The Woogie's: Back Again!

Yes, it has been a long time since I wrote on this blog. For those of you who are new in our lives, we started this blog to share the progress of my pregnancy for friends and family who are far away. We continued as Noah grew and shared our experiences and pictures of the cutest boy in the world, Noah. Now we are back, have a new addition to our family, live in a different state, and have a new job. A family of three to a family of four, Texas to Oklahoma, and Mechanical Engineering position to a pastor at Trinity Baptist Church.

I guess I will start with the pregnancy and birth of Luke David Wohlgemuth. We longed to get pregnant for a while before we were able to try. We were going to try in December but I got kidney stones. I had one so big that I couldn't pass it (7mm...5mm is the biggest a person can pass). I had surgery to have it removed then I passed many more from each kidney the rest of the week while heavily drugged. I had surgery again because my kidneys were so swollen from everything that week. Thus I got a part of my tube shaved off. After all that, I got a bacterial infection! After many testings, a colonoscopy, etc., I finally got over everything by April or so. Yes, it took that long. We wanted to know for sure I was healthy because bacterial infections can cause miscarriage and we certainly didn't want to go through that again. So, finally we were able to try to get pregnant and we did. Praise God!

This pregnancy was completely different from Noah's. I took me a while to bond with this new baby because of going through a miscarriage the pregnancy before. But, after I passed the 13th week (when I had my miscarriage) I slowly began to bond and realize it may just happen. I felt even more comfort as I passed the 25th week since I saw Josie Duggar (on the TLC show "19 Kids and Counting") make it (after much struggle) and thought that maybe this baby would make it. I had a little scare around 23 weeks and thought I was going to lose this baby but I was just dehydrated. I certainly drank a lot of water after that!!! We were excited to have another boy and worked through several names. This was a new experience because John and I had both a boy and a girl name picked around 2 1/2 years before we got married.

The last few weeks were harder than the first, of course. In fact, I only got just over 4 hours of sleep the last 4 days before having Luke. Not so good. I had Noah more than 3 weeks early and Luke came just a day before my due date. I will say it was nice to walk around since I was on bed rest over 9 weeks with Noah after being in a car accident with a friend.

The evening before Luke was born, I started having contractions that were definitely more painful than the Braxton Hicks contractions I'd had for months. I had them consistently all night every 10 minutes. They also got increasingly painful throughout the night but didn't get closer together. By 7am, they were every 6 minutes. By the time we left for the hospital at 8:30am, they were every 4 minutes. I had Luke at 11:11am. I was grateful to do most of the laboring at home. I was VERY uncomfortable in the hospital and it made it much more painful. With Noah I wanted to birth naturally without any pain medicine but had to get an epidural after 14 hours of labor in the hospital after my water broke. I had to push Noah out within 24 hours or I would have had to get a c-section. So, I chose an epidural. It took me 1 1/2 hours to push Noah out after I was dilated to 10 cm.

So this time with Luke, I still brought the same birth plan to the hospital that said NO EPIDURAL. I had discussed it with my OBGYN many times and she was aware of all my requests. I was grateful to do it without even Tylenol. I was very pleased with the experience. I think the contractions were less painful then I had with Noah. I had pitocin increasing every hour with Noah and that just makes them much worse. It is unnaturally forcing your body to contract...not ideal. I've had several people experience it without pain meds and one with pitocin and they thought the same thing. I will birth naturally again if I can have it my way!!! The experience was so much better. I think Luke was more alert (not drugged), it went faster because I was able to listen to my body, and I could push Luke out in 20 minutes because I could feel what I was doing. Yes, it did hurt! And healing was so much faster all around. Plus it is cheaper not to get an epidural...Woohoo! I am really enjoying Luke too. I feel the accomplishment of pushing him out and appreciate it more. I couldn't ask for a better baby either. He is sleeping and eating well and I am sleeping. I got about 1 hour of sleep with Noah in a 24 hour period for about 3 months. I am getting several hours each night. Praise God. Noah also had acid reflux...I hope I never have to do that much laundry again!

With all that said, I love Noah just as much as Luke. Each experience is different as each child is different, even though they look pretty identical at this point! I am sure our third will be even more different. Enough writing, I am sure you just want to see pics...