Isabelle's birth story--the long version--Part 2

I found out I was pregnant less than 48 hours after I arrived in the US for a month long vacation (a much needed mental break because I had become so homesick during the seven months I had been in South Korea so far). I started suspecting I was pregnant a couple of days before I left when I reached day 29 and realized I had yet to get my period. Uh oh. Started thinking, realized that I had been especially tired lately, Natalie had been nursing more lately, I had been feeling just a little off...NO, we had been careful! At least, I thought we had been... John agreed. No way are you pregnant, he told me. We even got a bottle of champagne and I had a glass the night before I was to fly off. We were careful. There's no way I'm pregnant. My period is just later this month, still within the 26-31 day window (though usually by day 29 I'm starting to spot and I wasn't but still...).

By the time my plane lands, I'm 12 hours late. My younger sister and the friend I'm staying with for the month both laugh at me. They think I'm being absolutely absurd. Maybe I am. Afterall, stress can affect one's cycles. I was all for rationalizing it though in the back of my mind there was that little thought nagging at me... That little nagging thought really gets going the next night when I start to feel nauseous at my younger sister's inlaws. When I was pregnant with my older daughter, I had gotten a couple of good signs that I was pregnant and a couple of those signs were missing so I wasn't sure. I asked my sister if she ended up finding out she was pregnant without any signs present and she said yes. I couldn't ignore that nagging feeling anymore. I was 36 hours or so late at this point. It was time to pick up a pregnancy test.

We pick up the trusty old digital model from Walmart, the one that tells you in plain words if you are pregnant or not. I get back to my friend's house and I don't even wait until the next morning. I had two tests on hand, I was going to take one now. It didn't even take three minutes before the results came in: PREGNANT. I swore. Yeah, probably not my proudest moment but this was definitely NOT expected at all! I mean, I had ordered cloth menstrual pads for crying out loud, had them sent to my friend's house fully expecting to use them on my period that I would be on when I got to the US for the visit. What's that old saying? People plan, God laughs? God definitely had to have been rolling on the floor and laughing His head off. Ha ha ha. What was really fun was trying to reach my husband with a 15 hour time difference. It took me a day or so before I finally got him on the phone and I had even sent an email saying, "Hey, need to talk to you!". That was kind of funny considering the news I had to tell him and it was definitely the last thing he had expected. His reaction was this sort of shocked, "Wow." Yeah, that about sums up how I was feeling too.

The rest of the month was kind of a jumble of emotions for me. I was scared half out of my mind and absolutely unsure of what to do. As with any pregnancy, there was always the chance that it wouldn't get all the way to term. Granted, I had never had a miscarriage before but I my sisters have and I certainly had risk factors for miscarriages including extra weight and a previous cesarean section. So the plan was to just wait it out, return to Korea, and see what could be done there in as far as having a child over there. I found information on a doula who lived over there online and we decided we would meet up when I returned to Korea. Other than that, there wasn't much else I could do. No sense in seeing a doctor since it was so early in the pregnancy and I wouldn't be setting up care in the US. I just did what I could to enjoy my time there even though at the same time, I was getting hit harder with first trimester pregnancy symptoms (including, oh the irony and the cruelty, morning sickness hitting right in time for Thanksgiving). I also ended up having to replace my computer during that time because I managed to break my laptop's hard drive on the way to the US (tripped and fell at the airport, banging up the computer enough to break the hard drive). It was a vacation that sort of fell flat with everything I was having to deal with. And to add to it, my friend also had a lot she was dealing with at the same time. So when I left December 8 (literally hours before a massive snow storm hit that would close the airport the next day due to 17 inches of snow, I mean, they were deicing the plane as I sat in it listening to--again, the irony--Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow), it was supposed to have been for the last time for possibly two years...at least, that was the plan. Little did I know that I would actually be returning less than five months later...