Pregnancy Number THREE

You can read about pregnancy number ONE here and you'll have to wait until June for the story of pregnancy TWO.

The summer of 1996 I had two children, seven and eight, and had given up the dream of having four kids.  We had long discussed permanent solutions to not spawning more children, but it was only recently that he had agreed to be the one to step forward for the procedure.  AGREED, he hadn't followed through yet.  Obviously.

In September I went with my two friends, Booty and Piranha, to Cancun to celebrate our 30th birthdays.  It was a grand time - four days of drinking, splashing in the ocean, getting sunburned and drinking and little more drinking.  On the last day I felt a little woozy but discounted it as something I ate.  I returned home still feeling woozy and bemoaning Montezuma's Revenge.

I couldn't shake the wooziness.  Days later a neighbor marveled at my glowing appearance and asked if I was pregnant.  NO!  She apologized profusely over and over and was horribly embarrassed.  The following weekend my husband left for a motorcycle rights meeting in Indianapolis and I started to notice little signs of pregnancy I remembered from the past.  My fingernails become incredibly shiny and every single joint in my body pops.  A lot.

Crap.

When he pulled in, I remember standing on the back porch.  He called to me asking if I loved him.  I responded, "do you love me???"  This went back and forth several times until he finally yelled that he won a trip to Alaska.  I replied, "I think I'm pregnant."

Crap.

I was at work when the doctor's office called with the test results.  I had to go to the school office to take the call and with little privacy had to process the emotions that swept over me.  Sitting in the nurse's office I bawled my eyes out and then called my husband to share the news.

I knew at the end of my second pregnancy that if I ever got pregnant again it would be high risk.  I had hung up any hopes for more children unless we adopted.  It explains a lot about my emotional reactions to the announcement - disappointment, fear, reserved excitement.

I left work for the rest of the day.  After a long discussion in the car, my husband and I picked up a few items from the store and hopped around to the grandparents to make the announcement, giving each a gift bag with a pacifier.

Our parents are slow.

Each one was baffled that we showed up in the middle of the work day.  They pulled out the pacifier and stared at it and we had to say the words that I was pregnant.  They took the news much better than we did.

Then we pulled Amanda and Keith out of school and told them the big news.  Honestly I don't remember their reactions.

I do remember my friends' reactions.  Booty and Piranha laughed their asses off.  What a dumbass I was, didn't I know how to prevent this?

Weeks later I received a garbled phone call from Piranha, crying.  She just found out she was pregnant.  Dumbass.  I grabbed a pair of baby booties someone had just given me and rushed over to her house.  Together we cried and laughed and plotted how to tell Booty.  Booty's daughter was 12.  She wanted more children but without a steady man in her life it just didn't seem likely.  We had recently celebrated that our five kids were finally old enough that we didn't have to tote diaper bags everywhere and wear spit-up on our shoulders.  Soon babysitters would be less necessary and we could pick up on our friend time unencumbered by children.

Not anymore.

Booty slipped into a deep depression.  She was not pleased that her two drinking buddies were both knocked out of commission.  She recovered just fine and our friendship is just as strong as ever, but there was a dynamic change in our friend world as she brought in new people to our circle.  This is a bigger story that I will write about at another time.

My wooziness continued and it was accompanied with full body aching.  Eventually I asked to change prenatal vitamins and felt a million times better.  This wasn't technically a difficult pregnancy, but it wasn't easy either.  This was the first time I didn't utilize a clinic and was able to see just one obstetrician.  And oh buddy she didn't like my pregnancy history at all.  I made her nervous.  So much so that several years later when I tried to schedule a tubal ligation and received a little grief from her office staff because I hadn't had a mammogram yet, I said tell the doctor WHO is wanting it.  Practically minutes later I received a call back with a little chuckling as her fervent breast health mission was sidestepped just to prevent ME from ever coming back to her with a fertilized ovum.

She sent me to a cardiologist who prescribed medication that was safer for my incubating baby than the other meds I was carrying.  Both doctors flipped out hearing that I had taken that other medication before knowing I was pregnant.  The child is a little off kilter these days, not in any alarming physical or mental way, but he's off - not sure if it's his weird parents, but it could be the combination of unrecommended medication and a four day drinking binge.  Hard to say.

More concerning were the bouts of rapid heartbeats I was experiencing.  The new medication worked very well for me - yay!  But I was also having quite a bit of premature labor.  Twice I rushed to the hospital for more drugs to keep my contractions at bay.

I don't remember a lot of being pregnant like I do with that first time.  I was working every day and had two kids with active lives.  I was busy being a mom.  We made way for a new little bundle in our world and excitement built as my belly grew.

I was working at the kids' elementary school so I was monitored by both staff and students.  Amazingly, I didn't have to do much explaining to the kids - they understood.  Most of them had younger siblings or had other pregnant family members.  And everyone had an opinion.  Seasoned in this realm I kept my snide responses to myself.  It was surprising to hear many of the annoying statements echoed by the students.

At the ultrasound I asked to know the sex.  As everyone prepared for a boy, I made sure if that if we had a surprise I was prepared.  I had heard horror stories of people having rooms painted blue only to bring home a beautiful baby girl.  Fortunately that wasn't necessary.

My coworkers threw a baby shower for me and the next day I went into labor.

Come back tomorrow for the rest of the story!