Dear Tennessee Grace

As I sit here on day 5 in the NICU and things are starting to settle-mentally, emotionally and physically (c-sections are OUCHIE!), I find myself still needing an outlet, a place of zen and peace to calm mommy’s nerves. I have always loved writing. You will learn this about mommy as you get older. I’m sure I will be writing you poems and you have already inspired me to finally write those children’s books I’ve always wanted to do. For now, this blog will be letters to you. There is already so much to write about! This pregnancy has been full of “excitement” to say the least. I have so much admiration for mommies now. Women are true warriors and I have no doubt you will be one day too. 🙂

So let’s start from the beginning of mommy’s journey, which seems like another lifetime at this point but it’s important to know the journey in order to cherish it. So mommy has always known her uterus was unique. In my early twenties I was wrongly diagnosed with bicornuate uterus. This is big word but basically means my uterus is shaped like a heart and may make having babies difficult. A few doctors even told me that conceiving would be near impossible. But mommy is stubborn and no one has ever been able to tell me I can’t do something, that just makes me want to fight harder. I hope you get this stubbornness! Hehe. Through out my twenties I knew it was important to plan a family and have doctors involved to make sure it was safe for me. After mommy and daddy got married, we started seeing a fertility specialist. The pelvic MRI showed a different diagnosis! I have septate uterus. This means I have a full septum that runs down the middle of my uterus, kind of like the septum you have that separates your left and right nostril! Pretty neat right? Except when you’re wanting to grow a baby… this can cause a few things to go wrong. Babies can implant on the septum which doesn’t have enough blood supply to support a pregnancy leading to early term miscarriage- which we believe happened in January 2023 when mommy experienced this 😦

If baby implants on the uterine wall, this means early loss is less likely YAY! However, the risk of late term loss becomes a major concern as baby only has half the space to grow and could run out of room too early- leading to late term loss or other complications.

However, there is an amazing surgery called septum resection that can be performed to remove the septum and allow the proper amount of room for baby to grow. This has allowed thousands of women to deliver full term babies with no complications! However, after seeing our specialist, he advocated against this procedure as there are risks of scar tissue that affect fertility. He recommended we try for a baby on our own as there are also thousands of women who have full term babies with a full septum. In September of 2022, daddy and I started trying! 🙂

Mommy tracked ovulation and daddy did a good job of reminding mommy that the more we “try”, the better our odds were of succeeding! Haha

January 2023 I just felt “off”. I texted your auntie Britni who has been mommy’s best friend since 8th grade and told her I have a feeling I might be pregnant. Daddy was working so I grabbed a bottle of wine and a pregnancy test and off to auntie Britni’s I went to take a test! (The bottle of wine was to drown my sorrows if it a negative test). BUT it was positive!!! I cried in Brit’s arms and ran to the store to throw a onesie in a bag to surprise daddy when he came home. It was pure bliss telling those close to us that we had conceived. But shortly after, we were in Williams enjoying a weekend in the snow when I started to cramp and bleed. I knew in my heart baby was leaving me and the heartbreak was overwhelming. Experiencing my first loss was emotionally overbearing but it was my first taste of loss in the midst of keeping my hope… In the months to come we tried for another rainbow baby but the months grew long and I found myself accepting that motherhood may not be God’s plan for me so we stopped tracking ovulation and just lived. Both daddy and
I had decided that we would leave it in God’s hands and 1 of 2 things would happen for us, either we would be blessed with another miracle or we would be planning more date weekends in Nashville (our favorite place on earth). We were starting to be content with either. 🙂

that was until I had THE dream that would change our lives forever… It was a normal Thursday night. The next day was a busy day planned to clip Mia’s calf for fair coming up. I had slept well, there was only one thing different. THE DREAM…

I was in a long flowy terracotta colored dress standing in a wheat field with a mild breeze just enough for the wheat stems to be slowly blowing back and forth. My hair was long and curled and my makeup was perfect. I was in the middle of a photoshoot and I could hear the voice of a photographer telling me each pose to do. “Look at the camera, look away with a serious face, touch your hair softly…” I was playing with my flowy dress and walking through the fields until the photographer told me to “stop right there and put your hand on your belly” I was confused but I did what he directed me to do and when I looked down at my belly, it was BIG!!! I screamed at the sight of it and blurted out “AHHHH!! What’s that?
” And in the softest tone, the photographer said “that’s your belly Rayeann, you’re pregnant, this is your maternity shoot!” Instantly I woke up…

Straight out of a dead sleep. We had not been “trying” for months, I didn’t feel sick or off this time. Nothing else in life told me I was expecting. But I flew out of bed and KNEW I was pregnant. I dug through the bathroom drawer hoping I had a left over pregnancy test from a year ago and after dusting off the test,I took it. INSTANTLY IT WAS POSITIVE! I ran to wake up daddy and tell him mommy had you in my belly and Nashville trips would be few and far between now. 🙂

and so the journey of pregnancy begins…