**Sigh**

Dear Family,

No, I'm not pregnant.

I was at one point this past month.

Seems that my embryo didn't like my uterus.

Oh well. Such is life.

You can stop talking about it now. Hope this cleared up any confusion.

~R

I wonder...

So, Ive had some down time lately and that means a lot of time to think. There is a bunch of stuff on my mind from Justins health to my own.

Yesterday I was thinking about my miscarriage in September. I was trying to figure out all the things I could of possibly done that might of caused it. I know, I know.. they happen but it doesn't stop a woman from thinking this way from time to time. Its a natural process but its also hard to accept because we always are looking for a cause to things that happen in life.

I started thinking back before I even found out I was pregnant. Vacations, drinking like a mad woman with friends, flying, stress, Justin jumping on my belly just a few days before our loss. All of it could of caused some kind of damage to my growing baby that might have contributed to her death. I thought back even further and something stood out in my head.... My IUD.

I had issues with getting an IUD but I needed a more reliable form of birth control since I fail at taking the pill. Ive always been afraid to get an IUD because of the damage it could cause my uterus. I'm not cool with sticking objects in my body that shouldn't be there. I'm not even cool with taking a birth control pill because they cause miscarriages to occur. Yes, believe it or not, if an egg is fertilized while you are on the pill, you will lose that pregnancy because the pill causes your lining to not be favorable for the egg to implant. But drug companies and doctors FAIL to tell you this. This is also why a birth control pill is not 100% and only 92% effective. Theres that 8% chance the egg will implant.

Anywho, maybe the IUD did something to my uterus. Ive had no issues with completing a pregnancy to full term(except for the blighted ovum). Then I get the IUD removed, get pregnant months later and lose the pregnancy. Then the chemical pregnancy happens. So, I wonder if the two go hand in hand.

Its just a thought though. Who knows. All I know is that Im not going to be introducing any chemicals into my body ever again. No more birth control. No more! If I get pregnant again, thats a personal choice for me and my husband. We both know we will be okay. Babies in this house are a blessing! Now....Dear body, HOLD ON TO MY BABIES AND STOP LOSING THEM!!!!

On the road to recovery!

Excellent Hematologist appointment today!

Hgb 10
Hct  30
RBC ? I know its higher then before which means the marrow is doing its job again!

Everything is climbing just like it should.

SO!!! That means that T.E.C. may have been what he has after all. Still waiting on the Parvo results.

Some folic and B12 issues but nothing that cant be fixed.

Praise the Lord, my baby is healing!!!!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS!!!

4 positives and then 3 negatives?

Lately Ive been REALLY tired and REALLY absentminded. Its gotten so bad that I completely forgot my husband had parked behind me the other day and in a rush to get Jade to her tutor lesson, I backed directly into the front of his car. Even when it happened, it didnt register that I had hit his car! I was like 'omg! wtf did I just hit???" Only when I got out of the car did I have my 'oh shit' moment.

Okay so I took a pregnancy test that night. Things were adding up. it came back as half a positive. Like one solid control line and half of the second 'your pregnant' line. So I took another one. It was more faint. Another 'oh shit' moment for me. I kept it to myself  for the night. Id test again in the AM when my HGC levels would higher in my urine. So I woke up the next day. Pee'd on one stick. It wasnt working! The purple dye wasnt going up the stick like it should of been! So I took another a little while later when I could force myself to pee lol It came back positive! When I went back later to look at the other one, it was also positive! 4 positives. Those are positives right? 2 lines yes. 1 line no. I am seeing two lines, right? Ive used this brand before. They come in a box of 5 strips. I used them when I found out I was pregnant with Haleigh.

First top two are from Thursday. Bottom two are from Friday morning.

So just to be 100% sure, I did what ever other woman does. I run to CVS and pick up a 3 pack of EPT. I waited an hour and pee'd on the stick. Negative. I took another one a few hours later and same thing. Negative. I asked my cousin what it meant and she said to do it again in the morning. So I did. Pee'd on the stick and NEGATIVE! 3 negatives to my 4 positives. I started spotting a little today. Not much but a little speck here and there. I figure it was from messing around with hubs this morning. 

Top two from Friday. Bottom from this morning.

So what does this all mean? Well I can think of two things.

1. The test pack I used was faulty and the batch was bad giving me a false positive(which is rare).

OR

2. I had a chemical pregnancy.

Id much rather have the 1st option over the second. Because the second means I have lost yet another pregnancy. Which right now, I really emotionally could NOT take the news of that. I mean seriously. After losing one baby and the recent drama with Turtles health all in a 5 month time span..... I might just lose my last thread of hope I have left for any chance of having a normal freaking year. 

Over dramatic? Maybe to you. You haven't had to go through the last 5 months. I pray that you never do and that you never judge a woman who has. 

So what do I do now?

Wait. Thats all I can do.

Lately, my lifes been one great big waiting game. And Im tired of waiting.

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, things are improving slowly! Last week Monday, Justins Hct and HgB counts were 6.7 and 17.

Today we hit 8 HgB and 24.7 Hct!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its a small jump but its improvement!!!!! Ill take that over not having any jumps or even dipping!!!

YAY!!! This makes me soooo happy. My little guy is on a good path and hopefully everything will look up from here on out!!!!

Todays appointment.

Well, it didnt go as I would of liked. But Im confident that the doctor we are seeing now will take the best of care of my little one.

This is what we know so far after the appointment:

-It is too early to give him a diagnosis of T.E.C. so what the doctors at the hospital told us is not 100%.

-It could be any of a number of things. All which we will test for as time goes by.

-Justins little heart is working over time. Which is understandable because it has to compensate for the blood loss.

-Justin has lost his appetite. He will eat the bare min. of food and then be done. At least I can get him to eat fruits and yogurt when I can.

-The doctor said that if his levels remain the same or lower in the next two weeks, a blood transfusion will be needed.

-The doctor is going to be looking at his blood platelets to see if he has sickle cell anemia and a few other things this time around. If things come back fine, we will go onto the next round of testing.

-It takes 3 nurses and myself to hold Justin down for blood draws even when he is wrapped up like a burrito!

I just want my baby to get better. Like NOW!

We will be seeing the regular pediatrician next monday for a retest of his levels and then we head back to Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington DC on the 21st to talk about what the blood work showed and what our next steps are.

Thats all the update I have energy for now. Till next week. Or before if something happens this weekend. Which I hope it doesnt.

Hematologist Tomorrow

We got Justin an appointment with a Hematologist tomorrow morning. It was a last minute squeeze in but I'm so glad we found someone who has experience with this and who could take a new patient referral last minute!

Ill update sometime after his appointment which is at 1130.

Heres to a positive outcome!! Pray!!!

Justin update #2

I took Justin in today for a retest. Im just not use to him looking so pale and I wanted to make sure things were okay. His iron count is 'okay' and his hemoglobin and hemocrit levels are the same as they were last week. Which is good but I wanted to see them go up. Even if just a little. She also said that with him being as anemic as he is, she is surprised he doesn't have a heart murmurer. His little heart is taking everything so well.

We are going to be taking him to see an hematologist/oncologist this week. Just for a second opinion and more tests that a regular pediatrician wont do. This can be a multitude of things and we don't want to chance anything with him. My baby is far to important to us to just sit around and wait for answers.

Keep those prayers coming! Little guy needs as many as he can get!!

Update on Justin

Well, we had his follow up appointment on Friday to recheck his hemo and hemo crit levels. We were hoping for improvement but his little body is still not producing red blood cells like he should be. His levels were the same as the day before. Doc said that she wants him back in a week instead of two to recheck him. If his levels do not change or get worse again, we will be seeing a hemotologist or oncologist for furture testing and monitoring. Depending on what happens, he is still on the list of potentially needing a blood transfusion. So let's all pray that his levels increase and his bone marrow starts kicking up red blood cell production again.

Today he was a little pale again but his color is coming back. He is eatting here and there but is so stinking picky.

Its scary having to go through all this with Justin. Probably the scariest thing Ive gone through as a mother. I now know what my mom felt like when she found my little sister in the middle of a febrile seizure when she was 2.

I guess we wait now.

Oh Justin... you make mommy crazy!

I gotta get this out. Ill be all over the place due to little sleep and emotional distress. Plus there will be typos because I have to phone blog since MWH is too cheap to get wi-fi in patients rooms lol

If anyone knows Justins story, you'll know he is known for giving me grey hairs from the beginning of his little life up til now.

Yesterday I had a healthy happy 2 year old. He was bouncing off the walls last night and seemed fine. But that all changed at 430 this morning.

Cliff had woken up out of a dead sleep for some reason. He kept trying to go back to sleep but couldn't. He went into the kids bathroom to find the toilet running so he fixed it and Justin woke up. Cliff went to get him and as he was bringing him into the bedroom he told me Justin felt really hot. So I took his temp and it was 101.7. Nothing really serious in my eyes since we have all been fighting a nasty cold. I laid him next to me and he asked if he could nurse ("have milk, mama?") So I began to nurse him. No more then 20 seconds into nursing he stopped, began to shake a little and cry. I said his name and told him it was okay because I though maybe he had been scared by the dark or something but within seconds I knew what was happening. He stopped crying, his eyes fixated forward and he began to convulse. I quickly laid him on his side. Cliff started freaking out and I grabbed my phone which I keep on my nightstand and called 911.

That had to be the longest minute of my entire life.

I quickly pulled some pants on while Justin was seizing and scoped him up and moved him downstairs to the front hall to wait for his seizure to stop and to wait for EMS to get to our house. Cliff was still in panic mode and was not making things easy for me. I've been trained to handle things like this but never did I think Id have to be using my training on my own baby or telling the father of my baby to walk away and calm down because the baby didn't need the added stress when he came out of the seizure. I've never seen Cliff like that and I felt horrible having to leave him behind but I needed to.

Justin finally stopped seizing and I kept talking to him until EMS showed up. He was so tired and pale. EMS got to our house, did their eval and we were on an ambulance within minutes headed to the hospital. Justin was so cranky on the ride over but had zero energy to do anything more then cry.

We got to the ER where they did chest xrays and a CAT scan along with blood work. Everything came back clean except his blood iron count and his hemocrit count. They retook blood to rerun it and it came back the same. Normal Hemocrit count would be above 30 but Justin was at 17. So the doc told me they needed to transfer him to Mary Washington because Stafford medical didn't have a pediatric unit and Justin needed to be seen because the iron thing was not right.

We were transported by ambulance to Mary Washington Hospital shortly after and for the first time all morning I saw my Justin smile. He laughed on the ride over and he was in awe of the cool ambulance! He was so stinking cute!

So far we have spoken to 1 doctor, Doctor Brown. She got our story and started telling me about some kind of blood disorder or something that she though fit the symptoms of what JT was going through but she wanted to run it by a hematologist up at Childrens Hospital in DC. She came back a few hours later and said the hematologist agreed that it sounded like transient erythroblastopenia of childhood. Something to do with his bone marrow not producing red blood cells. I'm kind of lost in the medical terminology right now so I'm not 100% sure what everything means. We have to stay overnight for observation and more blood work in the morning. Hopefully things start to look up for him in the blood cell department.

That's where we stand right now. No seizures since and he seems happy and playful. The Tylenol is keeping him tamed since he has been napping here and there. He finally fell asleep around 6 which allowed me to sleep a little. He woke up and was playing in his crib/bed the entire time and didn't make a peep while I slept. I woke up to check on him and there was his little cheesy grin. We talked a little and I told him to watch some TV because mommy was so sleepy and wanted to lay down again. He goes "okay" and laid down. I said "I love you, baby" and he goes "lub you, mom". Sweet music to my ears. I laid back down and fell asleep. He must of dozed off again because the nurse came in to check on him and I woke up. She said she wouldn't bug him because he looked so peaceful. He fell back asleep, too!

I'm so thankful right now. I'm thankful that my baby boy pulled through that seizure. I'm so thankful that God has given me the strength and knowledge to remain calm and provide the care he needed. God was helping my child through me. I'm so thankful for my husband and childrens loving words and encouragement. I am so thankful for my family and their prayers. And I am so thankful for my friends who have been praying and thinking of my sweet Justin and my family.

My Justie will pull through this. He is a tough cookie. I know my baby and after all our ER visits and hospital stays, I know he is just making sure he is my last baby. LOL!

Angel Ballon Release

These months have ticked by so slowly for me. I would of been 29 weeks pregnant yesterday. I try not to do the "I would of..." thing but some days it sneaks up on me and bites me in the rear.


My due date is a couple months off still, but it weighs on my mind like a heavy burden. I should be planning the birth of my baby. But I'm not. And that makes me sad. Very, unimaginably sad.

Ive decided to put my planning into something else. Ive decided to plan a balloon release the weekend I was suppose to be bringing a little baby home.

I want to invite everyone I know who has lost a pregnancy regardless of how far they were. I want them to invite everyone they know who has had a loss. I want them to show up and remember their little ones. To release some of their pain.

So this is what Ive thought of so far:

1. Balloons of course. Pink and Blue.
2. Little cards that families can write a special note to their Angels on.
3. A moment of silence.
4. Reflection service by the river. This will give people a chance to reflect on their little ones life if they choose to do so. Read a poem or a letter to your Angel, be silent or cry. We would all be there to support one another and to let one another know, we are not alone.
5. Balloon release.

I think I can do this. I'm scared though. This means having to face my own pain and sadness and letting others see a side of me that no one has yet.

If anyone would  like to participate whether it be just having me write a card to attach to a balloon for you in honor of your Angel of of a loved ones Angel, I will do everything in my power to make it happen.