He went as a preemie

He couldn't quite make it out of the hospital to get candy, but you get the idea.  :)  Thanks for the cute costume grandma!

Is anyone else having a hard time with blogger lately?  I don't know what they changed, or if it's just our computer, but I can no longer drag the pictures I upload to new locations.  I am also having a hard time getting it to let me type where I want to (ie between pictures).  Is this just me?

Onto more important things.... Ezekiel weighs 5lbs 3.9oz today.  He's getting nice and chunky.  He's starting to get nice fat baby thighs, oh so cute.  He's so precious.  We are working on his suck/swollow/breathe reflex.  Right now he has a hard time remembering to swollow, so we are dipping his paci in milk or sugar water (blah!) and feeding it to him so he can try to just swollow one drop at a time.  He seems to be doing well!  Hopefully soon we will be able to try and breastfeed him.  He will be full-term on tuesday.  I can't believe it!  He will be 13 weeks on wednesday, and he will be three months on thursday.  What a big week for him!  

In other news (why is this my new favorite phrase?), I haven't lost a SINGLE pound since Ezekiel was born.  In fact, I have gained 3 or 4lbs.  What is wrong with my body?!  Barring halloween night, I haven't been eating junk food at all.  In fact I don't think I was eating enough food period for a while, because my milk supply dropped, and then when I started eating more it went back up again.  I have never been so..... curvy(?) in my life.  I gained 30 lbs while I was pregnant.  Wow.  Today I got out all my size 6 jeans and decided to give them to a friend.  I'm pretty sure I will never wear those again.  I've kept them for, oh, I don't know, 7 years??  The size 8's, though, I took out (actually taped one pair to the pantry door downstairs!) to remind me that I want my figure back.  I need to start excercizing.  The main thing, though, is that I think my thyroid is completely out of wack.  I mean, I've never met a woman who didn't loose at least 5-10lbs post-partum.  I am 3 months post partum and weigh MORE than I did while I was pregnant.  Hello!!!!!  I have a doctors appointment friday, and I am hoping that they will check my thyroid levels and give me a prescription for cynthroid (thyroid meds) so that my body can start working again.  I mean, I am soo exausted all the time.  I sleep a good 7-8 hours every night, and still have no energy all day.  Coffee hardly works at all, and without coffee I am seriously a complete zombie.  I could fall asleep standing up.  It's that bad.  Normally I am not a prescription sort of person, and would rather "tough it out" than take a tylenol for a headache, but I can't take feeling so crappy and being so chunky anymore.  And there is nothing to fix a broken thyroid other than medicine.  Grr.  

Oh someone, please just wave a magic wand and give me back my cute little figure.  I miss feeling comfortable in my own skin. 

12 Weeks

TODAY I am 12 weeks pregnant! YAY!!

I am sure all my 2 blog readers are wondering why I didn't post this earlier. Well, that is because I have had 6 miscarriages, all very early on (around 5-8 weeks, one at 11 weeks). So we decided to wait till we were 12 weeks this time to tell anyone. Here is the story of why this little guy in my tummy is staying....

I have been to the doctor several times and let me just say that I have had horrible personal experiences with military doctors. They have been completely unhelpful and often rude to me. So finally we went to see a midwife instead of a doctor (I was 5-and-a-half weeks when we went). Within 5 minutes she diagnosed me with hypothyroidism. She asked me these questions: "Are your hands and feet always cold? Do you always feel tired and listless, with no energy? Do you have trouble maintaining your ideal weight?" My answer to all three was an emphatic yes!! She said, "I think you have hypothyroidism. Let's do some bloodwork." So she took some blood, and in a few days we recieved the results confirming that her hunch was right. We were so excited. Hypothyroidism prevents the body from being able to produce HGC, the pregnancy hormones. My HCG levels were at 1400 (at 5.5 weeks) which is below the normal range. Women with hypothyroidism will often suffer from repeated miscarriages, which is me!! I tried very hard to go to the military doctor's to get them to prescribe me medication for hypothyroidism (medication seems to be the only known solution... I would prefer some sort of dietary solution, but there are none as of now), but they refused to listen to me. It was very frustrating so I am really not going to bother explaining all the details but it is a long and drawn out story. The final result was that they never gave me a prescription, but thankfully my midwife told me to immediately start taking a natural supplement called "raw thyroid" (which we got from whole foods) and to start using progesterone cream (which I had tried to use unsuccessfully in previous pregnancies) and I believe that is what has helped. Meanwhile, durring week 6&7 I had a lot of spotting and cramping, and stayed in bed most of the time. Durring that time, the baby was barely holding on, but he made it through with a lot of prayer. More bloodwork was done, as well as an ultrasound at week 7 (this was the only time the military hospital was helpful, and they were still rather rude!) and I was able to see the baby's heartbeat! My HGC levels were also up from 1400 to 20,000 which was a huuuuge jump and a very good sign. I finally stopped spotting and everything is going well. Last weekend we had another appointment with our midwives (Joi and Stacey, by the way) and were able to hear our little guy's heartbeat. We are so happy he is doing well! Praise God he has blessed us with this baby, and I am so thankful to Him for leading us to our midwives and to a solution to our problems. More than anything else we give God the credit for finally answering our prayers and blessing us with a little baby. We have been waiting for him for a long time!! (And yes, we think he is a boy. Daniel had a dream that he met our little son when he was about 8 years old, and he told Daniel his name. So we already have his name picked out. But we aren't telling yet!)

ANYWAY so that is the story. I have been waiting and waiting to write about it; it's been no fun trying to avoid telling people. Today when Daniel gets home we will call his family to tell them... i can't wait! And my pants are starting to not fit anymore... i have a little baby pouch, but not much of one. I will have to put up pictures soon!