Think before you speak, or MYOB

I am currently 23 weeks pregnant with another boy.  This particular pregnancy has me even more annoyed with comments and statements from other people.  Not that it is anyone's business, but yes, this was a planned pregnancy.  Yes, I am aware that Ryan and boy#3 will be rather close in age.  Yes, I know this is my fourth child.  Yes, I know how birth control works.  No, I wasn't upset to find out it was another boy. 

When we got married, I had always thought that I would have three kids.  I fully intended on Ryan being the last.  However, about 6 weeks after he was born, it became very apparent to Ethan and I that our family wasn't done.  Ok, fine, we are supposed to have another kid.  Ok, I can handle this.  Thinking it out, 18 months between pregnancy doesn't sound bad to me.  Mark and Lyssa are 20 months apart, and Ryan is 2yrs and 8 mths younger than Lyssa.  The first two are close, the second two will be close.  As for planning, we have not had any issues with getting pregnant.  We have been very blessed, if anything, we have to be very proactive in not getting pregnant.  That time line would have had me pregnant sometime Nov/Dec-ish.  Start of 2013, I start getting another impression that this baby needed to come within the year.  As in born within this year.  That scared me.  I wanted my body to have more time to heal between pregnancies.  I don't relish the idea of two children in diapers. I didn't want it to be that soon.  I talked to Ethan about it and decided, well we don't know what the next year holds for us, but we were going to try anyways. 

I find out in April that I am pregnant.  I wasn't even sure what his due date would be, I hadn't regulated since Ryan so I didn't have a consistent time frame to work with.  Since the previous pregnancies have gone very smoothly and morning sickness is not an issue for me, I didn't even bother with scheduling an appt. with an OB/GYN until the end of May.  She scheduled an ultrasound to determine due date for Dec. 7th. This baby will be born within 2013.  Ryan will be 18 mths.  Just barely old enough to go to Nursery.  I can't wait for Nursery.

Now that it is Aug. there are several possible reasons that have shown up as to why this possibly needed to happen now.  Ethan's parents have just moved to Tennessee.  After serious consideration and a myriad of reason that I am not going into, I have agreed to the idea of moving, pending a decent job.  Maybe the pregnancy needed to happen while we are still on this health insurance. While I still have the same access to Laurie, the midwife who has delivered all three of my kids.  Maybe it has something to do with all the new healthcare laws.  I am not inviting any sort of political debates with that statement.   I don't ultimately know why.  I will probably never know why.

With my first pregnancy I announced pretty early, and with each subsequence pregnancy, it has been later and later.  I didn't publicly announce this one until I had a due date, at which point, I was about 14 weeks.  I told the grandparents and sibling and said something on FB.  That is all I have done.  This is baby #4, there is no need for a lot of attention to me.  And frankly, where as most people have stuck with the normal "Congrats!", there have been a lot of other comments that I just do not want to hear.  I know in my heart that the people who say these rather hurtful things do not mean it to be taken that way, but really?  I don't need to hear about "Wow, they are going to really close, I don't know if I could do it." or another one?  I don't want to hear negative things about pregnancy, implied or otherwise.  I am the one who has to live with the consequences of my choices, good or bad.  This was and is a good choice.

A friend of mine didn't find out that I was pregnant until 2 weeks ago. She called me a brat for not telling her.  I honestly didn't realize she hadn't know.  We did talk about it a little as to why I had been so secretive about this pregnancy and we both came down to there is sooo much about motherhood that is badly judged.  How many kids you have, how much age difference there are between them, how you raise them, circumcision, vaccinations, public school/private/home schooling, etc.  I don't want to hear about I didn't do things the correct way, or how they wouldn't have done it that way.  I don't want to hear judgement about this.  This is a private thing between my husband and I, if I chose to share it with you, then I trust you, but WE, Ethan and I, get that choice.  I didn't decide to get pregnant with you (generalized audience), so unless it something nice to say, don't say it.  No pregnant woman wants to be told that they are huge, that are you sure your due date is right, that is a lot of kids, how can you afford them, you know how birth control works right?  That is rude, condescending and flat out mean. 

The worst thing about this is I am not surprised when a guy says something, most of the time, they genuinely do not know better, but when it is from another mother.  Do they honestly not remember how awkward it is to have a stranger fondle your stomach as if you aren't actually there? Or how close their own children were?  Hormones aside, we are already sensitive to the changes our bodies are going through, the sickness that afflict many, the supermom façade that is the only thing that can be accepted when you walk out the door.  Yes, we love the weight gain, the swollen feet, the tenderness and freakly medical things that happen to us. 

I get gallstones while I am pregnant. This is not uncommon for pregnant women. It hit about 10% of pregnant women.  It has something to do with the estrogen levels messing with the bile producing and the bile is what breaks fat down.  If the bile isn't being produced, then fats aren't broken down and they can form gallstones.  Gallstones don't dissolve for the most part, there are some long term remedies for dissolving them but I mean like years long.  If they get too large, they can get stuck, similar to a kidney stone.

 They don't bother me when I am not pregnant, so I haven't gotten my gallbladder out.  I don't really want to get it out.  They started with Lyssa, even though I wasn't aware of what they were until half way through Ryan's.  All any doctor(6 to count at this point) will say is, well there is nothing we can do, so just get it removed after you aren't pregnant anymore.  If it turns out that it is infected or inflamed, then I will consent, but I would rather have it working at a lower percentage then not have it there at all, not being able to do even the low percentage.  I had 4 different attacks within the month of July, the last two of which I ended up in the ER for, one lasting 4 hrs and the other 6 hrs.  The second one would have been an er trip, but the pain stopped before Marme was able to get there to watch the kids, so we didn't go. To get an idea of the pain, it is an intense tightening feeling right below the rib cage, the whole way around.  It feels very hard to breath, even though you are capable of it.  I would compare it to late stage contractions with out the breaks in between.  They can be brought on from eating an fatty meal, carbonation, things of that nature, but also a baby's kicking can do it.  The relief from the pain usually happens the stone is dislodged and no longer blocking anything.  Not usually passing the stone.  So another words, it is still there to come back and haunt you.  They really don't like to do surgery on pregnant women, which I completely understand. Remember the story with the Duggar Family and their preemie child, Mom had emergency gallbladder surgery and it did affect the baby leading her to be premature.  With that said, they have given me different pain med to help "manage" the pain.  The one that was 6 hrs, I was on Vicodin and they still had to give me Demerol for it.

I have set up an appt. with an GI to talk to them about any other possible things that can be done, beside the watching of fatty foods and carbonation.  I have been watching what I eat and avoiding carbonation.  I can't do much about a baby kicking.  I refuse to believe there is nothing else they can do besides just wait until I am not pregnant anymore.  I am not the first person they have encountered that was unacceptable candidate for surgery, so I would like to hear what else is available from someone who specializes in these matters.  I felt bad, when I was making the appt. with the receptionist, she just kept going on and on how there really wasn't much they could do for me, until I finally yelled at her that, " Then you have 5 weeks until my appt. to find a possible fix/solution  to get me through, because I am not going to keep going to the ER 4 times a month for the next 5 months, scaring everyone in my family, as well as myself."  I know doctors hate Web M.D. and such as that, but if I can find different things, I don't know why none of them have been presented as options.  Almost all of what I have found say they are only temporary fixes, but that is all I really need, something to get me through the next couple of months.  I have also done a cleanse, and will be doing a repeat of it shortly, in hopes that this will help either pass the stones that are causing problem or help prevent new ones from forming. I have had a small attack since the cleanse, but it was far more manageable than the last three, so I have hope.