Welcoming our rainbow- Benjamin Ethan Bradley Wissink

 

It has been such a long time since I have done anything on this blog, but I got the itch to start writing again, so here I am! SO much has happened in the last 2 years. 

 

A historic pandemic came and wiped out thousands of people in every single part of the world. I have been devastating to say the least, although it has been greatly eye opening and brought humanity back together. COVID 19 will go down in history as a lot of things, but for us it was the time that we finally welcomed our sweet baby boy. We got pregnant about 5 months before the entire world shut down. My baby shower got cancelled and we were not really able to celebrate anything surrounding our baby boy coming, but all of our friends and family rallied around us and made sure we had everything we needed. I am beyond grateful to them and to those who have supported us. I will now proceed with a photo dump! We are just beyond in love with our little man and can hardly believe he is already a toddler.

 

I was incredibly sick during my pregnancy, getting daily IV fluids and medications, and was on 4 different anti nausea medications at home, 2 different ant acid medications as well. It got to the point where I was throwing up blood and  had torn holes into my esophagus. I was inpatient in the hospital several different times but am so grateful for my wonderful OBGYN & Maternal Fetal doctors who kept me safe and baby boy safe. He was worth it all.

Benjamin Ethan Bradley Wissink was born on May 18th 2020 at 7:54am at Bryan East hospital. 

The morning we headed to the hospital for my scheduled C-Section. Mikayla was really nervous for mom to have surgery but was so so excited to finally meet the little brother she always wanted. 

Dr. Byers (Maternal Fetal). The man who got me through my Hyperemesis, a Circumvallate Placenta and the overall complications that I experienced.

My OBGYN, Dr. Bokemper. She was phenomenal and just the doctor who I needed to help me through my anxiety about a really high risk pregnancy that I was convinced would end at any time. I truly could not be more grateful for her.

      The first time I was able to hold my sweet baby boy. I waited so many years for this moment.

The hardest part of the whole birthing during a global pandemic was that Mikayla was unable to come to the hospital to meet him. We face timed SOO much during the 5 days we were admitted. 

 

Rainbow Baby Coming October 2019

I know it is not normal for people to share pregnancy news in their first trimester, but John and I have kind of thrown out the rule book for this kind of stuff. We have been open with our infertility and baby losses. We are so excited and why should we hide it? Pregnancy and growing your family is such an exciting and joyous time, and we are thrilled. How can we dodge questions and ignore this little baby growing inside of me when we have spent YEARS trying to get to this point? No matter what, this little one is a part of our family.


I know it has been awhile since I have last updated on here; but we have exciting news! We are pregnant with our little rainbow baby and, with prayers and knocking on every piece of wood I pass, this baby will be born in October. This pregnancy was kind of unexpected. I had a surgery in December to remove my endometriosis, get a correct staging for it and do something called Ovarian drilling. Lots of doctors do not think that ovarian drilling is effective, and so they will not do it. But my obgyn decided that it was worth a shot since we had already done so much with no success in a pregnancy.

We did this December 14th and my cycles have been all kind of off ever since. The only symptom that I had was an extremely sore chests..... it hurt a lot. Turns out we are expecting! So I immediately called my doctor who wanted to do lots of blood work and check every single one of my hormone levels to figure out what was going on. My levels came back quite high on Monday and then Wednesday the 27th I had them repeated and they over doubled. They came back *almost* doubling on Friday.  I spoke to my doctor and she said there is no reason at this point to think that this is not a viable & healthy pregnancy that will go full term.

We feel so blessed,  so excited and so hopeful. This little boy or girl will complete our family and we are more than ready to close the chapter of this infertility book on our lives and move on. Mikayla is over the moon excited. Ever since we told her she is going to be a big sister she has been so curious about everything baby. She asks me about every 5 or 10 minutes: mom, is the baby hungry? Mom, is the baby tired? Does it sleep when you sleep? Does he hear me? Has it come out yet?? It will be really fun to watch her ask more questions and even come see the baby on the ultrasound to find out the genders. We have an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow and we are so so so excited to get a sneak peak of sweet baby tomorrow (march 7th) and we can hardly contain our excitement. We then get another look on the 20th!

I am feeling pretty good. I am pretty nauseated during the day but the sickness actually hits at night and the throwing up happens then. I am grateful that Kayla is old enough to understand and to do a lot of things on her own. I am seeing more and more pro's to having a 7 year gap! It has been a very surreal week and a half. I feel like I am constantly waiting for something to go wrong, but so far we have had nothing but a (this word is NOT ALLOWED in our house) Normal pregnancy. For this we are grateful. It Is kind of weird to have a feeling that we are starting over... we have nothing baby left! We have so many friends and family members who are super excited for us and are going to throw us a baby shower- how kind! Looking forward to every single part of this pregnancy!

 

Size of baby this week.

 

Fall family Pictures (September 2018)

 

"Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don't wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it's at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored"

.Earl Nightingale