Kimber's Navy Family

I'm pregnant! Gotcha! April Fools! Today is the day my newsfeeds are clogged with articles and pictures saying, "Infertility is not a joke. Don't post fake pregnancy announcements." Personally, I'm not one for April Fools pranks. I honestly think that if someone swapped my sugar for salt and I put that in my CAFFEINE-- my LIFE BLOOD-- making it undrinkable, heads would roll. When I see all the articles talking about (and shaming) people who find humor in posting a fake pregnancy announcement, I don't necessarily agree. Hear me out. On social media, most of my friends are from the military community. We have friends who post fake order announcements or fake duty assignments, only for it to be an April Fools joke. And check out this list of April Fools jokes from Buzzfeed . Silly? Harmless? Pretty much. We have lost babies to miscarriages, one early in the first trimester and one nearing the second trimester. We have tried to get pregnant ...

My husband walked around the bed this morning to kiss me good-bye before heading off to work. "How did you sleep?" he asks. He asks me that. 32 weeks pregnant with our 5th kid (6th pregnancy). How did I sleep? I had heartburn. I woke up a little after midnight and thought I would puke. I had Braxton Hicks. I felt like I needed my inhaler every time I rolled over. And forget about finding a comfortable sleeping position when your hips slide out of place every time you lay on one side too long. Lately I've been doing a lot of pregnancy grumbling. Like a lot of people, I hate being pregnant. The waddling. The huffing and puffing while doing small tasks. Braxton Hicks while trying to load and unload children from school pick up and drop off. The aches, pains, discomfort, irritable uterus, post-partum, all of that. It is all so frustrating. Of course there are amazing things about pregnancy. I love the excitement of seeing two pink lines when all I've been seeing is ne...

I was reading some blog posts recently and they were discussing how we as parents should be more vocal about our miscarriages and open about whether or not we are trying to conceive. There were a lot of points in these posts that I agree with-- how isolating miscarriages can be, how heartbreaking a negative pregnancy test feels, the emptiness and longing as you pass your due date without a baby in your arms. But some of the other points made me think about my own experiences with miscarriages and my current pregnancy. I think I have finally sorted out my thoughts into a blog post... So, first of all, I'd like to clarify that we do not struggle with infertility; my fertility is normal. When I talk about trying to conceive, all of this is within a year of trying to conceive without fertility treatments. I am adding that only because I am not trying to misrepresent myself or to represent a journey that I have never taken. I have many friends that struggle/have struggled wi...

I always dreamed about having a daughter. After two miscarriages (one of them being a molar pregnancy ), 4 boys (including a set of identical twin boys), and a rough start to our 6th pregnancy , I felt that our chances of having a girl were pretty low. I've heard throughout this pregnancy: "Oh, my old neighbor growing up had seven boys! Then they had their girl." "My mom's best friend has five girls." "Our cousin is pregnant with her fourth boy. They are stopping after this one! No more boys for them!" And then myself. I have two friends with four boys: one just had her 5th and it was a girl, the other just had her 5th and it was a boy. Ahh! So I scheduled my 20 week anatomy scan at my last OB appointment. The earliest they could get me in was 4 weeks away, when I would be 22+ weeks. I really thought I could wait that long. It would be torture, but I figured I just needed to hunker down and wait. I called my mom and told her to mark her calen...

"We are pulling up one more chair to the table... Baby #5 due June 2016!" The last time I wrote a blog post was on November 1st, 2015.... so Happy New Year! What's been going on over here with me?! Well, first of all, we are expecting again! Baby #5 is due June 2016. We are thrilled. Of course we are hoping that this one is a girl. A friend of mine with four boys recently gave birth to her fifth and it was a girl. I feel like there is *hope* but I also feel that after delivering 4 boys, it is a bit of a long shot. Who knows. Fingers crossed, right? I'm 16 weeks right now so we should find out in the next 2-4 weeks what the gender is of baby #5. I think the biggest reason I haven't blogged in so long is that this pregnancy was off to a really rocky start and it sent me into a bit of a depression. Initially the pregnancy didn't look viable. The ultrasounds didn't look good and we weren't given much hope. In fact, they ran bloodwork to rule out ...

It's Christmas Eve and I'm loving it. I'm cooking our Christmas Eve feast right now, where we celebrate Jesus' birthday and spend time together as a family, eating cookies, watching holiday movies, eating more sweets, and playing games. I love this time of year and I'm loving it this year, being home for Christmas and embarking on our own family traditions. With all that said, I'm feeling a little down. I keep getting these emails from baby sites (that I keep unsubscribed from!) about the progress of our 4-month old baby, the baby that was never born. Our baby would be 4 or 5-months now (since I've never made it to full term). We would be getting past the constant feeding newborn stage and into the fun interaction stage. We would (most likely) be done having children. We would have a nursery set up in this house. We would be celebrating Baby's first Christmas. Perhaps I'm just looking on Facebook at my friends' pictures of their babies' fir...

So I'm trying my first "link up" and I'm not sure if I'm doing this right, so please bear with me. I discovered this blog, " Eights on the Move ," and she does a Military Monday topic where people link their blogs up to hers and answer the questions posted on the topic. This week's topic is about Family Planning. Here is the link to her blog to see what other people posted, " Military Monday: Family Planning ." Being a military family influences many aspects of your life. For instance, you never know if your husband will actually be present for your plans. Some plans are fine, like a family movie night that you really wanted to have-- easy enough to cancel or reschedule. Some are frustrating, like family pictures with a professional photographer ("Um, can you Photoshop my husband in...?"). Some are emotional, like your wedding; my husband didn't tell me at the time of our wedding that he did not know until a couple days ...

Here is my follow-up post on my partial molar pregnancy. All in all, I had the best possible outcome with a molar pregnancy: no complications and my numbers went down quickly. Things I've heard a lot of throughout this whole process: "At least it happened early in the pregnancy." "At least you have 3 healthy boys to focus on." "You can try again soon." "I'm sure those complications won't happen to you; don't worry about it." "My friend who miscarried just gave birth to a beautiful baby." Sometimes it felt like as soon as I talked about the molar pregnancy or answered questions about what a molar pregnancy is, people would rush to assure me that it was all going to be fine or not to worry about it or that we will get pregnant soon. While talking with my doctor, he told me that the chances of me having the more serious complications of a partial molar pregnancy (read " Molar pregnancy ") were very l...

"I am so homesick now for someone that I never knew. I am so homesick now for someplace I will never be. Time won't let me go; time won't let me go..." -Time Won't Let Me Go by the Bravery I posted awhile ago about getting " a little help from my friends ." Lately, I've really needed a little help from my friends. I have felt so stuck with this past miscarriage and molar pregnancy . I feel so sad about losing this baby and I feel so disappointed we have to wait to start trying again (thankfully, not wait as long as we were originally told, read " 3 weeks, 3 months "). There is a weight on my chest and I feel like I'm going through the motions. Yesterday I took the boys to the park and let them play in the woods. They had so much fun running around together and playing. I sat down against a tree, leaned back, and let the sun shine on my face. The foliage kept whispering in front of the sun beams as the wind blew threw the...

I had a follow-up appointment for my partial molar pregnancy today. While a molar pregnancy is far from good news, thankfully my molar pregnancy is "behaving." As I explained in my blog post " Molar pregnancy ," the treatment for a molar pregnancy is monitoring your hCG levels after the D&C to make sure they keep going down and then remain negative, typically over a span of 6 months. I did some researching and asking around regarding the wait time to start trying again after having a molar pregnancy. A friend of our family who is a doctor said that waiting for 6 months is a very conservative approach and may not be necessary. He said that he would recommend 3 weeks of negative test results followed by 3 months of negative test results. I asked in my molar pregnancy support group and was given a study called "Low Risk of Relapse After Achieving Undetectable hCG Levels in Women With Partial Molar Pregnancy." It has a long list of authors: from the Dona...

I went in for my D&C follow-up appointment this past week only to find out that this last pregnancy (that ended in a miscarriage ) was a molar pregnancy. What is a molar pregnancy, you ask? I had the same question. My OBGyn gave me information from the Mayo Clinic (view it here, or Google "Molar Pregnancy Mayo Clinic" ). I'm going to use that source as well as What to Expect When You are Expecting by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg, and Sandee Hathaway (I have the third edition), the two sources I have used looking up molar pregnancy. My doctor said that sometimes Googling things leads to finding out really scary information and I've decided that I don't need more stress (he also told me to call him if someone tells me something upsetting that I want to ask about). I'm going to do my best explaining a molar pregnancy with those two sources. There are two types of molar pregnancies: a complete molar pregnancy and a partial molar pregnancy. I had a parti...

So I've been conflicted for the past couple weeks about whether or not I should blog about our miscarriage. On one hand, I would love to talk about it because it is so isolating. On the other hand, it feels so personal. In the end, I think talking about it is the best thing to do. From the beginning, this pregnancy was showing signs of problems. My OB/Gyn does a first trimester ultrasound. The ultrasound had abnormalities... the weeks weren't lining up right... we did blood tests... the numbers went up, but not as much as they wanted... more ultrasounds... After several weeks of this up and down, one step forward and two steps back, it was clear the baby was not developing and was in fact miscarrying. We decided to try the medication, this pill you put on your cervix, to try and have the miscarriage at home without surgery. This way we wouldn't have to line up a sitter for an early morning surgery with recovery time. The pill didn't work and I ended up still needing a...