Pregnancy

I loved being pregnant. I can hardly look at these photos without getting emotional. During the whole pregnancy, I would often just stare at my belly in the mirror in disbelief. After 6 years of arduous efforts to add another child to our family, I can't even put into words how much being pregnant meant to me. Pregnancy and the creation of a new life is miraculous in and of itself. I feel so blessed and so lucky to have had the amazing opportunity afforded to me to carry this miracle. I spent a lot of time just sitting with my hands on my belly feeling her flutters and movements and hiccups and all-out karate kicks. And even with that, I feel like it went by way too fast and I didn't enjoy it enough. Even now, I am a little sad that the last few months flew by so quickly. The anesthesiologist at the hospital was trying to help calm me down and talk to me as he was giving me the epidural and he said, "Just think, very soon you won't be pregnant anymore." I said, "I knoooooow," and started to cry. I'm sure he thought I was crazy. 

I can not believe how smoothly everything went. Yes, I had complaints and minor pregnancy-related annoying symptoms, but over-all, compared to my last pregnancy, this one was a piece of cake. I had morning sickness for the first about 14-15 weeks. The second trimester was a breeze. I felt like I had some energy and was enjoying my growing belly. The last trimester, I had some morning sickness return, I was extremely tired, and I started to get pretty swollen. But, again, when comparing something to heart failure, it all becomes relatively trivial. 

I worried a lot, but I also felt very safe and very well taken care of by awesome doctors. The fun part, if there is one, about being a high-risk patient is that I got to see my sweet little baby a LOT. I can't even count how many ultrasounds I got to see. 

We did have one scare in the last month of pregnancy where my EKG results came back showing a significant drop in ejection fraction. I had been hovering around 65%, which is awesome, but then my test results the first week of March came back as 45%. We panicked, my cardiologist was out of the country, and we were considering immediate delivery. I went in for another EKG to find that my EF had come back up. We're still not sure what the explanation is for this. Maybe the 45% was a mis-read or the machine messed up, who knows. We calmed down a bit, my cardiologist returned, and both he and my OB said they felt like I was okay to go a bit longer. Even though the doctors said I could maybe have a normal labor and vaginal delivery, we decided to take the safest route and have a scheduled C-section. This seemed like the best option for minimal risks to my heart and minimal risks to the baby, especially since I made it all the way to 39 weeks. 

The whole thing is simply miraculous. Here are some photos of my pregnant self...

32-33 weeks

Allary took these of me. Then she wanted me to take some of her. :)

37 weeks

(I wanted to hurry and take some photos because there was a chance we were delivering sooner than we had originally thought. Now, I'm just glad I have them.) 

38 weeks