My miracle wonder kid turns 3 today!
Sure, all moms think their children are miracle wonder kids, and they're probably right.
I know for sure that my Leo is a miracle wonder boy. It took some time for us to get him, we experienced a few small miracles, and today, on his 3rd birthday, I am so grateful to have him.
Here's the little miracle story of how Leo (my baby!) finally came into our lives...
In 2005, I was mom to then-2.5-year-old Clyde (he's now almost 7!!!), and my husband and I decided to try for a second child. Over the course of the next six months, I proceeded to have two early miscarriages, one at seven weeks and one at five weeks.
The two m/cs left me devastated, and I felt helpless thinking about what my future may or may not hold. My doctor said she would refer me to a reproductive endocrinologist - but only after a third miscarriage. A third miscarriage! Ugh...
I tried to numb up emotionally and we tried to get pregnant again. I told myself to prepare for another miscarriage, rather than a pregnancy. In my heart, I just couldn't plan for a viable pregnancy with loss so fresh in my mind.
Once I got the next positive pregnancy test, I talked to my doctor right away. She put me on Prometrium (progesterone) and said I was to take it until twelve weeks.
I also asked my doctor to order me blood tests so we could follow my HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) levels even though this "watching" probably made me more anxious than simply waiting. HCG is the hormone produced in pregnancy, which typically doubles every 2-3 days in the early weeks of pregnancy. Well, my first set of HCG numbers weren't doubling or even increasing at the "at-least-60-percent rate" they like to see. My doctor said, "It doesn't look good."
Although i thought I was mentally detached from from the hope of having a healthy pregnancy (haha!), this news hit me hard.
At six weeks, per my request, my doctor did a sonogram and we saw a sack - an empty black hole of a sack. "This doesn't look good," she said again and told me the sack was measuring too small for six weeks. She said we'd just wait and assume my dates were off. "My dates are not off," I said cause they weren't. She gave the doom and gloom look and told me I could stop taking the Prometrium.
I sat up in my paper dress, "So now I go home and wait for a miscarriage? Or I call if I want a D&C?"
"Yes," she said.
I went home and stopped taking the cute pink pills. I waited a week. I cried a lot. I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I wanted it done. I wanted the waiting and the sick feeling to end. So I called and scheduled the D&C, asking for another sonogram before the procedure.
I went in the next morning to get dilation started before the afternoon D&C, and the medical assistant asked me to undress in the room. I told her I wanted the sonogram before undressing, and she went to ask my doc. I will never know if they were planning to do the sonogram anyway, but it freaked me out that I had to ask for it. It didn't appear to be in their plan.
Five minutes later I was laying on the table getting the sonogram and there, in the formerly black hole sack was a teeny tiny blinking blob. To say the least, my heart fell into my stomach. "There's a baby with strong heartbeat," my doctor said.
"Well, what does that mean?" I asked, baffled. There still must be something very wrong with the blob since the HCGs hadn't been doubling and it hadn't shown up at all on the last sonogram. It must be underdeveloped. It must be sick. It must be just waiting to die.
The blob kept blinking and flickering and I wanted it. Oh, how I wanted that little blob.
"That means you have what appears to be a healthy pregnancy so far," my doc said, as if I hadn't just gone through anything at all strange. She acted excited about the heartbeat.
A few minutes later, I was out in the hall, floating down the stairs into the long months of my life, in which I grew Leo. Leo, who was born healthy on October 29, 2006. There were a few more small scares with that pregnancy, but it's funny how today none of that matters. That was before I knew what I was waiting for and this is now when I know what I got. And I truly know how lucky I am.
Leo is my little curly-haired, brown-eyed, energetic, sweet, funny, feisty, adorable, stubborn (oh, is he stubborn), difficult, rough, and dreamy boy. He is our son. He is Clyde's brother. He's our family. He is our little miracle wonder kid. He is forever my baby.
We did some waiting for him, but our life with Leo was unequivocally worth the wait.
Happy happy 3rd Birthday, Leo. And many more...
Are any of your toddlers particularly miraculous? Tell us all about him or her.
Written by Sheri Reed for CafeMom's Toddler Buzz
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