Cashew, the Fighter Baby

Some of you may remember that when Nicholas was still Peanut we came up with our own goofy naming system for future children.  According to that, baby #2 was supposed to be Cashew.  And ever since we have referred to hypothetical second child as "Cashew," even if only to ourselves.

Well, it is now time to introduce you to Cashew!

From 2013 May

Due to arrive in early to mid November.

This picture is now 2 weeks old, but as you can see Cashew already looks more like a person (without arms, in this picture, but its arms were actually resting on its head as it slept, in a position that looked JUST LIKE NICHOLAS) and less like a nut (or amorphous prehensile creature, as it did in the early ultrasounds), but its name has always been Cashew and so Cashew it will remain. 

****Warning: the rest of this post is personal and unfiltered.  I feel I need to write it and have it as part of this family log, but it may be too much information, so stop here if you don't want to go down that rabbit hole.****

We don't know much about this child yet, but we do know that it is a fighter.  We actually debated changing its name from Cashew, but couldn't come up with a nut that sounded any more boxing-like.  Because I have to tell you, I have already learned not to count this kid out, that he or she is resilient and tenacious and not to be messed with.

After two miscarriages in the fall (which are honestly posts/stories I don't know that I will ever write), I was primed to be hesitant and suspicious.  Honestly, those wounds were still really raw.  And so when things seemed to be following a familiar pattern in late February, I figured I knew the rest of the script.  I felt very strong pregnancy symptoms for about a week and then they went away.  It had chemical pregnancy written all over it (that is what the first miscarriage officially was).  I wasn't happy, but was okay.  After all, I now know that there are way worse things than a chemical pregnancy.  Better for it to end then than a few weeks later.  And this time I was primed because I knew what it was--I wouldn't get my hopes up. 

The following weekend I had strep and remember thinking, well okay, now it makes sense.  This is why I couldn't be actually pregnant right now, because the strep and the fever would be really dangerous.  So I was okay, at peace, glad I wasn't pregnant.  But because I still technically could possibly be pregnant, I sent my brother out in the middle of the night for Tylenol because I was at my parents' house and they didn't have any pregnancy-safe fever reducers.  I apologized to him, saying I knew it was silly since I was so sure I wasn't pregnant, but to just humor me (which, let's be honest, he has been doing his entire life).

Two days later I decided to go ahead and take a pregnancy test.  I was certain I wasn't pregnant, but I was late and I knew given the history the doctor would want some data about what was happening.  And it was positive.  Hmmm, okay, well I figured that likely just meant the hormones from the chemical pregnancy were still in my system.  I expected them to be gone by then given the previous pattern, but it didn't mean anything.  In fact, I didn't take a picture (I had two previous sets of pictures that were just painful and, okay, I was both jaded and a little superstitious) and promptly threw the test in the trash.

I called the doctor's office to ask what he wanted to do now.  I figured we were still in diagnostic mode and he might want to do some bloodwork to check things out.  And sure enough in I went for bloodwork.  And when the numbers came back I began to get my first glimpse of hope.  Because the numbers were good.  I still wasn't excited, I still wasn't believing, but it was a step.  Actually, at that point I remember feeling very conflicted.  It was good news, but to me it was also bad news.  Because now I had reason to hope and hope was scary.  When I was certain there was no hope I was at peace.  I was okay with not being pregnant.  I was even okay with a chemical pregnancy.  But if it was a real pregnancy, then things could go wrong.  Could I go back there?  And oh no, the strep!  Panic.

They then proceeded to draw blood every 2-4 days for what felt like forever but in reality was less than 2 weeks.  At that stage it is the only thing they can do to check the progress of the pregnancy because it is too early to see anything on an ultrasound.  And so they watched hormone levels go up.  And with each positive call I started to get a little more hopeful.  But I also remembered.  I remembered that the number was just under 10,000 when they did a draw right after the last miscarriage so no matter how well the numbers were moving in that direction, I knew I wasn't safe.  And then at just about 6 weeks the phone call with the blood results was more measured.  The numbers had still gone up, but they had slowed down and were lower than they wanted.  It wasn't awful, it wasn't necessarily a sign of things going wrong, but it also was not reassuring.  At that phone call the nurse declared us done with blood draws.  Instead of a blood draw on Monday morning (this was a Friday afternoon) we would do an ultrasound.  It was still to early to see a heartbeat and she prepared me that realistically it might be too early to see anything at all, but it was the only way to get any information about what might be going on because the numbers were now not telling us for sure--they had become gray.

I figured it was over.  I wasn't drinking or taking any other risks, but mentally I figured I knew what was coming.

Going in Monday morning I knew the best we could hope for was continued gray.  And then the tech showed us the heartbeat!  It was still too early to see a heartbeat--how was this possible?! The baby was still so tiny (I swear it looked like just a dot) that the flicker of the heartbeat made it look like the entire baby was flickering, like the heart was the entire thing. 

From 2013 May

And I cried.  Not with joy, but with pure relief.  Tension and fear that had been so bottled up came rushing out.

That is when we knew--this child is a fighter.

After a couple days the relief faded and the fear gripped hold again.  We weren't safe.  My doctor had already scheduled weekly ultrasounds given my history.  Not that there was anything he could do to prevent another miscarriage but maybe just maybe he could give me the peace of mind to keep me sane.  Even with those I will admit that there was one dark moment in between scheduled ultrasounds when I called the office in a panic, convinced it was over, and they brought me in to take a peek.  And the baby was fine.  And I felt stupid.  But I was apparently more scarred than I realized.  Those early weeks were hard.  I was so scared.  And felt so helpless.  But I also began to hope in our fighter baby.  That is actually what I called it in those weeks instead of Cashew.  I would plead, "Please, little fighter baby, keep on fighting."  Because there was nothing I could do.  I was at the mercy of God and this tiny clump of cells fighting so hard to develop.  It was a reminder of just how powerless I am as a mother, just how little credit I can take for who Nicholas is, just how much he is his own person.

And fighter baby kept fighting.  When we got to 10 weeks I started to breathe a little.  When I started feeling the baby move at 11 1/2 weeks I felt the beginnings of joy and excitement for the first time.  When we watched the baby sleeping with its hand on its head like its big brother at 12 1/2 weeks it became real.  And when we told Nicholas last weekend it became a part of our lives.

I won't say I don't still worry, because I do.  But it is manageable.  It is like this child knew that I needed those early motions.  Seriously, how is it possible to feel motion at 11 1/2 weeks?!  That really shouldn't be possible.  But, as I told Joe, if that wasn't the baby I needed to see a GI doctor because my intestines were literally tying themselves up in knots (the kid must have been doing somersaults).  And I don't think intestines respond to a jolt of liquid sugar (Sprite) by jumping around manically.  So now when I get anxious, I wait for the baby's reassuring motions.  They have become less frequent and noticeable actually in the last week, oddly enough, which I am trying not to let worry me (the heartbeat was still great at Monday's scheduled doctor's appointment, so no need for you to worry either).  But so far so good. And while it is really scary for me to go public (it feels like a jinx somehow), it is time.