BABY SERENDIPITY

What a better day than Landon’s first birthday to tell his story.

Ok, in all honesty, it’s been a year… and I haven’t had the mental space to write it all out. SO, a year after he entered the world it is!

Landon was VERY planned. We decided we wanted a second baby, and started trying for Landon shortly after Henry turned 1. We had so much fun that first year with Henry, it was a no-brainer that we wanted to do it again! But apparently, God had other plans.

Landon and Henry are 2 years and 5 months apart. I’m pretty sure you can do the math on how long it took to conceive Landon. And if you can’t… it was about 9 months. It was frustrating and confusing, and I know we had it easy in the grand scheme of things, but it was a long 9 months for us wondering why we weren’t getting pregnant. I had scheduled an appointment with my OB to discuss options and start testing. On a whim one night, because I “felt” pregnant, I took a test and the faintest of faint lines showed up. The yelp that came out of me brought Tony running in from the other room… only to tell me he couldn’t see the line…

But it was there!

I waited several weeks, and watched the test lines darken before I called my doctor to see if it was real and if things were going well. The day I called the doctor, I started mentally calculating my due date. The date I calculated couldn’t have been right, the odds just didn’t make sense. So I waited to see the doctor before telling anyone his due date. I just told my family “mid-May”.

When we went in for that first ultrasound, I was so nervous and excited, it still didn’t feel real. That little gummy bear showed up on the screen with a nice strong heartbeat and once we got to see the doctor, she confirmed my due date… it was exactly what I calculated… May 17th.

I was on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster at that point because May 17, 2003 was the worst day of my life so far. May 17, 2003 was the day my dad passed away from cancer. I was 14 years old at the time. So there was a definite smoothie of emotions going on in my heart. After 9 months trying to conceive… he was due on the 17th. I do my very best to be optimistic and positive, so I decided it was a Godwink. My dad saying hey, he was ok up there. It would be nice to have a positive on May 17th. Bring it on.

What followed next was the easiest, most uneventful pregnancy. I am truly blessed that pregnancy is fairly easy on my body. Aside from horrendous heartburn that had me sitting up to sleep from 16w forward, textbook pregnancies. I was even on the ski slopes at 29 weeks! Just kidding! I was on the slopes, but there were no skis on my feet! We took a trip to Colorado to ski right before the world shut down, and Henry got to learn to ski! It was wonderful.

But anyway, back to Landon.

After a routine and easy pregnancy, we’re all the way to 37 weeks and I go in for one of my final checks on April 27th. I was hoping to have a VBAC since Henry was breech and I didn’t have the opportunity to go into labor; I had to schedule a c-section with him. I jokingly asked my doctor what he thought the odds were of me going into labor by the next week because I would really love to have Landon on my dad’s birthday, May 5th. He chuckled and said it wasn’t likely because there was a whole lot of nothing happening labor wise at that point. So, on my way I went. For those of you that have never been pregnant, you typically see the doctor once a week for the last few weeks of pregnancy. My insurance also apparently likes to have a 38w growth ultrasound performed. So the following week, May 4th, I went into my growth scan and the ultrasound technician took the SAME measurement probably 8 times. Now I am not a jump to conclusions and panic person, I’m pretty rational, but I also know that if you’re measuring the same thing over and over… it’s not a great sign. She mentioned that I had pretty low fluid in this one pocket, but that the other pockets looked good. Ok, cool, I didn’t know what that meant. I did know Henry had low fluid as well, but not dangerously low and nothing ever came of it, so I figured it was a similar situation. After the growth scan I went in to see the doctor. She said the one pocket was “critically low” and he needed to come out… but I had some options:

1. Go home and come back Thursday and hope that the fluid re-appeared… but if it didn’t they would most likely send me to the hospital for an emergency c section.

2. Come in and be induced at the earliest available appointment

3. Schedule a c section for sometime that week, earliest available

Option 1 sounded horrible. I didn’t like the idea of “wait and see” potentially putting my baby bean at risk. Option 2 sounded horrible because literally nothing was happening down there, and I have heard some horror stories about being induced (I’ve also heard some awesome stories about being induced… but usually they had SOME dilation or effacement going on and I had nothing!). So I went with option 3. Get my baby out safely. It wasn’t a true emergency YET, but I didn’t want it to become one. So out my doctor went to check the schedule. She was the doctor on call for Wednesday, and she said she’d get me on the schedule for first thing that day. I asked her if there was ANY way to get on the schedule for the next day, and told her why. It was my dad’s birthday… and if I wasn’t going to get to go into labor spontaneously… I figured I’d shoot my shot. Since it was 4pm on Monday, she said it wasn’t likely that there would be anything available, but that I should go home and the scheduler would call me to confirm if it would be Tuesday or Wednesday.

Thanks to stupid COVID, I was alone at this appointment and of course burst into tears the second my car door closed. I thought I had weeks to get ready for him. I hadn’t even assembled the bassinet, let alone packed my hospital bag! I hadn’t even had a chance to gather myself before my phone rang. It was the scheduler at the hospital. They had a 9am slot the next morning available because of a cancellation. Of course I asked how that even happens, who cancels a scheduled c section? Simple… baby had other plans and came early… duh! I blame the tornado of emotions on that momentary lapse in intelligence.

Landon was born on May 5th, 2020 at 10:58am. 7lbs1oz of perfection. The OB said there was very little fluid left, but my water hadn’t broken… so we had made the right choice. I am so very thankful for modern medicine. And we high-tailed it out of the hospital on May 6th!

Landon Lee now shares his birthday with Jerry Lee. And another Godwink? He looks just like him. Strawberry blonde hair, light eyes… What are the odds?

Happy birthday, Daddy, thank you for sending us Landon

And Happy Birthday to my baby Serendipity. We love you so.