SURPRISE
This morning we posted some pretty big news on the gram and I thought it was only fitting that we give some details about what has been going on the last few months over at the Darling household. In case you don’t know what on earth I am talking about, we made another baby (oops). Just kidding, it was very much intentional and we are truly over the moon excited. I will say we initially planned to wait a little longer between this baby and Watty but with Covid and everything going on we decided why put it off? Best to just get this baby stuff over with all at once. A little chaos now for a lifetime of (hopefully) closeness between all our babes.
I want to start off by saying we are so grateful we are able to get pregnant naturally and do not take it for granted that we have been able to successfully create our beautiful family without much struggle. Beau gave us a run for our money with his early appearance (linking that blog post here for anyone who hasn’t read that little story), but in the scheme of things we have been more than “#blessed".
This time around was no exception. We got pregnant on our first attempt and everything seemed to be going great, besides of course the absolute horrific morning, noon and night sickness, but again not complaining, we made a baby (yay!). I want to warn everyone now before you continue reading - TRIGGER WARNING - I am going to share a little bit of the scare we recently had with this pregnancy. Thankfully as of now everything is fine but I am still a “high risk” patient and things haven’t felt as rosy as I envisioned. The night before Halloween, at just over 10 weeks pregnant, I was climbing into the shower, I looked down and saw blood. A lot of it. TBH I am quite triggered already by any amount of blood during pregnancy (as I am sure any pregnant woman would be) but with Beau when I had my major abruption the blood was the visual that I still see most clear to this day. I spent my entire pregnancy with Watson expecting to see blood. Every single time I went to the bathroom I was scared to look at the toilet paper. But nothing happened. So, as you can probably imagine, the blood was not a welcome sight. It was not a small amount of blood. It was a lot. And a lot all at once. Blood clots. The whole bit. It was not a cute scene, sorry for the TMI. I immediately told Chris I was going to the hospital. The babies were asleep, I didn’t want to call my mom to worry her, so I decided I wanted to go alone. Chris wasn’t pleased but he understood and obliged me considering the circumstances.
I drove away from my home and family expecting the worse. I have to say it felt more devastating than I could have imagined. I am not one to pray but I spent the entire drive to the hospital making deals with anyone listening that I would do anything for this baby to be okay. It felt like a very bad dream and I kept thinking maybe this wasn’t happening. Unfortunately it was. I got to the Bracebridge hospital and upon entry when I was asked by the Covid screener what was wrong I started tearing up immediately. I felt embarrassed that I couldn’t keep it together. She understood from my few mumbles and got me into triage within a few minutes. I calmed myself down to chat to the nurse as I wanted to ensure I was clear on what was happening. Again I was still trying to convince myself it was not worse case scenario but it was not working well.
The hospital was busy and as much as I wanted to be top priority the multiple ambulances that pulled up were the priority and I knew I was going to be waiting. 5 hours later I finally had my blood taken and saw the doctor. To my surprise my levels were good. My bloodwork was coming back with a positive sign of pregnancy. I didn’t feel one hundred percent better but I felt my heart start to climb back out of my stomach. Unfortunately our hospital does not have ultrasound machines accessible in the middle of the night so the doctor sent me on my way and said to come back if I continued to bleed the next day. I did not feel great about this answer to be honest but not much I could do and it was the middle of the night. I drove home.
After three hours of sleep I woke up to find I was still bleeding. Not a great feeling. I made the decision to go to another hospital in our area and get some real answers, I mean what else could I do? My poor husband who had also not slept but wanted to be the one to take me, packed the kids in the car and drove me 40 minutes away to the bigger (and better) hospital option. He took the boys for breakfast and I went in still feeling this impending doom.
I could go on but the hospital wait was a fraction of the time, I felt I was prioritized there and thankfully was sent to ultrasound quite quickly. With my history and with the continued bleeding they wanted to put my mind at ease, or at least give me an answer either way. A few minutes later, on the screen, before I even saw a heartbeat that little crazy baby was moving their arms and wiggling around. Tears fell down my face as I silently sat there and knew everything was okay, at least in that moment.
Long story short the doctor was so kind and really helped turn what was a terrible 12+ hours into a positive. I was told to be very careful (no heavy lifting, no added stress - best of all - no sex HAHA). Anyways, what had happened was a threatened miscarriage. From my understanding this essentially means your body acts as though it is miscarrying but does not. A very mean trick and something I had not ever heard of. The next few weeks did feel like they were dragging on but thankfully our last scan and ultrasound came back with all positive results. This little baby is growing and thriving and everything looks good. I will of course be doing my very best (easier said than done) to really be mindful of how I am behaving and working during this pregnancy. The only thing I know is that this is a gift, I am beyond lucky to be growing a third baby to complete our family and it all just feels so much more important than anything else.
For now I have slowly started to feel better, not all day constant nausea which is a very nice change from the first 12+ weeks. All I want of course out of this pregnancy is a healthy and happy baby but I am going to do my best to enjoy this last pregnancy and really embrace these months of just the four of us. Alright, that’s enough. I feel like this all sounds a little dramatic and I guess it kind of has been but here we are. Can you believe it thought?? We are having BABY NUMBER 3! Head over to the gram and ask any baby questions on your mind. So excited to share this journey, the good and the bad, but hopefully more good from here on out.
Thanks for being here babes.
xo
P.S. All these beautiful photos are from my extraordinarily talented friend Carlyn of Lenny and Hume, please go and check her out on instagram (linked here).