Building a Family

The whirlwind…

Building a family. How can I possibility be thinking about having more children? Thinking about when? Thinking about names? Thinking about the nursery? Thinking about rearranging the home to make room?

So it’s really not a secret that Mike and I want more children. But the thoughts of more children and having more babies have been constant on my mind. I have baby fever and I already have two beautiful healthy miracle babies that are my world.  I love being a Mom and having babies and I guess this why I am eager to have more.

How are my babies already 8 months old? This is going too fast.

Ah. Can you see the whirlwind?

So the hypothyroid thing has put some pressure on me to think about when to have more children. Because of this condition future babies will need to be way more planned than the twins were. The twins were not unplanned but we decided not to use birth control and decided we would just see what happened. Future babies cannot be like this. I have been specifically told this by 3 different doctors now.

I have been given specific guidelines on when to get pregnant again, if I choose to do so.

My OBGYN told me that if I wanted to have more kids that I needed to do a preconception appointment to screen my thyroid conditions, she said my levels should be no higher than 2. She also told me to wait until there was 2 years between births so that my uterus can fully heal and I can try for a VBAC if wanted. No problem here with the time frame as I would love to try for a VBAC and would already have to be pregnant for this time frame to not be okay! Her main point since I am not on an official form of birth control was to be careful not to get pregnant unplanned!

The ENDO told me. 2 months before I want to TTC she would want to increase my medication and test my levels so that a pregnancy would not throw me into a hypo period. Since being hypo during pregnancy can cause miscarriages, birth defects, mental retardation, and lower IQ scores.

Here’s the big one… having a hypothyroid condition can cause infertility. I specially asked the ENDO if I should be worried about this. Because it affects everyone differently she was of course unable to answer the question. Other than saying, “it can, yes, affect your fertility.”

So this makes me think if we want another we should try sooner than later because I don’t know how beginning hypo has affected my fertility.

Of course I have to get myself healthy first and that is the number one goal.

 But how long should I wait after that?

I would like our kids to be 2-3 years apart in age. So that would be TTC this summer at the earliest. While it sounds crazy if we are healthy and able… maybe we will try. I say the more the merrier.

Of course I am scared to be pregnant again. I had a hard pregnancy, months of sickness, hospital bed rest, twins coming early, the scary NICU experience. But the only thing that scares me worse than being pregnant again is NOT being able to be pregnant again.

Whirlwind,

Heather

P.S. I count my blessing every day. These are my raw emotions straight from my whirlwind of a head.