My Battle With A War I Thought I Already Won

This week has been VERY interesting to say the least. Hubby and I had a nice 3-day weekend away from work/school due to MLK Day where we chilled and cleaned and really just had fun being together.

Tuesday: I was at work doing things I normally do, when my heart started racing really fast for no reason. I was trying to breathe deep and calm my heart down when I began to feel light headed and the world went black for a few seconds. About half-an-hour later of dealing with the light headed-ness and the speeding heart I knew I couldn't function at work and called Hubby to come and get me because I didn't trust myself to drive home. He came as fast as he could and was going to take me to the Emergency Room when my heart calmed down and I felt like I was getting back to normal, I was just REALLY tired. Hubby took me home and I slept for a really long time, I almost felt like I had run from work to home not driven in a car because my heart had been racing for around 1 hour.

I felt like I was going to return to normal when about 9pm, it started up again. This time was different then before and I knew it. The light headed-ness started kicking in again and I began to fear for mine and the baby's well being and didn't know what to do other than go to the ER. Hubby helped me get into the car and drove me down, I explained my day to the guy up from and told him, "I'm pregnant... 22 weeks along", he quickly stood up and started to talk to one of the nurses that admits people into the ER. A minute later, someone sat me down in a wheelchair and checked my heart rate. It was 200rpm-230rpm. At one point someone asked, "Is our machine broken?" and the nurse answered, "No, that's her real heart rate." They asked some basics about my day and I told them how long these racing heart sessions were lasting. 1 hour had passed by this point and it wasn't slowing down. They rushed me into a room where the put IV in and I met my ER Doc and told him that I have Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome but had it corrected a couple years back. They needed to do a bunch of different tests on me but were running out of room by the number of nurses and specialists they had working on me, they moved me into another room that was bigger and had my heart rate stats behind me.

A lady from Labor and Delivery came down to check on my baby's fetal heart rate, as she put the jelly on my stomach she looked at my monitor and her mouth dropped, "Is that real?" she asked the Doc. He confirmed it. She quickly found the heart rate of my baby and asked if I was having pain. My baby had a normal heart rate and he was just mad that my body was having minor spasms and my heart was pounding so loud, so he kicked his disapproval every now and then. He was fine and I couldn't ask for more, I didn't care anymore what happened next, my baby was fine, and his normal stubborn self.

-2 hour mark-

The EKG guy measured my heart rate and I was asked who my doctor was that worked on my WPW, I told them, I was in luck, he was the doctor that was on call to analyze EKGs that night. He was contacted and sent a copy of my EKG. He told them what to do since I am pregnant. There is this drug that when placed into my bloodstream will stop my heart for a few seconds, wear off, and then my heart should restart by itself once again. Hopefully my heart rate will be normal after the drug wears off. It's kind of like a restart button. Well, after plugging me up to an EKG monitor, heart pads, and going through the risks and what back up plans are and confirming the baby's safety. We went through with the drug. I think I felt death.

As a little kid, I always thought that death would scare me and I wouldn't be ready for it and that I would be ashamed to meet my maker. But as I felt death, I wasn't scared, I was calm, and I knew I was safe. The Lord calmed me in my scariest hour and helped me breathe, I felt my pulse come back and my eyes could function again and I felt my cheeks regain color. My pulse felt normal.

They got some hydration in me, and I was finally left alone with my husband for an hour. We were safe, me, Baby X, and Hubby. This needed to happen, and it needed to happen here while we still live near my old cardiologist and family doctor. If we were somewhere else having this baby, they wouldn't have known that it was my WPW acting up once again, they would have not been sure what to do. But my cardiologist knew heart and knew what needed to be done. The team that was helping me in the ER, they knew what to do to help in every way they could, they did it fast and efficiently.

I am so grateful for the love surrounding me, my family (both sides) really stepped up to the plate to show they care and are there for me and my small new family. I was watched over by my Heavenly Father, and felt his love so intensely. I have no doubt in my mind. This was a blessing in disguise, and I've learned a lot about my Hubby, myself, and my baby.

-TBC

Gender Revealed!

So, last week we had our reveal the gender party for our baby, I had a lot of fun making the cake. It was a hard thing to do, but I finally accomplished it and it turned out nice enough. I made a classic yellow cake but I'm not the biggest fan of the taste of just plain old yellow cake, so instead of using regular milk I used buttermilk and that helped make it moist and add a little bit more flavor. I'm also not a fan of icing that tastes of only powdered sugar so I made it into a mint icing. It turned out pretty yummy. Here is the cake:

 I didn't add anything on the pan because I was getting kind of tired at the time that I was done. So, no brown sugar sand or any fun candy displays on this one. Which is fine. It still was awesome and people loved it. Excuse the mess-ups, this is my second time doing buttercream transfer, I'm still trying to work out the bugs.

For the party I made a poster (which I don't have a pic of) of Old Wives' Tales of which gender the baby SHOULD be. Majority said Girl. One said twins. Which was fun, because there were a couple of previously pregnant women there and they all compared my answers with their experiences. It was pretty fun.

I also make Mario hats and Princess Peach crowns for people to hold to guess the gender they thought the baby would be. The genders were originally split down the middle but Sa decided to switch to girl to make it easier for me to decide which side to cut into.

There are some of the guesses.... now.... time to reveal the gender!

Woot! It's a boy!!!! And his name will be Baby X (he eventually will become Mr. X, but he's Baby X for now) So, in May I can expect a cute bouncing and stubborn baby boy! You can tell Hubby is thrilled, hehe. :) He really is, we just are super tired so we look funny in this pic.

Anyway! Yay!!! Boys!

How did you feel when you found out your baby's gender? Or when you found out your neice/nephew's or little siblings gender? 

-TBC

Christmas and other fun times

Not much has happened these past few months concerning the pregnancy. I started to feel the little person move every now and then. Hubby thought he felt the baby move, he says it felt like "feeling a heartbeat".

My morning sickness has basically disappeared with a few exceptions of being nauseous because I might be sick. I still don't really like eating meat, I can eat some but not that much of it. Mostly red meats tend to bother me, but, I still will eat it if someone makes it for me.

Right now, I'm at 19 weeks (20 on Saturday), I'm a little under halfway done! I don't feel like I should be but I am! I also get to find out my little person's gender on Monday. I'm way excited! Guesses anyone?

I really want to do a reveal the gender party, but we'll see.

November was ok, I felt kind of queazy during Thanksgiving due to morning sickness. We had Thanksgiving Dinner up at my Brother- Wally's house. He is quite the cook! He made these fantastic cheese balls that were to die for. My other brother-Jar was the talk of the party because he brought tons of mini Martinellis. It was really fun, and a lot of people came.

Christmas! Christmas time was fun. I did the 12 Days of Christmas on Hubby this year, I was pretty proud of it.
Day 1- One face mask (he rides his bike to work/school everyday and his face is always freezing when he does)
Day 2- 2 cufflinks
Day 3- 3 raquetballs
Day 4- The Fantastic Four
Day 5- 5 oranges
Day 6- 6 Goldtoe Socks
Day 7- A lucky tie
Day 8- 8 pocket Kleenex
Day 9- a 9V battery
Day 10- 10 Facebook praises
Day 11- 11 songs that made me think of him
Day 12- Coupons for any time
Christmas Day- Shirts and movies

It was way fun, I found everything on Ebay & at Black Friday (I went after the crowds died down and it was really nice) and I spent $20 below my initial budget. I felt pretty proud about that :).

Christmas break was fun because we spent a lot of time with Hubby's family that were in town, so we got to play with little kids for most of break and work on puzzles. In Hubby's family it's a tradition (that no one knows how it got started) to have puzzles on a table in one of the rooms and they try to finish the puzzles that they get that year or didn't finish the previous year. I'm really bad at puzzles, so I have made the choice to practice puzzles. There were 1000 piece puzzles in my parent's basement so I snagged one and have been practicing. Hopefully next year, I can be helpful in the puzzle excitement.

Christmas Eve was delicious, my Mother-in-law is a really good cook so I enjoyed a very yummy meal.

Christmas Day is always interesting for Hubby and I, we spend some of the morning together, exchanging our gifts for each other. Then we went to my parent's house for the morning. Then we went to his parents house for the afternoon. We will switch it up every year because they only live a block or two from each other, so, not much traveling being done and we get to see everyone!

New Years Eve was exciting, the day before we had a fancy cheese dinner at my In-law's house which was fun, there were definitely some fun and interesting cheeses there. Then on the day of, we went to my parent's house and watched movies until midnight. Hubby & my mom took a nap around 11:00 PM so I was the only one awake and when midnight hit I woke people up, we cheered the New Year with Martinelli shots and stayed up for another hour or so.

Overall, a very good break. I also got a TON done. My pantry which was a total nightmare (we haven't touched it since we got married), I finally pulled out everything and redid the whole setup. We actually have a food storage space now, and can actually incorporate it into our meals now and rotate out old cans and such.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the year great (even if I didn't mention it) and I'm excited for what the New Year will bring!

-TBC