Leos story starts when I was sick and pregnant with Esther actually. The spirit was with me so strongly through that time and it told me, "you can do this, and you can do it again!" Then after Esther was born we were so overwhelmed with our kids and we had our two boys and two girls. It made a lot of sense to be done but I started to get this feeling again that we weren't done. I kept feeling that if we had another child that he or she would be a great blessing to us and that if we didn't have them we would be missing that great blessing that God was ready to give us. Still it was scary. We were maxed out. We waited. We had a beautiful confirmation one day in the temple and then a couple months later, I heard an actual voice in the temple saying, "Mommy, please don't forget me." With tears streaming down my face I knew then that I didn't want to wait another minute for this sweet baby. Once we got on board and started trying it took us a long time. Almost 9 months before I was finally pregnant.
I was not as sick and miserable with Leo as I was with the girls but I was still pretty much incapacitated. Then just as it was starting to get better one night I was walking around and suddenly there was a gush of blood. after calling the nurse she assured us that it was probably fine and to come in the next day. They did an ultrasound and it turned out I had a very large subchorionic hemorrhage. The dr said there was about a 50% chance the baby would live. For two weeks I stayed on bedrest. So many dear friends brought us meals and came to talk with me. I felt so grateful. Especially my dear mom did so much for me and my kids through this pregnancy. It changed everything. It made everything bearable. She picked up Phoebe from preschool a million times and brought us meals and was just an angel! I wasn't really afraid through this time because I had felt so strongly that we needed to have this baby, I just knew it was in the Lords hands. We were so blessed and I got better :)
About 20 weeks in my autoimmune disorder started acting
up pretty badly. I was sleeping ten hours every night and then requiring sometimes two or three long naps during the day just to make it through. In spite of all this sleep, I was exhausted every minute of the day. This sounds so dramatic and I hate to say it, but honestly I think what I was feeling is the tiredness people must feel when they are about to die. I could barely put one foot in front of the other and something like going grocery shopping might as well have been climbing mount everest. As soon as the kids fell asleep at night I would fall into bed and sleep through all of the noise and wake ups of the night like a dead person. Sometimes a small task like getting all the kids into the car would make me sit down and cry, just because I couldn't figure out how to find the strength to do it. I was too tired to smile and certainly too tired to talk at all.
On top of all this I was made of pain. Every joint in my body and all of my muscles hurt so badly and it didn't go away after a couple hours. In the beginning I was just experiencing tiredness, but if I only got 8 hours of sleep instead of ten, the pain was unbearable. After awhile I was so tired and sick I couldn't imagine that I would live through the pregnancy
Finally I was able to get on a low dose of steroids and everything got so much better. My third trimester felt like a piece of cake compared to the second. I could think clearly again and one short nap would get me through each day :)I was able to walk the kids to school. That description of the pain was written after I started the steroids though. The really crazy part about it was the fog. It was like I just wasn't really awake for months. I couldn't describe what I was experiencing until after i started feeling better.
In a way this was a blessing. I felt like this pregnancy went by like a dream. so quickly that I hardly noticed the hard parts. I think it was really a blessing. It was like God knew what a frightening thing it was for me to get pregnant with my disease and all the crazy of our lives and he truly blessed that faith. I felt his spirit with me throughout the pregnancy and I felt that he was pleased with me in spite of how short I was falling in everything. Im spite of needing so much help just to take care of my family. I felt very happy even in the midst of the fog and pain. I knew that I was doing the most important thing I could be doing. I felt heroic but mostly I could see with my eyes how God was filling the gaps.
Finally we got to the end. The last few weeks I started to lose my mind like always but it was also easier in a way this time because I knew I was not really myself and that it was normal to feel a little crazy during that part. I went to hospital with a false alarm once and then finally the day before Leos scheduled induction I went back to the hospital only to have my labor stop almost completely just as it was progressing rapidly. The dr was an angel and he let me stay and gave me some pitocin. I didn't want to use an epidural because I had had reactions to it during my previous three births. Instead I used Nitrous Oxide and it worked beautifully for all but the last hour of the labor. During the last hour the pain got so bad I couldn't even breathe the nitrous oxide anymore. I felt like I was being ripped apart. I had no idea how bad pain could be before this labor. If I ever have a baby again I will sign up for the epidural so happily. As I was screaming in pain, I finally got a spinal block for maybe the last contraction before pushing and the relief was immediate.
The pain was so intense that I dont think I could have pushed without the epidural.
