Fall and Other Pumpkin Related Things in Thirty-Nine

Lots to cover, so buckle in!

Howdy my friends, I hope things are going well for you all. We have been busy here pretty much since June lol. But I’ve not updated since August, which is pretty normal for me these days, ugh.

There has been A LOT going on. I will go all the way back to August though since that is where we left off. We had a whole fiasco happen with Miss Cleo and her kittens. She gave birth to 5, one was stillborn, and another one passed pretty quickly. I noticed after a while that Cleo was not doing well, so I took her to the vet later in the day, and unfortunately they could not do much....she had a kitten stuck inside of her. It was a huge one.

So I had called and one of the other vets was going to do an emergency spay in the morning, but she didn’t even make it more than an hour after we brought her home that night. I was so devastated. So we tried to bottle feed her babies. They were eating and staying warm, but none of them ended up making it either. That was super traumatic and I was just depressed for a few days after that.

During all of that time, around the 29th of August, we had received some news that we sort of knew was coming, but we weren’t really sure when it would happen. I personally thought it would happen in another handful of years, just because of the timeline.

Back in 2008, Randy had moved to Houston to be with the girl he had been seeing (in California) and he was only there for 3 months. Hurricane Ike hit, their relationship was not good, so he decided to move on and went back to Cali.

A few months later she tells him she’s pregnant. Fast forward to May of 2009 and she has the baby, tells him it’s his. He requests a paternity test, and she gets mad and says no way. He’s like I can’t do anything without the test to prove she’s mine. She gets even madder, because how dare he want proof, and they don’t have any more contact. She reaches out to him sometime later, like 2014 and only says “I had a dream about you are you ok”. Nothing else about the kid.

Fast forward to August 29 of this year, she reaches out again and says, hey, A has been asking about her biological father and I think it’s time we be adults about it and let this happen. She sends a picture and it’s undeniable that she is his. I tell him you all still need to do a DNA test. Which, mom is perfectly fine with doing NOW. So....Randy has a 15 year old daughter. He’s headed out there (Austin, TX) right after Christmas for a handful of days. They’re going to get the DNA test done when he is out there.

So that was a huge piece of info to have to eat that weekend. He has been honest about that whole situation from the beginning so it wasn’t really a surprise so much as it came at a really interesting time. He’s been talking to both of them (mom and daughter) and lots of questions have been asked and answered. First and foremost, they (mom and step dad) let Randy know that they’re not looking for any sort of child support. Just the fact that A has been asking about her dad and she wanted to know him after all these years. Mom didn’t even tell her about her dad until a couple of years ago, so now that she has gotten much older, she was the one who pursued asking about him, so I think that is a good thing. Instead of either of them being like hey, this is your dad or, hey I’m your dad.

So that was like the 29th....thursday or so. The weekend rolled around and we were kind of just like hmmmm still processing that.

I had been using an app to track my periods for years, and we hadn’t been having success trying to get things done during my fertile week because sex was not really a thing for us (hence why I was going elsewhere for it, with his permission). Well, in August, we had sex three times on my fertile week.

September 1st rolls around and I was supposed to start my period. Randy was at work, so I told him to bring home some tests. I usually at least have some light spotting and then start heavy the next day. There was nothing that day, so he brought some tests home.

Sure enough, we are pregnant. We haven’t told a lot of people. We were obviously very cautious, since we lost the first one at 7 weeks back in 2017. But as of today, the 22nd of October, we are 12 weeks and 1 day. We have only told a small handful of people. I told my close mom friends, because I need some mom support since I don’t have my mom. We also told my brothers, his brother, his mom, dad and step mom and his sister. But yeah we’re going to officially announce it on our Anniversary, November 11th!!

I have my dating ultrasound next Tuesday, the 29th. So we’ll get an official due date then, but our tentative due date is May 5th. I had my first appointment with my OB about 2 and a half weeks ago, but the lady I saw was like welllll with all your medical history, I won’t be able to help you, but I’ll transfer you to the other dr, who handles the High Risk pregnancies. Cuz yeah, I’m super high risk because of my age and all my medical stuff.

I was taken off the Azathioprine and Actemra (weekly injection). But they kept me on the Hydroxychloroquine as well as the Oxcarbazepine for my head. I’m thankful for both of those otherwise I would probably be super miserable. It also helps that the last time I got pregnant, the baby started to make this all go into remission, even in the short 6 weeks I was pregnant. So we’ll see how it goes as things progress.

I have felt pretty good. Dealing with ALL the emotions and all the hunger and alllll the things lol. It’s been a bit of a struggle dealing with the exhaustion. I deal with the fatigue on a daily basis, but to me that’s more mental exhaustion. This physical exhaustion is something else. throughout September, I just felt like I couldn’t get enough sleep. It’s a little bit better now, but I’m starting to get to the point where I’m uncomfortable in bed and I wake up every hour or so to pee lol.

Otherwise, things are going well. It has been pretty overwhelming overall, with the news of Randy’s other daughter (like I said, that we knew about but hadn’t really had any confirmation about it), and then finding out that WE are going to be parents to our own, but we are doing very well. I get overwhelmed and frustrated and emotional. I have cried SO MUCH about the fact that I don’t have my mom and dad. But that’s why I reached out to my close mom friends first, so that I could have some support.

I’ll be 40 in a couple months and I didn’t even think I would ever be able to do this, but here we are. We’ve talked about a lot of stuff and it’s like we have done a lot in our lives. Yeah we have struggled, but that’s all mostly behind us. We’re doing well enough now that it’s not a huge issue that we are having a kid. I had dreaded finding out I was pregnant, even up to about 6 months ago. Because of the fact that we were not in a good place financially so I was scared to even try. But now that Randy has been working again, it’s been a lot better. We’re able to pay our bills on time and just have the money we need to do the things we need and want to do.

I had to renew our Food Stamp application, and that brought our monthly stipend down from $288 to $23 lol. But alas, we have the means to cover our food costs now, so that $23 is just a little bit extra that we can use. Once I get my dating ultrasound and actual due date, then I can apply for WIC Benefits which will still help us out in the long run.

Randy has been doing great at work. I don’t know if I mentioned that he did get the promotion to the Store Manager position, and he’s been taking care of that store really well. The store’s overall performance score card when he started in June was 46% and as of last week he had brough it up to 94%....so that is a huge improvement. He finally got more management/key carriers hired, so he and his assistant don’t have to be there 6 days a week. He finally is going back to a 9 hour/5 days a week schedule instead of 8 hour/6 days a week schedule. So he can relax a little bit more now. He was getting burnt out a bit, but I told him that it would calm down soon, and it definitely has.

So that is what we are dealing with. If you’re on my FB, keep the baby stuff quiet, as I said we’re going to officially announce it to everyone on November 11th. I’ll be 15 weeks by that point. Ultrasound will be at 13 weeks.

We are chugging along in life right now and I couldn’t be happier. It’s been pretty amazing and I cant really say that anything is problematic right now (maybe except having to pee every seven minutes lol).

I hope you all have a wonderful time, enjoy the rest of your October and We will catch up again in a couple months probably LOL. Take care!!