Background

So, in my first post I made it sound like I am a single mother, which I'm not. My husband hasn't seen the blog yet, but if he had, he surely would have made a comment about not being mentioned.

Like I said, I have a husband. I like to call him Steebe. Don't ask me why. I started it one day and it stuck. We have been married 11 happy years. When we got married we said we were definitely NOT having children. To pacify all of the naysayers, we started telling everyone that we would talk about it in 5 years. So we went about our married life, traveling, eating out just about every night of the week, hanging out with our friends and pretty much everything else people without the responsibility of children do. Then we decided we needed a new house. We had a cute little (and by little, I mean about 850 square feet) bungalow in the city that was perfect for the 2 of us when we were newly married. But after accumulating the amount of "stuff" that we did after about 4 years, we decided we were out of space and needed something bigger. Now, I need to clarify that after about 3 years I started planting the seeds regarding moving in Steebe's head. I was much more patient back then. It took a year for him to "realize" that I was right and we did indeed need more space. We knew that we wanted to build a house. Clarification, have a house built. We have no business doing anything with a hammer that goes beyond hanging a picture, and sometimes that doesn't even come out right. Anyway, we looked and looked and looked for a builder in the right area and in the right price range. We finally decided on a location and put the deposit down on the lot. It was the floor plan we wanted, in the location we wanted, in the price range we wanted. But, it turned out that they weren't starting our phase of the subdivision for about another 8-12 months! So, back to the drawing board. We decided we needed some help, so we recruited a real estate agent. She suggested changing our target area to a little town about 8 miles from our original choice. We took her advice, found a lot, found a builder and started the process. We got lucky and our little bungalow sold before we even put the sign in the yard and our house was built 2 months since the weather cooperated.

In May 2002, we moved from the city to a little German farming town. Sounds drastic, huh? It isn't. It's about 25 minutes from our house in the city. But once you get out of the city and head the direction of our house, it starts feeling like small town USA. The closer you get to our house, the more you feel like you are smack in the middle of the town Footloose was filmed in. But it's not. It's a community with a small town feel but close to all of the city amenities and our family.

So we have moved into our brand new house, which is over double the size of our little city bungalow and we are feeling like we are in a mansion - okay, not really, but the extra space was great. We spent the next few months decorating, arranging furniture and getting the house exactly the way we wanted it. Now what?

Here we are almost to our 5 year anniversary. Our mothers and grandmothers are reminding us that we said we were going to discuss children after 5 years. So we have the conversation. Sounds dramatic, but it was about a 10 minute discussion that led to the conclusion that we would not try to prevent anything and if it happened, then it was meant to be. 3 weeks later it happened. And I know exactly when it happened. September 21, 2003. We were going to see the Lion King Musical that evening. We had reservations at our favorite restaurant for dinner. We were late for our reservation. Why? Because we were busy getting me pregnant. I never imagined it would happen that fast, so you can imagine my surprise a few weeks later when I didn't start my period and a pregnancy test came back positive. We were in such disbelief that we immediately went to the drug store and spent a small fortune on 3 more boxes, all different brands, of pregnancy tests all of which came back positive.

I mentioned my paranoia in my first post. I have never been the paranoid, worry wart kind of person. Until I found out I was pregnant. I didn't feel pregnant. My boobs weren't sore. I wasn't nauseous. I wasn't having cravings. I wasn't tired. I immediately started to worry. My doctor took away all of my pregnancy books. If he could have, he would have prohibited all Internet access for the duration of my pregnancy. But, here's where the paranoia really snowballed into turning me into a full on psycho freak. We booked a 7 night Caribbean cruise before I found out I was pregnant. When we left for the cruise I was only 8 weeks pregnant and was feeling great. About the 3rd night into the cruise we were partaking in the same activity that got me pregnant and I noticed some spotting. We are in the middle of the ocean heading to Grand Cayman from Jamaica. Cell phone reception is non-existent at this point so we head down to the ship's doctor. He was a very nice Swedish man. But he was not helpful. Apparently the word "miscarriage" is not used in Europe or Scandinavia. They refer to a miscarriage as an "abortion". All he kept saying was "I don't think you are having an abortion." It was scary. It made my blood pressure rise. He only made me worry more. Finally in the morning we had cell phone reception and I got through to my doctor's office. The spotting had stopped. They told me to keep an eye on it. But, if it started again and got worse or had clots, I would need to go to a hospital. Our next port of call was Cozumel and I had horrific images of me in some Mexican hospital. But it was fine. It never happened again. But I still worried for the rest of the vacation.

The day after we returned from the cruise I went to the doctor. Had an ultrasound and the little peanut was perfectly fine. But the chain of events on the cruise set something off in me that is still somewhat a part of me today.

The rest of the pregnancy was fine. I had about a 48 hour period where I was nauseous and that was it. I felt great, besides having a hard time getting comfortable in bed towards the end. Then at 34 weeks, all of my greatest fears came to fruition. I was having a premature baby. I developed pre-eclampsia. The pre-cursor to eclampsia, which you want to avoid at all costs. My blood pressure was sky high, I had protein in my urine (apparently that's bad) and my doctor was afraid I was going to have a heart attack or stroke. I spent some time in the perinatal center having some high tech ultrasounds to check on the growth of the baby. He was fine. I wasn't. After 24 hours of tests, we were told that in order for me to get better, the baby had to be delivered. 6 weeks early. His room wasn't done. The crib still needed to be put together. I didn't have my "hospital bag" packed. I didn't have a chance to buy my cute after delivery pajamas. And we were scared to death. We didn't know what to expect. And we didn't really have a chance to think about it. Everything happened pretty fast. They broke my water, started the pitosin (that's probably misspelled), I got the epidural and the next thing I know, it's time to push. 4 pushes was all it took. He was only 4 pounds 11 ounces. He cried immediately. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I held him - for about 1 minute - and they took him. Whisked him away to the NICU. I didn't see him again for a few hours. I didn't hold him for 3 days. That was the longest, most excruciating 3 days of my life. I was scared. Steebe wasn't. He knew everything would be fine. But I was a freak. I blamed myself. If I hadn't gotten pre-eclampsia, this wouldn't have happened. If something went wrong, I would never forgive myself.
More later.