A Brother for Gavin

No better time to blog than at 1:30 in the morning, right?

It’s my own fault. Earlier this evening, we were out having dinner with friends. Well, I couldn’t help it. I felt myself needing a little something to drink besides water. So what do I order? A Dr. Pepper.

And here I am paying for it.

I’ve never been much of a soda drinker or a caffeine guzzler. I know plenty of people who don’t go a day without their pop / caffeine fix and it’s never something I wanted to get into the habit of doing. Pouring all kinds of chemicals into your body doesn’t seem like too great of an addiction anyway. But I do enjoy a soda when I go out and I’ve found myself paying for it more and more lately. Should have stuck with water, I guess!

But enough about soda! Let’s talk about this active little life inside of me!

We had our gender reveal about two weeks ago, just a few days after Christmas. I found myself wondering about the gender quite a bit, trying to get a feel for a girl or a boy. I started out pretty convinced it was a girl and became more and more convinced when so many people were guessing the same thing. In fact, for a while there, I had NO guesses for a boy at all! Clearly, there were some strong girl vibes emanating from my tummy.

But a few things got me wondering about it, whether we were right or wrong. I was surprised to hear my dad guess it was a boy. He added, “I just have this gut feeling whenever I think about it.” The thing is, my dad also had a gut feeling that I was pregnant in the first place. We’d had lunch together the day before my blood test, and I’d expressed quite a bit of skepticism that I was pregnant at all. I knew I was overdue for a negative anyway. Eventually my embryos wouldn’t stick. When I found out it was positive, my dad told me he wasn’t surprised, that he’d felt I was pregnant at our lunch together and had “had a good feeling about it.”

Since he was right before, I thought maybe my dad’s perceptions were a little more in tune than others’.

Then, when I was at the store picking up some baby wipes, this adorable baby blanket caught my eye, a blanket that was clearly for a BOY. I found this enormous smile spreading across my face and I giggled. “You ARE a boy,” I thought, “and you are just fooling so many people.” Something about that moment, and my sudden smile, made me feel a bit more certain that this baby was quite the trickster and would turn out to be a boy after all.

So I’d convinced myself that it was a boy and went to the ultrasound with my mother, visiting from California, and my husband, anxious to finally have this question answered. There sat my mom with a baby name book in her hand, writing down ideas for girl names, and I was shaking my head telling her she was wasting her time.

Sure enough, once we started moving the scanner down toward the baby’s nether regions, I kept seeing something flashing between the legs. Uh huh. Mm hmm. Again and again, this little something was popping and I was feeling more and more convinced that we had ourselves a little boy. My mom wasn’t seeing anything and declared it a girl, but I knew. We finally got the money shot and there was no doubt about it. Gavin was getting a little brother.

Here’s the video on youtube. If you can get it big enough, you can see him sucking his thumb the whole time, which I thought was pretty darn cute.

Now I’ll insert some honesty here. I was secretly hoping to be wrong about the gender. For a multitude of reasons, having a girl is very important to me. Not only have I been denied much girl connection for my entire life, but I have a very good relationship with my mom and I know that relationship stands out in comparison with my brothers. Not many boys grow up and keep in good touch with their mothers, but girls do and it’s something I hope to have someday with my daughters, a little “thank you for raising me” token by having a lifelong friendship and connection.

So I was just hoping for a girl so I could have this guarantee of getting a shot at that.

But I’ve found myself more and more okay - even happy and excited - to know that the boys will have each other. I know some brothers don’t get along, but I think there’s a good chance the two of them will become good friends, and that makes me very happy.

And I think Gavin will be a good big brother. He is really so cute with babies, actually. I think he can sense how precious they are. He goes up to a baby wanting to hug it, lean his head in, and be near the baby. He wants to touch the baby, especially the face, and will say “soft” because he knows he needs to be soft with the babies. And this smile will envelope his whole being, like he cannot even contain his excitement for the baby and how wonderful it is. It makes me hopeful for their relationship as brothers, though I’m sure it’ll be an adjustment once the spotlight starts shifting away from Gavin.

I think about that eventuality, of dividing my attention between toddler and infant, and it overwhelms me a little. Funny thing is, I couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome, to have my fertility process work out and to have the boys a good distance in age. But I know it’ll be a little rough at first, since Gavin will still be very young and still need much of my attention and care, not to mention his inability to understand much about being a brother and the need for mom to care for this small creature that has suddenly invaded the family. I think the first year may be a little difficult and then become perfectly splendid as the boys can really play together. That’ll be a fun time, I think.

I’m in continual awe of how easy this has been, not only in having in vitro work out but in having such an incredibly smooth pregnancy. Each week, I enjoy reading about the progress my baby is making and read of the symptoms I may expect. Frankly, it makes me shake my head to see just how much women go through, not only to carry and deliver a child, but in all the changes her body goes through in the process. We’re talking some serious expansion and retraction of all kinds of things and it blows my mind. And our bodies just do it, initiate and cope with all that change. Sheesh. High five, women. Seriously. We are awesome.

I read about all these symptoms and feel so lucky that I have none of them. The list goes on and on – headaches, constipation, heart burn, dry eyes, nausea – holy cow, how does a woman survive being pregnant!? The only symptom I’ve had is a whole lot of that expansion I mentioned earlier, though that’s in large part due to my holiday eating. I’ll be happy when I start looking pregnant and not just fat.

My next ultrasound is in two weeks, on February 2^nd, and I will be halfway done at that point, 20 weeks along. That zipped by quickly, especially with everything going so smoothly.

Unfortunately, I’ve been really struggling about my choice of doctor and have debated about what I should do. I know I’m being very particular, but I’ve had such a difficult time with getting pregnant that I find myself really hoping for an extraordinary pregnancy and birthing experience. A lot of that hinges on your relationship with your doctor and I find myself a little unsatisfied there. What I’m looking for is someone who’s as ecstatic as I am about this pregnancy, and who makes me feel comfortable with their attention to detail. My fertility doctor is a perfect example of this. He is very kind and caring, with an outstanding bedside manner, and is very interested and excited about me, my particular case, and my progress. I can tell him about my history and he will remember it on our next visit, and any visits thereafter. I can talk to him about Gavin, or about my progress with fertility, and he will smile and be genuinely excited about it. That’s what I need, someone who can be excited WITH me and take good care of me because they work hard to really know ME and my case.

And a woman would be nice, simply because I think it’s a little easier to have that kind of a connection between women, and I feel a little more entrusting of someone who actually knows what it is to have these parts!

I had a woman doctor with Gavin. She was fine but she did a few things I wasn’t too happy with, all during delivery. They told me she would hold Gavin up when I delivered him, so I could at least see him before he was whisked away to the NICU. But that didn’t happen. I saw his foot pop up between my legs, heard a little cry, and then he was gone. I didn’t even get a glimpse of his face and I was so bummed by that. That could have been a special moment for me and it didn’t happen.

There was also, at one point while pushing him out, a moment when she very suddenly left without a word. The nurse called after her, “Should she keep pushing?” but there was no reply. Granted, she was probably whisked away for something rather dire or there wouldn’t be that kind of urgency. Still, it seemed a little abrupt to not even say, “I’ll be right back,” or “Keep having her push,” or any such phrase that would have taken two seconds and given me a little reassurance while literally in the middle of delivering my baby!

After I delivered Gavin, she started pressing very firmly all over my abdomen, which was absolutely excruciating. I have no idea how long this went on because I was in a whole different state of exhaustion and pain, but it felt like a good fifteen minutes, during which she said nothing to me at all. Two things were wrong with this. First, a little communication would have been nice. “We need to get this placenta out and I’m going to be working on your abdomen to help it out. It’s not going to be pleasant, I’m sorry.” Something! Maybe some words of encouragement while I’m groaning in pain, because I WAS, very audibly, expressing my un-enjoyment of this seemingly never-ending massage of death. Secondly, when the doctor did finally tell me what she was doing and that it wasn’t working and that they’d have to manually go in and get my placenta out, much to my absolute horror, it was only then that she recommended we do anything about the pain. Could that not have been offered to me earlier, perhaps during all my frustrations and protestations to this body pounding?

So, yes, I have considered going back to her only because she is a woman AND because the office staff is much friendlier there. But those memories flare up in my mind and I don’t feel much more trust or rapport there than I do with my new doctor. Not only that, but I’m not too sure they take my new insurance anyway. In fact, I looked up doctors on my insurance website and researched every woman obstetrician in the area, hoping I would find some gem I hadn’t seen before. But every doctor I saw had either bad reviews, mixed reviews, or was just too far away. I did find one good doctor just down the road who had great reviews and a cute little video online about how much she loves what she does and how she loves the miracle of life and how it never gets old, how she loves to see mom’s and dad’s reaction to their newborn. But, of course, she just moved to St. George! Darn it all, that’s just my luck!

So I may just have to settle for a satisfactory experience after all. Or maybe somehow, something will change that will make it extraordinary. I’m trying to be hopeful and positive. Whatever happens, I’m just hoping for things to continue to go smoothly so I can make it all the way this time, deliver a healthy baby, and be able to cuddle him straight from the womb!

In the meantime, I’m enjoying this new phase where the baby is big enough to feel his little movements. I felt his taps this week and enjoyed the heck out of it. It comes and goes but I’m excited to reach this new point and look forward to feeling him move around more and more. 

I also was able to hear his heartbeat on my Doppler for the first time. It’s pretty hard to catch, probably because he’s still fairly small and doing a lot of squirming around in there. But even if I get it for just a few seconds, it’s a sound that brings me such joy.

I’m starting to really fall for this guy, my little kicker in there. I’m getting excited to meet him, to see what he looks like, and discover his personality.