Meet Candace. Candace's story is one that takes I Guess I'm Due to a very literal meaning. Her and her husband had their 5-10 year plan all laid out. Things were getting in order and their plan was falling into place. Things begin to change from here. Check out Candace's story below!
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“Your boys
look exactly alike!”
It’s a
phrase my husband and I hear often. Although
they have nearly three years between their ages, there is no doubt they are
brothers with their bright blonde hair, beautiful baby blues, and plump
cheeks. And their hyper, outgoing
personalities are almost identical as well.
In fact, my standard response to the question “how are the boys?” is “ornery.” But, the stories of their entrances into this
world probably couldn’t be more different from one another.
Let me
start off by noting my husband, Randy, and I had a detailed plan: establish our
jobs in the city, buy a house, have one child, wait two full years and have
another, then relocate closer to our hometowns to be near family before our
oldest child started Kindergarten. After
that, we planned on having two more children because we both have three
siblings a piece. Well, we should have
known that plans don’t always work out the way we hope. We both had steady jobs, but before we were
close to being prepared for buying our first home, my maternal clock was
ticking and it was time to change our plans.
We
certainly didn’t expect the conception of our first child to take quite so
long. After about ten months of daily
temperature-taking and charting, I felt like I was hitting a breaking
point. Ten months isn’t long compared to
what some couples go through, but it was taking a toll on me emotionally. We finally decided to take a break from all of
that after month eleven, and…
TA-DA! Pregnant!
The first
pregnancy was a breeze. With the
exception of some nausea and back pain, I felt pretty good. During my routine 37-week checkup, my doctor
said my blood pressure had spiked and I needed to be sent to the hospital for
more testing. When I heard her say “We
probably won’t induce you today,” I think I went into a state of shock. I was not planning on having this baby today
or any day soon – I was planning to go into work! The next morning, I was admitted for
preeclampsia and the only remedy was birth.
This was a Thursday morning. I
was thinking “Great, I will have my baby later today and welcome all of my
family and friends to meet this little guy over the weekend!” Wrong.
No one told
me how long it can take to be induced when your body is not physically
ready. After being poked and prodded for
two-and-a-half days straight, with no sleep, no shower and no food (thanks IV),
my sanity was running thin. Late Saturday
night, the medical team broke my water and I finally started having
contractions through the night. Things
were finally moving along, but in the a.m., two adjustments of the epidural
proved to be unsuccessful - I was going to be doing this the natural way. And the natural way lasted two-and-a-half
hours while I pushed, semi-convinced this baby was never coming out. Around the 73rd hour, Brady was
finally born on Sunday, March 8, 2009.
By this
time, the weekend, along with visitors, had come and gone, but I was finally
able to sleep due to the magnesium in my system from the preeclampsia (the
shower though, wouldn’t happen until Tuesday due to the fact that I was seconds
away from fainting during my Monday morning attempt to do anything on my
own). Adjusting to parenthood proved to
be a tough one, especially with our family several hours away and a baby who
only slept when he was held - literally.
Our plans took another turn and we ended up moving closer to our
hometowns when Brady was just 18-months old.
This, of course, meant two new jobs and attempting to buy our first home. We decided it was best to only have one more
child and to put our Baby #2 plans on hold for a while longer. That’s the funny thing about plans…
TA-DA! Pregnant!
The second
pregnancy didn’t go quite as smoothly, as I developed gestational diabetes and
had to begin an improved workout regime, closely monitor my diet (every single
crumb that entered my body), and test my blood sugar 4x per day. It probably would’ve been best to stay off
the Internet after that diagnosis… yikes!
Because Brady was induced three-weeks early, imagine my frustration when
Baby #2 stayed put for the full forty-weeks.
Sure, it doesn’t seem that long in theory, but those weeks seemed like
an eternity.
On the due
date, I woke up before dawn to use the restroom (again) and my water broke the
instant I stood up. I spent all morning
and part of the afternoon lying in the hospital bed, watching television,
chatting with family, and texting with friends – so far, much more relaxing and
pleasant than the first time. My contractions
started in the afternoon and I asked for an epidural around 1:30pm when I began
to get uncomfortable, but still not in a tremendous amount of pain. Things escalated rapidly and by 2:15pm, the
baby was ready to enter the world and I received the epidural about 10-seconds
before I was ready to push (and this time, it worked! Whew!).
Unfortunately, the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck three
times and he was turning sideways. The
doctor was ready to try one more possible solution, otherwise I was headed for
an emergency c-section. Fortunately, the
alternatives worked - two pushes was all it took, which was a monumental
improvement from the first time around (or miracle, as I like to call it). Cooper was born on Monday, January 9, 2012.
Adjusting
to life after Baby #2 was much easier than we had anticipated, and it has been
amazing to watch our boys growing up.
They are so much alike, but also very different in many ways. It didn’t take long before we realized we
don’t feel “done” creating our family, so our plan is to try again for another
baby in the future and see what life brings.
But you know what they say about plans…
Candace
