Second Pregnancy: Counting Down to Meet Our Baby Girl #2

This is my second pregnancy, and I’m both excited and nervous that it is only one week away from meeting our baby girl #2!

Counting Down to Meet Our Baby Girl #2

My delivery with our first daughter (Valentina) was natural (with epidural). I remember I was so scared out of my mind to even think about the “natural birth” with my first pregnancy…. But my doctor really talked me out of doing the C section and told me that the recovery from the natural birth would be much quicker. She was right! I bounced back soooo quickly after the delivery! I couldn’t believe it! That’s why this time around, I wasn’t thinking about any other way, except the natural delivery again!

The unfortunate part is our baby decided not to turn and she is standing in the “breech position” (as you know, most babies will move into delivery position a few weeks prior to birth, with the head moving closer to the birth canal. When this fails to happen, the baby’s buttocks and/or feet will be positioned to be deliver first. This is referred to as “breech presentation”). So I have no other option except either trying to turn the baby or do the C section! As “scary” as it sounds, I decided to try the ECV (external cephalic version) at 37 weeks to see if our baby would turn! My doctor informed me in advance that 50% of babies will turn while doing the ECV and 50% don’t! The procedure of turning the baby was not really painful! It was more of a “pressure” rather than pain (or maybe my doctor was simply so gentle that I really didn’t feel the pain). After all that work (getting admitted to the hospital, not eating for several hours before the procedure, etc.…), our baby decided not to turn! Hahaha! My doctor only tried for 5 minutes and when the baby didn’t turn, she said she didn’t want to push it any longer. My doctor said usually if babies want to turn, they turn in the first few minutes… So she stopped trying to turn her! That means that I had to schedule a C-section!

My due date is on 3/19/2019. I really wanted to keep that birthday for our baby girl. I thought it was a “cool” birthday! LOL! But unfortunately, my doctor will be traveling on my due date and since we wanted her to deliver our baby, we decided to choose a different date. We ended up choosing Saturday, March 16th instead, because Matt will be able to be at the hospital with me the entire weekend. I’m happy to deliver her on March 16th since it happens to be my mom’s birthday! So her birthday will always be extra special for me!

I’m sharing some of my maternity photos here that we captured few weeks ago. It is so unfortunate that Matt is absent in these photos as we were doing some remodeling at our house at the time (making our house ready for baby #2). Therefore, he could not leave the contractors at home! So it ended up being just me and my mini me (Valentina). I’m also, sharing few fun facts about my pregnancy below 🙂

How I found out I was pregnant: If you don’t know about the struggle we went through to get pregnant with our baby #2, you can read my post about it “here”.For this baby, it took us over year and half (including one miscarriage) to get pregnant. I was so sick and tired of taking pregnancy tests every month! I remember thinking that I should just stop taking those tests as I knew the results would be the same as last month (Negative)! It was 4th of July weekend and we were planning to celebrate it with my family, therefore, I knew we would be having some extra drinks! Only for that reason, I decided to do one more pregnancy test just to make sure…!!! I’m so glad I did! The test was positive!!!! I seriously couldn’t believe the result! I thought I was dreaming! I did 2-3 more tests just to make sure that was not a mistake! Matt was still in his case so I couldn’t talk to him. I sent him a picture of the test! He called me as soon as he was done with work and he was so excited about the news too! But this time, we decided not to celebrate it too early as we really didn’t know if this pregnancy would end in miscarriage again! Fortunately, we are about to deliver and all has been well throughout this pregnancy minus the breech position.

Best Part of the First Trimester: Hearing our baby’s heartbeat for the first time! It made me feel like this pregnancy is real!

Worst Part of the First Trimester: Constant nausea! I started having bad nausea at 6 weeks and continued until 13 weeks. I don’t know why it is called “Morning Sickness”… Its ALL DAY, EVERYDAY sickness! My nausea simply wouldn’t go away!

Best Part of 2nd Trimester: Finding out the gender!!!! I was really hoping and praying for another baby girl!!! I was so happy that I got my wish! The other great thing about the second trimester was as soon as it started, all my nausea went away and I got all my energy back again!

Worst Part of 2nd Trimester: I couldn’t fit into my normal clothes anymore, looked completely over weight, but didn’t still want to share the news!

Best Part of 3rd Trimester: There were several great things about the 3rd trimester! No one wonders if you’re pregnant anymore! Your hair and skin never looked better! I LOVE to feel the baby movements! I also didn’t feel as bad to have more cheat meals or extra treats as I knew this is ending.

Worst Part of 3rd Trimester: Entering the 3rd trimester, feels like every part of your body hurts! The excessive heart burn, constant back pain, regular bathroom rotation and not being able to find even one comfortable sleep position, makes you beg for the baby to be born so you can get some relief! Although it makes me sad to think that my pregnancy is almost over, and our second child will be our last child.  Despite this I’m so excited to meet her and also be done with all the discomforts of 3rd trimester!

1st, 2nd, 3rd Trimester Food Cravings: I honestly didn’t experience the whole story behind the “pregnancy craving” in either of my pregnancies! I always loved and craved ice cream, but that has nothing to do with the pregnancy! hahaha! I simply love ice cream! So I tried to take advantage of “being pregnant” and treated myself to some frozen yogurt, ice cream or gelato once every other week.  However, in the 3rd trimester I definitely had more!

Unfortunately, my first pregnancy with Valentina was a very high stress pregnancy/ experience starting from 20 weeks all the way to the delivery day! We were truly grateful that Valentina made it to the end of the term and was born perfectly happy and healthy! This pregnancy was exact opposite…! It started very smooth, had no problems during the pregnancy, and we are praying for a smooth delivery and a healthy baby! Valentina, Matt and I, along with our families are so excited (and antsy) to meet her and I already feel so blessed to be able to be her mommy!

Love,

Sherry XOXO