Kyra's Story

After 7 months of trying, I finally got pregnant with my second child.

From the very beginning, the pregnancy was vastly different from my first pregnancy. I had morning sickness right away, and bad cramping.

During my first trimester, I went four times to the hospital ER because of the pain. At first we were told it might be a ectopic (tubal) pregancy. Once that was ruled out, our concerns were always that I was having a miscarriage.

We were on a military post, and our hospital had a strict rule that patients were not admitted to OB/GYN until the twelfth week of pregnancy at the earliest, so I had no regular checkups.

I spent the first three months of my pregnancy worried every day that I would miscarry. Once I started my second trimester, I began regular visits to the OB clinic. Unfortunately, due to the shortage of doctors at our hospital, I never saw the same doctor twice and most of the time had nurses do my check ups. Because of that, I had to constantly go over the problems I was having with each doctor in attendance. While annoying, this also caused problems because the new person never knew what was wrong or what had been done. I was still having bad cramping, was always badly dehydrated, and had a couple of incidents where I started spotting.

I had an ultrasound done to make sure everything was ok during my fourth month, but they never found anything wrong. We didn't even get to find out the sex of the baby and, since we were only allowed one ultrasound during the pregnancy, I resigned myself to being happy that the baby was ok and waited to find out the sex of our baby until the birth.

During my fifth month of pregnancy, my cramping got worse and I began to have headaches. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me though, and I was ordered to drink one gallon of water daily. The water didn't help but a kind nurse told me to try drinking Gatorade and to water it down at home.

Two check-ups later I was no longer dehydrated. I entered my seventh month of pregnancy on Sept 11, 2001. My husband's unit prepared to deploy for the war, and my cramping got worse. I began to have Braxton Hicks contractions constantly. My husband and I would rush to the hospital, carrying our two-year old son in tow, fearing that the time had come. I was put on bed rest halfway through my seventh month. It was hard to relax when I was constantly afraid that I would give birth at any second. I was also concerned because my husband was on standby for deployment. The bags were packed, everything was loaded and waiting to be put on a plane. One call in the middle of the night, and my husband would be gone.

One evening I woke up bleeding and rushed to the hospital. The doctor couldn't find anything wrong again, and I wasn't in labor, so I went back home, worried but not overly so. By then I was 37 weeks along. My husband didn't deploy with the rest of his platoon when they went three days later to Kazekstan. He was given a waiver due to my problems throughout the pregnancy. Two weeks later, on Nov 13, 2002, I finally gave birth. The labor and delivery went fine, and my beautiful daughter Kyra came into the world.

Kyra had a small breathing problem that required her to spend her first night in the NICU, but I was able to take her home the next day. It was such a relief after all those months of worrying. She just turned a year old eight days ago and is a beautiful, happy, stubborn child.

I am now pregnant with my third child, and hoping for a smoother ride this time around.