6 year Angelversary

It’s interesting, whenever April approaches, I notice I start emotionally eating. I get grumpy and a little sad. But the good news is, this April, while I still felt those things, I didn’t clue into why until Charlie’s angelversary was almost upon us! When I realized, I practiced important self-compassion, which helped.

I have learned not to have expectations for angelversaries. I don’t know how hard or easy they will be. I also learned it’s valuable to have a proactive plan for how to spend the day.

This angelversary was the best we’ve passed. It was actually a really good day. Chad ditched work, and we let Hailee stay home from school and we spent the whole day together as a family. In the morning, Hailee and I hiked up to the Reservoir where we fed the ducks and played around. Then, after lunch we all went to the Museum of Natural Curiosity. Hailee was the only one who had been there before, on a school field trip. The museum was so much fun! It was even better that it was during a school day so we practically had the whole place to ourselves. We spent several hours there goofing around. I was struck several times that day that I laughed! Like really laughed! We all had fun together making memories in honor of Charlie.

Of course we concluded the day at his grave where we gave him some small presents and released 6 balloons to heaven. We came home tired but pretty happy.

I like this new tradition we are creating of using Charlie’s Angelversary as a family holiday. Hailee was too young when Charlie died to remember him and Cami and Liam never got to know Charlie in this life. So having an annual family holiday where we make special memories together in Charlie’s honor is a good way to keep Charlie’s memory alive. I like thinking that when the kids are all grown up, they will remember “Charlie Days” together.

I am grateful to be in a place where the sadness I feel about Charlie’s death doesn’t feel dark and heavy. Of course grief waves still strike, but I have learned that I am a strong swimmer. I also can’t help but look at my little family and feel full of so much gratitude for the life we have together now. Cami and Liam are here because we lost Charlie. Our family feels complete, even though our hearts will always yearn for our little angel.

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Biting the bullet

At seven months, when we did all that intense sleep training with Liam it was GREAT! And worth every penny and all the time and effort we put into it. But Liam only slept through the night for about the next month. At 8 months he started teething. And Liam did NOT like teething. So we sleep regressed. Despite giving him Ibuprofin before bed, Liam would wake up one, to two, to three times each night crying! And as he got older, his cries were louder and more persistent! He would stand up in his crib and see us in bed and just cry and cry and cry until we relented, got him out and snuggled him back to sleep.

This got worse. I kicked Chad out of our room and he went to sleep with Cami. I thought it was his snoring that was waking Liam up. But no, Liam kept waking up. I became so tired that I would pull him into bed with me and nurse him back to sleep. But then I began to fall asleep cuddling him and hours would go by before I’d wake up and attempt to put him back in his crib. Liam became so sensitive to being transitioned that eventually he refused to sleep in his crib at all. He just wanted to be in my arms, on my chest, or just right by me, all night long.

Well, this made for poor sleep! While I secretly LOVED cuddling him, he also wiggled all night long and whined. Neither of us got good sleep. So, before this could become too much of a pattern, we KNEW it was time to move Liam into his own room.

I dragged my feet about this so when I was gone one night at a women’s retreat, Chad took down the crib and re-assembled it in the nursery. When I came home the next afternoon, Liam had already taken two naps in his nursery and seemed to be adjusting just fine! In fact, Chad said when he brought Liam into the nursery and Liam saw his crib, he got a big smile on his face.

I was super sad when I got home and realized my little baby would be sleeping away from me from now on. I honestly wanted to cry big alligator tears. But I knew it would be the best thing for all of us.

He’s been in his nursery for a week now and the last several nights he has slept 11 hours straight! At first this made me nervous and I’d wake up to check on him throughout the night. But I am getting used to it too. We had some Owlet difficulties for a few nights where it had difficulty getting a reading, but after re-setting the base station, I think we figured that out and the owlet hasn’t gone off since. Knowing Liam has the Owlet on is very psychologically reassuring since he’s not in my room. When he wakes up between 7-8am, I will still pull him into bed with me to nurse and snuggle for a little bit, so we still have that connection. It’s also good to have Chad back in my bed and our bedroom to ourselves again. Liam seems really happy in his own place as well.

While I am still sad at this transition and that Liam is growing up, I am compensating for the sadness by putting energy into decorating his nursery. Mel is helping me and we are making it really cute! Having a cute space for him makes me excited.

The sleep experts who consulted with us about Liam when he was 7 months old told us that having Liam in his own room would be the best for sleep training. Three months later and lots of hours of lost sleep, we realize they were right! But better late than never!

Liam Charles Packard birth story

I woke up at 1:15am on June 6th with painful contractions. The contractions came at regular 10 minute intervals but did not speed up nor increase in severity…so I knew I needed to just sit pretty and wait. I was somewhat bummed that I was missing out on what would be my last good night of sleep as the contractions were so painful I couldn’t sleep through them. At 4:30am I got up and put together the hospital bag. I noticed the birds started chirping that early and it was going to be a sunny, warm day.

The irony of my body starting contractions on it’s own was that June 6th was my scheduled induction day. I had actually prayed that my body would go into labor on it’s own and it seemed Heavenly Father was answering my prayer. And that we were also going to go through with our scheduled induction. At 6am I called Labor and Delivery at St. Mark’s hospital to find out when they would have me come in. When I called, they said they were really busy and I needed to call again at 8. By that time in the morning I was tired enough that I was able to doze until 7:30am. At 7:45 Labor and Delivery called me and asked if I could come in by 8:30.

We packed up, gave last minute instructions to Grammy, and I quickly made a bagel with peanut butter and we were off! Once we got the hospital, my contractions had increased to about every 7 minutes but I could still talk through them. The nurse checked my cervix and I was 4cm dilated and 70% effaced. They hooked me up to an IV and after a bag of saline, added Pitocin to increase the frequency and intensity of my contractions. Man, this is when it really started to hurt! I kept asking Chad to come and massage my back through each contraction as I had back labor this time. I tried to put off an epidural for a little bit because I know epidurals can slow down labor. I tried using the labor ball but it wasn’t super helpful. Pretty soon I was done being in intense pain, especially as the contractions came more and more quickly. I asked for my epidural but the anesthesiologist was in the middle of a c-section. The nurse informed him to come give me my epidural next but as soon as he finished that c-section, he was off to another! So I had to labor about two more hours without my epidural! I was in intense pain and the nurse suggested I take a dose of Phentinol for the pain while I was waiting. This made Chad and I nervous as back in October they gave me Phentinol when I was in the hospital with my ectopic pregnancy and crashed. We knew logically that I went into shock because my tube burst and I was losing blood but it still made us a little nervous. But I was in so much pain at this point, I was willing to try. As a compromise I asked for half a dose.  That did the trick and I was able to endure another 45 minutes of labor waiting for my epidural.

Side note, Chad is an anxious person when it comes to labor! He was super vigilant watching baby’s heart rate on the monitor the whole time. Anytime baby’s heart rate dropped at all he’d tell me to shift positions.

Finally the anesthesiologist came and proceeded to set me up for my epidural. This was probably the scariest moment of labor because based on how the anesthesiologist placed me, baby’s heart rate dropped into the 90s. They gave me oxygen and then had me position myself a different way and baby did fine. I felt really great after having my epidural. My pain was gone and my mood quickly improved too. The only thing I wished was different was I wish he hadn’t given me so much as when I became complete, I couldn’t tell it was time to push.

With my epidural on board, Dr. Watts came in and broke my water and they turned the Pitosin up to full throttle to move things along. I could barely feel a thing and baby’s heart rate stayed great through that. Not too much time later, the nurse came in and asked if I felt any urges to push. I didn’t, but asked that she check me anyway. She checked and exclaimed, “You are complete and a +2! Don’t push! We want to get the doctor here!” Within minutes Dr. Watts was back in the room and I started pushing. They had a hard time tracking baby’s heart rate during this part of labor so they put a pulse monitor in his scalp as I was pushing. It only took about 4 contractions worth of pushing and baby was here! He arrived at 2:28pm.

After sucking out his mouth, he quickly started crying. Chad immediately started crying and forgot to take photos. I had to prompt him several times to start taking photos. They put baby on my stomach and I felt it warm, sticky body as he squirmed and cried. I started crying too.

Baby weighed in as our biggest baby: 7lbs 8oz. He was 19 inches long. His APGAR scores were 8 and 9. When they gave him back to me, I immediately started breastfeeding him. He latched like a total champ! I was really impressed. He ate for over half an hour within his first hour of life!

Baby and I stayed at the hospital for two nights. I was feeling great and ready to go home the next day but they recommended a little extra monitoring for our baby. He failed his first hearing test and if we stayed a second night they could just run the second test the next morning. It was nice to take advantage of the nursery services so I could get some stretches of sleep. Baby struggled both nights with the middle of the night feeding. He had a sour stomach and it took 3 hours each time to get him to eat. When he did eat, he ate well. I felt bad for his sour little stomach.

The second day, Chad and I pushed ourselves to decide a name. We went back and forth between Everett and Liam. Finally, we decided on Liam. We like the meaning of Liam: Strong willed warrior and protector. We also like that it’s Irish. Ireland has a special place in our hearts as it was on a vacation there, over 8 years ago, that Chad and I decided to start our family. It feels fitting that our “Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow” has an Irish name and is the completion of our family. We always knew his middle name would be Charles, after his angel big brother. It’s a way to honor Charlie and also acknowledge Charlie’s impact in our family and the reality, on the very existence of Liam. If Charlie were here today, we would not have had Liam. I also strongly believe that Charlie will protect and watch over Liam so I love having Charlie’s name be part of Liam’s name.

Liam’s sisters love their little brother! Cami was a bit scared of the baby at first and didn’t want to touch him. But very quickly she warmed up to baby and both girls are eager to hold him and love on him. Hailee was over the moon to meet him and is so thrilled to have him.

We are home now and it’s nice to be back in our house. It’s also hard. Last night was our first night home and I got VERY LITTLE sleep. The owlet wasn’t working quite right so we didn’t have a monitor on him. As a result I was an anxious mess, trying to stay awake to hear him breathing all night. By the time morning came, I was a tearful mess. I predicted this, as this happened with Cami. It’s so hard having a newborn, and then obviously  even harder with our history of loss. I pray sweet Liam gets to stay in our family and we can raise him with his sisters. I feel hopeful that will be the case. But I am also scared, naturally. I’m not letting that fear interfere with the lovely moments of cuddling my sweet newborn and enjoying breastfeeding him and kissing his fuzzy soft head. We are definitely smitten with our little “golden boy!”

 

35 weeks with our last rainbow

This last week caused some anxiety as my belly is measuring small for my gestational age. As a result, Dr. Watts sent me to get an ultrasound at the Maternal Fetal Medicine clinic downstairs. We had that ultrasound yesterday.

And baby boy is growing just fine! In fact, baby boy is measuring in the 86%. The doctor we saw asked if I had gestational diabetes, because he is that big! What a relief! And also, because I’m just so anxious with this pregnancy anyway, now I’m worried about him being too big! The ultrasound tech commented that this baby was on it’s way to being a really big baby that would be hard to deliver so it’s a good thing I usually deliver at 38 weeks! I agree! Glad I deliver early…but what if I don’t?! I need to meditate more…too much anxiety.

Other good news from the ultrasound is that the baby is head down! So I should be able to have a vaginal delivery! 🙂

But seeing baby on ultrasound and seeing how he is growing perfectly and strong, made me feel like crying. Both in a, “I’m so excited to meet him!” way as well as, “This feels so vulnerable!” way. From the ultrasound 3D pic, little boy looks a lot like Charlie. But this little boy also has fat rolls and a bit of hair on his head!

I feel so eager for him to get here so I can hold him in my arms and snuggle him! I am simultaneously so nervous about him getting here! So much has happened in this pregnancy so it’s hard to rest easy. On the other hand I keep thinking of what a miracle this baby is and hope there is meaning in that.

I love this little one so fiercely already and I pray he gets here safely and joins our family!

It’s a boy!

I am inclined to think of this baby as “The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” This baby will be the completion of our family so it seems perfectly fitting that he be the Pot of Gold!

While I was at my OB appointment a few weeks ago, I asked my doctor to do an ultrasound and check for gender. Based on that ultrasound he said he was 75% sure it was a boy. I’m glad I had that first revelation that I could ponder on for several weeks before the confirmatory 2o-week ultrasound.

My first reaction to learning I was having a boy wasn’t positive. The thought I had was, “That doesn’t seem fair.” I couldn’t quite articulate or understand why I felt that way. But I think I had this belief that “the Universe can’t send us another boy and think that makes everything all right.” While I know this boy doesn’t replace Charlie, I somehow felt we shouldn’t have a boy in this life. That our life somehow always needs to represent our loss.

When we saw the baby at the 20 week ultrasound, my feelings changed. I found myself feeling genuinely happy. I was also happy to see Chad so happy. And of course, most important, was that the ultrasound didn’t see any physical problems with our baby and he is growing strong and healthy!

I was especially excited to surprise our girls and the rest of our friends. After the ultrasound we went to the Sweet Tooth Fairy and I ordered four cupcakes with blue frosting inserted in the middle. They looked like normal cupcakes on the outside but the colored frosting on the inside would reveal the gender of our baby.

Later that afternoon, after Hailee got home from school, we brought out the cupcakes. The girls were so excited! Although I think Cami felt somewhat confused. We filmed the girls biting into the cupcakes and finding the blue frosting. Hailee’s excitement was the best as she exclaimed, “We are having a brother!” We used the video to tell our family and friends (and social media) our news.

Everyone is really excited for us. A lot of people are also being sensitive and thoughtful as they inquire how we feel about having another boy.

I still feel really happy. I know this is going to be quite messy and hard. I know the trauma memories will be stronger. I am worried this little boy may look like his older brother and that will be messy if that’s the case. But I also hope and am looking forward to raising a boy! I’ve always wanted to raise a boy! While I don’t feel I’m missing anything with my sweet tom-boy, Hailee, it’ll still be great to experience raising a boy. I am hopeful this little guy will live. I feel his story is incredible and he is a miracle. I feel as a result, he “should” live. But I am also very aware there are no such things as guarantees. I am trying not to jump too far ahead in the future and stay present. Now that I am past the first trimester and no longer feel miserable and sick, I am trying to soak up and enjoy my last experience of growing a baby.

As I write this, little man is kicking around in my tummy. He’s a very active baby and I love it. I am loving him.

First sex talk

Hailee and I had the first version of a sex talk this week. I have to say, I wasn’t exactly “prepared” for this conversation and navigated it as clumsily as you would imagine someone unprepared would.

Hailee and I were snuggling one morning, as we were waking up for the day. Suddenly Hailee asked, “If I kiss a boy for a really long time, will I get a baby from that?” I laughed and said, “No, kissing does not make babies.” Then of course she asked, “Then how do you make a baby?”

Um…ok…let’s think about how to approach this.

“So first of all Hailee, you have to grow up. You know how I have my periods?” Hailee nods. “Well, you have to have periods in order to be ready to have a baby. And boys have to be grown up too to have babies.”

Hailee seems to be following this ok. Then I get to the “messy” part. “And then, when you want to make a baby, a boy and girl share a ‘special hug.'”

Hailee, “So, Tevin and I hug all the time. Will that make a baby?”

“Uh, no. When you have this Special Hug, you don’t have any clothes on.”

At this Hailee started giggling. And that’s where it ended…for now. Phew.

Femara cycle 1

Today is a fuzzy socks, sweatshirt, and pony tail kind of day. Emotionally, I’m doing ok but I’ve felt a swirl of thoughts and confusion and felt the need to “bunker down” so to speak and have some quiet, introspective time. So I just sent Chad and the girls off to church while I stay cozy at home, smelling the new fall candle I lit this morning.

Pregnancy chances aren’t looking good this month. I am on day 14 of my cycle and my ovulation kits continue to record “low fertility.” I have been taking the kits since day 9. I experienced what I believed was ovulation pain on day 10, but the kit (that’s over 99% accurate) said I must have made that up. Or the pains I thought were ovulation pains were indeed some other pain? I go in for an ultrasound tomorrow to see what is going on and if I will ovulate or not.

This is a weird experience. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m fighting my body. It feels like we aren’t on the same page and I’m trying to force something it is no longer willing to do. I mean, they gave me a fertility drug and I’m not ovulating! How stubborn can my body be?!

As I experience this, it’s easy to really quickly become hopeless. I know that hopeless feeling is premature. We’ve only really BEGUN the assisted fertility process, but it feels like a struggle and it feels overwhelming. I’ve started to wrap my head and heart around the idea that the family that we have right now is the family that we will have. I can start to identify myself as a mother who gets to dedicate her time and energy to raising two spirited daughters. And those two girls need my time and energy.

The life I have right now is not a bad life. Not at all. It’s a beautiful life. And a lot of the time I don’t want for it to be different (with the exception of wishing Charlie were here). But then I think of never getting the opportunity to give birth again. Of never nursing my own baby again. Breathing in the intoxicating perfume of a newborn. Of having that third child in our home that I always fantasized I’d have, and I feel persuaded to pursue this fertility journey.

It’s a weird, lonely journey. I feel, for the first time in my life, that I can relate to women with fertility struggles. People close to me in my life know what we are going through, but it’s strange to carry this experience, silently and invisibly. Whereas people saw, held and knew Charlie and his loss is an overt, visible, concrete loss. It’s something I can speak to, if I chose, and it’s something people quietly acknowledge. But this…it’s just a loud silence. It’s a loud QUESTION MARK. It’s a huge unknown and feels like limbo. I can’t move forward emotionally, because I don’t know what moving forward emotionally looks like. Does it look like grieving this ambiguous loss and the dreams I had for the children I would raise? Does it mean refocusing my emotional energy on the children I have now, and not on the child I don’t get to have? Or does it mean continuing to hope and believe that we will get another child? It all just feels really messy.

The good news is, whatever happens (or doesn’t happen), I feel and believe, I am going to be ok. We are all going to be ok. We will live our life meaningfully and it will continue to be GOOD.