First night in the Hospital

Yesterday started pretty early for me. I woke up around 4am and just couldn’t go back to sleep. I was not feeling too well, my belly just felt weird. Around 5 the contractions started, but nothing unusual, They were not hurting that bad. But my belly was hard as a rock and stayed like that the whole day. So after going back and forth all morning long, on what to do, I called dr.Jeffer’s office and spoke to a nurse. They made an appointment for me right away. I called Oly’s work and asked if he could come home and take me to the hospital. Fast fwd: I got admitted. My blood pressure was higher than normal, lots of contractions… but the cervix was still fine.

Once I got into my room, lots of equipment was brought here. They had to keep track of each baby so they needed another computer and a few more heart monitors. It took a while to get all those monitors on my belly, I had one for each baby and one for my contractions. I just couldn’t believe it – I was having contractions every 6 minutes! I probably spent 30-45 min laying on my back with all those things attached to me and my back started hurting a little. In the beginning I thought it’s from my belly contracting so much. But at some point the pain was unbearable! The left side of my belly all the way to the back was hurting me so bad! I kept breathing thinking it’s just another contraction, a very serious one this time around. But why just half of my belly and the back? The 3 nurses that were in my room at that point were looking at me very worried but there was nothing they could do apparently. Looking at the monitor, they said it sounds strange because I’ve had contractions like that before but couldn’t figure out why I have so much pain this time. I thought I am going to lose it at this point. Oly was holding my hand and he kept telling me it will go away, well it wasn’t! I was covered in sweat and I really thought I am about to have these babies right at that moment. I asked made the nurses take the 4 monitors for the babies off me so I can turn to the side and try to relax. Even breathing was to hard for me. It slowly went away, but my side all the way towards the back still hurt. It was manageable though. Then I got the chills, I was freezing! Even after I warmed up, my body kept shivering for a while. I thought that was it, it went away. But shortly after, I needed to go to the bathroom. The second I got up, the pain was back. I don’t even know how Oly managed to take me in and out of the bathroom, I thought I will faint every step of the way. I got back in my bed, terrified… Is this what being in labor means? are the babies coming? am I ready? All these questions and many more crossed my mind. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, but I was trying my best to keep myself together. My hubby kept telling me that we’ll be ok, the babies are good and all that pain doesn’t mean they are coming so early. He reminded me that only God knows the day that He picked for these angels to enter our world, we should not worry.

I did get some pain killers and it helped a lot. This is just for a short period of time, until they figure out what is wrong with me. I was happy to see Ada and my in laws later at night. The doctor -that was on call- stopped by and checked me out. He thinks I might have kidney stones on my left side. So they’ll make some urine tests and hopefully this morning we’ll find out. Not sure what’s the plan if that’s the result. I will be spending the whole day here. They said I have a chance of going home tonight but I am not getting my hopes up. Whatever they consider better for me, I’m fine with it.

Oly decided to spend the night with me, he was too worried to leave me here. I thought that was very sweet of him, it did make me feel a lot better just seeing him sleeping on the sofa next to me. I didn’t get much sleep though, even after taking some Ambient. Before we went to bed, I was pain free, so we had some fun taking pictures 🙂

prego style in my new room

O & L

the view from my room

Can’t wait to see how today is going to be and how long I’ll end up being here. Thank you to all of you that have been praying for us! I know God is in control!

Lori.
27 weeks.

Happy 4th of July Y’all! :)

What better time than 4th of July to pack the car and go camping? Forget about bed rest!

4th of July 2012

Just kidding! These are  from last year’s 4th of July. Ada decided to give it a try, came with us and she liked it. It was very hot, remember last year? Everyone thought we were crazy to go camping. We are a little crazy! Now it’s so hard for us to stay home. Every time we had the chance to go somewhere and have fun, we would not think twice. Camping is one of our favorite things to do. And now that the babies are on their way, all we talk is about how as soon as they are old enough, we’ll go camping!! This year, we’ll take it easy. The weather helps too, this rain doesn’t get you in the mood of going anywhere. But still… if I would not have to be on bed rest, we would probably be somewhere right now.

Today we had to go through a bunch of hand-me-down baby clothes that we got from some friends at church, to sort them and get them ready to be washed. It was funny in a way because we did that so many times but it was not about us, not about our kids. This time around we would look at cute outfits and cute hats thinking how our babies are going to look wearing those 🙂 Oly would ask my opinion on every single on of them, except the ones that said something like “I love daddy” or “Daddy’s helper”, he just piled them up right away without hesitation! We are getting closer and closer to becoming parents and it is so exciting! The babies are always on our minds and we talk about them, we talk to them, we imagine how they are going to be like, how they are going to look like, it is so much fun! Four precious babies at the time… wow! I am still amazed! Almost everyday we get to surprise somebody with our news about expecting Quads. It’s funny how people react! Some are so excited – I used to take the youngest of the Fogles – Bennett- to My Gym in Buckhead and his coach, a sweet lady, was so amazed when she found out I am expecting quads! She just wanted to hug me all the time. From that moment she considered me and the babies a true miracle from God and she kept telling me that there is a big plan for us and that God has something special for our family. I agree!! Other people get scared when we tell them about these four babies. I guess some of them think having one baby is hard and it changes your life and all that, they cannot imagine having four at once! Well, we cannot imagine our lives without them now, and they are not even here yet. It is probably the best feeling I ever felt, and I know my husband feels the same. Four innocent angels that need us so much! We are excited and so happy that this is happening to us!

Back to bed rest. Today, Dr.Jeffers ( my OBGYN ) told me how happy she is about how things a moving forward. My fluids look awesome and the babies are perfect, growing and developing normal, my cervix looks great (it has a huge role in getting me into labor) – honestly nothing to worry about. So I need to keep being good about everything, no camping trips what-so-ever 🙂 She even said that I will probably get to 32 weeks or more!!! That is the biggest deal to hear that from her, because in the beginning she told me that I should keep my fingers crossed to get to 28 weeks. It seems like quadruplets usually come in between 28 and 30 weeks. I was SO happy to hear that, especially coming from her. But we are still going to do everything we can to pass even 32 weeks, even 34 and get this pregnancy as far as we can. All that with God’s help of course. And because recently we’ve learned a new song from a person that prays for us a lot and encourages us every single step of the way, I will share a little bit with you:

“What God has for me, it is for me
I know without a doubt
That he will bring me out
What God has for me, it is for me”

Our plan didn’t work out, but we know that God has a plan that always works out, better than we can imagine! This is His plan for our family. And we love it 🙂

Have fun this 4th of July and be safe!

Lori.

20 weeks, 2 days

Infertility

Infertility is such a sensitive subject. And you don’t realize that unless you walk that path. There are so many couples that struggle with infertility. I never imagined that we will have to deal with it and I never knew how hard it is going to be. As a woman, I believed that it is only normal for me to get pregnant without any “extra help”, I thought it is my right. But it doesn’t work that way. God is the only one that decides for each and every one of us when, how and if we are going to have a baby. He is also the one that guides you in the right direction when time comes.  I will make the long story short and leave out many details because it would take forever to write everything down. So here it goes!

After being married for 2 years, we felt like we were ready to make our family whole. 3 more years passed by and nothing happened. Of course I was getting worried that something might be wrong with me or my husband. I remember people asking us if we are planning on having babies. Duh! We SO wanted to have babies, but nobody knew and we didn’t even know what was going on at that time.  Last year at some point Oly went to get checked out and see if he was the problem. He passed all the tests and so I knew…it was me. Still I waited a while, I guess I was scared to hear that something might be wrong with my body.  In November 2012 I had my first visit to an infertility clinic and I found out that I do have a couple of issues that keep me from getting pregnant. It was very emotional, I remember I was crying so hard when I left the office that the cashier from the parking lot looked at me and said ” You obviously are having a very hard day, so go ahead, you don’t have to pay for the parking today!” . I was told I have a condition called Endometriosis (you can Google it to find out exactly what it is) that is very common in women with infertility. But the main problem was my eggs… not enough and poor quality for a woman my age. A healthy woman has about 25% chances of getting pregnant each month, I had 1-3% . Of course I was upset and I would question why why why but soon I realized that my life is not in my hands and God doesn’t make mistakes. So after I told Oly what was going on, we both decided to go ahead and do whatever we can to fight infertility. Even though we were going through something so hard , God has given us the best doctor we could ever have asked for, which was also our friend and our number 1 supporter. So the problem came with the solution attached to it 🙂 At that time nobody knew what we were dealing with, we decided to keep it to ourselves until we had some good news to share.

Now, to make it clear to everybody out there, we did NOT use IVF! These babies are NOT the result of In Vitro Fertilisation! In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process by which an egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro. IVF is a major treatment for infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. Here is the treatment that I did: I was given medication (Clomid 100mg) to stimulate the ovaries to release eggs. An ovulation kit and ultrasounds were used to determine when ovulation would likely occur. Then, my husband’s sperm was transported via catheter at the very time when ovulation was expected, into my uterus (IUI = intrauterin insemination).  The success rate is around 15-20% per cycle so it is truly amazing that quads were conceived this way.  We went through this process 3 times, the 3rd time worked like a charm and I got pregnant with four babies! It is very unusual to have this result so we feel  4 times blessed and so happy and excited! It was a shock in the beginning because we didn’t even know quadruplets were possible with this kind of treatment so it didn’t cross our mind that it could happen. But it is so obvious to us that this is God’s plan for our life and we’re moving on day by day 100% through faith! These miracles are everything we focus on right now.

I am going to be 18 weeks tomorrow and 2 nights ago I felt the first baby kicks! It was just amazing! I got so emotional 🙂 My mother in law and 2 of my sisters in law were there to witness which made it even more special. I think baby A (Hannah) wanted to play! All the babies are doing great, they are very healthy and about 7 oz.each, that’s about a half a pound each! I didn’t mention yet, but we are having 2 boys and 2 girls, how perfect is that? 🙂 So, at 18 weeks I have 2 pounds worth of baby in my womb! I had to stop working a week ago, sooner than we thought, but it is all for the best of the babies. I am thankful for all the prayers that were lifted for us, because it is all in God’s hands! And it is the safest place to be!

Lori.