Why We Didn’t Tell Anyone

In case you missed the announcement last week – I’m pregnant with Baby #3!  I’m 20 weeks as of last Thursday and due in October with…a boy!

That’s a lot of info, isn’t it?

How is it that you didn’t know about this sooner, you ask?  Well, no one knew really.  As of about 3 weeks ago, only a handful of people knew, and that number includes our parents and my doctor.    I broke the news to my office about 2 weeks ago and we went “public” with the information on Facebook the week after that.  As the wall posts, text messages, private messages, and phone calls rolled in, the resounding response was that of surprise, even from family members.  Some people even seemed a little hurt that we hadn’t shared the news with them before turning to such a public forum.  People wanted to know why we hadn’t told anyone.  Well, the answer to that is long and somewhat complicated, so I figured I’d put it here.

One day back in mid-February, I found myself in extreme pain.  A pain worse than labor, and yet, eerily the same – a cramping pressure that was coming in waves and lasting for several minutes before finally giving me a reprieve.  I knew I didn’t feel “right” at about 8 pm that night, but couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly what was wrong.  By 11pm the pain and pressure were unbearable.  I was running back and forth to the bathroom, not that I had to go, just that was the only place where I felt even a little comfortable.   By 1am, I couldn’t handle it anymore, and made the decision to go to the ER.  Alone.  Probably not the best decision I’ve ever made, but we live pretty close to a hospital and I didn’t want to wake the girls up to all go sit in the hospital.  By the time I arrived in the ER, I was vomiting from how much pain I was in (and scaring the triage nurses since the only thing I’d consumed that night was red Gatorade) and a series of tests were ordered.

I was convinced it was a ovarian cyst.  I’d had one rupture in 2010, and the pain was similar.  I was wrong though.  Instead, it was this:

At 6 weeks and 5 days.  Not a thing wrong with what we know know is our little boy.

The ER doctor gave me 2 shots of morphine (after virtually having to swear on the lives of his own children that it was safe) and I was sent home several hours later with a prescription for Vicodin (which the ER doctor again had to swear on the lives of his own children was safe).  Lots of instructions to follow up, but no reason for the pain, after all, the ultrasound they performed there came back normal.

What followed was a flurry of visits to doctors that couldn’t explain my pain.  Until my OB ordered an ultrasound a few days later…  As the tech was going through and taking all the measurements she found a clot of blood.  She very quickly brushed it off as no big deal and something that can naturally occur during implantation, saying as long as it measured under a certain number, it was fine.  As she stretched the dotted line over my clot to measure it, her voice trailed off.  “Hmmm.  I’ll take a picture of this to show the doctor”, she said.

Turns out, my clot was measuring six times what it was “allowed” to.  And there were other smaller clots as well.  The very next day my doctor explained that the blood was indicative of an internal bleed in my uterus.  The clots were essentially threatening the baby, but there wasn’t much that could be done to stop the bleed itself.  We talked about bedrest, medication, and a variety of other options to safeguard the pregnancy, but when all was said and done, there was nothing proven to work.  And naturally, they couldn’t go in and fix the bleed itself.  I left the office unsure of just how long this pregnancy would last.

I was followed closely by ultrasounds and doctors visits after that.  At one point I remember looking at my doctor and saying, “But the baby’s still in there, right?  I’m still pregnant?”.  To which she replied, “I don’t think you should be making any big announcements.  You’re not quite out of the woods yet.”  That right there scared the crap out of me.  I’ve never had a doctor tell I was in the woods.  Ever.

So we didn’t tell anyone…mostly out of fear that we’d have to “untell” them one day.  We really didn’t want to have to do that.

Instead, we continued on with everyday life.  And with the exception of the extreme morning sickness (I was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum shortly after my ER visit), I pretty much ignored the fact that I was pregnant – it was easier than worrying all the time over something I had no control over.  I tried my best to keep up with my kids through the exhaustion.  I only missed one full day of work due to my ER visit.  And due to the extreme morning sickness, all my normal clothes fit.  Time marched on and I marched with it.

But I was dying to tell someone.  Anyone.   Every now and again, I’d find myself telling random people (the bank teller, the lady at the grocery store check out, the guy at the car wash, etc) because I had to get it out.  I wanted someone to know this huge secret that only I and a handful of people knew, but I only felt safe telling those random people – I knew that I’d never have to “untell” those people.  They didn’t know me.  I didn’t know them.  It was freeing to share the news and yet reminded me how difficult this pregnancy has been.

After months of monitoring, my doctor finally declared my bleed to be small.  She was no longer quite so concerned – I was officially out of the woods, a place I never wanted to be in the first place.  That meant we could start sharing the news, but where to start?  I was just shy of 18 weeks along.  Who waits until 18 weeks to reveal a pregnancy?  We briefly debated the idea of telling no one and just showing up with another baby one day, but quickly decided we couldn’t actually pull that one off.  So we snapped a few pictures, played around with photoshop, and decided to go public on Facebook.  That way everyone would know at once.  A few days after that, I posted those same pictures here so all of you would know too.

And now here we are 20 weeks into this pregnancy.  Finally, everyone knows.  Finally, I can blog about it (because I’ve wanted to for so long).  I’m thrilled and relieved to have made it this far, and I’m determined to enjoy the remaining 20-ish weeks…because being pregnant again is not on my to-do list.