On going "way" overdue.

I've never been pregnant this long. Although with every pregnancy I've had, I've been able to say that. I  have a very clear trend going here. Every baby comes later than the one before.

My first came fast, on his own, a couple of weeks early or so. We weren't expecting it as I'd always been told first time mamas tend to go pretty overdue. But it was a welcome surprise because he was healthy and 8lbs, 1oz, so nothing to worry about there!

My second, my daughter, was a different story. At 36 weeks, they checked my cervix because I'd been having a lot of prodromal labor. I was already 3cm dilated and though I can't remember for sure what my effacement was, it was a lot. Maybe 75%? The doctor's exact words were, "Any day now...don't travel for Christmas." Almost four more weeks went by after that with no baby. Each week, I was further dilated, until a few days before my due date I was sitting at 6cm dilated, totally effaced with no baby. I was partially exhausted by the nightly prodromal labor that would often last for hours, and partially scared of their warnings that if I wasn't induced, baby would come before I could make it to the hospital, so I agreed, a few days shy of her due date, to allow them to break my water rather than use pitocin. They weren't thrilled about taking that route, but they said if I came in when I was having consistent contractions that they could pick up on the monitor, they would allow me to go that route instead of the meds, and even though it was still out of my comfort zone, I felt like I was favorable for that sort of induction and that it was a safer/more natural option than drugs. So I did, and they broke my water, and she came fast and furiously an hour later. Though it went mostly fine (she had problems breathing and they did have to take her away, probably because it was such a crazy fast labor, but I'll never know), I have always regretted forcing her out. Babies stay in the womb for a reason, and for most of us, it's because they still need to be there. There are definitely cases in which baby is safer outside the womb than inside, but those are the exception, not the norm, and can usually be picked up from Biophysical Profiles and Non-Stress Tests, which are standard procedures when you pass your due date. I have no idea when Adalyn would have finally decided to come on her own, but it's not that crazy to think she might have stayed in there another week or two. I have a history of walking around pretty dilated for long periods of time.

By my third, I knew I wanted something different, and I got it.  Landon came on his own when he was ready, like Ben, and I waited, mostly patiently, for my body to do it on its own. He was my latest baby at three days past my due date, but looking back now, I was lucky. ;) I didn't feel like it at the time! It was a peaceful birth, though a really long labor for me and my own history, but there was nothing I regretted about it.

Now it's my fourth. I'm sitting here somewhere around 41.5 weeks pregnant, though there is some uncertainly about dates in about a 3-4 day range, so I could be as little as 41 weeks pregnant or more like a day or two shy of 42. If I had gone with my doctor's date (or the "accepted" date calculated from my LMP), I would be 43 weeks pregnant. Because I was charting and because I know how crazy my cycles run, I knew it was way off. In fact, this week I sat down with my chart and started doing calculations to make sure I know what I'm talking about and if my due date was really 9/14, I would have been EIGHTEEN DAYS POST OVULATION(!) before I got a super duper faint positive. That's insane. I've always gotten my positives at 8 or 9 DPO. But most OBs won't listen to that (as we discovered with Adalyn when I told them their due date was way off from my own and I knew without a shadow of a doubt what my correct due date was within a range of 3-4 days), so I would have been induced TWO OR THREE WEEKS AGO had I gone the traditional route of an OB. Baby would not have been close to being ready. This is the exact reason (well, one of them) I now choose the births I choose, with the providers I choose, and I feel it's the best and safest option for myself and my babies.

What's funny is that the pressure I'm feeling to get this baby out is coming from the outside world much more than internally (not so much that people are telling me I need to be induced, just that it's what I see all around me). To be almost 42 weeks pregnant is unheard of. Even in my "natural mamas" expecting club I joined this time around, most women's doctors won't allow them to go past 41 weeks (which is a whole 'nother problem, y'all...it breaks my heart that women are made to feel that have no say in their own health and care and bodies), so a lot of women were getting induced between 40 and 41 weeks. So even though in the homebirth circles I run in it's quite common for women to go to 42 weeks, I'm feeling like a freak of nature because I'm just about the last woman standing in my expecting club (a pressure I never anticipated I'd feel or would even bother me, but HOLY COW it is!), and I've had almost no friends go this late because they were induced if they got close to this point. I have to remind myself every single day that many women go to 42 weeks (or later - or a day or two shy) if they aren't being forced by a doctor's time clock to do something about it. And I do - STRONGLY - believe that more often than not, God (or nature if God isn't your thing) knows what he's doing much more than our own limited understanding of birth. If so many women would go to almost 42 weeks if left completely alone, then it is not a medical emergency that you're four days past your due date with no baby. It is not a medical emergency that I'm a week and a half past my due date with no baby, either. We've been doing non-stress tests, baby is responding beautifully, and this week I go get a biophysical profile and do my part to make sure that everything is still going well in there. I'm halfway done with my dilation now and totally done with my effacement, so clearly my body is doing what it needs to be doing, and hopefully for me, that means a fast and easy labor. I have to continue to believe that my body is working properly, because without that faith, I will run to the hospital for a dose of pitocin, and I will regret that forever, just as I regret forcing Adalyn out.    

There are things I could be doing right now to more aggressively hurry things along. I've considered them. I will still consider them if there are any signs that baby needs to come out, but for now, I'm trying to manage my grumpiness by hiding away in the bedroom when I can, taking naps every day and plopping my butt down on the couch when I'm in pain. No one ever said it was easy to be overdue. It's not. In fact, the last week and a half has been INCREDIBLY TOUGH. I'm not over here trying to sugar coat it like I'm amazing and this has been a cakewalk. Ha. No, just ask my husband. Or my midwife. I am not at all a joy to be around right now. But when it's all said and done and baby is here, I'll look back on these last weeks with incredible pride that I was able to truck along, hugely pregnant and uncomfortable, and continue to believe in my body and trust the process of birth, knowing I've given birth three times successfully and my body is equipped and capable of doing this again. There's a time and a place for medical intervention. I am so, so thankful it exists. I will have no problem utilizing it if it's necessary, and if I'm still pregnant next week, I may go down that path! And I will be forever grateful for it if does become necessary for me. I love modern medicine when it's needed. I'm so thankful for the abilities we have to intervene when nature doesn't quite get it right. But the honest to God truth is that I'm more scared of what would happen if I induced baby before baby is ready than I am of letting my body stay pregnant until my baby is ready. And I think if we all felt that way, perhaps our birth stats in this country wouldn't be so embarrassing compared to other developed nations.

Also, I'm just a really big hippie. So there's that.

This is what 41.5 weeks looks like. You don't get to see my face 'cause I'm too grumpy to smile. ;)

Since it's been almost nine months since my last pregnancy post...

I'm pretty bummed with myself at my awful documentation of this pregnancy. I documented everything in the last three, but having my side business has meant that when I do have free time where I actually have energy to do something, it's been spent completing orders, finishing up the website or, the last few weeks, nesting like a crazy person. Which is why my blog has been pathetically quiet for the past year.

So since my due date is a couple days away, shall we revisit the past nine months in fast motion?

8  weeks:



9 weeks:

10 weeks:

11 weeks (Waaaaah, I miss my hair!):

17 weeks (embrace messy hair, right?):

18 weeks:

19 weeks:

20 weeks:

And then we found out what we were having!

21 weeks (I chopped off all my hair...and totally please pretend this picture wasn't in my messy closet):

22 weeks:

23 weeks:

24 weeks:

25 weeks:

(and then I guess I forgot to document for a loooong time...) 32 weeks:

33 weeks:

35 weeks (That mirror is SO gross, I know. Don't worry, nesting kicked in and it's clean now.):

37 weeks:

38 weeks:

And now we're in week 39 and a few days from my due date! This pregnancy has somehow simultaneously gone by in slow motion AND at the speed of light. I have no idea how that's even possible, but it has. The first trimester was so. hard. Morning sickness had me laid up in bed for close to twelve weeks. I seriously couldn't function. The second trimester was fine, but definitely the worst of any of them. Everything about this fourth pregnancy has been tougher than the others (except for the pregnancy depression which seems to only hit me with my boys, so that's a huge plus! None of that this time!). The pain is way worse than ever before. For the first time ever, I've actually had some (minor) swelling and I WADDLE. Seriously. The fatigue? Out of this world. I'm not a napper but the past few weeks I've been randomly falling asleep in the afternoon. But then nighttime hits and I can't get comfy, contractions bad enough to keep me awake but not bad enough to be labor hit, I end up in the bath or eating cereal at 2:00 a.m. and beg God to just bring her out. But the realistic side of me who remembers how much work those first few weeks are is content to let her squirm around in my belly for just a little longer.

I'm so excited to bring her into the world just like Landon - in our dark, quiet bedroom, right into her daddy's hands in her own home.

Topical Steroid Addiction. It is a real thing + it is horrific.

I absolutely can't believe the last blog post I wrote was the end of January. I'm pretty sure that is the longest I've gone without writing since I started blogging years and years ago. It's not like good things haven't happened to our family, or that I have nothing at all to share (I'm 23 weeks pregnant with our second girl, yippee!). It's just that we've been a little overshadowed with the bad, and I haven't known how to put it into words. Sometimes I get tired of being a Debbie Downer.

For the last year or so I, like the rest of the world, have been obsessed with the uber popular phrase Choose Joy. Nothing about it comes naturally to me, I'm a total pessimist. But it makes sense to me, and I would love my children to grow up seeing the joy in their lives. So when I'm feeling more angry or bitter or frustrated or defeated than joyful, it's hard to share that with the whole world, because I feel like I'm saying, "Hey there, look at me, the eternal pessimist!"

I especially didn't want to talk about the kids' eczema because when I wrote that post in October, I believed that was it. I needed to believe we were past the Eczema Beast. So even though things took a really bad turn for the worse in February, I didn't know how to write about it because it was painful. And raw. And I felt that I was admitting yet another failure after so proudly declaring we had conquered the Beast. Sometimes eczema feels like failure after failure. You can't ever seem to win. And it can be so utterly defeating to think you've solved their problem, shouted it from the rooftops, and then it comes back. Eczema seems to constantly evolve. And maybe adapt. You find a way to make it better, but it always gets the last laugh. 

But this is a story that needs to be told. It's one that not many people know about yet. I'm a Research Junkie and as anti-steroids as they come (I've never made my opinion on those drugs a secret), but I was in the dark on this one. Eczema has become two to three times more common in the past few decades, so more and more children are being put on topical corticosteroids to treat the condition. Most are never told of the possibility of addiction and what withdrawal from topical corticosteroids looks like.

Steroid rebound. Have you heard of it? I had. It was my big fear in treating the children with topical steroids. For some, they use topical steroids to treat the patch or two of eczema on their child's body. The eczema gets better, everyone rejoices and the tube goes back into the medicine cabinet. But suddenly, the eczema comes back. And it's worse than it was before. It's spread to new parts of the body. Out comes the tube again. Some more applications, and the problem appears to be resolved yet again. But the cycle repeats. Stronger steroids are called in to treat the "worsening eczema." Rinse and repeat. For some, they use the steroid creams for too long against the advice of their doctors (steroid creams should never be applied daily!). For others, their own doctor advises them to use the creams incorrectly, for too long, and without tapering off. Either way, it's a recipe for disaster. 

Steroid rebound is actually a really lousy way to describe what's really happening. As it turns out, that's just the tip of the iceberg. What we're really dealing with here, in quantities that I'm afraid are much greater than anyone is willing to admit yet, is steroid addiction. It's a medically accepted fact that steroids have the potential to be addictive. The medical community has fully accepted that steroid-induced rosacea is a real condition. In other words, the use of steroids can actually cause rosacea. From the above link:

"In a recent study, researchers examined 75 patients (62 women, 13 men) between the ages of 18 and 60 who had steroid-induced rosacea-like dermatitis. The patients had used topical corticosteroids for anywhere from three months to 10 years. More than 90 percent suffered facial redness and hotness, and 97 percent reported burning or itching. More than three quarters suffered from telangiectasia (visible blood vessels), and 40 percent had the bumps and pimples associated with subtype 3 (papulopustular) rosacea. Many patients reported emotional stress, heat or sun exposure as triggers for their outbreak of symptoms."

90 percent?! That is significant! So why is it that the medical community as a whole continues to deny what many people are experiencing and learning on their own: that treating eczema with topical corticosteroids will often not only worsen the eczema and cause it to spread, but if removed from the patient's skin care regimen, will send them into a spiral of painful and tortuous withdrawal that made their initial eczema look like a cake walk?

To understand topical steroid addiction and withdrawal, the only real way I can explain it is to explain what's happened to our little guy in the last seven months. As I talked about in October, our kids were pretty much free of eczema. I attributed it mostly to the diet change, but knew that the sea air in Myrtle Beach in September was probably helping. I even prepared myself for the possibility that when the air got dry and cold in the winter, their eczema might return, but hoped it would be mild.

It really was. Adalyn stayed clear all through winter. She got a little spot here or there, but nothing that impacted our life in any way. But one November day, Landon's face looked like this:

I panicked. A few traces of a mild flare sent my mind reeling. Would we go back to last year?! I couldn't do that. I couldn't even mentally wrap my mind around the idea that life could ever return to that nightmare. It was too much. So against every single bit of better judgment I had, and every motherly instinct that I squelched, I pulled out a tube of over-the-counter, 1% hydrocortisone. It was over-the-counter. What could it hurt?! Yes, I hated steroids. Yes, we tried to stay clear of medicines unless our lives depended on them (true story). But what could a few applications of something so mild it's sold on grocery store shelves do to harm him? Surely if I just got a handle on the eczema really early, while it was still mild, I could stop it in its tracks.

Fear is a powerful tool, and it got to me. These days, I think back on this "flare" and wonder if perhaps it was only chapped winter skin. Maybe if I left it alone, just as I had done with Ben years ago, if I had refused topical steroids, just as I had with Ben years ago, his would have just gone away on its own, like eczema often does when left alone.

But I didn't, and there's nothing I can do now to change that. But I can use it to help others. Sharing my story just means others can educate themselves and make different and better decisions than I did and hopefully prevent this sort of mess for their own children.

A few months went by with hydrocortisone application here and there. His eczema spread to his arms during that time, but it was still pretty mild and it never occurred to me that it could be from the steroids even though last year his face was pretty much the only skin affected by eczema. As you can see from the picture below, he wasn't needing his scratch sleeves at this point much at all.

At the beginning of January, I started noticing weird things like the appearance of his eyes. My mommy gut was really screaming at me by this point. I was starting to feel really guilty about the hydrocortisone and noticing we were needing it more and more often. His eczema was starting to get a little worse.

This picture is actually after we had stopped using the HC, but I didn't snap any pictures of his eyes before, and this is the best picture to convey what they looked like. He just looked sort of sickly.

While on an eczema support board on FB one day in January, someone posted a link to ITSAN.org and asked if anyone had seen it. The post was quickly ridiculed by most moms on the board and the person who posted it was basically scolded. That alone was alarming to me, and curious, so of course I had to check it out. It turns out ITSAN.org is a website dedicated to informing others of the dangers of topical steroid addiction.

The overarching theme of this "support" board on FB was that the only solution for severe eczema was to go to National Jewish Hospital in Colorado. It was something we had already talked to our doctor about, but were discouraged to go because our doctor told us if our goal was to continue to avoid steroids, NJH was the last place we wanted to be. Their solution for eczema is a course of therapy at the hospital where the child bathes for long periods of time, then gets steroid creams and moisturizers applied to their skin and then is wet wrapped. It's very structured and regimented, and it does seem to really help the children who go. The problem for us, though, was that we believed strongly that steroids were not the long-term solution for eczema. Sure, I could bathe my kid all day, every day, apply stronger and stronger steroid creams and create a lifelong dependence on them. Maybe my kid would be lucky and unaffected by these strong drugs, but the side effects were way too severe for us to be willing to risk it. We like to take the "root cause" approach because masking symptoms just makes you dependent on the mask.

On the day I learned that many children (and adults) are getting addicted to topical steroids, I decided to put the tube of hydrocortisone away for good. I believed strongly that there was no way Landon would experience withdrawal. He only used 1% hydrocortisone! For a few months! It wasn't going to happen to us. But it didn't appear to be helping, either, so what was the point of continuing to take a medicine we didn't need that had severe risks associated with it? There wasn't one.

About a week or so after we'd stopped using the hydrocortisone (which I pretty much admitted to no one, because I was ashamed that I'd resorted to steroids after my strong stance against them), Landon's eczema spread. And it was different than the eczema we'd dealt with before. Although I still had my doubts (lots of them), the picture was becoming clear quite quickly. Topical steroid withdrawal is notably different than eczema in several ways. The skin becomes red underneath. Many get what's called "red sleeves" (Landon has had this same appearance, but on his legs, stopping at the feet). Instead of regular eczema, it can look like a sunburn. For Landon, it was all this red blotchiness underneath his skin that was new to me.

Rather than those raised, scaly rashes (although he had those, too), he had this redness. He also gets that way when he eats a food he's allergic to, so at first I thought it was related to food. But it just kept spreading off and on throughout his body.

Then the skin on his neck began to change. It thickened up, almost like leather. A lot of people call it elephant skin. Totally fitting, as it resembles the skin of an elephant (also known as lichenified skin). Thick, leathery, deep wrinkles, all sort of crunched together. The deep wrinkles freaked me out. It was hard to ever get a good picture that captured what his neck actually looked like, but this is as close as I could get. This was not baby skin! And oh, did his neck ever itch! He scratched at his neck off and on for months. This was his first real "flare" spot. And about a month or month and a half ago, the skin on his neck changed, softened up, and he stopped scratching it. It appeared to be moving down to other parts of his body instead, which I was thankful for, but just this past week he's started getting bothered by his neck yet again, and it's turning back into this sort of skin yet again, so I'm afraid the cycle is just starting over.

His knees have been like this, too. Deep, deep wrinkles. Even with his one knee completely bent, you can see those wrinkle lines in his knees. I'm an adult and don't have those when I bend my knee!

A quick google images search of elephant skin steroid withdrawal will produce lots of pictures that show just how mild Landon's elephant skin has been compared to so many others who were on stronger steroids for longer periods of time.

The redness and eczema has just continued to spread through the months.

Another (and possibly the worst) sign of TS withdrawal is the horrible itching. I really cannot grasp how much this must bother them, but I'm on a support board on FB with many adults going through this, and the way they describe it makes my heart physically hurt for my son. It's an itch that they literally cannot escape. They lose sleep, many have to go on disability while going through withdrawal because they hurt and itch so badly they cannot function in any capacity. Some can't walk. The brave warriors who go through this are amazing. Landon has been in his scratch sleeves almost non-stop for months now. He has to be in them, or he will quite literally rip layers of his skin off, making him super vulnerable to infection. He started to learn to take his sleeves off during the night, and we would wake up to horrible sights.

 The scratching is relentless, so even during the few minutes we change his diaper or switch his scratch sleeves, he can do real damage to his body.

There are good days, where we can take his sleeves off for a few hours, and as long as he's entertained and distracted and fully clothed (meaning no open access to arms or legs, but at least exposed hands), he'll not scratch. These are very common in withdrawal. They are flares. They come and go, and as the months go on, most will have longer periods between flares. Right now, we don't have any periods longer than a day or so where we can take his sleeves off for a few hours, however we have very cyclical patterns of extreme itch and total sleeplessness for a week or two, and a week or two of less itch and only waking a few times during the night.

For many on this withdrawal board, they've found relief in what they call moisturizer withdrawal. Another sign of topical steroid withdrawal is that suddenly, all (or most) moisturizers burn the skin. This has never happened to us! Shortly after withdrawal, I was putting on his normal lotion and he started screaming and crying. Some days he would act like I was torturing him if I put it on, other days he was totally fine with it. Because so many people were seeing success with shorter flares and less redness when they withdrew from moisturizer, and because I can absolutely see how artificially moisturizing your skin will condition it to create even LESS of its own oils, we stopped. We very infrequently put coconut oil on him now, but we've stopped all moisturizers in the last month or so, and the red blotches/patches are pretty much totally gone. Unfortunately, though, you can't escape the fact that it causes even worse lichenified skin/elephant skin. Another symptom of withdrawal is skin shedding like you wouldn't believe. When we take off Landon's sleeper in the morning, it basically snows. It's awful. The less you're moisturizing the skin, the more that is going to happen, obviously, but it's been happening for us since day 1 of withdrawal. Those of us who are doing it like to believe it does lessen the flare times. So far, it seems to be.

Adalyn had a moderate spring flare (the lucky girl didn't suffer mommy's bad decision to use topical steroids). It's nothing like Landon's, and if we keep her indoors all the time, her skin is almost totally fine, but I noticed that once spring hit, her legs would go crazy with eczema if she went outside. When we applied moisturizer, it was making her legs redder and blotchier, so we stopped with her, too, and maybe it's a coincidence, but her eczema improved leaps and bounds once we stopped the moisturizer.

It's a tough decision with eczema kids to keep them indoors or let them play outside. Because my husband is such an outdoors lover, I do let Adalyn go outside quite a bit. Probably much more than I should. I feel like kids should be outside having fun. But she pays the price every single time. If it's at all even warm out, her legs just flare right up. Landon is just too severe. I don't let him go outside very often. Since he has to have long sleeves and long pants with scratch sleeves over them at all times, he really can't go outside anyway once it's above, say, 73 degrees outside. The poor guy would just be too hot. So you'll usually find me inside with Landon while everyone else is playing outside.

This is Landon over the past week or two:

We're on month 5 of withdrawal. Some people can go through it for years, but luckily once withdrawal is over, most people have completely clear skin. We'll see what happens to us. And hopefully, since we used a mild steroid and for a short period of time, his suffering won't go on for too much longer.

All I want is for people to do the research first. If you or your child is on topical steroids for eczema or considering it, please check out ITSAN.org. There is a small(ish) group of us who have been going through this together, and those who have gone before us who serve as living proof of this nightmare, and the happy place on the other side. We are going to raise awareness! We are going to make sure that no mom is given a tube of topical steroids without being told of the very real danger of topical steroid addiction! We are going to share our stories so that the suffering of our children (or ourselves) is not in vain!

The National Eczema Association, after talking with ITSAN.org for a few years, launched a task force committee to research Topical Steroid Addiction. This is huge! And even more awesome is that we heard through the grapevine yesterday that at a recent conference, they discussed that they did, indeed, find that TSA is a real condition. We're so excited to see their official paper on the matter and to finally end the pointless and nasty bickering I've seen between eczema moms over the months. So many have claimed it can't happen for so long, and ridiculed the moms who refuse steroids, and it's time for that to stop. Our goal should be to empower each other. To make sure that every last person on this earth knows ALL the risks and benefits to each treatment. Only then can you make a truly informed decision. Our job should be to inform and then support, regardless of what the parents choose for their children at that point. At the end of the day, the truth is that not every child or adult who uses topical steroids will get addicted. Mine did, and it's tough. If I had been given this information, I don't think there is any chance I would have used that hydrocortisone in November and December, but hindsight is always 20/20, I know.

ITSAN.org is the best place to start. There are testimonies, pictures, tons of research and information and a great forum. Go forth and visit! :)

Chelsea, the author?

So I'm going to write a book. I feel like right out of the gate, people are going to either roll their eyes or laugh. But that's okay, because I'm choosing to banish the fear. That little voice inside that squelches my excitement and passion and drive? Gone.As a child, I dreamt of writing the next great novel. I have a dirty, crumpled pile of partially-completed fictional novels sitting on my desk as we speak. I found them while going through some old boxes a few weeks ago and I can't quite bring myself to read more than a few lines without chuckling like a little schoolgirl. They're pretty terrible. Nicholas Sparks-esque, but much worse. At some point, I came to terms with the fact that I'm much more of a technical writer than a creative one, and I banished the dream that I could be an author to the dark depths of my brain. Then a few years ago, my sick little kid was born. He was healthy at birth, but as the weeks passed, it became clear that something wasn't quite right. We were sent to a specialist or two, bounced between doctors and eventually threw our hands up in defeat. I turned to food almost immediately, which was funny because up to that point, the most thought I'd ever given to food was whether I should eat a hamburger or some pizza. But for some reason, the allure of healing through nutrition came to me early on, and I've been on a long and winding journey ever since.I say winding because my faith in natural healing has waxed and waned. And life obstacles like pregnancy and side projects have sucked up my time and energy. Not to mention the financial aspect of it all, which, in a few panic-induced moments, led me to forgo healthy eating or products for the cheaper and unhealthier alternatives. As time went on and our family grew, our problems only multiplied. For most who know me or have read this blog, it's not news that we struggled with pretty extreme eczema along with a few other issues (like frequent migraine-like headaches and vomiting for Ben and digestive troubles and frequent diarrhea for all three). It was beyond health issues we could cope with. They impacted our daily living quite drastically, and ignoring them away was not even an option (though we initially did try!). I feel like God has been leading me on this journey...to this point...where everything came to a head and combined so beautifully (in a weird sense of the word). For the first time ever, my faith in our diet and lifestyle changes were so strong that I didn't revert to our old ways, as I'd done every time before for years on end, met with awful results. For the first time ever, also, our problems were so bad that I simply couldn't just give up. I suspect that all the waxing and waning was partially responsible for setbacks worse than our original problems. All my life, I've struggled with self-esteem issues just like most women. Unsure of my life's purpose, I felt direction-less so often. I suppose this is something that comes with age, but as I grew, as my faith deepened and as my children got older, I began to see things more clearly. I felt like my path was being etched out right before me, so clearly if only I had been looking. I think the gift God gave me was a fire inside. And a way to put that fire into words. I'm painfully wordy, I know. Probably because I enjoy writing so much, but also probably because I have no idea how to be short and to-the-point. While I think I'm a pretty decent technical writer, I know I'm no grammar perfectionist (and thanks to autocorrect, I'm no longer even capable of typing coherent sentences more than 50% of the time).  But those flaws aside (and with a good editor - anyone?), I believe in myself, and I believe that I'm good enough to give this authorship thing a try. My goal is not to be an award-winning author. It's not even to have a publisher or an agent. I'm not fooling myself, and I'm setting my standard pretty low here. Amazon and iTunes have made self-publishing a piece of cake (relatively speaking), so that's all I'm going for. I'm not trying to write the next literary masterpiece. Just a little piece of nonfiction with one goal: helping others. My path etched before my eyes has been one of healing. I've been on a quest to learn as much as I possibly can for years. This year, especially, I feel like I've learned so much I can truly fill a book, so I'm going to try. We found tremendous success, and even cooler than that? The journey my children went on has helped other kids just like them. Seeing that the tips and tools we used to heal my kids were used by others to heal their kids who were as bad, or even worse, than ours, is just indescribable. It truly makes everything we went through seem like it had a purpose. I had a nice little talk with a friend last night about God's healing role in our lives. He IS the healer, and I would be leaving out a huge part of our equation if he didn't get the credit. Sometimes it's so easy to focus on our own control that we completely forget that the one in ultimate control is God, and he is ultimately the only one capable of healing. I chewed on that conversation in my head all night, wondering how this could all peacefully coexist. If God is the ultimate healer, is it foolish to attempt a healing journey? Or should God be part of our healing journey, in combination with other tools? Would it be foolish to say, "God is the healer, so I'm just going to pray for him to heal me and if he doesn't, then it's not his will," without doing any work on my own? I'm in the latter camp. For us, I can't deny that God played a vital role in our journey because it was all so perfectly orchestrated. So often I cried out to God only to be met with another possible explanation, right before my eyes. I feel like God placed people in my life to encourage us to keep going. The timing was always so perfect. Just as I'd give up, someone new would speak into my heart and encourage me to keep going, to keep investigating, no matter how tiring and hopeless it all felt. And I believe deep in my soul that my passion and drive and my kids' affliction were paired together for a reason. I feel like my purpose is to use what I've learned - what God has surely lead me to - and my passion for it all, to educate others. My hubby and I had an awesome weekend alone, and on the way home from picking up our kiddos, I blurted all of this out. I've been wrestling with the idea for a month or two, but I needed his support. And because he's the awesome guy he is, he gave it to me fully. And he gave me the courage to go for it, too. He believes in me, and that is a gem to have.My biggest struggle, and one I'm not sure I'll ever be able to overcome, is the ability to share what I know in a way that reflects my heart. It's tough to share anything alternative without being slapped with a "judgmental" label. How does one communicate that her only purpose is that of helping and encouraging? There's such a fine line between sharing information and making someone feel lousy about their choices that it's hard to navigate the waters. But here's to trying!

Health in pregnancy.

I love challenges.

I also love adventures and new things.

I started calling myself a "new things junkie" a few years ago because that's just how I roll. I like new projects, new goals, new recipes, new organizational systems, new decor, new room arrangements and new challenges.

Each pregnancy I've challenged myself to do the things I didn't do as well in the previous pregnancy. And it's fun, because it's a fresh start. It's a new chance.

With my first pregnancy, I did a lot of things I wish I wouldn't have in retrospect. I ate too much, gained too much, exercised too little, documented too little and didn't really educate myself much about how challenging birth was actually going to be.

Round two, I learned a little more about birth and had the experience of the previous one to help me better prepare. Even then, I went into the labor giving myself grace to get an epidural if needed, but I got through that labor without one and having a natural birth rocked my world. I ate much less (though I did still eat crap food) and gained much less and documented much more.

Round three, I wanted an even better birth experience, so we went full-fledged Earth Mama and hired a midwife who became a great friend. We had a homebirth and it was beautiful and more insanely life-changing than anything I ever could have imagined. I tried to eat better that time and did a brief stint as a vegan which totally backfired when I became severely anemic which threatened my homebirth. Once I fell off the vegan train, I spent the rest of that pregnancy eating like crap, too, and ended up gaining more weight than my second pregnancy (but at least less than my first). I got horribly depressed and didn't do enough to learn about why depression in pregnancy happens. I just popped a pill for a month until the depression subsided on its own. I did way better documenting!

Round four (still can't believe I'm saying that), I have a few more challenges for myself.

• Keep up the documenting (and make something more awesome now that I'm actually proficient in Photoshop)
• Eat healthy - whole foods almost the whole time, super rare fast food trips, way more water, big loads of veggies every day
• I'm on an awesome vitamin/supplement regimen these days that has given me a whole new outlook on life! Seriously. Natural Calm (incredible stuff) + 5000 IU/day vitamin D drops (also incredible and what I credit the very most for my shift in health),  Adrenal Health supplements because mine are shot, Green Pastures butter oil/fermented cod liver oil (finally found a way I can take these!), and some iodine drops (though doc says only safe for short periods during pregnancy) have made me feel like a new person, so I want to keep these up. For me, the starting point is always the tough part. Once I develop a routine, it becomes easy to stick to. But I have to force myself to do it for a few weeks before it becomes second nature. This little regimen is finally second nature, so I really want to keep it up! And I want to drink a cup of this Dandy Blend every day, too, to get a dose of beneficial dandelion (now I sound like a crazy person, I know). I've been drinking it for almost a week and love it. Even my cousin was a convert! 
• EXERCISE. This and laying off fast food are the two toughest challenges of pregnancy I've never been able to succeed at. We're getting ready to buy a treadmill and Lord willing, I am hoping that this is it for me! I truly despise exercising outside. I guess I have exercise-induced asthma (which could not be a more embarrassing diagnosis, am I right?!) because I always end up a wheezing, red-faced mess when I come inside. The only times I've ever maintained exercise for anything longer than a week have been when I had access to a treadmill either at the gym or when I was younger at my parents house. I want to do an hour on the treadmill 5 days a week. HUGE goal for me, but it's my #1!
• Learn more about essential oils and herbs. I've become about 86 times more crunchy since Landon was born, and dipping my toes into essential oils has been quite the experience! I've always been a little (orrrrrr....a lot) skeptical of herbs and oils. Until I got my first order from Young Living. So far I've had huge success with kicking Ben's headache, my joint pains and using Peace & Calming to relax me in the evenings (That + Natural Calm before bed equal a sleepy mama without wine! Miracle!). Plus to finally get to have a yummy smelling house again (we gave up the Scentsy and candles and air freshener awhile back)? Yes, yes, yes! Love having an essential oil diffuser. Since we've had such tremendous success with oils, herbs seem logical, too. Mother's Milk tea did always help me, even if only a little. So I'm challenging myself to learn more about beneficial herbs and oils in pregnancy and labor and use them!

I'm not setting a weight goal for myself because if I'm following the above, I don't care what I gain, because I'll know it's what my body needs to gain to create a healthy baby. I can get super obsessive about my weight in pregnancy, so another huge bonus of going the midwife/homebirth route is the choice not to be weighed. 

That's all she wrote! But for entertainment purposes, I leave you with the largest 4 week belly ever. For real though, I'm embracing it. I solemnly swear not to complain about it this time around because even though I'm a freak of nature, the pregnant body is gorg.

A Hibbz Family Outing

Take a quick peek at this video and then scroll down. :)

Oh heeeeeeyyyyyy.

That's how I told hubby we're gearing up for baby #4. I suppose I could have waited 24 hours for this to pop out and it could have done the talking for me, but I'm glad I found the coolest way yet to tell him!

This baby was very much planned and as that was a first for us, it was so exciting to anticipate it, go through negative after negative test, counting this month out completely, then being a few days late and randomly testing to find a suuuuuuuuper faint line staring at me. My heart about jumped in my throat as I grabbed another brand, tested, and waited with shaky hands to find a slightly darker line greeting me.

Since we planned this baby, I wanted to take some time to put together a cool announcement. Something memorable that will be ours to cherish forever. I'll always adore the video we have of Ben telling Tim we were expecting Adalyn.

While my sis-in-law was here last week, being the budding videographer she is, I asked her if she could take some video footage of our family hanging out in downtown Greenville to help me put together this little surprise for when we eventually (God willing) got a positive. I told Tim I wanted more pictures/videos of us documented (which was partially truth) and I quickly began editing in iMovie, so excited even though I didn't think I was pregnant at the time. I figured I had at least another month to finish it up, so I put it aside to tackle some work projects instead.

Then a few days ago, I took that random test while I was getting into the shower, set it on the counter and forgot about it. I knew I was already two days late, and I've always gotten crazy early positives. So I'd written off hope for that month but some tiny voice inside me told me to just take one more for the...fun of it or something. A few minutes after I got out of the shower, I happened to glance down and just as I was getting ready to toss the test in the trash - BAM! A teeeeeny, tiny faint line. 

I wanted to tell Tim right that very second! But I couldn't because I hadn't finished this stinkin' little video and I was bound and determined to make it cool (our last pregnancy was announced by me calling him at work, crying, asking him if he was sitting down and proceeding to sob like a baby - I had a six month old colicky baby at the time, so that pregnancy came as a complete and utter shock). 

I threw together the ending of the video as quickly as my little fingers would let me and told him I would love it if he could give me 3 minutes to check out the video I put together from all the footage his sis took. I tried to capture his reaction on film, but the guy moved the laptop where I had it all set up to show him (he wanted to sit on the couch to watch it), so that part was a bust. 

/////Just insert awesome reaction here/////

We all know that I look six months pregnant the day I get the positive (even with my first, but it just keeps getting earlier every time), so just roll with it. At least by now I don't have to fear looking like I've got 8 babies in there by the end. I know that as some point I slow down and catch up to normal pregnant women. But this time it's so crazy that when we showed my mom and dad the video yesterday, my mom said, "You know, I suspected it! I just didn't want to insult you by asking you why you looked pregnant." There no hiding this baby bump! So at 4 weeks, there's your announcement.

Although we are hopeful to foster at a later point in our lives, this little babe should complete our family  for now and my heart is about to explode with anticipation. :)