Pregnant with Dawson

We were SO excited when we found out we were expecting again and that Emmy would be a big sister. It was also perfect timing because a few weeks later, Emmy and I would be heading to Georgia for several weeks so the majority of the time I would be the sickest I would be with my mom and have help. I also got really lucky because we (my mom, sister, and Emmy) had a girls trip planned to go to Disney World but I ended up not getting sick until we were on our way home from it.

Until about 20 weeks I was still sick and could barely eat anything of substance, but I was no where near as sick as I was with Emmy.

But of course, true to pregnant Katie fashion, I started having other issues. The rest of my pregnancy I was dealing with a kidney that was not emptying as fast as it should have been because it was a tad "squished". It would cause so much pain that at first they thought I had a kidney stone and were treating me for that, until they realized it wasn't that and that I would just have to deal with it. YAY.

I also had really, really bad acid reflux. I tried multiple medicines that didn't work, then found out the secret of pickles. Turns out pickles get rid of acid reflux, so I was eating about 5 a day, until about 30 weeks when just the thought of a pickle made me want to puke, so I started to just deal with the reflux, AKA not eating past a certain time and definitely not laying down until 5+ hours after I ate. But as you can imagine this was not a good solution for a pregnant girl, so mostly I just ate and ate and ate and prayed I wouldn't be able to taste the acid seeping up. TMI I'm sorry.

At around 16 weeks I started to have Braxton Hicks contractions regularly in the evenings. On our anniversary date when I was 30 weeks pregnant we were at a movie and I started to notice I was having contractions every 10-15 minutes and that lasted for 6 or so hours, but the doctor had told me that unless they were 8 or less minutes apart to not worry, at which point I would go to the hospital with the NICU if under 35 weeks pregnant. This continued to happen frequently until I gave birth.

A foreshadow to what I would find out 5 days after Dawson was born, I had accidentally taken a blood test to see if my baby would be born with Chromosomal syndromes. I say accidentally because I don't think I took this test with Emmy and unless you are someone who would abort your child then knowing this information wouldn't really come in handy since there is nothing you can really do. A week later I got a call- my numbers were 272 (if I remember right) and anything over 269 is considered a positive. The nurses said not to worry because it was just barely off so most likely it was just a fluke and my baby would be perfect. After telling Logan, we decided not to do the invasive test because the only Chromosome Syndrome we even knew of was Down Syndrome and we would love him regardless. At our next ultrasound, however, the tech looked for signs of a Chromosome Syndrome and found none. We were sure Dawson would be born perfect, and we were right, just not in the way we would have ever imagined.