20 Week Happenings

Wow! Today I am 21 weeks and I have a lot to post about. This past week has been full of a lot- ups and downs and everything in between!

To start with, I have been absolutely loving the fact that we know we are having a baby boy. I can call him by name now and buy gender-specific things and make things for his nursery. Intertwined in this absolute joy, though, is the difficulty in dealing with the death of my grandma. And, since both stories interweave in the other, I feel it's necessary to start by telling both.

I wrote about my grandma's failing health a few months back. Since that post, things have continued to spiral downhill. She was having weekly blood transfusions to help sustain her. Her body wasn't producing blood as it was supposed to be due to bone marrow cancer. You could tell within 5 days of her last transfusion that she would start to get fatigued. She would become disoriented and sometimes collapse simply trying to make it from one room to the next. Once she got the next transfusion, she'd start to feel back to "normal" again. The transfusions have effects of their own, though. And, after months of doing this, she ended up in ICU with congestive heart failure. You see, the blood contains a lot of iron in it which can be difficult for your body to get rid of. Most women are able to release iron from their body when they have their monthly periods, but an 85 year old woman has no way to do so. So, the iron deposits around your body. For my grandma, this put increased stress on her liver and heart. I think she was there about a week until they were able to get her heart stabilized and her fluids and blood pressure and everything where it was supposed to be. Then they sent her home. There were a lot of questions about the next step in treatments. We had discontinued the chemotherapy months earlier. Now it was a question of whether to continue with the blood transfusions that may cause continued heart or liver failure or to stop the blood transfusions which would lead to a pretty quick deterioration and death, perhaps within weeks. A few days after she returned home from the hospital, (just about 3 weeks ago) the decision was made to put her on hospice care. This means that she would discontinue all treatment and that our goal would be to make her as comfortable as possible.

I witnessed a lot of changes in my grandma during this time. It seemed that her once super-positive demeanor was now irritable. When she once loved all of the attention, she now got upset by constantly being asked how she was or if she needed anything. She quit watching tv and could barely stay awake for company. Hospice left a book for us to help recognize the stages and timeline of death. It became quickly apparent that she had already gone through many of the stages and was approaching her last days. She started sleeping most of the day. She barely ate or drank. She couldn't communicate very well- mostly groaning or mumbling. And she seemed restless and uncomfortable. So, they would give her medications to keep her comfortable and help her to eat or drink when she needed it. Hospice would come several times a week and bathe her or give her massages. My mom and her siblings made every effort to have 2 people in the house at all times. This would ensure that if my grandma had to get up and go to the bathroom or something like that, there would be enough people there to help support her. And, they tried to switch off enough so that it was not too much weight on any one person. My mom and uncle have lived with my grandma for years, so they were always there throughout the night and then others would come throughout the days to relieve them or support them.

The hardest part of watching this deterioration was seeing my mom go through it. While my grandma is the closest person to me to ever pass away, the difficulty was really in knowing how I'd feel if it was MY mom. So, I made every effort to be there for my mom however she needed me to be. There was a lot of realizations, recognizing that my grandma would never wear the clothes in her closet again. She'd never see the trees blossoming with flowers again. She'd never leave the house again.

As I said, though, she really didn't communicate much, neither being aware of what was happening most of the time nor being able to form coherent words. But one day my grandma asked my aunt what day it was. My aunt responded, "Today is March 31st. Tomorrow is April Fool's Day." My grandma said, "And then the next day Mandy finds out what she's having." This is shocking! Everyone was taken aback that not only did she remember the date of my ultrasound, but it seemed that she was looking forward to it. So, on April 2nd after my doctor's appointment, my mom drove home and woke up my grandma. She said, "Mom, I just wanted to tell you that Mandy is having a baby boy." My grandma said, "Oh, a boy," and then fell back asleep. It sounds so simple, but it's a pretty big deal that in the midst of being so disoriented and not even being able to communicate, she not only remembered the day of my ultrasound, but also was coherent enough to utter the words aloud. I cannot tell you how much it means for me to my grandma to have seen me get pregnant after more than a year of trying and then to find out that we were having a baby boy. I knew when I got pregnant that she probably wouldn't make it to see my baby be born, but I am SO glad that she was able to find out that it was a boy.

The next day, the shock of finding out that I am having a boy was still sinking in. I was sitting at my desk at work and started shuffling through the ultrasound pictures. I stopped on the 3-D one of his face and all of the sudden was overcome with emotion. It hit me that this was my baby boy. Typing it out doesn't even convey the emotions that flooded me. It was an intense realization of having a son- a baby of my own- a baby boy at that. I'm going to be a mommy to a little boy! A lot of people describe falling in love with your baby before he/she is ever born. It's one reason (of many) that miscarriage is often so difficult. You already love that baby as if they were in your arms, alive right before you. But I can't say that I've really felt that way until that day looking at the pictures. It was a wave of love that just poured over me, my heart swelling with pride at the knowledge that I am going to have a son. As I relayed it to Jesse later, I couldn't help but have tears streaming down my face. Knowing for sure that we are having a boy has made a huge difference in how I think about my pregnancy. I love that we can call him by name and plan according to him and not according to a generic baby.

The next day, on Saturday April 4th, I called my mom because we were supposed to go shopping for baby boy stuff. She told me, though, that my grandma had taken an additional turn for the worse and that they were pretty sure she would pass away that day. I had the opportunity to go over there and be there with them, but didn't feel like I could emotionally handle it. I felt like I couldn't stay home and just wait around. I wanted to do something productive- something I could still look forward to. So, I decided to go shopping by myself. This didn't prove to be very helpful. As I drove, I couldn't help but think about everything and would keep crying. My best friend was the maid of honor in a wedding that day and Jesse had his band practice and wanted to do yard work. However, when Jesse finished his practice, I told him I really needed him with me that day. So he put aside his yard work for a few hours and went shopping with me.

Our trip wasn't too productive as I didn't want to really buy a lot of baby clothes (I know that I will get a lot given to me instead). I was looking for one specific outfit that I had found months earlier and also looking for anything I couldn't live without to commemorate our baby boy. The one outfit I wanted from earlier turned out to not be what I remembered it to be, and the selection of baby boy items was sorely lacking!

So, after browsing the mall, I let Jesse go back home to do yard work while I continued shopping a bit more. My mom did call during our shopping escapade to check on me. She said that, at that point, they were just trying to make my grandma as comfortable as possible. I spent the afternoon making wall art for the nursery and then called my mom about 7:15pm to see how things were going since I hadn't heard from her in a few hours. She told me that my grandma had just passed away 10-15 minutes earlier and that she was planning on calling me soon. Fortunately, though, my grandma had all six of her children gathered around her bed that day. They were able to pray together over her and, as she took her last breaths, they were able to tell her that they were all there and loved her and that she could go on.

Church the next morning was a mix of emotions. We were surrounded by people who deeply loved my grandma, as she had gone to church there for probably 50+ years and had touched many people's lives. It was hard to tell people who didn't know, though, that she had passed away. One specific instance is a little old lady who always sits in front of us. She turned around and gave my mom a card and asked her to give it to her mom. My mom had to gently tell her that she had already passed away just the night before. The lady broke down in tears and I couldn't help but begin to cry. As my mom later opened the card, it turned out to be a "get well" card saying how much she had been missed at church and how they hoped she'd feel better soon. I was glad that we were all at church together, though. I felt like it was a very empowering thing to say that we were declaring to praise God in the midst of our storm.

While there are many tears in our family, for the most part, they are not tears of sadness. We have a peace about where she is now. We just miss her presence here with us.

That afternoon, I was able to have my shopping trip with my mom for specific baby things. I am thrilled that in the midst of losing her own mother, my mom can experience the joy of becoming a grandma herself for the first time. It just reiterates to me the cycle of life and death. And I can tell you that she's much more fun to shop with than Jesse is!!! I picked out two outfits and she paid for one and I paid for the other one.

I received a really sweet gift from a lady at work. She didn't even realize I was pregnant, but when she found out that I AM and that it's a BOY, she was really excited for me. So, she bought me a little outfit and gave me a card with it.

And, my cousin and his wife bought me these outfits when they found out we were having a boy:

And this is the sign I made for his nursery:

Well, since my grandma's death, we have been in a whirlwind of organizing and sorting and planning. I am doing a slideshow for the memorial service and making the program for it while also balancing my job and filling in for someone else at a different hospital who is on vacation.

We also celebrated Easter along with my cousin and his fiance who came up to visit from Oklahome. I have LITERALLY not seen this cousin in 10 years! So, it was a treat to be able to see him for the first time as an adult and now meet his fiance. On top of that, both of them were celebrating their BIRTHDAYS on EASTER!

We had a huge family gathering at my aunt's house Sunday afternoon. We were expecting about 25 people. I'm not sure how many actually made it. And this wasn't quite everyone, but it was a good group.

And remember the cousin who bought us those outfits mentioned above. Here are some pictures of their adorable, but uber chunky 7 month old daughter, Natalia:

And then we got some pictures of my immediate family, including a recent belly pic. So, if you've been waiting for it, here you go. By the way, I included all of these because between my brother and my husband, it was difficult to get a nice one of us all. I think they just showcase our personalities a bit: