during my pregnancy, I missed 3 days at work. It was NOT fun, but the maternity leave will be worth it.

At 36 weeks, I woke up at 2 in the morning with my whole body itching like crazy. It seemed to come in a wave down my body starting with my head and moving to my ears, my chin, my neck, my torso, my stomach and it would just cycle. I went to the midwives the next day and was diagnosed with a rash of pregnancy called Pemphigoid Gestationis. This is a 1 in 80,000 disease and basically what happens is that your body attacks the collagen that is in your placenta (and in your skin) which causes the reaction. It may appear as a hive-like rash, but then develops into blisters. Some of the side effects of this are preterm birth, low birth weight, placenta failure and low amniotic fluid. I had to have an non-stress test to check on the placenta and my amniotic fluid, as well as monitor baby's heartrate. Fortunately, Cora passed with flying colors. Otherwise, they would have induced me by the end of that week. By Sunday of the following week, I woke up and the rash had completely disappeared. To this point, we have no idea what caused it. It could have been an allergic reaction to something I came in contact with or it is possible that it was stress-induced. I was just relieved that everything seemed to be going ok and that I wasn't going to need to be induced at that point.

The rest of my pregnancy was pretty uneventful. I really struggled at work the last 2 weeks of my pregnancy with all of the good-natured comments of "You're still here!" and the not so good-natured ones of "My baby was late and if we had waited any longer they would have been stillborn." I had a few really bad days, but had a good friend at work that reminded me to try and enjoy these last few moments of being pregnant with my precious little girl because these are moments that I won't be able to get back. I did a lot of research on the science behind due dates and how they are calculated. Despite my ESTIMATED due date of 3/12/16, I came up with the range of 3/17-3/23 based on my LMP, the date I ovulated, and my first trimester ultrasound. I was content on waiting her out - but going to work was hard. :-P

Our sweet little girl waited until 4 days past my due date to make her debut on March 16, 2016.


I will be making a separate post about her birth story.