Skip to main content

Where to Start?

I’ve been thinking a lot about where to start. I think jumping right to the day Beckett was born wouldn’t be the right decision, as his story is bigger than just his birth. Instead I’d like to start in the summer of 2022.

Keith and I had decided that we wanted to start trying to have a baby. We found out we were pregnant in June 2022, and quickly felt all the feels of excitement, love, joy, and fear. We shared the news with our families. Unfortunately we had a miscarriage early on, on July 1. That was a difficult experience. I’ve heard some people suggest that to have a loss so early on doesn’t really “count”. But, the joy, excitement, and love that we felt after finding out we were pregnant was real; the emotional pain that followed so shortly after was just as real. For Keith and I, it reinforced the fact that we were ready to start our family, and that we wanted to continue to try until it happened. Luckily for us, that didn’t take long, and we were pregnant again in September 2022. Again we quickly shared this news with our loved ones and we started optimistically planning for the future.



I won’t bore you with many details of the pregnancy. I definitely had some anxiety early on, worrying about another miscarriage, but the later I got into the pregnancy the more calm I felt.  I did not like being pregnant, but couldn’t really complain with my experience in particular.

Generally speaking, I had a straightforward pregnancy, stayed healthy and active throughout, and had every reason to believe our baby boy was thriving. He kicked and wiggled strongly and regularly. We received excellent care from our midwife. Though one of the ultrasounds identified dilation of our baby’s kidney and ureter, we were assured that this is not uncommon, and could be monitored closely after birth and would likely sort itself out. 

My due date (May 14) came and went, and to say I was tired of being pregnant was an understatement. Finally, on the evening of May 23, I started to have contractions. By 10 AM on May 24 I was in active labour and we went to Foothills Hospital to meet our midwife.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Aunty Mommy Guest Post

For those who don't know me, I'm Melanie 👋 - Chantale's twin sister, and known to Little Bee as Aunty Mommy 💕 Little Bee and Aunty Mommy I've been thinking about writing a guest post for a long time. I have so many thoughts, emotions, unsolicited advice, rants, stories, etc. etc. etc. that I want to share, but don't know where to begin. So, what follows is a little bit of all the above, but mostly just Auntie Mommy's stream of thoughts. There's lots more where this came from, so I expect you'll be hearing from me again soon. Little Bee Beckett is my fave guy. Seriously, I just can't get enough of his sweet little face. But he's so much more than just a cute face (he does have the cutest face though).  Just cute It has been such a joy to watch Beckett grow and learn new things. Yes, he is behind, but I could not be more proud. His usual day is filled with more exercise and physio than a professional athlete (probably. I actually have no idea wha...

2024 Catch Up

When I started this blog I had the best of intentions to catch up to real time quickly and then write posts on a weekly basis to keep things up to date. That was optimistic. My goal for this post is to do a quick catch up - where we are with diagnoses and prognosis for Beckett. There will be other posts to fill in the gaps on more specific details and also how things are going on a more mental health/emotional side of things. But, there will be smattering of that in this post too, because the lines blur as I start typing. Here we are, March 2024. Beckett has previously been diagnosed with Currarino’s Syndrome (CS), and Cerebral Palsy (CP). Also previously unmentioned, he has GERD, which isn’t super uncommon in babies.  When we were told about Beckett’s genetic test results of CS, the geneticist ordered tests for both Keith and me to determine which side of the family it was passed down from. There was some indication that Keith might have it, since an old x-ray on file at the ACH s...

In the NICU - Week 1

May 25  When I joined Keith and Beckett in the NICU a little while later, the NICU nurses were connecting Beckett to an aEEG to monitor his brain waves. The doctors were deciding whether Beckett met the criteria for cooling (currently the only treatment for hypoxic ischemic encephalopothy), and we were told this decision would be made quickly, since the treatment had to start within 6 hours of birth if it were to happen at all. The NICU staff suggested we both go to the postpartum ward to get some rest since we had been up for well over 24 hours and the EEG would take time to set up.  When we returned to the NICU, not at all rested, we were told that Beckett did not meet the criteria for cooling. Something about his cord blood test results. To this day, I still wonder if cooling would have helped him in his initial recovery. But as with much of Beckett’s and our story, there’s not a lot of point in thinking about the “what ifs” and the “whys”. We could only move forward. ...