It's never boring....

We survived Afghanistan...

For 6 months my phone was set on the loudest ringer possible, waiting for a phone call from Dennis, preparing myself for a phone call from someone else... always anticipating.


Pregnancy insomnia has already kicked in and I didn't get much sleep the night before last. I got up at 5:30 with Dennis, made him lunch and went back to bed. He was supposed to spend the day serving as medical coverage for training on the other side of the island. Basically that means he was going to sit in the van all day and study for his upcoming advancement exam.

At 8:30am I was knocked out and my phone started ringing...I didn't hear the first call, ignored the second one and finally answered when the number called for a third time in a 10 minute time period.

"Is this Mrs. Sanders?"
"yes..."
"This is Sgt. _______, has anyone spoken to you this morning?"
"no....."
"Well first of all I want to tell you that Dennis is ok, but he was involved in an accident this morning... we are at the hospital now. He said to tell you not to panic because you are pregnant and you don't need to stress"

I have a pretty bad problem when it comes to stressing but for some reason this phone call didn't even phase me. Maybe it's my body not letting me stress to keep this baby safe, maybe I'm already becoming mentally prepared for having a boy and experiencing a lifetime of ER visits...who knows. I even asked the guy if I needed to come down there or if Dennis would be able to drive himself home! I guess he realized that he had to tell me something to make me understand without giving too much detail... he told me that Dennis was going to be taken back for CT and xrays...he was pretty bad off when he first got there but that he was fine now and that they may keep him over night. At this point I realized that it sounded pretty serious so I jumped out of bed and headed downtown to the hospital.

When I got there, Dennis had been taken back for CT so I waited in one of the family waiting rooms with Dennis' former Chief, his current chief, and some of the Marines that were already there. I figured I'd go ahead and ask exactly what happened...

About a quarter mile off base, the driver lost control of the vehicle, overcorrected and hit the middle concrete median on the highway as they flipped a few times. The driver was ejected from the vehicle, as well as Dennis and another Corpsman. After the crash, a Marine from another vehicle came running up to Dennis and told him to hang on and that he was going to get the Corpsman. Dennis' response was "I am the Corpsman." At some point he started seizing and vomiting and fortunately one of the Marines knew to turn him on his side and pry his mouth open.

Even after hearing all of this, I still didn't know what to expect when I saw him.
This certainly was not it:



How is it that he goes 6 months in Afghanistan completely untouched, but he gets in a humvee accident in HAWAII?!? Not that I am complaining by any means whatsoever, at least with it happening here, I was able to see him and be with him as opposed to not knowing what was going on if something like this had happened over there. But it's so ironic- I made myself crazy constantly worrying about him... not even thinking twice that something could possibly happen when he was home safely.


Fortunately all of Dennis' CT and xray results came back fine. No bones were broken but he's got some bruising on his lungs, some pulminary contusions and he can't really move from the waist up because he's so sore. They sent him home yesterday afternoon...he's going to be miserable for a few days but he's fine.

***update***
Turns out, Dennis has a broken rib and a potential hairline fracture in his pelvis. So much for bones made of rubber! Way to go ER docs for not telling us and letting us find out in the xray/ct reports two days later!

I received a really funny phone call this morning from the Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington DC. They were calling to inform me that my husband had been involved in an accident and asked if I had spoken to him yet. I told him that I had, because he's currently laying on the couch right next to me. The guy was even more confused when I told him that he wasn't deployed!

Gotta love the Marine Corps! We are definitely ready for Dennis to get back to Navy side and working in a hospital again.

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Just when we thought this weekend couldn't get any crazier, we were woken up this morning by a Tsunami warning that's expected to hit around 11:30 Hawaiian time. I've experience many Tsunami warnings since we've lived here but this is the first one that people have actually started panicking about. Fortunately we live in the middle of the island and won't be affected... but like I said, life is never boring!

It's a...

We had our gender determination ultrasound today and he was certainly not shy about it!


He's already got his daddy's laid back personality...all he wanted to do was lay there with his arms behind his head like he was reclining in a lawn chair!


We did get him to move around a little though...the ultrasound tech even recorded a video for us.

I think we have a future New Orleans Saints kicker!

This is what it's all about...

Patience is a virtue....

We originally had a 4d ultrasound appointment scheduled for Valentine's day weekend. I thought it would be fun to find out the gender of our baby instead of celebrating V-day with flowers, gifts, etc. (not that we're big Valentine's gift givers anyway.)

Last week I got it in my head that we needed an earlier appointment. I had heard of other people finding out the gender early so of course I wanted to....I HAD to. Plus I figured it would add to an already AMAZING weekend of the Saints going to the superbowl. It was perfect timing because we were supposed to receive our tax refund today so we didn't have to worry about messing up our budget at all.

Well thanks to the wonderful marines who volunteered (more like voluntold) who did our taxes...our return was not submitted within the deadline that would have given us our return today. I'm taking it as a sign and I rescheduled our appointment for next Saturday.... One of these days I will learn patience, I will learn to be ok with being patient, and just maybe I will learn to like surprises. Although, I have learned that surprises can be absolutely wonderful...after all this baby was definitely a surprise in so many ways and so many times throughout this pregnancy.

It would be nice to not have to refer to him/her as "it" but for now, we'll be focusing all of our attention this weekend on......


A BLACK AND GOLD SUPERBOWL!!!

Pregnancy Dreams

I'd always heard that pregnancy can cause crazy dreams....

I had no idea how crazy:

-I've had multiple dreams about being chased by a serial killer.

-A few nights ago, I dreamt that the baby was a velociraptor. Everytime it kicked, a claw came out of my belly button but the baby was still so small that the claws looked more like kitten claws than velociraptor claws. (This one was caused by a facebook status about velociraptors that I had read before I went to bed!)

-Last night was the weirdest yet. I had gone to bed a few hours before Dennis... I don't really remember what I was dreaming about but at one point I was being chased by a tiny little bald fairy dwarf man. (Think a slightly more attractive Smegal ???)
(real life: Enter Dennis and the dogs in the room)
In my dream the little bald fairy man jumped on the bed with a knife.
(real life: the dogs jumped on the bed)
Dennis said that I jumped and screamed and put the blankets over my head. He proceeded to laugh at me while I told him to "quit laughing at me because I'm scared!" Of course he didn't stop laughing....at least he's getting some amusement out of my nightmares!

But seriously?! Can I just get one good night of uninterrupted DREAMLESS sleep?!?

It's official...

WE MADE IT TO THE 2ND TRIMESTER!!!

We hit 13 weeks 3 days today and got to have another ultrasound to check on the little one. Everything looks great...Dennis hadn't been able to go to any of my other appointments so he finally got to see all of the changes I've been telling him about over the last few weeks. Goodbye gummy bear, hello baby! He/She has a cute little button nose, lips, arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet and toes! As soon as the ultrasound tech started we saw a little hand waving at us!

Then He/She touched their nose:

At this point He/She started doing "butt lifts." Feet down, butt in the air...showing off!

Our first look at his/her "cute" little baby face. This one may actually give me nightmares!!

12 week baby bump.

Wow.... It's been awhile!

Dennis and I have spent the past two months trying to get our life back to normal after his return from Afghanistan. Quite honestly that has involved doing alot of nothing. He definitely needed this time to relax after going non-stop for 6 months in a combat zone....and I needed my time to relax for other reasons....

On December 2nd, I was driving home from work and joking with a friend about how I'd been feeling weird. She told me to take a pregnancy test.

Rewind 7 months-
Dennis and I were told that it would be pretty much impossible to get pregnant without help because I have a septate uterus and PCOS. I was told that I needed surgery to correct the septum but because I'd have to go under anesthesia...I wanted to wait until Dennis returned home. The first month of having him home was too busy to even think about scheduling the surgery so we just went on with our normal lives.

Back to December 2nd-
On my way home from work I stopped at the drug store and picked up the cheapest pregnancy test I could find because I seriously wasn't about to spend $$$ on something that was just going to tell me I wasn't pregnant. Boy was I wrong. Instantly it was positive. So I took the other one in the package. Same result. I still couldn't believe it because we'd been living under this assumption that having a child would probably not be an easy task for us. I went back to the drug store and bought another pregnancy test... I asked for the fancy digital kind but I didn't realize until I got home that the pharmacist had given me the same generic kind I'd taken previously. I took them anyway and to my surprise got the same result. Positive Again.


I went ahead and called my Reproductive Endocrinologist explaining the situation and was able to get an appointment for the following morning. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I'm a little crazy. I tend to over analyze and obsess over everything. I STILL wasn't satisfied with these stupid little cheap tests. I wanted to see it in writing. I convinced myself that I absolutely 100% needed a digital test in order to believe it. So...I told Dennis I was going to the store to get some icecream. I got the ice cream, but I also picked up the digital pregnancy tests. As soon as I got home I ran upstairs to take it and BAM...BIG FAT POSITIVE....written in black and white.

The next morning I went to my Drs appointment. Dennis couldn't go with me because he had something important going on at work. I sat in the room by myself staring at the ultrasound thinking about how many times I had been in that room for other reasons wondering when and if our time would come that I would actually get an ultrasound for pregnancy reasons. The Dr. came in and as soon as the ultrasound picture came on the screen he confirmed our pregnancy. But to my even bigger surprise...we were already 6 weeks pregnant! The fetal heart rate was a strong 116 and the Dr. told me that everything looked great, that the septum probably won't cause and issue during pregnancy, and to come back 2 weeks later with Dennis so that he could check on things one more time before I transfered over to ob/gyn.

December 14th-
Dennis and I went to our 8 week appointment. We had been looking forward to this appointment because this is when we would get the ultrasound pictures that we were going to use as part of our Christmas gift to our parents when we surprised them with the news on Christmas Day. During the ultrasound I immediately knew something wasn't right. The Dr. told us that the fetal heart rate was only 97 bpm. For a healthy pregnancy the heart rate should have been in the 150s at least. He told us that there was a 99% chance that we would miscarry and to come back in 3 days for another ultrasound so we could see what we should expect for the weekend. I was devastated. Dennis tried to stay positive...he told me that we couldn't lose hope and that everything was going to be fine regardless of what happened. For 3 days I prayed. I prayed harder than I'd prayed in awhile. I prayed that I would have peace with whatever happened and that if this baby was meant to be ours that everything would be ok. I went ahead and told my mom...I needed that support and if anyone could have prayed for this baby, it would be my mom.

December 17th-
I had a peace that morning. I wasn't stressed. I wasn't worried. I wasn't upset. I knew in my heart that everything was ok. I didn't know what ok meant at that time but either way it was fine. Things were going to happen the way they were supposed to. As soon as the Dr. pulled the ultrasound up on the screen this is what we saw:



Yep- that's a fetal heart rate of 176 bpm!!!

The Dr. looked at the ultrasound and said "let's just say that I never saw you on Monday...because right now everything looks great!"

It's little arm and leg nubs were moving too!


The following week after I got off work from taking the newborn photos, I ran upstairs to OB to pick up paperwork that I would need for my first appointment there. While there, I spoke to one of the appointment people about seeing if it was possible to have my 10-12 week appointment moved up because I still had some concerns about the baby's heart rate. He immediately went and spoke to the Fertility Dr. and she took me back right away for an ultrasound. The heart rate was 183 bpm. I thought it was awesome that she was so quick to put my mind at ease like that when I didn't even have an appointment. It completely shot down all of my previous assumptions about military hospitals.


On Christmas Eve we had a minor scare and ended up going to the ER on Christmas Day. Once again, everything was fine. I have to take it easy for a few weeks but God continually keeps proving to me over and over that He is in control of this pregnancy. It may be a rollercoaster...and it may just be a foreshadowing of what we can expect with this little one, after all it is mine and Dennis' child so it will without a doubt be a little crazy, but I'm ok with that. ;)