My Dog Knew Before Me

I thought it was always weird when your dog knows things before you do. Has that ever happened to you? This was weeks before I found out that I was expecting with my first baby. And I am impressed because we found out around 4 weeks of being pregnant. My dog was doing some weird things like coming up and sniffing my breasts, more snuggly than normal, and started being more protective. They say dogs are pretty smart and man are they ever. I didn’t think anything of it until I was a few days late on my period and I felt really sick on the first day of my actually period date. Things started to make sense once I got a positive result from the pregnancy test. He must have smelled all the new hormonals.

Finding Out I was Pregnant

Once I realized my period was late by a few days, I knew I was on the clock to do something special for my husband before he started getting suspicious. We had agreed to get off birth control and preemptively bought some at home pregnancy tests. Some may ask if we were “trying” but I would say we were technically trying but not really trying if that makes since. Expectations were low and figured it would take some time for the birth control hormones to get out of my system. We were in no rush to get pregnant and we put it into God’s hand and knew he would make it happen when it did. One day after feeling off, I went upstairs one night after work and took a test. A few minutes later it turned out positive. I was in shock and didn’t even think it was true. Before I got really excited, I wanted to take one more before I told my husband. The following morning, I took another test and it was positive again! I was so excited and knew this was going to be the hardest secret to hide from him until my next day off which was 2 days away to allow me to do a proper surprise… not a “oh hey, by the way we are pregnant”.

Telling My Husband and Family

I did it, I waited a whole 2 days before telling my husband he was going to be a dad. I wanted to do it in a cute special way. The morning of the surprise, I made my husband breakfast while he was in a meeting upstairs. I do this from time to time so no suspicion yet. I made him scramble eggs and spelled out “Hello Dad” with the eggs and salsa. I walked upstairs with the camera rolling, at first he was like “hello dad? Did Meeko make this for me?”. So next I handed him the positive test. He was like “is this real!?”. He was super excited We decided to wait until 8 weeks to tell our parents and siblings and close friends. You can see the cute video here. For social media I always wanted to do a video or picture of ICE ICE Baby… corny but hilarious in my book. But once you go onto Pinterest you come up with a million other ways. We did two different ways. We told the world around 12 weeks pregnant. We made a video of ICE ICE Baby(see video in link), where my husband and dog held up a bag ice and at the end showed my belly. And did a Taco bout a baby theme picture.

First Trimester

They aren’t joking around when they say the first trimester can be rough. I told myself I wasn’t going to be like everyone else and disappear off my social media, but I had to. I was so sick! It started around 6 weeks. I was constantly nauseous, exhausted, and I didn’t want food other than chips. I had major food aversion when it came to peanut butter. I couldn’t stand the smell and or taste of peanut butter so of course I banned the household from consuming it (sorry E.C. and Meeko). I also would throw up anytime my allergies would act up. Have you ever coughed into full fledged puking session because I have. Every symptom they say you can get, I got. Don’t get me wrong… I count my blessings and so glad I am able to have this little miracle, but it was no cake walk. We had our first doctors’ appointment at 8 weeks and had a very special moment seeing our baby on the ultrasound for the first time. Every day I still went to work and had to wake up a little early in case I was sick and carried nauseous candies around with me. My doctor did prescribe nauseous meds and I only took them when I really needed to (They can make you very dehydrated). The stress of the pregnancy got real after the 12-week appointment. The doctors did some measurements and out of over abundance of caution they wanted to keep any eye on our little one due to having extra fluid around the baby’s neck. Extra fluid around the neck can indicate some very scary things like chromosome issues or a heart condition. When the doctor told us this news I began to get teary eyed and it was difficult to understand all the medical jargon they were saying. I remember hearing there is something wrong with the baby and you are now high risk and the rest just flew right over my head. She wanted to test my blood to see if our baby was positive for down syndrome and schedule another ultrasound with the high-risk doctor. All of this was very overwhelming and thinking to myself that I have already failed as a mother and my body wasn’t good enough. We had to wait a whole 2 weeks before we found out the blood results. Man was that a tough 2 weeks. I just knew we were going to love this baby no matter what, no matter what it came back with. We leaned into God really hard and prayed constantly and we were fortunate to make it to the end of the 2 weeks with our sanity. We got good news… the tests were negative (sigh of relief). The next day more good news at the ultrasound that the neck fluid went from 5mm to 1mm. Praise Jesus! Although, my high-risk doctor said I needed to come back at 23 weeks to check out the heart once it was a little more developed just to be cautious.

2nd Trimester

The trimester every pregnant woman wants to be in. I would call this the easiest trimester physically but still not mentally for me due to some issues that came up. I believe the best part was our gender reveal party and babymoon. We wanted to be surprised of the gender we were having and find out at the party (no cheating). Therefore, we arranged for my doctor to call my sister with the results while we were on a family beach trip where we planned a dual gender reveal party for me and my sister-n-law (she was pregnant as well). We decided to do smoke canons on the beach. It was pretty funny because it was so windy that day my husband and I didn’t really see it. We popped the cannon and the smoke literally flew away faster then we could register the color of the smoke. We turned to my sister to tell us and she screamed, “it’s a girl!”. It was an “Oh no reel moment!” (Can see the videos here) We also had one more gender reveal with my husband’s side of the family where we filled up water guns with washable pink paint to surprise them. We let our nieces and nephews spray us in white shirts and they loved it! While my nausea did not go away until 15 weeks, I did start to get a lot more energy once I was in my second trimester. Fast forward to my 23 week ultrasound appointment, the high risk doctor was checking the size of our baby and the heart. The ultrasound tech had some trouble getting a few angles of the heart due to our baby girl being stubborn, just like her momma. The doctor came in and started to tell us that our baby girl was only measuring in the 10th percentile for growth and that can mean a couple of things. It could mean that she isn’t getting the right nutrients or it could just be the fact that I’m not exactly Andre the Giant myself. They also wanted us to come back in another 2 weeks to check my amniotic fluid level. I would say this was very hard for me to hear. I felt my body was failing me yet again. I was worried my baby wasn’t growing and there was nothing I could do about it. I struggled emotionally for the rest of the day. I finally put it in God’s hands again. Yet another two weeks went by and we were back at the doctors. They said my fluids were good but they were not able to get the view of the heart again and that they found what looked like a calcium spot on babies’ stomach and this could be the reason why she not growing like she should be. They wanted to test my blood to see if I had bacteria and that the baby and I were sick and needed to take an antibiotic. At this point, my husband and I wish we could just have one good news appointment. We waited two whole days to get my results and it thankfully the bacteria infection came back negative, but they would like to see me again to make sure the spot didn’t spread or grow larger; as well as, checking heart and growth again. We were very thankful. Overall the second trimester was awesome feeling great but also crappy for me due to all my problems and covid canceled my out of town baby shower.

Third Trimester

The last trimester where everything starts to get really real. Time to start cracking down and getting things in order before the baby comes. For some reason I felt like I needed to be really prepared or I would feel stressed out but at the same time I was a slacker because fatigue symptom came back. In between the high risk doctor appointments I had the normal glucose test at week 28. Everyone makes it out to be the worst appointment ever because the drink is gross, but I didn’t think it tasted bad at all. It tasted like Hi-C. A few days later, I got a call from the doctor saying I failed my 1-hour test and needed to come back for the 3-hour test to check for gestational diabetes. I really didn’t want to do the 3 hour long test, and put it off until 30 weeks. For this test, they took my blood every hour after I drank the drink. They made me sit there so that they could watch me and made sure I didn’t go anywhere. At the end, it wasn’t too bad due to having a lot of things I needed to do on the gram. Surprisingly my results came in the next day. When I came home after my test that day, we found out that my husband came down with a bug and he was so worried about me getting it that we quarantined him in the guest bedroom/bathroom. I would only see him through FaceTime. This lasted a whole week, which was very hard for me because I found out the news that I failed the test again and indeed had gestational diabetes… goodbye ice cream, goodbye lattes, and goodbye bread and pasta. The worst news of my life. I went through so many emotions that week. I would say it was one of the hardest weeks of my pregnancy. I had to go through sugar withdrawal on top of trying to figure out how to eat and write down how many carbs I was having… all while pricking my finger 4 times a day. It was an eye opener on just how crappy I was eating and how many carbs and sugar are in everything. After 2 weeks, I did get it down where I knew what I could eat and made sure I got all my snacks and water in for the day. I was very strict on my diet and never went off it because if I did then I immediately felt terrible. My friends who had previously had it were very helpful and gave me pointers along the way. Skipping ahead, around my 32 week appointment, we had our last family vacation scheduled and everything went wrong right before we were going to have to leave. That week I had thought I lost my mucus plug and freaking out that we might have our baby too early. I was hard core stressing. At my appointment she checked me and I didn’t lose my plug, thank goodness, but that my blood pressure was extremely high. I was in disbelief because I have never had high blood pressure in my life including up to this point in the pregnancy. She recommended that I not go on the trip and to rest so that we could get it down. Our family was sad but understood. We had a restful stay-cation on the couch and did nothing for a week. I was able to get my blood pressure down and keep it down. After that appointment I hadn’t had anymore scares. Once I got to my 36-week appointment it was time to get my body ready for labor. I was walking tons, bouncing on the ball, and doing all the old wives’ tales to get our baby to drop. Overall, my third trimester was okay. I would say the worst feeling is your swollen feet, pressure in the lower back, joints being so loose and painful, cramping, lots of braxton hicks, and lastly feeling so big that you could pop at any moment and there is no way you could possibly get any bigger. I enjoyed all the snuggles of Meeko and sweet moments with my husband before our sweet little girl comes. While we had our fair share of scares, we are beyond grateful that God has allowed this miracle to happen and continues to see us through it.

Pregnancy Journey