My profile

I am 30 years old, married for 8 years, pregnant and due January 8, 2010 with my 3rd child (4th pregnancy). I have had an interesting reproductive history so far.

My first pregnancy was July 2003. I found out at my first doctors appointment (10 weeks) that my baby was only measuring 6 weeks and didn't have a heartbeat. One week later, the "missed miscarriage" was confirmed and another week later after my body still hadn't started to miscarry, I had a D&C to officially end the pregnancy.

After my miscarriage we tried to get pregnant again and after 5 months, I was pregnant again. After an enjoyable and uneventfuly pregnancy, my water broke 6 days before my due date and my daughter Grace was born on 12/12/04. While the pregnancy was uneventful, the delivery was not. I labored perfectly and 8 hours after my water broke, I was finally pushing. Her head delivered, but her shoulders did not. Things got crazy in the delivery room and after having a nurse jump on my belly and push from the top, and some manuevers from the doctor, she eventually was unstuck and born. Immediately after birth she wasn't using her right arm, but by the time the NICU team arrived, she had regained movement. However, during the initial check-up we did learn that she was born with a Cleft Palate. We eventually had the palate repaired just after her 1st birthday.

When Grace was just 8 months old, I noticed a lump in my right breast. After some inital false negatives, I was diagnosed with Stage I breast cancer in September of 2005. I was only 26 years old and had no family history, but somehow had cancer. Due to my age, my doctors came at the cancer aggressively. I had 2 lumpectomy surgeries, 6 rounds of chemo (yes, I lost my hair), 7 weeks of radiation, 1 year of IV Herceptin (every 3 weeks), and 2 years of Tamoxifen (pill daily by mouth). During one of my routine CT scans in February 2007, they found a 6cm mass/cyst on my right ovary. After monitoring it for a couple months, it was not fluctuating with my cycle and starting to become more complex, so they decided I should have it removed. In the process I also lost my right ovary.

So, one month before my "all clear" two year cancer check-up, I had my IUD removed in anticipation of getting the go-ahead to get pregnant again. Apparently cancer treatment and losing an ovary did not effect my fertility as I got pregnant before I showed up at that appointment. I had another uneventful pregnancy (with the exception of a couple false labor scares), but this time we closely monitored the baby's size. He seemed like he was getting rather large, so at 37w3d we did another ultrasound to estimate size and did an amnio to check for lung maturity. Because of the shoulder dystocia on my first delivery, my doctor wanted to try to deliver me before this baby got too big. The ultrasound estimated his weight at 9 pounds and his lungs were mature, so we induced the following day (5/7/08) at 37 weeks 4 days. I had about 8 hours of labor and only 15 minutes of pushing, although again I delivered the head, but the shoulders got stuck again. Thankfully, again no injury to me or the baby. However, when they put him on the scale we were shocked to learn I just delivered a 10 pound 8 ounce baby boy 2 1/2 weeks before his due date! So much for ultrasound estimates!

We decided we wanted just one more, so I had my IUD removed on April 1, 2008 and again we got lucky on the first try! I'm very excited to meet my 3rd and final baby probably around Christmas depending on the mode of delivery.