More pumpkins...

Baby Jack, the kids' newest cousin, came to visit all the way from Colorado. Isn't he sweet?

Today is Hudson's 6th birthday. I should tell the story of how he almost wasn't born, as I promised in an earlier post....so here goes. I was about 9 weeks pregnant and noticed some spotting one day. I had never experienced spotting with my first pregnancy, so I immediately called my doctor. He was not in the office so I spoke with a nurse. "Are you cramping at all?" she asked. "I guess I feel a bit crampy," I replied. "Well, since Dr. ____ isn't here you'd better go straight to the emergency room. You are probably going to miscarry." Holy crap! I thought. So I drop off my baby daughter and my niece who I was babysitting for, and head out in tears to the ER. There they do a battery of tests, catheterize me (Ouch!) and draw what appeared to be A LOT of blood. My uterus looked good though, the Dr. on call said. They scheduled an ultrasound. Everything looked fine. So she sent me home and had my own doctor look at the results of the blood work. He called me later to tell me that my hcg levels looked low and I would have to have another blood draw every 2 days for a week to monitor them. So that's what we did. My arm was a mess from all the needles. I nearly passed out after one draw- slid down the wall in the doctor's office and had to be helped to a bed. My doctor kept telling me that my hcg levels were dropping and it didn't look good. "You will probably miscarry over the weekend, so if you want me to perform a d&c now, to save you the anguish of waiting this out, I'll do it." I was shocked! I said no thanks and went home.

Now, I remembered reading something once that said if you took a pregnancy test when you were further than 10 weeks along it will probably come back negative, because your hcg levels climb, climb, climb in early pregnancy then plateau and then start to drop around 9-10 weeks. This was before I was comfortable with the internet, so I went to a book store and read every pregnancy book I could get my hands on until I found the same information again. I went back to my doctor on Monday, having NOT miscarried, with my information. He said I was wrong. He said I WOULD miscarry this baby. I demanded he try to find the heart beat. He said, "I don't recommend this because it is sometimes hard to find at 10 weeks and if we don't find it, you'll be devastated." Do it anyway I said. Well, he found a heart beat. "Oh this one is a fighter," he states. That is when I sat up, walked out of the office, went home and called another doctor. I ended up with the head of obstetrics at our local hospital. His office was dumbfounded as to why my original doctor would put me through this. He asked if I wanted to take legal action against him. I just wanted to have a nice uneventful pregnancy, so I said no, "But I don't want him to do this to anyone else." My new doctor took my case to the hospital board and they stripped the first doctor's ability to see anymore pregnancies or to deliver babies. I feel bad that it had to come to that, but at the same time- I look at Hudson, who such a great little boy and I want to march into Dr. _____'s office and say, "LOOK at him!!! He's perfect!"

So happy birthday Hudson....my sweet miracle. I'm so happy that for once I trusted my gut.