Three's Company

"Come and knock on our door...we'll be waiting for you"....loved that tv show and pretty soon we'll be singing the same theme song in the Mack house. Because as crazy as you may think we are, #3 is on the way and will be here, God-willing, sometime around September 20th!

It's been a long road to get here and definitely not according to our plan, but you'd think by now that I'd learn that nothing goes according to my plan when it comes to planning for our children. God thinks he has this better plan. And you know what? He's right, His plan is way better than mine.

Back in November, we experienced another miscarriage.

Our third one.

You'd think we'd be pros by now with handling it, but it's heartbreaking even the third time around. The only thing that made it easier to take was tucking our boys in at night and knowing that even if it didn't happen that we are definitely blessed with what we have. To make things more emotional, my HCG levels wouldn't come down after the miscarriage and they were concerned that I was having a ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy in my fallopian tubes) which can be fatal if it ruptures. This is all  while Tonya (my sister) is in the hospital to have her mastectomy. It was a rough month for sure. Thankfully, after month my HCG levels came down to zero.

Having three miscarriages put me into a new level of "recurrent miscarriages". We met with a fertility specialist in January to help figure out what might be the cause of this miscarriages.We had a lot of questions and wanted answers before trying again.

Well, it was one of those moments where we had an appointment to see the fertility specialist on Tuesday but found out the weekend before we were already pregnant.  Getting pregnant was never the issue, it has always been keeping the pregnancy. So I was so glad to see the specialist when I was newly pregnant because with all of my miscarriages, they have happened early in the pregnancy.

Once the specialist found out that we were pregnant, he put me on blood thinner injections and baby aspirin. He reassured me that if I have a certain condition that called antiphospholipid antibodies that the blood thinners could actually save the baby but if I didn't have the condition it wouldn't harm the baby.

Turns out that I do have that condition as well as another...lucky me! The first is that my antiphospholipid antibodies levels are borderline, meaning that my blood tends to clot easily which is why I'm on blood thinner injections in my stomach. I'm thankful to have something to help with this condition but with a black and blue bruised stomach, I'm hoping and praying that my levels somehow get better so that I don't have to continue these. The other condition I have is the MTHFR gene mutation. My body has a very hard time absorbing vitamin B and folic acid...two things vital to prevent birth defects. So now I'm on a mega dose of these two vitamins.

Of course, my first question to the doctor was, "Then how do we explain the boys?" And he couldn't. And when a doctor can't explain something, I like to call it a miracle. Of course we have always thought that about our boys but after finding this out, it's truly amazing that I was able to carry them both full term and have 8 lb. chubby babies. God is just winking at me every time I look into their blue eyes.



Although, it's not exactly exciting to hear that you have these health issues, it was relieving to finally have somewhat of an answer to why we kept miscarrying. We just kept hearing, "It happens to a lot of people and sometimes we can't explain why."

It's been frightening to share the news with people that we're pregnant. It's my neurotic, irrational side like if I somehow share it with someone that I'm jinxing it. It took 2 months to even share it with our own parents. Being out of the first trimester now makes me breathe just a little easier.

Being due in September was definitely not according to my plan especially since Nolan's birthday is six days later than my due date and making it through the triple digit heat being pregnant was absolutely NO fun with Nolan. I had ZERO ankles and when I took off my flip flops the indentation was still left. Oh and did I mention it's a terrible time of year to be out as a teacher? But I definitely feel that this baby was meant to be and it is what it is so we should just embrace it.

Justin's mom was in town back in February and it was my mom's birthday so we thought it was a great time to share the news.

Campbell's birth story

I'm feeling rather nostalgic right now with Campbell's 2nd birthday coming up and wanted to share the upcoming events leading up to his birth.

Don't worry there will be NO talk of mucus plugs, placentas, or any other things that might make you want to second-guess eating before you read this post. {Whew!}

There was a lot of pressure building up to Campbell's arrival. My parents canceled their trip to a family reunion and my in-laws were on their way down from Kentucky "just in case" he came. I wasn't due until July 8th, so it was highly unlikely that he was coming this soon. What is the saying, "A watched pot never boils"?

I had contractions off and on for days, only for them to stop after 30-45 minutes. So when I started having contractions at 11:15 p.m. on June 27th, I didn't really think much of them. They were about 10 minutes apart. An hour later they were 8 minutes apart, and two hours later they were 5 minutes apart.

I think it's always so funny seeing men in the movies running around like crazy, driving to the hospital and leaving the wife behind at home. What was my husband doing, you ask? Let me re-enact it for you. It sounded something like this...."zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz huh? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" And that was after I told him that my contractions were 5 minutes apart and going strong for 3 hours. 

I wasn't too sure if I was in labor or not because I never experienced contractions with Nolan because I was induced. I called my mom and the doctor and they both said it sounded like I was in labor. So we headed to the hospital at 4 a.m. Up to this point, I was only dilated to a 2 at my doctor's office. But when they checked me at 5:00 a.m, I was a 3 but my contractions were really starting to space out. So we started planning where we would eat breakfast on our way home.

At 7 a.m., the doctor said I was dilated to a 4 and said, "Looks like we're having a baby!". After all this wishing that he would come, and then panic started to set in. I was admitted and they broke my water by 9:00 a.m. They gave me my epidural at 10:00 and checked me again. I was a 5.  Things slowed down a little bit for the next hour so they gave me more Pitocin to get my contractions closer together. Well that seemed to work because I went from a 5 to a 9.5 in 30 minutes.

He was still up pretty high so they let gravity do its work, and sure enough within two minutes of sitting up, it was time to push. Five contractions and twenty minutes later, Campbell Allen McDonald made his appearance into this world at 3:15 p.m. weighing 8 lbs. 1 oz and 19 1/4 inches. It felt like I was looking at Nolan all over again. Both were exactly a week and half early, the exact same height and only 3 oz. difference on their weight.

And no, I don't have a steel trap memory to remember every detail like this, although my husband would argue that I do. Thank goodness for my pregnancy journal because I had all of this written there. I'm so thankful that I wrote it down because there's no way I would have remembered those details and it makes me realize that all those hours of blogging, journaling, scrapbooking will be loved by my boys someday.

Here is a video of the pictures that Justin took of me while I was pregnant with Campbell. It almost makes me want to have another one...almost.