Every summer my two kids usually spend the summer with their dad and step mom in Florida. This year things became a little crazy due to covid-19. Their dad and step mom both serve in the military and were placed on a mandatory travel ban. This made it impossible for them to meet up with us half way like we always did in Georgia. So we worked it out to where my husband and I would drive the kids all the way down to Florida. Seeing how we live in Virginia we decided to make a fun road trip out of it, visiting my grandmother in Alabama, my sister in Georgia, and my husbands best man in North Carolina. At this time I was only 5 weeks pregnant closing in on 6 weeks. I remember feeling so sick almost the entire time. Nausea was rough and my stomach was cramping a-lot, but I hadn’t really used the bathroom the entire trip so I thought I was just constipated. We get home after about five days of being on the road and I am exhausted! The next day I am laying in the bed face-timing with my little ones when I felt the urge to pee. I tell them I have to go and get up to walk to the bathroom. Soon as I walk into the bathroom I feel something going down my legs. I look down and it’s just bright red blood. I stand there scared and shocked and yell for my husband who comes running up the stairs. He can see the look of terror on my face and I say “I’m bleeding a-lot, I’m miscarrying”. He immediately says “no no no no”. I sit on the toilet because I am just soaking through pads and anything I try to use. While Lewis is getting clothes and stuff for us to go to the hospital I call the on call OB who tells me to come to the ER that they practice at. The hospital is about 40mins away and it’s the longest most quietest ride my husband and I have ever taken together. We don’t talk the entire ride but instead we quietly listen to our worship music while I sit in the passenger seat and silently cry to myself. He holds my hand the whole way trying to comfort me the best he can. We get there and it takes us an hour just to get seen which had me even more panicked and at this point they had to get me those gigantic pads you get from labor and delivery because the ones I had were not holding up. We get back there and they immediately run an IV, ask me to pee in a cup, send me to get a vaginal ultrasound…meanwhile every time they move me or ask me to do something more and more blood keeps coming out and making me feel more and more terrified of our reality. I get back from ultrasound and I’m sitting in there with my husband crying and he says to me “lets not give up yet, I believe God is going to take care of this situation, we don’t know what’s going on yet, we gotta keep the faith that God is going to come through on this”. I of course believe in God, I believe he creates miracles, but I have also considered myself a realist and felt like I had to accept the reality of this situation. I mean why else would you bleed this much. The doctor walks in with the results and firs thing out of her mouth to us was “actually everything with the baby looks ok”. I just starred at her in disbelief. I couldn’t understand how a baby was ok when bleeding this much. She goes on to tell us that I am experiencing a subchorionic hemorrhage where part of the placenta has separated from the uterus wall and it’s bleeding out. She continues to say that the bleeding should begin to ease up soon and she has seen people still have full term pregnancies with this condition. She places me on bed rest until I can see my OB again. I still sit in silence just looking at her and then my husband finally chimes in and says “I think my wife is just a little shocked ma’am”. He asked again for clarification “so the baby is ok?” and she confirmed the baby was ok. Almost instantly my blood loss started slowing down and after 6hrs at the hospital we were heading home. For about two weeks after I was beyond sick. I had lost a lot of blood, I couldn’t keep food and fluids down and I became severely dehydrated and weak to where I couldn’t take care of myself at all! Luckily my grandparents and my dad came in town to help take care of me for a week so that Lewis could still go to work. My intense nausea continue for weeks! It didn’t begin to subside until around 17-18 weeks! So I was pretty nauseous for quite a while, all day every day. But I felt blessed that she was ok, and I kept reminding myself that the nausea is only temporary and being nauseous was a reminder that she was still in my tummy growing!

I ended up taking my glucose test rather early on in my pregnancy around 14 or 15 weeks. I get a call the next day saying my levels were a little high and they would like me to take the 3hr glucose test. Those of you know that you have to fast the day prior for the glucose test. The first time I attempted to do it I threw up at the doctor office and was forced to reschedule before we even really got started (Covid protocol). They said I had to be able to make it without throwing up in the morning, which only lead to me rescheduling the glucose test three times because my nausea was so bad! After the fourth attempt, I get a call that I have been diagnose with gestational diabetes and needed to see a diabetic nurse who will help me manage a diet control routine to help me through the pregnancy. This was yet another thing I didn’t experience in my last pregnancies and I felt so frustrated. What I could eat and keep down was already limited and now I was going to be placed on an even more limited diet. However, due to covid-19 the diabetic team was so busy they couldn’t get me in for a few weeks which pushed me out to about 20 weeks before they would see me. Before we could even make that appointment God had an unexpected detour for us that would change the trajectory of our entire pregnancy.