Loss

As most of you know we suffered a loss last week when we found out that the baby that I was 16 weeks pregnant with had no heartbeat.

On Wednesday I went in for a regular check up and the nurse couldn't find a heart beat. She got a second person to come in and try and she still couldn't find it so they got a third person to come in with a newer machine and try. When she couldn't find the heartbeat they called the doctor and I called Dave. The doctor brought in a portable ultrasound machine and she also could not find a heart beat. They sent me upstairs to the big ultrasound machine where they confirmed that the baby was gone. They said that even though I was 16 weeks the baby was only measuring 13 weeks. This could mean that he had been gone for a while and my body had done nothing about it...I had NO signs. We went back down to my doctor to talk with her about our options. She said that she would need a specialist to do a D & E (they do this instead of a D & C when there is a baby involved and in the 2nd trimester).

We met with the specialist on Thursday morning, where they did another ultrasound to again confirm the findings. He talked with us about what all the procedure would include and about our options. We scheduled the procedure for Friday afternoon, but I had to go in on Friday morning to spend the day in the hospital so they could give me meds to prepare for the surgery.

Dave and Nora spent the day with me at the hospital keeping me occupied. The doctor said the meds could cause some pain, but I never noticed anything...I was just REALLY thirsty. I walked into the operating room and we had agreed that I wanted to be completely out for the procedure. They gave me some light meds that put me under but not too deep. They woke me up in the operating room afterward and took me to recovery. I never had any pain at all and still haven't 2 days later. They let me eat dinner and sent me home that night. We were gone for a total of 12 hours. The boys spent the day with a babysitter and were both in bed when we got home.

We decided that we felt that genetic testing was our number one priority because we want to know if there is something that will affect trying again in the future. But the remains will be released to a local funeral home where they will cremate him and give us the ashes. The doctor said that he didn't think that the baby had actually been gone more than a week, but because he only measured 13 weeks he had stopped growing. I feel that it was a problem with the placenta. On the ultrasound they saw nothing physically wrong with the baby, but the timing of the whole thing is about when the placenta takes over and it doesn't look like the placenta was able to do that. This pregnancy had problems from the very beginning...lots of bleeding and low progesterone levels in the beginning, but we thought that everything was fine when we had a normal ultrasound at 12 weeks. The testing the doctor will do may or may not tell us anything...we should hear this week.

We feel grateful that we had already decided to name him Samuel, Sam. I'm not sure why him having a name provides a bit of relief, but it does.

Physically I am doing really well, emotionally it's been hard on us both. I was almost 4 months pregnant. We had bought a new car, decided on decorations for the room, bought a baby book and a blankie. We had a stocking hanging on the fireplace and only 2 days before had started talking to Connor about how he was going to be a big brother again. Our family had 3 boys in our every thought of the future and that is the tough part to deal with.

Also, I have either been pregnant or nursing every single day of the last 3.5 yrs. I am trying to focus on things that I can do now that I am neither (drink spiked eggnog, take a hot bath, wear perfume). The boys are a good distraction because they still get up at 7:30am and go, go, go all day so there is no time to sit and focus on the sadness. And really, that is all I feel...a deep sadness. I am not angry or depressed or anything else but deeply sad.

We know that in a few months we will try again, but for now we will try and mourn the loss of our son, Sam.

Happy Birthday/Hanukkah

Evan had a bad hair day the other morning! That's what happens when you take a bath and then go straight to bed.

Yesterday was Dave's birthday and the first night of Hanukkah. So we had dinner then did birthday cake and presents. Connor sang Happy Birthday to Daddy all by himself...the whole song! Then Daddy unwrapped his bowling shoes! Then we got out the menorah so we could light the candles. Connor again sang Happy Birthday, this time to himself (dear Connor) and then tried to blow out the candles. It's a little confusing having everything on the same day!

Bowling shoes!!!

We had cheesecake which Evan thought was pretty darn good!

Connor is able to say the sounds that go with most letters now. His teachers at school were amazed today when I went to pick him up. He also set a family record yesterday and spelled "Kostusiak" correctly, all by himself while I was on the phone with Grandma Kostusiak. She said he was the youngest to be able to spell it...even beating out Aunt Mary Ann! He plays with letters like other kids play with action figures or cars. That's just his thing...so we go with it.

Evan got a new Elmo for Hanukkah that blows kisses and says "Elmo loves you!" He loves it!

Thanksgiving

Evan LOVES the new van with the DVD player! He says "Ehh-Ehhh" (Elmo) each time I set him in and get him out. You can also see one of his favorite toys in the picture, Dog-Dog. This boy loves dogs and Elmo! He can say "woof" now. He roars when he sees a lion. He makes the "ssss" sound when he sees Sophie. He still only has 5 teeth and he was 14 months last week.

Connor decided to build a fort and of course anything that Connor does...Evan wants to do too. Last night Connor was playing with some big foam letters. Evan would go over and steal one, and if Connor didn't notice he'd go hit him in the head and then run away laughing! It's gonna be a long 18 years with these two!

Helping Daddy put up the tree. The boys aren't actually very helpful with this process. They both refuse to leave any ornaments on the tree. We have had many arguments over whether ornaments are toys or not. Most of ours are hung on the top left so they can't get to them...even when they climb on the chair!

Evan also LOVES to vacuum! It's cute in a most annoying kind of way. He stands in the way when you vacuum. He gets out his vacuum and pushes it around behind you and generally makes the whole process a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

Thanksgiving was kind of quiet around here...just the four of us. The turkey didn't get done in time and those of us that eat at 5pm were having a hard time waiting until 6:30pm. The boys "ate" (Connor ate the roll and Evan ate the roll and turkey) while Dave was carving the turkey. By the time he was done and it was really time to eat, Connor was gone and Evan was throwing a fit and I had to attempt to hold him and eat. I vote for dinner at 4pm next year!

We all seem to have mostly recovered from our illnesses last week. I'm still coughing a bit. Marley seems to be a little more fragile and Connor is having some stomach issues related to the hard core antibiotics, but we're all much better than last week!

Sick

It's been a rough week around our house so far and it's only Tuesday afternoon!

Yesterday when we came downstairs we discovered that Marley had exploded all over the place. There was puke, pee and poop (P3)! She refused to eat or drink too. So we took her to the vet and he kept her all day. He was afraid she was having another bout of pancreatitis. She had no more problems through the day so he let us come get her around 4pm. On the way home, Connor said his ear hurt. Then he proceeded to puke IN my new car! The vet called to check on the dog and got quite a different story than they were expecting! Connor sat in front of the tv for the rest of the night like a zombie. He threw up 2 more times...Evan tried to help by getting him his bucket (which really just spilled puke all over the place) and by sitting directly in front of him and staring at him (which only pissed him off). But by 7:30pm Connor started to perk up and asked for some juice. He had a fever but we managed to get some Motrin in him before going to bed.

He and Marley both slept well through the night, but this morning Connor refused to get out of bed. His fever was up so we called and made an appointment for him. We scheduled with the vet too so we could drop Marley off on the way to the pediatrician. (Marley who was getting pretty mad because no one was feeding her.) On the way to the vet, you guessed it, he puked in the car again, but this time he did a better job of getting it on things. I had to call Dave to meet us at the dr, after throwing Marley at the vet, so we could clean Connor up. Turns out he has sinus infection and a blister on his ear drum! We came home, gave him some meds and he slept for over 2 hrs. Then he wanted juice and two pieces of toast and now he wants to go outside and play! Amazing how quickly they bounce back.

Meanwhile I'm have to feed Marley a tbsp of wet food every 2 hrs. She seems just fine. I would guess that this may just be a precursor to something worse. One of the tests came back 'abnormal' for pancreas function. She was able to fight this round off but it could come back at any time. She had pancreatitis 5 1/2 yrs ago and it was much worse so I'm not sure what this was, but I'd bet it's just being quiet today and will come back in the next few weeks....we'll see.

I seem to have the same cold that caused all of Connor's problems, but I can't take anything but Benedryl and Claritin for it so I'm suffering! I hope this neti pot helps soon!

Evan learned to say "Uh-oh" today at the dr's office. He said it so clearly that I asked Connor if he'd said it.

Dave is still bowling and enjoying it. Unfortunately two of the five people on his team have quit the company in the last few weeks...so we'll have to see if it becomes contagious!

New Stuff

This is not new, but kind of funny. At night Bodie only goes part way out the door and ends up blocking it so neither of the other 2 dogs can get out. You can see his tail sticking through the dog door (sometimes it's his back 2 legs and tail) and poor Sophie waiting for him to get a clue and move on!

Connor is back into letters again...and Evan is into anything Connor is into. Connor can match upper and lower case letter without help and knows quite a few of the sounds. Last night Dave was asking him how to spell things and no matter what he asked the answer was always c-o-n-n-o-r....which was pretty funny. Occasionally if he knew the correct first letter then he'd change the first letter but then spell the rest of his name...i.e.-horse is h-o-n-n-o-r.

He's started to like to write too. He gets up on my desk and writes on whatever I have. We've had some serious conversations about asking if it's ok first. The other day he got the refrigerator and pantry door with a pen and then colored on the computer screen with a crayon. We've got some work to do in this area.

Evan learned to climb up on the fireplace today..he's getting down now. Last Friday he got his 5th tooth...slow going with this one too! He's very into dogs and stealing whatever his brother has away from him. He runs if he has a poopy diaper and laughs as you chase him down. He still shakes his head no if you tell him it's nigh-night time or ask him to say bye-bye to someone. He's a funny little dude!

Tonight we are going to pick up our new van! Yes, I said van and we are ok with it! There really is nothing else out there that is economical and easy and fits 8 passengers. We ended up going with a 2011 and feel that we got a fair deal if not a good one. We got $1100 more for the Mazda at Carmax than we ever thought we would so we jumped on that quickly. I looked around and compared prices and actually got some help from the bank in negotiating the price on this car plus a good apr. We can get 3 large carseats across the middle row and still have room for 5 other people in the car! We can actually pick people up from the airport now and not have to leave cars in the parking lot and text where to pick them up! The boys are excited. They've been having fun running around inside each time we go to talk to the dealership people. Let's hope this is a) a good idea and b) lasts a long time!

12 Week Ultrasound

We had our 12 week ultrasound today called the First Screen. They look at the fluid on the back of the neck and pair that with info from blood work to adjust the odds of the baby having Down's Syndrome or another chromosomal defect. This is helpful because at 38 my odds of having a baby with a problem is 1:150 or so, so this can help us to decide if we want more testing or not. The fluid levels looked low and that's what we want. We will get the full adjusted odds within the week hopefully. While we were there we convinced the lady to take a "look" to see if she could see anything. She said that they've done an in house study and at 12 weeks they've discovered that they're right 70% of the time. (She also said don't tell her boss that she looked!) Anyway, it was pretty obvious that it was a boy! We will not know for sure until the 20 week ultrasound, but I'm pretty much giving up hope of it being a girl. I'll just have to hope my sister has girls so I can buy strawberry and watermelon clothes for them! Now we have to come up with another boy name! I've used all the ones I liked and am fresh out!

Connor got his school pictures back today and they were actually really good. He's getting so big. I was telling a friend yesterday that he's very trustworthy these days and then while I was making dinner tonight he took a blue pen and wrote all over the refrigerator and pantry doors. So much for that!

Halloween

We got a few decorations up in the front. Last year our neighborhood was like a festival on Halloween, but this year it was really quiet. We had TONS of leftover candy.

Evan wanted to go walking around the neighborhood and look for dogs.

Connor figured out what Halloween was about and that his pumpkin was empty and that needed to be fixed. We didn't go to very many houses...they had enough candy from Dave's office.

Passing out candy out front..or eating candy. Connor wasn't very helpful with passing out the candy. He'd run up to our bowl and put his hand on it and stare at the kids.

Connor's class...notice everyone else dressed up!

This week has been kind of rough since I haven't been feeling too hot. Today is the end of the 1st trimester though so hopefully things will start looking up. We have an ultrasound on Tues.

Evan is growing and changing everyday. He is completely obsessed with dogs and Elmo..which seems to be the average one year old obsession. He is a pretty competent walker and loves to follow his brother out to the play set to play in the dirt and sand. He likes to help me vacuum which is extremely annoying. He gets his vacuum and stands right where I'm trying to vacuum and he pushes his little vacuum back and forth as fast as he can. He's been working on this 5th tooth for a week now. It's just sitting there causing pain but not coming through.

Evan goes right to bed at night which is awesome since his brother does not. But he tends to wake up a few times in the night. I know this because you can hear him play with Elmo through the monitor at 2:30am! He also likes to turn on his aquarium and generally find anything he can that will make noise just long enough to wake me up so I have trouble getting back to sleep!

Connor still loves letters and is working on sounds now. He follows directions if he feels like it and his teacher says he's really starting to open up and participate in class. He runs right into his classroom now and I never hear anything negative about not wanting to go to school. He's getting so big!