Seeing The Light

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the warmer weather, maybe it's the fact that June is here in just 6 days, but suddenly that heavy cloud that was over my head and robbing me of the joy of this pregnancy is gone. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and my excitement to meet this new little person is back and in full bloom. Yay! :)

Here I am, 34 weeks pregnant. :)

My gestational diabetes is still as complicated as ever, and even though I'm still having to watch my diet and take insulin injections, it's suddenly become so much easier now that I can see the end in sight and I know I will be holding my baby in no longer than 4.5 weeks.

A lot happened this past week to remind me of why I'm doing all of this.

The first and biggest reminder was the ultrasound we had on Friday. I had forgotten how cool it is to have a visual picture of that life growing inside you. Our baby is definitely in on the keeping everything a secret/ mystery/surprise plan. Baby was head down and face down so we couldn't even see his or her face. Then the technician said it was a good thing we didn't want to know the gender because baby was doing a great job of hiding that from all of us too. :)

I just left the ultrasound thinking about how I can't wait to meet who God has chosen to be the perfect and last addition to our family.

Another thing that lifted my spirits this week was my most recent Dr's visit. On Wednesday, my Dr. informed me that they will likely schedule the c-section at 38 or 38.5 weeks (sooner than she had originally told me) so I know now I have no more than 4.5 weeks left!

Then, with all of this new excitement in me and knowing we don't have a ton of time left, I had fun creating a baby pool for friends and family to guess the arrival date, gender, weight, etc. for this baby. Please, feel free to make a guess if you'd like.

Here's the link:
http://babybookie.com/pools/1345-baby-howard-3/bets/new

We've really enjoyed reading over all of the guesses! :)

And last but certainly NOT least, I'm excited to announce that we FINALLY have names picked out (well, sort of-the girl name is down to 2 options).

For a long time we were trying to find names that started with E since we have an Elliana and an Ethan. Then as time went on we realized we weren't really in love with any E names and we felt like we were trying to force it too much, so we decided to just go with names that we really liked with special meaning to us.

If we have a boy we will name him Noah. If we have a girl, her name will be either Audrey or Emsley.

I would love to go into the meaning of each name and what they mean to us, but I'll save that post for another day.

In other news, we had a wonderful Memorial Day. We went with Caleb's parents to the mountains for a picnic and had SO much fun with the kids! After eating lunch we walked by the river, let the kids splash and throw rocks and watched the many white water rafters that came by.

I think it may have been one of our last outings as a family of 4. Here's a few favorite pictures from today:

I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day too!

Day By Day

I just realized I last posted almost a month ago! I had no intention of being absent from my blog for nearly a month.

The truth is, just a little over a month ago this pregnancy (and life in general) became really, really difficult. :( For those of you that are involved in my every day "real" life, this will be old news to you. I just wanted to document this time in my life on the blog so I can look back at it some day and know how I was really doing.

Around 26 weeks pregnant, I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes. I know I'm not the first or the last woman to be diagnosed with GD, in fact a friend of mine just recently had her baby and shared about her life with GD too.

I knew it would be difficult to follow a very specific and rigid diet (very low carb), but I was unaware of how my life would be completely flipped upside down and consumed with needles.

Right from the start I had to prick my finger to check my blood sugar 4 times a day. Yeah, no fun. It was then that we discovered that diet was not enough to keep my blood sugar down. Even my fasting blood sugar was high every day.

 

 

I knew and still know that I am doing absolutely EVERYTHING I can to keep my blood sugar under control. I have never been this disciplined with diet in my life, and at the request of my Dr, I increased working out (at this point that mostly consists of walking and swimming) from 3 times a week to 5+ times a week.

Still, all of this was not enough so I was put on insulin injections about 2 weeks ago. I'm not going to lie, I was terrified of giving myself an injection every night, but after a while you get used to it. The injections helped to get my fasting numbers down, but I still consistently run a little high after lunch and dinner.

 

I'm eating even less carbs than I'm allowed at most meals, and the proof is in the fact that over the past month I haven't gained any weight. In fact, I've lost some. This is the lowest weight I've been this far in a pregnancy.

I've had multiple Dr's appointments every week, and I get confusing and contradicting information about how best to treat my GD.

The latest news is that I'm looking at the possibility of having to do mealtime insulin instead of just the once a day at bedtime insulin. :( I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, I really don't want to have to give myself injections all day long on top of checking my blood sugar 4 times a day, but on the other hand I feel at times that I'm starving myself and my baby in order to keep my blood sugar under control. :(

 

This past month has been HARD. Maybe one of the hardest in my life. I have so much fear that this diabetes won't go away after the baby is born (really, it should), and on top of all that I am very big and uncomfortable and chasing a 2 year old wild boy and a 4 year old active girl.

I feel as if the joy of expecting another little one has been completely overshadowed by the difficulties of this pregnancy. At this point, I am just surviving every day and looking forward to holding this baby and letting all of this be in the past.

The good news is that so far my GD has NOT caused my baby to grow too big or put on extra weight, which is one of the biggest concerns.

Needless to say, this has been confirmation that after this baby is born our family is complete. We already thought we'd be done having children after 3, but this experience has been the nail in the coffin. It's official, my body should NOT do this again!

I'm currently 32 weeks pregnant. I'm just hoping I can hang on for another 5+ weeks. I'm constantly praying for strength to make it. I know with God's help, I will.

Thanks for letting me be honest and vulnerable. I know this is not my most cheery post, but sometimes life is just hard.