Pregnancy - Part 1, 2, and 3

So. Our pregnancy. This was a long and difficult road. One that I'm mostly open about. There were a couple snippets of our difficulties in the earlier blog posts, but I'll do a little recap here before doing Part 4. For more detail about these first 3 pregnancies, we have our other old blog (also not updated!) which is found at http://hendersonpregnancyexperiences.blogspot.com/

From the very beginning of our relationship, Stephen and I knew we wanted a family. We seemed to have no troubles, as we got pregnant on our honeymoon. Unfortunately, things didn't end well and we lost the baby. We just figured it was due to the stress of traveling and moving to Texas.

After our second miscarriage, seeing how statistically only about 5% of couples would have 2 consecutive miscarriages, I finally decided to the doctor to figure out what was going on. I was diagnosed with PCOS, which pretty much means we can't have kids without extra medicine/treatment due to hormone imbalances and cysts. I was referred to meet with an infertility doctor in Del Rio.

I met with him, and he decided he wanted us to get pregnant again and then once the ob referral was approved, he'd do some tests and get me started on some medicine that should help. So, we got pregnant our first month trying.

We got positive home pregnancy tests multiple times. But whenever I went to the clinic to get tested, it kept coming back negative. This was super frustrating because they can't get me a referral to an ob until it's positive in the clinic. I was worried because I normally lost our other pregnancies around 6-7 weeks. When I was finally 5 and ½ weeks, they did a blood test and it came back positive!

I explained the referral situation to the nurse who called in to make an immediate appointment with the ob. Unfortunately, he went home for the day (at noon) and wouldn't see me until the following week. By now I was full out panicking about not being able to get the medicine in time.

I started to miscarry later that day. We went to the ER where it was confirmed I lost the baby. It was probably the worst miscarriage of them all because we really had hoped the outcome would be different.

I went to the ob the following week and he didn't even seem compassionate at all. He left a really bad taste in our mouth. I did a follow up with him a couple months later. It was supposed to be the appointment where he said we could start trying again. He did some tests which came back irregular, so he said we needed to wait another 6 months or so before coming back to him to see if things are good. He also said that the game plan (of waiting to get the referral before medicine) would be the same. That pissed me off so bad because it obviously doesn't work for us.

I did a lot of research and had to fight to get a new referral to get seen by specialists in San Antonio. It was all finally approved! I'll pick up from here with Pregnancy Part 4.

Jessie's work changes

So, we've obviously have had a lot going on, and many of our big events have overlapped. You'll have to bare with me as I get everyone all caught up on the whirlwind of the past year.

I was originally hired by the City of Del Rio to be their GIS technician. I was so excited to have a job in my career field even though we live in such a small and remote town. I received a lot of notice and attention due to my work ethics and ability to do more stuff than technically required from my job. Very quickly, I had become the favorite employee of the public works director and he gave me lots of extra projects on top of my normal duties. I created all the utility draft plans that have to be submitted to the Texas Dept of Transportation. I created the official engineer reports and blue prints/schematics for civil engineering projects. Was a project manager, event organizer and coordinator, etc. There had also been talk of moving me up to the GIS Dept manager.

I would've been happy as GIS manager, and the job as technician just wasn't appealing enough to me anymore. The work was very dull and there wasn't enough to keep me busy (hence all my other projects). The first opportunity I had to move up in ranks and position was to become the Recycle Center Coordinator. I applied and was offered the job. Lucky for me, it still is technically in my degree field, falling under "environmental sciences".

I really enjoyed being a supervisor! I had 2 employees, both Mexican (good thing I'm fluent in Spanish!) who were both very sweet and hard working. It was nice to not have to worry about them not doing their job, and also respecting me even though I'm a woman and half their age. I did my best to make their life easier by pulling my weight even though I technically only had to hang out in the office doing admin stuff. It was nice to have a bit more manual labor to do during the day, keep me on my feet and moving around, rather than twiddling my thumbs and perusing Facebook and whatever else that could keep me entertained for hours on end.

I got into some disagreements (more just I wasn't afraid to speak my mind and share my opinion) with my new boss about how to do scheduling. My thoughts are that everybody works the 40 hours, and we do it during the shifts that are most convenient for us (as long as all shifts are covered). Let me explain. One of my employees only got his kids every other weekend. The recycle center is open on Saturday. I would make sure that employee wasn't working on the weekends he had his kids. This meant that sometimes the other employee or I would work 2 Saturdays in a row, and the employee with his kids would work one of our original Saturday shifts. Everybody works the same number of Saturdays, just in a different order. My boss could not figure it out and would tell me that our personal life comes after our job. To me, that's completely wrong. It's ironic though because my boss would sometimes come and complain to me about how much extra work he has to do and that the government officials aren't taking into consideration that we have personal lives. Double standard. That was so frustrating!

But, he liked me and my hard work. I got the recycle center looking much better and cleaner and better customer reviews. That was really good because I ended up needing to take a lot of half days driving to San Antonio for my doctor appointments, and he was understanding.

Only a couple months after I left the GIS Dept, the manager also left, and I was extended the job. It was a tough decision, but I turned it down. I knew that I would have to use certain programs and complete certain projects that are complete wastes of time and money for a city that's the size of Del Rio. Yes, it would be worth it if this were San Antonio, but it's not. And my "quality of life" had improved drastically with my change to the recycle center, and I didn't want to go back into the more negative office building.

I applied for a grant that would allow for the recycle center to buy some new equipment that would make things a little easier. Both my boss and his boss said they had zero expectations or hope that we'd be awarded even some of the money. The council who went through and approve the funding for the projects is highly political, and we just got a new mayor who was making some big waves that not many people liked. I had to travel to another city to do the presentation and low and behold, I was able to secure 100% of our funding! Everybody was so surprised! It definitely made me feel good about my work and what I'm doing!

In the end, I ended up having to make a difficult decision (that wasn't too difficult) and quit my job even though I really enjoyed it. I was the recycle coordinator for only 4 months, but those 4 months were enjoyed so much more than the year as the GIS technician. What it came down to was my pregnancy (which will be in another post) was too complicated and risky for me to continue working. I was told that I should quit my job, or see if I could get moved to a part-time desk job. Obviously our pregnancy was a higher priority than my career. We did some re-budgeting and made it work, allowing for me to stay at home completely full time and just focus on me and our baby's health.

The plan now that we have our baby boy is for me to continue to stay at home as long as I want. I completed my EMT-Basic certification and have started on the Advanced EMT class. I've really enjoyed these classes and really like the fact that they have many part time job opportunities. Once we move to Missouri, I'm planning on finding something to do with it maybe once a week, something just for fun. That will also allow me to continue being a stay at home mom and having an active role in raising our kids.

A new start

Ok, so we got really behind in blogging about our lives and would start posts that would only get half finished and then some other big event came up, but the last part wasn't finished and it just compounded into is never blogging. So, please excuse the last year!

I'll go into more detail later, but here is a quick recap:

I was promoted in my job to Recycle Center Coordinator. Stephen got to fly the T-38 which would allow him to fly fighters or bombers upon graduation. We found out we were pregnant with twins. We lost one of the babies. I quit my job to stay at home and was on modified bed rest for about half the pregnancy. Stephen's sister got married in Utah. We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with Stephen's family. I went into preterm labor (and didn't have the baby). Stephen graduated first in his pilot training class and will be flying the B-2. We then hung out in San Antonio for 3 weeks while waiting for our baby to come. I had our baby boy, named Tyler. Lots of family visited. We went to our new base in Missouri to look at houses and our offer was accepted. Stephen went TDY for a month. I started the Advanced EMT class. We went on our first real family vacation to Orlando. We close on our house at the end of the week. We move to San Antonio, where Stephen will be doing pilot instructor training, next week. Stephen also will be starting his master's degree this fall semester.

Obviously we have been really busy!  I will back track and expound on these events later!