This is my first blog post in well over a year. I’ve been a terrible blogger. There’s no excuse. Everything is great, I’ve just been busy with life. I’ve been meaning to write a post for so long now and will soon, but today I just wanted to remind everyone to light a candle tonight at 7pm (in your time zone) for all our babies gone too soon. ❤️ Photo credit: https://pin.it/jyidxo7lhtkg32
Category: Uncategorized
Our Miracle Girl’s Birth Story
Baby girl is here and 2 weeks old already! Our miracle girl, Rylee, was born on April 17th at 34 weeks 3 days due to preterm labor pains and a very scary and traumatic birth caused by my uterus rupturing. First and foremost, we are both okay, but it’s a miracle that we both survived. Once again things did not go according to plan. The plan was to have a scheduled c-section 3 weeks early in order to prevent the risk of uterine rupture from the classical incision on my uterus. For those who are not aware, a classical incision is a vertical incision high on the uterus that is usually only used in very urgent situations and with very premature babies. The abdominal incision (the incision you see on the outside) is low and horizontal, but the internal incision on the uterus is high and vertical. This is the type of incision I had from my c-section with Holdon and the reason I had to have a subsequent, though normal (low tranverse), c-section with Archer. It is very dangerous to have a vaginal delivery or even any contractions with a classical incision because the incision can split open. The…Continue reading Our Miracle Girl’s Birth Story
Tomorrow
Tomorrow Holdon would have been 7 years old. How has so much time gone by already? And yet a day doesn’t go by that I don’t remember every detail of that day on April 6th, 2010 like it was yesterday. He shouldn’t have been born that day. He wasn’t due to be born until June 26th. But HELLP Syndrome happened to me and he was delivered via emergency c-section at just 27 weeks, 5 days. I was told I had to deliver immediately or I could die and Holdon was in distress, having not grown at all since 24 weeks. He was severely premature, made even worse by severe growth restriction, and a perforation in his small intestine on top of it all. He had to have surgery at only 1 day old to remove the necrotic tissues of the small intestine that had perforated and was left with only 25%. The odds of survival were stacked up against him from the start. The fact that he lived for 3 1/2 months in the NICU is truly amazing and testament to how strong and amazing our little boy was. Time goes on and a lot has changed. It took…Continue reading Tomorrow
April (Baby) Showers – It’s Freaking Babypalooza
This is a weird post for me to write as I am currently one of them, but I had to write about the explosion of pregnancies and babies happening right now. It doesn’t seem to just be happening to me. Others in our blogging community and also in my rainbow and unicorns mom Facebook group have been talking about it happening in their circle of friends too. It seems like where ever we go, and even when we’ve gotten through it and have our rainbow and unicorn babies either through a really lucky egg, ART, donor eggs, surrogacy and/or adoption, we’re still affected by it. When I had my last miscarriage right before this pregnancy, I must have seen 6 pregnancy announcements or knew of several women who were already pregnant and expecting their second or third baby. It hit me hard. At the time of that last miscarriage, I thought my DOR was getting the best of me and I was going into premature menopause and I truly began to think that I’d never be able to give the miracle toddler a living sibling. Then I became pregnant again with this pregnancy. I found out I was pregnant again…Continue reading April (Baby) Showers – It’s Freaking Babypalooza
Appointment with the Perinatologist
This is just a quick update about my appointment with the specialist on Monday. I am relieved and happy to share that there is low risk of placenta accreta! The placenta is higher up so it’s nowhere near the incision from my standard c-section with Archer, and it’s only partially covering the incision from my classical c-section from my delivery with Holdon. It’s technically an anterior placenta, but it’s leaning towards the side a bit so fortunately only a portion of it is covering the classical incision, and the part that is, is not growing into the scarring at this time and doesn’t look like it’s going to over the coming weeks. This is such a relief!! I knew deep down that I would be okay with whatever we found out as long as the delivery would be safe and baby girl would be safe, but now that I have this good news, I have to admit that I really was afraid for the worst and was dreading the prospect of losing my uterus. I knew that if there was any growth into the scarring and/or my uterus, they would not have taken any chances and a hysterectomy would have…Continue reading Appointment with the Perinatologist
Myhopejar Moved and Updates
This is a quick test. I’m not sure if this is going to work so for all the WP .com readers, if you see this, can you comment and let me know? At the end of the summer I moved myhopejar.com to a self hosted site from WP .com to WP .org. I since then have posted a few updates, but it seems that my posts no longer show up in the WordPress reader feed. I discovered this through communication that I have had with some of you through Facebook and Instagram, but there are some of you who I don’t have contact with that way and I’m hoping to reconnect with. Then I realized I still have a .com account and it seems that I can post from it so I’m hoping that this will publish from WordPress.com and not from my self hosted domain and that this will show up on your WordPress reader feed. If it does, can you please click like or comment and let me know and then if you still want to read posts from myhopejar.com, can you please go to the the link and resubscribe to my blog via email? This seems to…Continue reading Myhopejar Moved and Updates
Another Long Overdue Update
Happy three months into the New Year everyone! I hope 2017 has been good to all of you so far! I have been meaning to write an update for months but somehow the holidays and travel and family visiting got in the way and this blog once again got pushed to the back burner. Since my last post, so many things have happened with this pregnancy and with our miracle toddler too. I apologize in advance for this is kind of a long update… Update About Our Miracle Toddler Little man is now two! Daily life with him is such a blast. He’s so much fun and is such a little goofball. He’s also very much a two year old now and there are definitely a lot of new challenges these days, but for the most part his temper tantrums are very short-lived and are usually resolved with a redirect. When that fails I sit him down and ask him if he’s mad or frustrated. And of course he says yes and then I ask him if he needs a hug and he will usually say yes and then he calms down. Some days nothing works and we ride the…Continue reading Another Long Overdue Update
My Hope Jar Moved and Major Updates
This post has been sitting in my drafts since August. I’ve modified it a couple times because of updates in my life, but as more and more time went by and more and more happened, it became harder to finish it and hit “Publish”. At first it was just a quick post about moving my blog and I just hadn’t finished writing it, then I did finish writing it and things happened so I modified it, and then more things happened that made me take a big pause and I’m only just finishing it now. In truth, this post should really be 3 posts but if I separate them and think about this too much more, I’ll never submit this post so here it goes… First and foremost, it’s official, Myhopejar.com has moved! I now host my blog on my own hosting plan rather than through wordpress.com. The entire process was not without hiccups and definitely gave me a few frustrations along the way, but for the most part it was pretty easy, and there is so much more I can do with the way my site is built and functions now that it’s self hosted. Perhaps the biggest frustration I’ve encountered is…Continue reading My Hope Jar Moved and Major Updates
July 20th
Dear Holdon, On this day 6 years ago, I held you for the last time. No matter how much time passes, it never gets easier to know I’ll never get to hold you again. Today, I sit here snuggling your little brother and it’s still not easier. I wish so badly you were here to snuggle too. Due to your severe prematurity, you had so many tubes and wires all over you. You even had a tube to breathe for you, and because of that, I was only allowed to hold you five times. Five. What I would give for just one more snuggle… On October 16th, 2009. I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. We were so happy and a little scared of what kind of parents we would be. Little did we know then, that our journey into parenthood would take years and those little fears all parents have when they learn they’ll be parents were nothing compared to the fears to come. The pregnancy started off normal and healthy and we sailed through the first trimester without any issues. We made it to 27 weeks and then the pregnancy took a drastic turn. I got…Continue reading July 20th
myhopejar is moving
This is not the long overdue update I should be posting. Instead it’s just a quick update to let anyone who is still reading this blog that myhopejar.com is moving from wordpress.com to wordpress.org so I can manage and host the blog myself. Why am I making this change? Well there are many of reasons. However, the most practical reason is money. I just purchased a new hosting plan for my company site and have shut it down and am now in the process of rebuilding/redesigning my company site. One of the perks/incentives for moving hosting companies for my company site is I can host as many sites as I want and my new hosting company advertises themselves as the best hosting company for wordpress sites. So it just makes sense to move myhopejar.com too. I can save myself the fee I pay to wordpress.com every year and have full control of my site if I move it to wordpress.org and host it myself. The other reason, is this move is forcing me to stop avoiding my blog because I’m so embarrassed I haven’t written in so long and finally write something! The timing is also perfect because it’s my…Continue reading myhopejar is moving