The Rollercoaster

Where to even start since our last blog post? As you can imagine the last month has been very trying on Jamie and I. Dealing with the death of our son, Conley, has not been easy and has been downright hard to deal with at points for me. The thought of having a son was something that I had begun to look forward to and had started to picture us doing things together while there girls were out getting their nails done. Although his earthly life was short we know that he is being cared for and watched over by our heavenly father and loved ones who have gone before us. We know that they can offer him more love than we ever could and he is being loved and cherished by each and every one of them.

All of my focus lately has been strictly on Jamie and our little girl, or Little Alice as many like to call her. For those that don’t know Alice will be her middle name because we are not sharing her first name until we welcome her into this world.

So you may wonder why I have entitled my post “The Rollercoaster?” Well, we have had many ups and downs in our last few weeks since our last post. Jamie has been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, they believe her to be anemic, she has high blood pressure and we’ve made one hospital visit on top of that. We are not sure what else to expect by the time Little Alice makes it into this world but nothing could surprise us at this point. How are we holding up? Probably better than most would expect, the gestational diabetes we are treating through diet. Out with the stuff we LIKE to eat and in with the stuff we HAVE to eat. I just hope it helps with all the sympathy weight I promised I wouldn’t put on!

The anemic condition is very new to us just being diagnosed last week, we are eating a lot of leafy vegetables like spinach and trying to avoid a supplement as they are hard on the stomach. The hospital visit was precautionary as she had a few pre-term labor symptoms, but all checked out ok and we were out of there in a few hours. Fortunately, we were able to get an early look at the labor and delivery rooms, not by choice, but better to be safe than sorry with our situation.

As far as my duties go, they picked up tremendously lately as the doctors have been really restrictive on Jamie. I’ve been cleaning more than I ever have in our marriage, don’t get me wrong I had “my duties”, but this whole house cleaning is a new thing. I appreciate all that Jamie has done around the house allowing me to do the minimal things she doesn’t like doing, floors and trash. I’ve also been doing the shopping at the grocery store and making sure our meals are well balanced and on time. These things have all become important in order to ensure a safe and healthy baby girl. She still lets me get away on Saturday’s for a little coed soccer with my team, which allows me to relieve the stress from the week. It always comes with one stipulation on the way out the door, DON’T GET HURT, which as you know has happened once or twice in my playing career.

We are starting to notice a pattern with our little girl and that is that she doesn’t like to be disturbed in the mornings with monitors and probes. More times than not she tends to kick the monitor or probe, which allowed us to get sonogram pictures like the one in this post.

Thanks to all that have sent cards and extended their kind words through emails or phone calls. These mean a lot to us and it’s great to have a support system like that during this time. We look forward to introducing Little Alice to each and every one of you.


Love,
Ben