third trimester, baby #2! (written on December 14th, 2015)

at the beginning of my third trimester we went to utah to see alex off for his mission! he went to the georgia atlanta north mission! i was feeling good and the flight didn't bother me at all. we were considering leaving at the same time if prim didn't do well on the flight to utah, but she did. i stayed an extra few days and she and i flew back to TX alone! she did great. 

 27 weeks

27.5 weeks

28 weeks, our last day in utah.

  30 weeks

34.5 weeks

36 weeks. Prim's birthday!

 37 weeks. right before leaving for the hospital to get a version performed.

fortunately baby was already head down so they sent me home!!!!

bare belly! 37.5 weeks

39 weeks

39.5 weeks

2 days before due date. getting eggplant parmigiana to try to induce labor.

the night before my due date. went on a strenuous walk to encourage the baby to come out.

 

40 weeks and 3 days. this was the night before i got induced.

the trimester in all really wasn't that eventful. i felt good and was able to keep up with primmy.

i am being induced tomorrow at 4am. i have shown no signs of labor and am currently 3 days overdue. my dad is in town and prim was 4 days late. they worried about meconium with her, so we didn't want this baby to be any later. plus if he/she is born tomorrow, they'll be exactly 13 months apart!

it has been nice knowing exactly when the baby's going to come. we cleaned the bathroom really good (for some reason, coming home to a dirty bathroom REALLY bothered me with prim), got our car ready and are in the process of cleaning up the apartment. this is so exciting! i can't wait for prim to meet her sibling tomorrow! i really haven't wanted to finish this blog because i don't know what my official gender guess is going to be. . . i think i'm going to say boy. i've felt boy the whole time although that's how it was with prim as well until the end. now, the day before, i am still unsure. but i'll go with boy. jon guesses boy as well!

2nd trimester, baby #2!!

here i am at 26 weeks. i can't believe how quickly this pregnancy is going compared to the first! i am so grateful to prim for keeping me so preoccupied and happy.

(16 weeks)

i am still feeling really good. my stomach is starting to get pretty cramped and it's not comfortable to bend over. i can squat and pick stuff up, but bending over puts weird pressure on my stomach and bladder. i think this started happening earlier than it did with my first. i keep telling jon "i can't believe i _____ already!" and he says "a.j., i don't think you realize how far along you are." i guess he is probably right. everything seems to be happening earlier, but i think it is just because it was this time last year that it was happening so it doesn't seem like enough time has passed, if that makes sense. i got pregnant so quickly that i don't remember what normal is. hard to explain.

(18.5 weeks)

the summer went by way too fast. we had tons of plans to swim all the time, but that just didn't happen. i definitely started wearing maternity clothes earlier than i did last pregnancy. at the beginning of the second trimester i started feeling fat and not cute yet. my small clothes didn't fit and my maternity stuff didn't fit right either. at 12 weeks i went to the temple store without prim. i was wearing a maternity shirt with my skirt and the lady at the register congratulated me and asked how far along i was. i thought that was pretty bold of her, but figure it was probably obvious because of the scrunching on my maternity shirt. she's the only one who congratulated me for a long time and i think it's because Prim wasn't there. when i was pregnant with her, people were commenting on it ALL the time from when i just barely started to show. now people are afraid to say anything when they see my belly and see my little baby. they aren't sure if i'm still trying to work off my baby weight! 

(20 weeks)

my belly really popped while amanda was here at the end of july/beginning of august. i said "look at my belly!" and she said "yeah, that was not there when i got here" and she was only here for a total of 5 days. now that i've popped and its increasingly obvious that i'm pregnant, people have started to congratulate us and prim. i had expected people to say weird things about having a baby so soon and babies so close in age, but i haven't been offended or surprised by anything that's been said so far! 

(23 weeks)

i worked out pretty consistently until around 22 weeks when our jogging stroller got a flat tire. i was walking at least 3 or 4 times a week and then doing push ups and other arm work outs. since the tire popped i've had a really hard time doing cardio. i only go when jon comes with me because her normal stroller is really heavy and hard to push on our drive way. that sounds super lame, but you have no idea how long and bumpy/hilly our driveway is. it takes about 10 minutes to get from the house to the main road and by the time i get there i already want to turn around, haha. i'm dedicated to getting back into walking and doing easy work outs though, hoping it'll help get back to my normal size after teeny gets here. 

(24.5 weeks)

mid august we went on a gap shopping spree (thanks to emma for the coupons!) for me and prim. i desperately needed post baby clothes and don't want to have to deal with it when i have two babies, no time and no money-ha. we got clothes for prim for her to grow into next year and even got one item for teeny. a little white fuzzy snowsuit that is to die for. we put prim in one her size and lost it. she looked so cute, but it wasn't practical with her crawling and starting to walk. teeny is going to look SO cute in it! this is so far the only thing we have bought specifically for him/her!!

(25 weeks)
while lizzie was in town we got to have our big ultrasound! our doctor prefers to do them as late as possible (we are never in a hurry since we don't find out the gender) so that she can do the anatomy scan when the baby is pretty big and she can see it clearly. we went on tuesday september 1st and it was the cutest thing in the world. it was so much better than prim's ultrasound (i think the doctor was rushed with her). she let us just look at teeny moving on the screen. it's little hands were up by its face twitching and moving and he/she was opening and closing its mouth. at one point prim looked at the screen and giggled. for the most part it seems like she is oblivious, but there are little tiny moments like this where i think she knows more than we think she does. we could see that teeny has chubby little cheeks like prim did and it looks pretty bald so far! (as if we really know) it was really exciting and special that both lizzie and prim got to be there. jon and i are over the moon excited about this new baby coming into our lives. we have enjoyed prim so much from day one (okay maybe like day 14) and can't wait to experience it all again with prim in tow. we are all three so lucky.

waiting for the doctor. she'd always lean over lizzie's shoulder to look at her close up.

there he/she is!!!! i can't get over those eyes and that nose.

(26 weeks)

bring on trimester three!

first trimester, baby #2!!!

I am officially out of my first trimester and feeling great! i was fully prepared to be exhausted and sick, sick, sick. luckily, this was not the case. when I found out i was pregnant, i could have tricked myself into thinking i wasn't. it was so different from the first pregnancy, i didn't feel pregnant at all. as i got to week 6, i kept remembering back to how sick i was at this point before....week 7, week 8 and I still wasn't sick. i remember telling amanda and lyndsi that i believed at this point it was mind over matter and if i truly believed i wouldn't get sick, that i wouldn't. (HA) i kept putting off being sick and i never became plagued with sickness like i was before and i can't say how grateful i am for that. there were a handful of days that i felt crummy, but mostly when I was in utah with a lot of help with prim. i also think that taking care of primmy took my mind off of tiredness or sickness i may have been feeling if i was able to mope around and feel bad for myself. i've been reading about other women with 'short interval' pregnancies and they all talked about how tired they are/were. you guys. when i had my kidney issues, i was. so. tired. i couldn't get out of bed and couldn't hold prim because it made my arms too tired. i guess i'm seeing now how those events could be blessings in disguise. i am nowhere near as tired now as i was then. 

 this is when we found out. i was at ashton's house and we were talking about how i wanted to get pregnant again. i was a few days late, but didn't say anything. on the way home i stopped at the grocery store and bought a pregnancy test. cassidy happened to be there, so again, she was one of the first people to know (sort of know)! she is the checker so when she scanned the test she looked at me and said "seriously?" then got so excited and hugged me and prim even though there was a line. i went home and took it and it was positive. this is right when we got back from california, so i text jon and asked him to come home from school. he didn't think anything of it because after being together for the whole weekend, he just thought we missed him. i put the test on the bathroom counter and told him to go look at it. he turned around with tears in his eyes and hugged me and prim! we were both in blissful shock.

right when i saw the positive, i ran to prim and told her "mommy's having a baby!" she smiled SO big and starting kicking her legs. later, when i told jon, we asked her if she knew who the baby was and she smiled again and got excited.

 bold to be posting this, eh? this is between 5-6 weeks pregnant. nobody knew. i took this picture to send to amanda showing her how the swimsuit she gave me fits (we're like that). not flattering but pretty much me post baby and pre baby :)!

 at exactly 8 weeks, we went to our first doctors appointment. i had text my ob to tell her the good news, so she was expecting us. as she was doing the sonogram she said "aw, i was hoping it was twins". who would wish that juju on us at this point in life?! the baby looked great and seeing that little heartbeat was really touching.

 celebrating after the appointment at cheesecake.

we told my family and jon's family at about 7/8 weeks and then told everyone else around 9.

here i am at ten weeks.

 11 weeks up at the cemetery.

and 13 weeks!
it took me a few days to get over the anxiety and guilt about having another baby. i got melancholy about taking time away from prim, but i had to keep reminding myself that we wanted this like crazy. we aren't taking anything away from her, but giving her a little sibling that can hopefully be her best friend! we love being parents and love little prim so immensely that we knew pretty darn soon we wanted another one. we have so much love to give these two babies. we keep thinking that this may be our last one, so i'm soaking up this pregnancy just in case!! i am looking forward to the second trimester, hoping to have a little more energy and starting to see a cute little bump (before i get huge). here we go...

a baby is born.

[originally posted on 1/19/15]

Jon and I tried to keep track of the details of our baby's birth by taking time to write out what was happening. we actually each only wrote one time. this is Jon's account:

"On Nov 15, AJ woke me up and was having contractions. We woke up, and decided that they were very serious. So we got in the shower (because we smelled like campfire) and washed up for the hospital. Aj's contractions were getting more and more severe and were very painful. We got out of the shower and called the on call doctor. She was supposed to call us right back but my phone was on do not disturb mode so we didn't hear it! She called twice more that we missed and by the time we got ahold of her it was almost 0200. When we finally talked to her she told us to go to the hospital so we gathered a few loose ends and John, Kathy and Katie sent us on our way. 

The drive was slow, not another car on the road. Contractions were very bad and very close. We got to the hospital and parked and as we were walking in, AJ wasn't able to walk anymore and sat on the ground. Luckily someone was in their car outside the ER and they went in and got a nurse with a wheelchair. She brought us up to the second floor and we got checked in to triage. By this time the contractions were very bad and Aj's back was hurting very bad. In triage she was dilated to 3cm.

We got a room soon after and AJ really wanted the epidural. She got hooked up to an iv and soon after the anesthesiologist came in for the epidural. The first time she placed the catheter it was in a blood vessel so she had to do it again. Once she got it placed and the medication flowing I almost passed out. I was standing with my knees locked and supporting AJ and all of a sudden my vision started blurring and I had to step back and put my hands on my knees. By this time it was about 0415/0430. Everything since then has been uneventful. Current time 0501."

and mine:

"The epidural was the best thing ever. When she put in the first numbing shot, I was tingly all the way down to my legs. I told her I didn't want her to tell me anything she was doing, so we mostly talked about Jon's pram from Germany. The nurses loved/acted like they loved it. It was scary when Jon almost passed out, he was white as a ghost. He sat on the sofa and the nurse sat in front of me and rubbed my legs until the anesthesiologist was done. It made me very sleepy and jon and I both fell asleep until about 7. The new nurse came in and checked me at 8am. She said I am 6/7 cm dilated and the sack is bulging. The baby was also right there! She said she could have broken my water with her finger nails. She will send the doctor in around 9am to break my water and thinks it'll be about 2 hours after that when we have the baby. I am so excited!"

when the nurse came in to check me again she let me know that my water had broken on its own and that she saw meconium in it. because of that, they would have NICU nurses on hand when the baby arrived and i wouldn't be able to hold him or her right away. that made me pretty sad but i journeyed on. i didn't progress as fast as the nurse had thought that i would. Dr. arya came in and introduced herself as the doctor on call. we let her know that we had hoped our doctor, dr. simpson would be able to deliver our baby. she said she'd call dr. simpson and see if she'd be able to come in! we were so excited because we had felt a special bond with our doctor, she'd been so kind to us the whole pregnancy. 
i started to push around 11am. i decided to have only jon and i in the room when i delivered, it just seems so personal to me and i wanted to keep it the two of us. i'm really glad i did because the whole time i pushed the only people in the room were me, jon and one nurse. it was quiet and the three of us just chatted and went back and forth about whether the baby was a boy or a girl. the nurse, jessica, kept calling it a 'he' and told us she did that because she has two boys of her own. i didn't mind too much but secretly thought it was a girl. 
when i started pushing i noticed that every time i'd push, the ribs on my left side felt like they were breaking. i didn't know what the deal was but my nurse kept telling me it was normal although it didn't feel normal. i started to feel quiet a bit of pressure in the downstairs so they upped my epidural. that didn't seem to do anything so they brought the new anesthesiologist in. he checked my epidural and saw that the catheter had been bumped out of place so i wasn't getting the medicine-no wonder! he had to do the whole procedure over again aka i got a second epidural and afterwards i felt so much better. when i started pushing again the nurse noticed that the baby was facing my side instead of facing my bottom. she told us that not all doctors will turn babies but dr. arya is one that will. she came in and tried turning the baby's body. she said when she'd turn its head the baby would turn back. she tried a couple times and decided we would just continue to push and it would be fine. this is about the time they asked me if i wanted to have a mirror to see what was going on. i told them i didn't think i wanted to see but to bring the mirror in anyway. well when they brought it in i definitely wanted to see and i'm so glad i did! it was so motivating to see the top of that little baby's head. all we could see was a pale head with very little hair!! my whole pregnancy i had horrible heartburn so i was excited to see if the old wives tale of having bad heartburn meant your baby would have a lot of hair was true and it wasn't! around 3pm (i'd been pushing for about an hour with a 45 minute break for a new epidural and then for another hour and a half or so) my nurse said that she would call dr. simpson and she would come deliver our baby!!! this is when we really started to get excited. jon and i made our final guesses and agreed that we thought we were having a girl. i never felt like i was losing steam or getting to the point of not being able to push anymore. my biggest complaint was that i was very thirsty. all i could eat were ice chips and my nurse discouraged me from drinking any water (i think this is normal). when she wasn't looking, jon would tip my ice glass and let me drink the melted ice at the bottom of the glass. (*spoiler alert* this is when i started to become very dehydrated which would lead to major health problems, but we will get to that later) Jon was so sweet the whole time. I don't know how many times the man left the room to refill my cup and when he got back he'd pick out the biggest pieces to give me and say "this is a good one!"

(jon took this at noon, either right before or right after i got my second epidural)
by the time dr. simpson moseyed in i was very ready to get this baby out! she was chatting with one of the nurses and i remember interrupting them and saying "it feels like this baby is coming out!" dr. simpson is very laid back and never seems to be in much of a hurry. this was obvious during pregnancy when she would be very late to our appointments. all our appointments. that day was no different! she casually put on her gear and got in place. it took three pushes and her coaching me "come on girl, push push pushhhh!" to get that little baby's head out and in the same push the rest of the body! she pulled that baby out, held it up and i looked into jon's watery eyes when he said "it's a girl!" and the doctor and all the nurses yelled "girl!!" it was such a surreal experience, it doesn't even feel like it really happened. as the doctor was holding her in front of me i said "she's so tiny!" Dr. simpson said "she is not tiny! i can't believe she was in you, where was she hiding??" jon cut the cord and she handed our little girl to the nicu nurses and they all asked "does she have a name?" jon and i had been going back and forth on a middle name before i started to push. we were pretty settled on it so i replied "Primrose Teresa" and it sounded perfect. 

we were listening to the hunger games over the summer on our drive to carlsbad caverns. of course we didn't know what we were having, so we always bounced around boy and girl names. as we listened, we started discussing how great of a character prim is in the book. i asked jon if he'd consider primrose as a girl name and he very quickly said yes because he loves how kind and compassionate the character is. i looked it up and it was also, coincidentally, a texas wildflower. additionally, there is a little school here named the primrose academy that i would drive past every day to and from work. as i drove by i would daydream about a possible baby girl with the nickname 'Prim'. Teresa was my mom's middle name and everyone said she was very funny. compassionate with a sense of humor, hopefully our prim lives up to that:)

after the brief glimpse of my baby, they took her to get her cleaned up and weighed while i myself was cleaned up andddd stitched. i could hear muffled crying and things like "c'mon baby girl" along with suctioning sounds. they yelled out her weight, 8lbs 4oz and me, the doctor and the nurses all gasped in surprise-big healthy baby! i was definitely expecting a six pounder. i couldn't really see Prim from my bed, i could see jon looking at her smiling and the back of one of the nurses working on her. they had a big balloon that they were using to suction out her lungs, it turns out she had fluid in them as well as low blood oxygen levels. after awhile, probably twenty minutes, they finally swaddled her up and asked if i was ready for her. dr. simpson had finished with me and already left, so yes, i was ready to hold prim.

they handed her to me and told me that they were going to have to take her to the nicu. this was a weird moment because she was totally bundled up and i knew i only had a few short moments with her. i touched her cheeks and said to jon "they are so soft!" i started to cry and the nicu nurse was immediately at my side telling me that i didn't do anything wrong and not to be sad because there is nothing i could have done differently. i understood that, i wasn't beating myself up about it i just didn't want them to take my baby away before i even had a chance to be with her! 

we got a quick family photo, i kissed her and they were gone. jon and i barely had time to talk, all i could say to him was "please send katie in." he looked confused for some reason, but he left. when katie came in i told her what happened and she hugged me while we both cried. that was one of the scariest and saddest moments of my life, i am so grateful katie was there with me. she got my phone and on speaker i called my dad to tell him the good news. i had told my dad and my sisters our boy and girl first names, but no one knew the middle name. i told him her name and he got so happy. i could tell he was tearing up as he told me he loved the name. i called lizzie who was overjoyed. i later learned that she was walking in nyc and looked up at the empire state building as i told her we'd welcomed a baby girl. lastly, i called amanda who squealed incomprehensible words then said "that is the most beautiful name i have ever heard in my life!" it was so good to talk to them and hear their excitement, but at this point my head was pounding and my breathing was labored. i could barely keep up conversation because i was in so much pain, the epidural had worn off very quickly. the nurses gave me medicine for my headache and helped me to the bathroom. brittany nunley wrote very honestly about her birth story in this post which helped me SO MUCH throughout my healing process. when i went to the bathroom i was expecting a lottt of blood, so i was relieved to see a normal amount and kept thinking how grateful i was to her for preparing me. jon came back down to see me and i asked him if he'd told his family yet. he hadn't, so he left again to tell them it was a girl! her name was prim and she is in the nicu. by the time he got back, i had already gone to the bathroom and was ready to move rooms. katie packed up all our belongings and moved it to our recovery room while i was wheeled up to the nicu to see our baby.