Christmas Mommy

This Christmas season was so different for me. I took a little boy to meet Santa. I wrapped gifts that said, "From: Mommy and Daddy." I watched my baby boy crawl and try to grab the tree branches. We played Christmas music and bounced around. We read The Night Before Christmas while little hands tried (and succeeded) in ripping the pages of the book. I put photos in Baby's First Christmas frames.

These sound like the smallest things. To me they mean everything. Our baby boy is now 8.5 months old. We wanted him for so long and waited for him. We went through so much and now that he is here every moment means so much. We are so lucky. I could not even imagine our life without him.

Dylan now has 5 teeth and is crawling everywhere. He keeps me busy every day and I am so happy.

Baby's first Christmas.

And my first Christmas as Mommy.

My boy

The moons and stars whispered to me,

Try just one more time,

It will be worth it,

And I believed them,

I pushed through hard times,

Just to see your face,

My heart broke so many times before you,

time and time again,

My life seemed over,

Then there you were,

You put all the shattered pieces back together,

My blue eyed boy,

You were meant to be,

You were meant to be mine.

I love you I love you I love you.

Four months

Our son just turned 4 months old. The son that we hoped for and dreamed of. The son we went through hell to create. The son that we did not know for sure would exist.

I have been wanting to post what it feels like to finally be a mom. To finally hold my child. To finally see my husband hold our child. It is hard to describe the overwhelming feeling of love and completeness.

This little boy that we created together fills the hole in our hearts. He is beyond anything we could have ever imagined and he feels like the baby we were meant to have. There was such a long time of sadness in my heart and an unsure feeling of if we could ever bring home a baby to raise together. Those years of feelings aren't erased but they have been replaced with feelings of happiness and a feeling of being whole. That is the best way to describe the journey I went on. My heart was missing a piece before. I knew I was missing out on so much and missing out on the thing I always wanted. I wanted someone to call me mom.

And I just know that from now on I mean more to someone than I have ever before. He will depend on me. When little does he know that my life depended on him.

Baby boy Baxter, our Dylan, you are everything I imagined and more than I could have ever imagined. I love you I love you I love you.

Things no one tells you about having a baby

When you are pregnant, people give you lots of advice but they don't tell you things you actually need to know.

Here is my list of things I wish people told me:

1. Once you have your baby at the hospital there will be lots of people coming in and out of your room. They will poke your baby's foot to take blood. They will want to do hearing tests on your baby. They will want you to write down when your baby eats and has a dirty diaper. I was not prepared for absolutely no privacy and no alone time with my baby.

2. We said we were going to breastfeed on our birth plan with the hospital. What that meant for us was once baby was born, they watched you attempt to feed him every few hours even though your milk didn't come in yet. There is a chance your baby won't latch. Maybe you will try a nipple shield to get him to. Baby isn't getting much food yet and is hungry. What ended up happening for us was our baby lost too much weight. He also had slight jaundice. So this means he is hungry, losing weight, and his jaundice isn't getting better because of that. This turns into going to the pediatrician 2 days in a row when baby is just a few days old and needing to get your baby's weight back up.

3. You know you will bleed. But do you know for how long? 4 weeks later and it is still happening. It may stop but don't let that fool you, it will start back up a few times before it really stops for good.

4. Did you get a c-section? You will be in lots of pain. You will have an incision that takes time to heal. When you bend over or move too fast, it will sting. Even weeks later when it looks like it's healing well, you may find a white string on the end and think what is that!? Oh it's the dissolving stitches that didn't dissolve but instead poked out.

5. Baby may wake up every 2-2.5 hours at night. It will take about 30-45 minutes to feed, change, and sooth baby. This means you will get 1-1.5 hours of sleep at a time.

6. Napping during the day when baby naps? Sounds great in theory. But maybe you just spent 2 hours feeding, changing, soothing, playing with baby. Finally they fall asleep. You have an hour, maybe 2 hours of free time. Oh you didn't eat lunch yet. So let's eat. Then strap the pump to you to get some milk for later. Drink tea to help with milk production. Let the dog outside. Brush your teeth and wash your face. Oh no, time's up! Baby is ready for food and to be changed again. Sorry, no nap!

7. You plan on breastfeeding? That's great. But maybe baby won't latch. You both get frustrated. Let's pump! Oh you don't produce enough so you need to supplement with formula. It's okay! It's okay for baby to drink from a bottle. It's okay for baby to get some breast milk and formula.

8. The days go fast. Taking care of your baby takes up your whole day. And your day flies by because you are on call 24/7. You will probably forget what day it even is.

People tell you it will be amazing and the best thing you ever do. They are right. Having this baby boy with my wonderful husband will be the greatest accomplishment I will do in my lifetime.

Dylan's birth story

One week ago we had a baby. After all these years of us waiting and doing everything we could to have a baby, we had our perfect little guy.

On Sunday, April 9th at 9pm we checked into the hospital. We had a planned induction. I was 3.5cm dilated already, so they started me on a low dose induction med through my IV and told me to get some sleep. I was too excited and nervous to get much sleep that night, I was so ready to meet my baby. The next morning, I was 5cm dilated so they began to up the meds. I had high blood pressure so they gave me a med to lower it. A few hours later I was fully dilated. Pushing began! I received an epidural for the pain. I pushed and pushed.

After 3 hours of this, my Dr said that he thinks this is a big baby and I had a narrow pelvic bone. He said I could keep pushing or move onto a c-section. If you asked me what I did not want to happen before this day, I would have told you a c-section. I wanted to be able to be there and hold my baby immediately after having him, I knew having a c-section would change that. But I knew I could not push any longer especially when there is a big possibility that it wouldn't change anything and I would still need a c-section later.

I received a second epidural in preparation for the c-section. It did not take. My blood pressure dropped way too low and I needed oxygen. My husband was worried I wasn't breathing. The oxygen helped and I was stable. They wheeled me into the operating room and my husband couldn't come with right away while they prepped me.

Then I received a spinal which numbed me from the neck down. I was a little out of it and was just asking where my husband was. Finally he was able to join me and I asked him if everything was going to be okay. He assured me it would be okay.

Then I heard a cry. Oh I heard the perfect little cry. This is the best sound I will ever hear in my entire life.

My husband was with him while the nurse cleaned him off and then they brought him over to me.

I got to see him for a minute before my husband and the nurse took him to weigh/measure him. My surgery had to be finished up before I could go get a better look at my baby. It was probably the longest 30 or so minutes of my life laying there waiting to go be with my husband and our new baby.

Dylan Robert Baxter was born on April 10th, 2017 at 3:37pm. He was 8 lbs 10 oz, 21 inches long, and had a 14.5 inch head! He is perfect. We are in love.

His birth isn't what I imagined. But in the end all I wanted was a healthy baby. If I got asked about his birth day, I will recall his cry, his luscious dark hair, my husband with his arms wrapped around him, and then feeling my baby laying on my chest.

The month of April

April has become a hard month for me over these past years.

On this day, I have been pregnant 3 out of the last 4 years. Finally here I am almost 39 weeks pregnant and baby boy will be here soon. I have waited to hold our baby for so long and I cannot believe I will get to in 4-5 days.

And I just want to say:

I love you

I love you

I love you

my baby.

Before you arrive

Baby Dylan,

As I sit here 37 weeks pregnant with you pushing up on my belly, I wanted to write to you before you arrive into the world. I dream of you all day and can only imagine how our life will change once you are here. I can only imagine seeing your face for the first time, hearing you cry, holding you close to me, kissing your cheeks, and being able to say this is my son. This is so overwhelming for me because for a really long time I did not know if you would be real for us.

We have wanted you for so long and now it's coming true. You will be here in the next 20 days hopefully. I am counting the days because the day you arrive will be the day my heart is full. To know you are half me and half your daddy is the greatest thing I could ever ask for.

Even though I wish I could fast forward to meeting you, I am still soaking in the moments when I feel you move inside my belly. Being your mom and carrying you has been my favorite thing in my entire life. And I know that feeling will grow even stronger once you are here with us.

We will see you soon. I will be the crying woman who holds you tight and won't ever want to let go.

I love you
I love you
I love you

Mom

Baby boy coming soon..

Last July we transferred 2 perfect embryos.

It's almost 7 months later now and we are 31 weeks pregnant with our baby boy.

Wow I know. A lot has changed. Let's go back for a second.

In June I started medication to get my new cycle to start. Once I did that I would be able to start prepping my body for our embryo transfer. I started injections and saw the specialist to make sure everything was looking good. Everything was going great! On July 28th, my husband and I went in to the doctor's office. We were ready to bring our embryos home with us. We watched as the Dr took a vial that contained 2 embryos and put them into my uterus. It is amazing to think that in that moment our baby could be snuggling in and making this their home for 9 months!

I felt pregnant. Only a few days after transfer I took a pregnancy test and sure enough it was positive already! That was fast! A week later I did blood work to confirm and my level was already high. And it got higher and higher as time went on. We thought both embryos took and we were going to have twins!

We went in for an early ultrasound and saw one sac. It was too early to see much. We would have to wait a few weeks to see our baby.

Around 6-7 weeks pregnant, I started bleeding. I had been here before and I knew it was our baby. We were losing another baby. How could this happen to us again and again?

At 8 weeks pregnant, my husband and I went into my new obgyn and told him what was going on. He let us do an ultrasound immediately that day. We didn't know what to expect. I didn't know if it would be bad news again. Then we saw our baby. We saw a little gummy bear inside his sac. The Dr then saw an empty smaller sac. He wasn't sure what to think about this second smaller sac, we would have to wait and see.

Our lil guy grew inside his sac and everything looked good! Meanwhile the second sac got smaller and smaller, it took weeks but then it was gone completely. The bleeding I had weeks ago was us losing our baby's twin.

Since then this pregnancy has been pretty wonderful. We found out we are having a boy! He is looking perfect and we cannot wait to hold him. He should arrive in 7-9 weeks! Can you believe that?

We are having a baby. For real this time.