He's 2 months old today, so it's about time I formally introduce you to our sweet sweet boy.
But let's backtrack a little bit. Last October Caroline was 3 months old. I had been to my 6 week postpartum check up and I denied birth control because of everything we went through to conceive Caroline. One miscarriage and months of fertility treatments-birth control was not on my to do list thanks to PCOS. My doctor reminded me that anything could happen and I kinda sorta laughed at him.
I was exclusively breastfeeding every 2 hours during the day which typically means your period takes forever to come back-and well I never get them so I wasn't even thinking about that. I had read that your cycle could come back earlier if your baby was sleeping through the night-and well, Caroline was so I'm guessing that triggered a cycle. On October 20th, I woke up and had this feeling that I was pregnant. (I had found out the year before on October 26th that I was pregnant with Caroline.) In fact I probably didn't even need to take a pregnancy test- I knew. We were packing up the car to head to Lexington VA to help out my brother and sister-in-law with watching my nephew while they were in town for a reunion. I quickly grabbed a test from CVS because I just had to know. I had told Chris that morning I thought I might be pregnant so when I walked out of the bathroom holding that little stick he wasn't totally surprised. I wanted to look at it in natural light so I headed to the deck.- Because us girls are crazy when it comes to pink lines on pregnancy tests, but before I got there that little pink line popped right up. It was overwhelming, I'm not going to lie. Caroline was 3 months old and it was like real life repeating itself. I knew they would have similar due dates and possibly the same birthday. (They ended up with birthdays 6 days apart) Could my body handle this again so soon? First trimester sickness again so soon? 2 babies under one year old? Oh goodness- what a day that was.
Then those dreaded feelings of something being wrong came creeping back because after you go through a miscarriage it steals all joy from future pregnancies. You don't want to get excited because if something is wrong somehow you think that if you don't get excited or hold back on starting to love that baby it will be easier. Not true, but that's what our brains do.
My pregnancy with Caleb was totally normal. A quick preeclampsia scare that turned into nothing and high blood pressure which I had with Caroline was monitored throughout. Otherwise a wonderful 9 months.
Caleb was born on June 21st, 2018 at 4:30 pm and weighed a chunky 8lbs 2oz. He is healthy, smiley, and just the perfect addition to our family.
I went in to be induced on Wednesday, June 20th for high blood pressure. Nothing crazy, just a little high as it was with Caroline and my doctor wanted to be on the safe side. I know there are many horror stories about being induced and a lot of women prefer not to be, I loved being induced both times. I loved the step by step process, the relaxed environment, and the gradual lead up. I was a bit more nervous with Caleb than I was Caroline just because with Caroline I had no clue what was really going on-I was just going with the flow. With Caleb we were doing the same steps and procedures and, I guess I'm just better when I don't know all the details. So I was more nervous the second time, but all was ok.
So we started induction at about 3:30 pm on Wednesday and 25 hours later and pushing for about 30 min, he was here. Chris was surprised for the gender just as he wanted to be. Our doctor lifted Caleb into the air and asked Chris to say out loud what it is. Such a sweet moment.
Since Chris was being surprised-we didn't talk about names very much while I was pregnant. Boy names are hard for me so I felt if I brought them up I would give away the gender. We had "Claire" picked out for a girl, but really nothing for a boy. We both had names the other hated so those were vetoed and it was stressful trying to decide on a name. If I did it again, I would have had a boy name and a girl name picked out before I found out the gender. So many opinions came at us from family and friends I couldn't really focus on what WE wanted to name him. If someone loved one name, someone else hated it. Again, stressful. In the end, we had the name Cameron but knew at some point it would become "Cam" and I don't think we were 100% ok with that and all I could think was Modern Family. So there we were thinking "well, are we going to do a C name?" Caleb was just on a "C" baby name list that I was reading and we both liked it- a rarity. It stuck and we decided on Alexander as a middle name because Chris has always liked that name and it's a small nod to our first pregnancy that ended in miscarriage at 9 weeks. We gave that baby the name Alexander because we thought it had been a boy. I have a necklace with a bible verse on the front and a tiny A on the back. So about 5 minutes before discharge we finally had a name.
Caroline meeting Caleb will forever be one of my favorite moments of all time. I wanted to share the video with you all today. I'm so glad I recorded the moment.
You can find it here
So I'm an Irish twin mama. And for 6 days every year Caleb and Caroline will be the same age. Hilarious. Life is so funny. For those still in the wait with baby shaped holes in their hearts, I see you. You are loved and I just know your story is not over, it's still be written and one day it will all make sense, I promise.
Warmly,
Michelle