Weekend Recaptured.

I hope that all you mommy's out there felt appreciated by your Baby Daddy's and little people.

I certainly did. My Mother's Day was full of cute rompers, jumpers, jewelry, sweet, sweet, sweet cards and my new sewing machine!!!

I am over the moon excited about this fun new toy but I'm sure it will sit in the box until I get some courage to use it.


Are any of you out there sewers (or is it seamstress)? Do you have helpful beginner tips? Websites with video tutorials? And most importantly what other tools do I need to get started?


Shawn hopped on a plane again this morning at 6 AM (which required me to wake up at 4:00 AM! Next time. He's taking a cab) to go to LA for 10 days so Saturday we took Phoenix to see Ocean, because of his love of all things fish & Nemo related. And he loved it. And so did I! Such a great, great movie, and incredible reminder of how AMAZING God is.  

But what I really wanted to tell you was that I spent 6 hours in the ER on Friday.


Starting a few days after Shawn got back from LA last month I started having really intense cramps. I wrote them off thinking that it was just normal reactions to the Mirena. Two weeks ago I started throwing up, which unless I'm knocked up, I never do. For the past two weeks I was just really sick to my stomach and had incredibly intense headaches.


For the past two weeks the symptoms came and went so I tried not to think much of it. Last Sunday after throwing up all weekend and having bad cramps I took a pregnancy test that of coursed popped up negative. 


But this past Friday the headache was so intense that I told my sister Savannah that if I passed out to call 911 and then Shawn. That's how bad I felt.


By 9 that evening after self diagnosing myself via WebMD and Grey's Anatomy episodes I determined that I must have either a brain aneurysm or an ectopic pregnancy. I woke Shawn up and we drove to the ER.


After being pumped with pain medicine and Zofran. A CAT scan and blood work it was determined that I only had acute sinusitis! How's that for a waste of time?


But after talking to the nurse practitioner we kind of determined that the Mirena has been making me feel bad the last several months and that my body has not had time to get back to normal hormonally. 


We had talked about taking the IUD out in September anyway, but recently after stumbling upon a lot of negative Mirena stories and my recent issues I thought about removing it early and getting on BC. But thank goodness I talked to the nurse because she said I definitely should not remove the IUD and then get on BC because that  would just further put my body in shock.


I think based on what I have learned Shawn and I are going to be having some heavy conversations in reference to timing. My mom and both the nurse think I should wait 6-9 months before I try and get pregnant again, which means I might need to put in a phone call to my moms midwife to ask about natural BC remedies. Because with my luck I'll have the IUD removed on a Tuesday morning and get knocked up in the evening.


Not that it would be a terribly bad thing, but the timing and pressure on my body, might not be so good.


Do I have any readers who have had bad Mirena experiences? Anyone who is on a natural birth control? The rhythm method doesn't seems to me to be as effective as "pull & pray" so I'd rather not try that. 


Please, please go and enter into the giveaway! It closes tomorrow!!!!!

So is she or isn't she?

I know that you all have been sitting on pins and needles for the last few days to hear if I am with child again.

And the answer to this most important question would of course be no!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! 


Is that angels I hear singing?

I was so super relieved to I hear I wasn't.

I love all of my awesome new followers and commentors (is that correct English? Or should it be commentators). 

I lot of you were saying that I should take that little incident as a sign. 


But you see I didn't quite feel the same way.

I would have been excited if I was, but I was even more excited when I wasn't.


Having a baby right now just doesn't seem like the right thing to do.


Getting pregnant with Phoenix was at the worst time, but I wouldn't change it for the world. All I can do now is make the best decision I should have made back then. Which is to wait.


Hear that teens? It is better to wait!



I really enjoy being our little family of 3 and snuggling on the couch together. I enjoy that our life isn't super chaotic and that we can get up and go and only have to grab one diaper bag as apposed to two.


I'm just getting my figure back. I'm sleeping. And I am now just figuring out who Shawn and I are meant to be.


We didn't take enough time to do that before Phoenix and it is paramount to me that we take that time now while we still can.

Do I want more babies? For absolutely, maybe, certainly, possibly.


I'm thinking after Phoenix's second-ok maybe third, or fourth, or seventh birthday I'll be ready to talk about it again.


But for now being the three soup cans (See cuz our last name is Campbell and it's kind of a play on the Three Amigos. Get it? No? Lame? Ok.) is ok by me!

More importantly however, why is my title post is third person?

Definition of Irony

Did you read my post yesterday about wanting to have more kids?

I had my IUD put in place in April and my follow up was 6 weeks later. Well I forgot about my appointment and kept forgetting to reschedule. 

It wasn't until last week that I got my reminder card for my "yearly well woman's visit" that I remembered about having my follow up.

Today was that day. 

I go in and jokingly say to the nurse that I hope my IUD hasn't rusted up there. Of course that's the beauty of the Mirena. It won't do that.

So my nurse practitioner gets me to put my feet in the stirrups and gets me all uncomfortable and she says "Well, your IUD is hanging out"

Alarm bells are RINGING in my head!

"I'm not pregnant am I?!" I screech.

Of course she couldn't tell and she decided to take my IUD out and since the last time my husband and I "visited" with each other was Sunday she wanted to wait until next Wednesday to take blood and put the IUD back in on the 15th, If I was in fact not knocked up.
  
Question: Do I take this as my sign to get impregnated again?  

I'm leaning towards no, but unsure because since Penny's birth Shawn and I both have talked about doing this again.

And what better way for God to tell you what to do but make all your safety options null and void?!

Scratching the baby itch

My beautiful niece made her arrival on Thursday. Being in the delivery room, and helping my sister nurse, and hearing Penny's tiny little cries sent me back to 14 months ago when my own terror on two legs was just a tiny little boy.

Since I've had Phoenix I have had two minor pregnancy scares. Once I had Phoenix I have literally gone back and forth on the option of having another baby. 


I'm the oldest of 8 kids ranging in ages from 22 to 8. I've been around kids my whole life and when I was younger I resented being from an older family.


But when my family packed up and we moved to Maryland when I was 17 my family was all I had. When you've already graduated high school it's hard to find friends. So my sisters, brothers, and I developed a very close relationship.


Combine that with not enjoying being away from home when I was 15 at Bible College and my urge to have tons of kids started to hit me. A number somewhere between 4 & 6 sounded pretty good to me.

But then my lovable, snugly, cooperative infant turned into a spirited (this is Tracey Hogg's description of him) wild energetic, fiesty, spicy, toddler.

I can barely manage to make a 20 minute trip to the grocery store with Phoenix before he's throwing his paci because he's mad at me or trying to lick the tops of the cans!


So I knew that at least until Phoenix was calm or three which ever came first, and at this point it both seems so far off, that more babies are out of the question!


And at times I also feel like we are complete family. When I envision our future I'm not always sure I see other little ones running around.


But when I walked into the L&D room Thursday afternoon I was hit with that feeling of excitement I had when I was rolled into L&D exactly 14 months and a day before! And then when the stunning Ms. Penelope made her debut and I got to snuggle with her and smell that new baby smell! I was enthralled!


And I walked out of the hospital wanting to make the first appointment I could with my Gyno to have my safety friend removed and get knocked up STAT!


But then Phoenix screamed and hit me and I was jutted back into reality.

But still over the past few days I've been able to spend with Penny that desire keeps coming back.


So those of you with more then one, what made you decide it was time to try again?



And those of you who have only one what made you decide one was it and do you ever get the desire to have more?

And the results are in...

I hope I'm not the only irrationally momma out there who thinks every headache, upset tummy, and sleepiness are signs of another occupant living in my belly!

Seriously ever since I've had Phoenix every few weeks I'm like 'Oh crap! Where' my aunt Flo?' and then sure enough she shows up a few days later then I expected. Since having Phoenix making those little red dots on my calendar once a month has been the least of my concerns!

I remember the day we got our little Charlotte girl I was on the way to Target to get pet supplies and it hit me "Oh my GOD! WHERE THE HE!? IS MY PERIOD!!!!" All through Target I walked around in this cloud thinking of two screaming babies, piling laundry, 2 diaper bags and fat rolls galore! I quickly ran to get a pregnancy test and drove home as quick as I could! I called Shawn to come upstairs and I was shaking and crying! Don't get me wrong. I love my monkey baby and I even loved being pregnant. But I don't have a lot of patience and I have always known popping kids out one after another was just not me!

Shawn tried to calm me down and say he really didn't think I was, but based on my math I hadn't had a period in like 45 days! So I pulled open the Clear Blue Easy box and peed so fast!

Those 5 minutes were truly agonizing! But of course it read "NOT PREGNANT!"

Phew! What a relief! But I sure did call my doctor and make an appointment to get Mirena...

But even with this trust little device, I still feel paranoid. Every few weeks when it seems my period is late again (she must like making me sweat) I'll ask Shawn if he thinks I could be, I'm always to scared to pull out my emergency pee stick.

But last night, my mom really freaked me out! After dinner I was debating if I wanted to go to Coldstones for dessert. And I said I had been "craving it"and of course my mom says "You aren't pregnant are you!?" "No!" I shouted. But that 15 minutes ride down the mountain really f'd with my head and as soon as I got home I pulled out my emergency test, took a deep breath and let it go.....



In case you can't see it, that does say NOT pregnant. Phew! Dodged another bullet!