Kristen’s Natural Pregnancy and Rainbow Baby at 41

On episode 87, Kristen is from Rochester Hills, Michigan. She moved to Barcelona, Spain, after graduating with a masters in Spanish and met her husband there. They married when she was 27. She was there for about five years when they decided to move to the United States. Her husband was a dentist in Spain, so he had to go back to school in order to practice dentistry in the U.S. Starting a family wasn’t on the radar in Spain. They didn’t think about starting a family until his schooling was completed. That was completed by the time she was 33, and there was nothing stopping them from trying to start a family.

She says getting pregnant with their first child was easy. It only took one time of not preventing it to get pregnant. She assumed getting pregnant was always going to be that easy. She wasn’t even good about tracking her cycle. She remembers she didn’t know she was pregnant right away. At the time, her routine was that she would teach, have office hours, and then go to the gym for about an hour every day. For three days in a row, she couldn’t get herself out of the car to go into the gym, but she didn’t know why. That’s when she realized she hadn’t had her period. Then she remembers on a Tuesday night, she had a craving for pizza. It was strange to her because she normally eats very healthy. The next day she took a test and it was immediately positive. Overall her pregnancy was uneventful. This pregnancy went well, except for the high blood pressure which she had to take medication for. She was active and still worked up until a month before she was due. She was induced and took a few days. They had to break her water and gave birth in the morning after being in labor all night. Her baby was small for her gestational age at 5 pounds 13 ounces, but, otherwise, healthy. She was a very colicky baby, so Kristen describes it as a hard introduction to motherhood.

Kristen wanted more kids. She always said she wanted at least two, but really wanted three. For Kristen, she didn’t get her cycle back until about a year postpartum. She and her husband tried for baby #2 while she breastfed her one year old daughter. She was doing ovulation strips, but that was about it. She wasn’t getting pregnant. The doctor told her breastfeeding might be preventing her from ovulating. The doctor suggested doing a cycle of Clomid and she was pregnant. There was a heartbeat which she recorded on her phone. At 12-week appointment, she gave her urine sample but also blood and tissue right at the doctor’s office. She didn’t know what to do. They did the ultrasound but there was nothing. She screamed and cried in the shower when she got home. She had counseling because she knew there was no way she could get through it on her own. She did grief counseling and that helped her a lot. She also did another grief group through her church. It took about 5-6 weeks for her HCG to get back to zero.

At 37, Kristen wanted to get pregnant again, but she didn’t consult her doctor. She just went for it. She was tracking again once after she had a cycle. August was her anniversary, so she forced herself to schedule an overnight trip with her husband. She wanted something to look forward to. She told herself to try to enjoy it. Going through the loss made her feel guilty when she was happy. The weekend trip was lining up with her ovulation. They tried during that weekend, and she got pregnant with her first rainbow baby, second child. She had high blood pressure again with this pregnancy. She didn’t get on medication because it was within an ‘okay range.’ She just needed to keep track of it. She used a different restroom when the doctor to give a urine sample because she thought she would have flashbacks of her first loss. Getting past the 12-week mark for her was her goal for the time being and then she can relax a little and not freak out quite so much. She was so terrified to lose the pregnancy that the only exercise she did was walk. She called the doctor often asking about what she could eat? She knew she was being over-the-top, but she couldn’t help it. She knows there’s not much you can do to prevent a loss, but she was determined to do everything in her power to prevent it. She went over her due date and swore she wouldn’t be induced again. She was about 37-38 weeks pregnant and was going into labor. She called about 2 am, and he told her to come in. It was just a painful kidney stone. She just wanted the baby here and agreed to get induced again. That took a couple of days and they had to break her water again. She got an epidural, but it didn’t work. There was no stopping labor and no time for pain medication. She had a PTSD moment during the labor because she felt the same as she did during the miscarriage. She had to tell herself she was giving birth and not having a miscarriage. She cried through most of the active labor and when he finally came out, she cried tears of relief. He was healthy but small. When she took her baby home, she went through a lot of grief again. The postpartum period with her baby was really hard. Her daughter also had a hard time adjusting. It took almost a year for her cycle to return.

Kristen had talked with her husband about trying for a third child, but she wasn’t really sure. They both went back and forth a lot about it. She was happy with her two kids and wasn’t sure she wanted to go through pregnancy again. She became pregnant again. She was excited and happy. At the first ultrasound appointment the doctor said the embryo was a little behind and suggested taking some progesterone. She had a feeling something wasn’t right. The embryo had developed to 9 or 10 weeks of gestation, but there was no heartbeat at her next appointment. She cried with the same nurse that was there during her first loss. Her doctor suggested having surgery because of how far along the pregnancy was. She immediately declined. She went home to talk about the option of having surgery with her husband. They both decided the surgery would be more predictable and had the surgery the next day. They had genetic testing done and it was triploidy. This second loss left her feeling angry.

She still wanted to have a third child. It was hard to get the idea of having three children out of her mind, but she also wasn’t ready to start trying again. She had too much pain, was angry and wasn’t ready to deal with the possibility of another loss. She was seeing her doctor for blood work to make sure her HCG levels went back to zero. It took much longer this time, even with the surgery which she assumed would be quicker. This time it took about 12 weeks for her HCG to return to zero. Her doctor told her this was at the (long end of a) normal time frame. The doctor suggested waiting at least one cycle, ideally two cycles before trying to get pregnant again.

I kinda hoped once we started trying it would happen quickly for us like it did the first time.

They waited two cycles before trying to conceive. She had some irregularities with her cycles, but nothing too out of the norm for her. She would have times where her period was a week late or she would have a long period. A friend suggested she do seed cycling to regulate her hormones. She ate four different kinds of seeds during her cycle: For days 1-14 of her cycle, she ate 1-2 tablespoons of ground flax seed and 1-2 tablespoons of pumpkins seeds. For days 15-28, she ate 1-2 tablespoons of ground sunflower seeds and 1-2 tablespoons of sesame seeds. It completely regulated her cycle which shocked her. After she started doing it, she would ovulate, then 14 days later, she started bleeding. It was extremely regular after doing the seed cycling. She’s not sure if it helped her get pregnant, but she believes it regulated her cycle. She also started tracking her basal temperature in the morning and used ovulation strips to track that, too. She was eating super healthy, worked out, and had acupuncture. They were trying every month but nothing was happening. She was very discouraged after six months. She went back to her OB to do more testing which all came back normal, including a good ovarian reserve. There was no physical reason why she wasn’t getting pregnant. She was turning 40 on Christmas Day, she still wasn’t pregnant, so she wasn’t happy to celebrate. She just wanted to get through the day and not pretend like she was happy. Later in April, she had an acupuncture session. As she laid there why she had the points put in, she had a vision of an embryo in her body. She thought it was strange, but hoped it would happen soon… or maybe she was just overthinking things. Mother’s Day that year came and went. She tried not to ruin the celebration by dwelling on things. She was chatting with a friend she met in the grief group. He told her of a vision of her next child his wife had while she was praying one day. Kristen hoped she was right but didn’t put much thought into it. She was at her breaking point. She was open to seeing a specialist and doing an IUI if she didn’t get pregnant. If that didn’t work, she just wanted to leave things alone. She had been having extremely regular cycles for the last year, but before an acupuncture appointment, she didn’t start her cycle. Kristen had the points placed as if she was pregnant just in case. She was putting off taking a pregnancy test. She was terrified of a positive test and having another loss. After a week of putting it off, she took a test and it was positive. She thought it would be a good time to make an appointment with her OB for bloodwork which all looked good. Her OB wanted her to do more bloodwork to make sure her HCG was going up. She waited for the call that Friday to confirm her bloodwork. She assumed it was going to be bad news because they waited until the end of the day. The call finally came that everything looks good and scheduled her first ultrasound. She was in disbelief. This time her husband was going with her.

This is the oldest I’ve ever been pregnant and the healthiest I’ve been.

At her first ultrasound appointment, she saw the other doctor while her OB was on vacation. The nurse attended who had been through it all with her. She didn’t notice at first, but the doctor didn’t turn the big screen on, just his small viewing screen. He announced this was good news when he turned on the big screen on the wall. She was convinced she would hear bad news. She began to cry because she was so relieved. She was very happy to be wrong. Her blood pressure was normal for this pregnancy this time. She was teaching again. She tried to stay with her normal routine as much as possible and not dwell on the possibilities of something going wrong. She didn’t feel super confident this time, especially during the first trimester. She did prenatal yoga because she felt like it was gentle and would help with birth. She always kept her friend’s vision of her next child in the back of her mind and that she should believe it. Her pregnancy was pretty uneventful overall but ended up having nonstress tests starting at 32 weeks. She had an anterior placenta, but didn’t have trouble feeling her baby move.

Names have been significant when growing her family. When she had the second loss, she kept thinking of the name, Emma even though she didn’t know if it was a girl or a boy. She kept feeling the name and wrote it down. As her pregnancy went on, she felt this baby was a girl. After finding out the baby was a girl at the 20-week, she didn’t tell many friends the gender. One day, she was talking to the same friend that had the vision of her third child. Her friend told her she felt the name Elizabeth. Kristen couldn’t believe it. Elizabeth was another name she was considering and even had it written in her phone. She took this as a sign that her baby was really going to be ok. She ended up naming her Emma Isabel, which Isabel is the Spanish version of Elizabeth.

Kristen wasn’t sure if she was going to do an epidural or not and wanted to prepared for both options. Kristen’s blood pressure was great and the NST were also great, so her OB didn’t want to induce her without a good reason. At her last appointment, she was already 3 cm dilated. One of the nurses that day heard she was going to yoga and just knew that would cause her to go into labor. Others in her yoga class were surprised to see her there. Kristen was feeling super uncomfortable and was ready for it to be over. At 9:00 pm that night, as she laid down, she heard a pop and wondered if it was her water breaking. She went in the bathroom to confirm more liquid was coming out. At 40 weeks, two days, she went into labor naturally. When she got to the hospital, she was still at 3 centimeters. They confirmed it was amniotic fluid, so they wanted to admit her. The nurse asked her if she had a nice dinner earlier that night. Kristen admitted, no, she had Taco Bell. She held off from the epidural until 3 am. She was trying natural labor, but she was hold on to the bed railing and shaking while her husband slept. She wanted an epidural that worked this time. They suggested she lay on her side for an hour and then switch sides to make sure the medication was distributed evenly. They continued to monitor the baby while she tried to rest. She felt constant pressure when she switched to her right side like something was trying to come out. Three nurses come in to exam her. They didn’t think the baby liked that position, so they moved Kristen again. After changing positions, she was fully dilated. The nurse asked her to wait 10 minutes to push for the on-call doctor to arrive. Active labor of pushes was only 16 minutes through seven contractions. Her baby was born at 5:38 am weighing 7 lbs. 2 oz. She had minor tearing and stitches like all of her other births. There was delayed cord clamping and had skin to skin. Her daughter latched on right away to breastfeed. Kristen and her daughter were released to go home less than 24 hours later.

Kristen did a lot of meal prepping in her second trimester before the baby was born, so that really helped with her recovery. She purchased a cookbook from Mama Meals. She was glad her husband was able to get two weeks off to help. She also hired a postpartum doula for a while to help because previously the transition from one child to two was hard. She preferred the daytime help with postpartum doula.

During the recording of the show, Kristen was 12-weeks postpartum and feeling pretty good. She thinks she has thyroid issues because of hair loss. She gained about 65 pounds and has lost almost 20 pounds so far. She is eating very healthy and starting to be active again. She believes this postpartum is better than the others, but she also has more help. She believes she has wisdom that comes with being more relaxed with how she wants things to be. Mentally, she’s much better than in this postpartum that her other two.

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