All my life I have felt that I was supposed to be a mom; it was a deep, soul crushing calling. So after Nico died, I knew I would try again for a baby one more time, yet struggled with it because I didn’t want him to feel betrayed, as though I was trying to replace him. There is no replacing one of your children- they are individual beautiful people and I love all of my children for who they are as individual souls.
Last September I made the decision to stop taking birth control. This was a cause of dissonance within myself and my relationship with my husband. Although both of us wanted to try to have another baby, we weren’t ready mentally or emotionally to get pregnant yet. However, given my past history of fertility issues and the fact that both other times I had gotten pregnant it took a year and a half before it happened, I decided now was the time to at least make it a possibility so that I wasn’t in my mid thirties before having children.
To our shock, and honestly terror, three days before Nico’s birthday we found out that I was pregnant. I don’t even know why I decided to take a pregnancy test that day. I wasn’t feeling very well, but it had just started that day. I was only a few days late for my period, but again, with fertility issues, that wasn’t remotely surprising. I just had this nagging feeling that I had to stop at the store on the way home and pick up a pregnancy test. So I did. And surprise of all surprises, that was the first day we knew that our lives would be forever changed. Again. Either we would finally bring home a baby, or we were done trying.
I cried a lot. The timing just seemed so wrong. I felt guilty. I didn’t feel ready.
The timing turned out to be perfect though, because it forced me to take care of myself during a horrible anniversary. If I didn’t have this little life depending on me caring for my body, I would have just broken down.
We decided that rather than going to my previous OB/GYN that we were going to see the doctor that delivered Nico because we really liked her and could tell that she genuinely cared about us, something that was lacking before. This meant that instead of ten minute drives to the doctor we had 45 minute drives, but it felt worth it. At my first appointment, they did a confirmation ultrasound. On the screen was a beautiful, tiny little bean. Too tiny. She was only measuring at seven weeks instead of ten. However, she had a wonderful, strong heartbeat and our doctor told us that either:
A) She was just younger than we thought, or
B) There was something developmentally wrong.
She didn’t tell us option B to scare us, but to prepare us in case of the worst because it was a possibility, especially given that our first baby stopped growing at about six weeks. Thankfully, by our next appointment, we found out that she was developing just fine and just happened to be younger than we expected.
Another clue that the baby was developing just fine was that I was sick. All the time. I threw up everything that I ate for weeks. I actually lost five pounds in the first trimester because I couldn’t keep anything in.
I still struggled with feeling guilty towards Nico in those early months. It was just so soon after he was gone. Every time I open the closet at the end of the hall I talk to him and tell him how much I love him. (His urn and all his belongings are in there to keep him and them safe from getting dirty or knocked over. Some day we will have a proper home for him, but this is what we have for now.) Then one day, I was in the kitchen and I heard this tiny little voice. I know it sounds crazy, but I heard him say “It’s okay Mommy.” I cried, but after that I was able to let go of the guilt, knowing that he wasn’t hurt by us having and loving another baby.
I started feeling the baby move extremely early on, which was at the time an unknown indicator of the very active child she was going to be.
At our anatomy scan ultrasound we found out we were having a girl and she was measuring about two weeks larger than her age, which was surprising to us given that we originally thought she was too small. Originally we loved the name Lilu, and I still do, but we wanted to give her a name that wasn’t too cutesy for her to be taken seriously when she was an adult. So after looking at some names online, we settle on Leyna Nixie for both the meanings, and sounds. Leyna means “little angel” and Nixie means “water sprite.”
In the third trimester we started having weekly non stress tests (or NSTs). There wasn’t exactly a medical reason (such as gestational diabetes or Preeclampsia) but rather for peace of mind for us and our doctor that she was developing well. At an NST they hook up two monitors to your belly- one to monitor the baby’s heart rate and another to see if you’re having any contractions. The goal is to see at least two spikes in the baby’s heart rate over a twenty minute period to indicate that they are moving. At our first appointment, Leyna had 10 spikes. We quickly learned both through me feeling her and the NSTs that this child almost never stops moving. At one of our last appointments she was moving so much that the nurse had to move the monitor eight times trying to find her heartbeat again.
In addition to our NSTs and feeling her move all the time, I knew this child was tough because nothing fazed her. I ended up in the hospital with kidney stones one day and she never slowed down. I got a horrible case of the stomach flu, could not keep anything in my body for days and she never slowed down. She took what she needed from my body and kept being a trooper.
On June 27 (my birthday) I woke up feeling some weird cramping. As the day went on it became more and more painful. By the time Ryan got home after 5 I was having horribly painful and frequent contractions. We quickly threw our hospital bag together and headed to the hospital. A forty five minute drive. During rush hour. They hooked me up to an NST monitor and found that I was having contractions only two minutes apart. Yet when the midwife checked me, I was barely one centimeter dilated and it was determined to be false labor so I was sent home.
I was scheduled to be induced on July 11 so that my doctor would be the one to deliver Leyna and so that I didn’t have to wait and worry about her, given what happened before. However, because my kid is a great big troll, at my second to last appointment, she had turned herself breech, despite having been head down for over a month. At our appointment after that she still had her head under my ribs so we scheduled a C-section instead. July 12 we went to the hospital all set for a C-section and when they did an ultrasound to see where she was, we discovered that overnight she had turned herself back head down. (Like I said, great big troll baby.) Since it was no longer considered medically necessary, they said they wouldn’t do the C-section anymore. I wasn’t dilated at all still though, so I would have to be induced. This meant several days in the hospital waiting to go into labor and my doctor wouldn’t be there. As they started describing the process, I started having flashbacks to my labor with Nico and I had a complete emotional breakdown. In addition, they said it was possible for the process of induction too cause her to turn around again which would lead to an emergency C-section. It all seemed like too much and thankfully our nurse called my doctor who agreed to go ahead with the cesarean even though it was considered “an elective procedure.”
Finally, I got sent back to the prep room to sign a bunch of waivers and hooked up to a bunch of monitors and IVs. I also had to have my rings cut off because I had swollen up so much that there was no other way to remove them and even this was extremely difficult and my finger got cut in the process.
Before I got sliced open, they had to do a spinal block. This means a great big needle going into your spinal fluid. This was one of the most physically painful things I have ever felt. But eventually it was over and I was numb from the belly down. Ryan wasn’t able to come back with me until after they did the first incision, but soon enough, he was up by my head for support. I didn’t feel the pain of the incision, but I felt a lot of pressure. It felt very weird to feel the pressure and movement of things coming out of you and see blood splash up onto the blue curtain to block your sight/keep things sterile, but it wasn’t too unpleasant. We had been warned that she might not cry right away like vaginally delivered babies do because there isn’t the pressure to push the fluid from their lungs. The doctor said “Here she comes” and I heard screaming. It was the best thing I’d ever heard. That scream told me that my daughter was here, alive, healthy. They held her up over the screen for me to see and took her off to get cleaned up, measured, and warm. Those moments, hearing my daughter cry for the first time broke my emotional wall and I started sobbing with joy.
Baby girl weighed in at 8 pounds 10 ounces, measured 21.25 inches. Big, beautiful girl. Because she was large, they were concerned about her having low blood sugar and had to draw and test her blood every three hours. When she got her shots and blood drawn it was very hard for me to stay calm and not cry with her. Seeing and hearing your baby in pain is horrible. Most of the time her blood sugar was tested she was fine, there was only one time where she dipped one point away from the danger zone and it was because she had refused to eat for almost nine hours. Fortunately, doing lots of skin to skin contact kept her warm and her sugars elevated even when she was too tired to eat.
She was born Tuesday morning and by Thursday we got to go home. That first night was terrifying. Suddenly we were in charge of this tiny person whose life completely depended on us, no more nurses to help and on top of that, I was in a lot of pain from having surgery. She cried so much and we didn’t know what to do or what was wrong. In a panic I called the after hours nurse to see if something was wrong with her. Now I know that it’s just scary and confusing to be a new infant in the world and on top of that, Leyna is a colicky baby at night.
The first few days that we were home were very difficult emotionally for me. My hormones were absolutely everywhere and I cried all the time. I cried because I was tired. I cried because I was scared. I cried because I was happy. I cried because I felt guilty for changing Jin’s life and him no longer being the center of attention. I cried because I was completely overwhelmed. And I cried because Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s daughter drowned in a movie. It felt unfair to be so sad when I finally had the one thing I had always and desperately wanted. After a week or two my hormones and emotions calmed down and I didn’t cry as much.
Leyna eats all the time and is growing like a weed. At her last doctor visit she was about four weeks old and up to 11 pounds 7 ounces. During the day, she is a happy and playful baby. She is insanely strong and lifts her head up to look around and has been doing that since the moment she was born. She smiles a lot, real smiles. When she’s playing, she does what we call her “Popeye smile” because one of her eyes scrunches up and half of her mouth turns up. At night, she’s starting to sleep better and for longer stretches. By no means is she sleeping through the night; the longest stretch we’ve ever gotten was four hours and that’s a rarity. It’s more common for her to sleep two or maybe three hours at a time before waking up to eat. The biggest night issue is the screaming before the initial sleep. Somewhere between 9 and 11 almost every night she wakes up and screams and cries for at least an hour. I rock her, hold her, sing to her, walk around the house with her. Nothing works until she’s done. She’ll trick me into thinking she’s calm and then a few minutes later she starts screaming again. And then eventually she’s just done and falls asleep. I know it’s just a phase and that she will eventually grow out of it. It’s just very difficult in the moment.
This little child is the light and joy of my life. On one hand I’m shocked that she’s already been here for seven weeks. On the other hand I’m shocked that I ever lived without her. I love her more every single day and I can’t wait to enjoy every new stage of life with her.
And now for some pictures:
