cont'd from here
---
I started running again. 5, 6, then 7 miles at a time.
And I couldn't lose a pound.
"You just had a baby," people said.
My hair started falling out. I was exhausted.
"You just had a baby." they said.
Then I started throwing up.
I hadn't ever had a period after Thaddeus.
I was nursing.
And I was taking birth control pills.
And I just "had a baby," as everyone liked to remind me.
But I was pregnant... I KNEW I was.
Even if people didn't believe me.
I finally convinced my primary care doctor to do a blood test.
Because as it turns out, I was right.
I was pregnant.
I made an appointment with a new ob/gyn, and since I hadn't had a period, hoped we would be able to figure out just when I was due.
Turns out, I was much more pregnant than I thought.
At my very first appointment with my very new ob, he said.
"Whoa. You're REALLY pregnant. It's a girl!"
I was estimated to be about 17 weeks along.
And my baby was 7 months old.
You do the math....
My new doctor was very concerned about me. I was put on his "high-risk" list.
It was a nice list to be on. I got very personalized care and support, which made my second pregnancy a bit more tolerable.
I made it to 25 weeks before I was put on full bed rest.
In the morning, DadGuy would get me set on the couch with diapers and wipes, and Thaddeus and I would lay there and watch TV for hours.
I developed an affinity for Bear in the Big Blue House, and had a small crush on Anthony Wiggle.
I had my first amniocentesis test at 32 weeks.
Amnio is not fun, especially when you're very pregnant. They could give you a small shot to numb the area before they used the big needle, but if the baby moved, they would have to give you another shot to numb another area before they used that big needle again.... it was much easier to just not have the extra numbing shots.
A nurse came in to hold my belly, while an ultrasound tech located a good pocket a fluid. Then my doctor slowly inserted a long thin needle into my belly, through the uterus. Then Blayne moved.
The needle was extracted and we started over again, but as soon as the needle was in a pocket of fluid, Blayne would flip around to see what was going on.
The third time this happened, my doctor kept the needle in my belly, and the nurses grabbed hold of Blayne through my belly, and tried to move her out of the way.
I still have the bruises on my stomach from that day.
At 34 and a half weeks, I was admitted to the hospital, and had amnio again. The test results showed that Blayne's lungs were developed enough to be born.
Blayne was delivered on December 1, 2004. One day short of a year to the birth of my son.
My recovery with Blayne was a walk in the park compared to Tad.
I stopped bleeding after a month, and I actually lost a little bit of weight.
My ob/gyn set me up with an endocrinologist, who ran a lot of tests, and took a lot of scans.
I finally had a diagnosis.
Hashimoto's Disease.
Hashimoto's is an auto-immune disease. My immune system attacks my thyroid, which, as we know, regulates a LOT of the hormones in your body.
Now the wonderful thing about having Hashimotos AND being pregnant, is that I have so many hormones coursing through my system, that my immune system goes absolutely wild and instead of focusing on just my thyroid, it began an attack on my heart, and my kidneys.
I again was cautioned about the dangers of pregnancy, but despite our very best efforts, we got pregnant again.
Daniel was born 17 months after Blayne, and he was my only technically full term baby, delivered vaginally at 37 weeks.
But I knew that something was wrong after Danny was born.
I, the heavy, heavy bleeder, didn't.
Three weeks after he was born, I had the heaviest period I've ever had in my life.
I bled for twenty three days straight.
Then it stopped for a week.
Then I bled for another three weeks.
It was my worst nightmare, a menstrual cycle flipped, instead of having a few days of bleeding every month, I only had a few days of not bleeding.
After a few months, the bleeding stopped, and the vomiting started.
I was pregnant. Again.
And nobody believed me.
