I know, it’s been forever since I last posted. My sister in law started a travel blog and it has inspired me to start writing again.

Between having a toddler, being pregnant and now having a newborn, I have been busy! I have countless blog drafts started, that I never got the chance to finish. A few that I would like to share include: Williams big boy room transformation, BLW friendly recipes and some quick and easy instant pot recipes. So stay tuned for those in the *hopefully* near future.

Since I last posted, William has celebrated his 2nd birthday (cue the mom tears) and I gave birth to baby #2! Before I write my birth story, I quickly wanted to talk a little bit about being pregnant with baby #2 and the prolapse that I have from giving birth to William and how it affected my pregnancy.

About a week after giving birth with William, I remember texting a close friend who had recently given birth asking her if it’s normal to feel like “my insides are falling out” to which she quickly responded with “no, you should see your doctor.” I didn’t make an appointment right away but asked about it when we were there for Williams one month appointment. I said “I feel as though a tampon is falling out all the time, is that normal?” My doctor replied “you haven’t been using tampons, right?” Of course I hadn’t. From everything I had read online, I knew better! So he took a look, and said that everything looked normal and that I still had a stitch that hadn’t dissolved yet so maybe that was what was making me feel uncomfortable.

Well, the feeling of a tampon falling out never went away. I had been using a mirror to see the progress of my healing since about 3 days PP and things definitely looked different than I was used to seeing but I just assumed that things were still swollen from the trauma of giving birth. Two months later, I was still seeing a bulge so I decided to google my symptoms. Everything I came across, mentioned prolapse. I had never even heard of POP (pelvic organ prolapse) before so I didn’t think anything of it when I was first having my symptoms. I think around 4 months PP I finally called the doctor and made another appointment. I told him that I thought I had a uterine prolapse and when he looked, he said “that just looks like the back of your vagina” and mentioned that I could look into getting a pessary but as long as I want more kids, there wasn’t much else I could do. At this point, it wasn’t affecting my life much, other than being a little bit uncomfortable at times, so I just kind of blew it off. BIG MISTAKE. If I could go back in time, I would have made an appointment with a pelvic floor physiotherapist asap.

When William was 16 months old, Brent and I decided that we wanted to start trying for another baby. I had just finished my last package of birth control pills mid September, so we figured it would be a month or two before my cycle evened out. Since I got my period back (about 10.5 months postpartum) it had been super irregular – even though I had been on the pill since about 9 months PP. I would have my period every 2-3 weeks; sometimes it would be super heavy and last for 5-6 days, and others it would be much lighter and only last a few days. I mentioned it to my doctor multiple times, but he didn’t seem concerned, smh.

ANYWAYS – with all of that being said, Brent and I weren’t expecting to get pregnant super quickly. I ordered the ovulation tests off Amazon and tried to track my ovulation according to a 28 day cycle. I tracked it for 5 days but never got a positive result, so I just decided to stop tracking, wait for my period and start again next month since hopefully that way, I would have a clearer picture of how long my cycle is. *Side note: we tried making a baby around the time my app said I should have been ovulating.*

According to my app, my period should have been arriving on Monday October 21st. Monday morning I woke up and decided to take a pregnancy test just in case. It came back 100% negative – no faint line, nothing. I was a bit disappointed, but at the same time I knew it was a long shot and now at least I knew. Fast forward to Friday morning (Oct 25th) – I still didn’t have my period. I decided to take one of the cheap HCG tests that comes in the package with the ovulation tests off Amazon.

THERE WAS A FAINT LINE. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I got William dressed and ran out to Walmart to get a First Response test because I had to know. As soon as I got home, I took the test and waited a couple of minutes before glancing over and seeing a definite line! I was SO shocked.

Based on my last period, I thought I was 4 weeks and 4 days pregnant, with a due date of June 29th, 2020. I went for a dating ultrasound just to be sure around 6 weeks (or so I thought) and there was nothing. I was definitely heartbroken and was convinced that it was a chemical pregnancy and that my period would come any day. Well, it didn’t. I went back for another ultrasound a couple weeks later (I was 8 weeks 3 days, according to the ultrasound – giving me a due date of July 7 – the day before MY birthday!)

Fast forward 4 more weeks and I was seeing our sweet baby jumping around on the monitor at my 12 week ultrasound. My mindset was still tainted by my miscarriage but things were looking much more hopeful!

At 19 weeks we found out we were having another BOY and we were thrilled! To be perfectly honest, I never pictured myself being a boy mom but now that I am, I couldn’t imagine my life and other way! I wouldn’t know what to do with a girl, haha.

As the weeks went on, I had the normal pregnancy symptoms: nausea, sciatica, back pain, heartburn etc. All things I could handle, but around week 25, my prolapse started getting extremely uncomfortable. Everything was swollen and there wasn’t a second that went by that I wasn’t thinking about it.

At this point, I should have made an appointment with a pelvic floor PT, but was holding off because we don’t have benefits (again, big mistake). Then all of a sudden it was March and the pandemic hit so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t make an appointment. I would say the last 10 weeks of my pregnancy were the worst – very hard to put the uncomfortableness aside and just enjoy my pregnancy. In turn, around 36 weeks, I started getting extremely emotional about the fact that this would most likely be my last pregnancy, and I wasn’t enjoying it the way I wished I would.

I started trying to enjoy it more, but it was HARD. Besides the fact that *most* people don’t enjoy the last few weeks of pregnancy, I also had a very busy toddler at home and nowhere for us to go because of the pandemic. It was tough. But we made it through!

Around week 38, I started doing EVERYTHING I could think of to get labour started. Bouncing on my ball, eating dates, drinking red raspberry leaf tea, having sex, eating spicy food, breast stimulation in the shower. I tried it all. We had a close call at 38w5d with what I believe was prodromal labour. I was having what I thought were real contractions. They were close together and were lasting up to 5 minutes each! We went to the hospital and as soon as I layed down in the triage bed, they stopped.

One week later, my water broke and the we met our sweet boy! I will be sharing a separate post with my birth story, so stay tuned!

Xox. -K