Monday, April 13, 2015

Baby Boy #3--his name


Baby Boy #3 has a name!

Its a beautiful name. Right after we found out he was a boy when I was about 14 weeks pregnant, we started praying about the name that God would have us name our boy. We knew we wanted to keep our tradition of a Bible name for the first name and a family name for the middle name.
Look at those little arms! 
We have Gideon Zeller (Gideon from the Gideon of the bible in Judges and Zeller is my maiden last name) and Silas Todd (Silas is from the Silas in the bible who was a missionary with Paul and Todd is my husband's name). We started looking at all the bible names. I went through my list of names we had rejected with Gideon and Silas. They were great names, just not THEIR names.

We prayed a lot.

We narrowed it down to about 3 names. We wanted it to be someone in the bible who was Godly and had a name that has a good meaning. Finally, we knew. We knew what is his name was.

Justus Ryan.

One of his feet that kicks me all day long! 
Ryan is my brother's middle name, and it is the name he goes by. And I knew I wanted to honor my brother with naming one of my sons after him. My brother is really a great brother and is always protective and loving. Actually, Silas and my brother have very similar personalities.My brother is funny, very blunt and yet caring. I am honored to have my son named after him. (Also, my brother is very excited about this too! haha!)
The name Ryan means little king.

Justus in Biblical times was a surname given to men who are very Godly. Justus means, just or upright. This is what we pray for our Justus, that he is Godly, just and upright. There are multiple Justus' in the Bible. There are 2 verses that stood out to me and made me think, "yes, this is my son's name."

His little face!
Acts 18:7 says "Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God." So this Justus was a worshiper of God! That is exactly what I want for my sons.

The verse that stood out for me even more was Colossians 4:11 "Jesus, who is called Justus, also sends greetings. These are the only Jews among my co-workers for the kingdom of God, and they have proved a comfort to me." This Justus in the bible was one of the co-workers for the Kingdom of God with Paul. And he was a comfort to Paul.

I have been learning a lot about the Kingdom of God and what it truly is, and with everything that I have learned lately, I KNOW that I want my son to be a worker for the Kingdom of God. I want him to reveal the Kingdom of God in this world, to be an active part of the Kingdom! What else could a mom want for her child? I want him to follow the Lord with all his heart and work for the Kingdom!

So, you see, Justus, working for the Kingdom and Ryan meaning Little King, go hand in hand.

So we knew. Our little boy is Justus.

We also picked a name for our little Baby A. For those who don't know. I was pregnant with twins at the beginning of this pregnancy. We lost Baby A through something called Vanishing Twin Syndrome. We believed in our hearts that Baby A and Baby B would be boy/girl twins. Well, when we found out that Baby B was a boy, we knew Baby A was a girl. So as we were picking a name for Justus, we were praying and thinking about a name for Baby A. We wanted a name that sounded like "twin names." And we gave her a name.

Joy.
You can see his head and his arm and hands. His hands were in front of his face the whole time. All of the Zeller babies like to do that. Put their hands by their heads. 

So we have Justus and Joy. They have names that go together, both begin with a J. We chose Joy because of how much joy she gave us in such a short time. When they showed me twins and I saw a little speck that was a baby. I began laughing! I was so elated! The woman who has trouble conceiving at all got pregnant with twins! And knowing that I will see her and our Gideon and Avery again gives me joy. God gives me joy in the midst of every trial.

So that is her name. From now on, when I refer to Joy you will know that Baby A is Joy.

I am the proud mom of 3 awesome boys. Gideon, Silas and Justus.

And the proud mom of 5 babies total; Avery, Gideon, Silas, Joy and Justus.
Thats one of the little hands that punches me! :D 

One day I will have all of them in my arms. Until then, I wait with joy, hope and faith.

I LOVE this one!!
I had my anatomy scan for Justus last week at 20 weeks 5 days. The anatomy scan is where they check to make sure the baby is totally healthy and does not have any major physical problems. We knew genetically that Justus was ok, but we were anxious to find out of he was totally healthy with a good umbilical cord insertion. Justus is wonderful. He has had a strong heartbeat. He s measuring right on track and has all of the markers that show that he is totally healthy. Kidneys, 4 chamber heart, 2 hemispheres of a brain, a perfect spine, etc. They checked the umbilical cord insertion into the placenta and it is perfect too! The membranous cord insertion (or velamentous cord insertion) is what Gideon had, and it was undetected. That ultimately caused his death. Justus doesn't have that. When I saw that I breathed a huge sigh of relief! I know other things can go wrong in pregnancies, but I am glad that he doesn't have the same thing his big brother had. I am praising God for every day I get with this little miracle!

He is still a boy!
Psalm 66:5 "Come and see what our God has done, what awesome miracles he performs for people!" (NLT)

Thursday, March 12, 2015

A New Baby Brother/Sister?


Gideon and Silas are having a new baby...


BROTHER!

YES! Another boy!!! We could not be happier!! We are blessed and honored to be the parents of 3 very special boys.

I have had people ask me if I wanted a girl this time. I honestly have never cared. I have never been the kind of mom who would have been sad to have one gender over the other. I have always wanted children and wanted the children that God would give us. Boys or girls, whatever God decided.  I am just happy to have a child. I am honored to get to be a mommy.

I had some bloodwork done at 12 weeks to run some genetic testing on the baby. It was an option for me and we took it. If there had been some genetic abnormality we would have carried the baby no matter what. But we wanted to know. And a bonus is that we could find out the baby's gender! The blood test is simple. They take my blood and a cheek swab from Todd and then send it off to one of the few labs that runs this test. Then they pull out Todd's DNA and my DNA and they are able to decipher which parts of the baby's DNA is in my blood.

Small fragments of a baby's DNA runs through the mommy's blood. Isn't that amazing?


This is the video of how I told Todd that he is going to be a daddy of another little boy! He is over the moon!


When we got the genetic testing able to see if the baby has certain genetic abnormalities, he showed no markers for any of those abnormalities. That was the best news I could have gotten. Praise the LORD! We are not out of the clear yet. We won't be until this little guy is in our arms. I know that a lot could happen between now and 38 weeks. But we are holding onto hope and praying that we get to raise this little boy and that he doesn't join his big brother (or his twin) in Heaven.

I love being a boy mom! I love getting to snuggle my boy, to run, play and act silly all day! I love the energy of boys. I love that I get to get out all of his hand-me-downs from Gideon and Silas. My 3rd little boy will get to wear his big brothers' clothes. That makes this mama's heart happy. It is something they all share.

I wish that I could have all 3 of my boys with me. I wish I could have all 5 of my babies here. I wish that my arms were completely full of little stinky, sticky boys. One with red hair, one with blonde hair and a little baby. But, this will not be. So I rejoice for the boys I get to have with me. I feel the hole in my heart every day for the one who is not here. And I rejoice for him too. Because ALL of my boys are gifts and bring such sweet and abundant blessings in my life.

Here are some pics from my gender reveal I did with my family.
I let them spray me with silly string that was blue (which in hindsight was a mistake because my brother and niece are crazy. My brother kept spraying me in the face! haha! Even though we are both in our thirties, not much had changed. haha!). Everyone was surprised!

I had everyone pick a crown or a mustache for their guess of boy or girl. Livy chose both. 

My brother and sis-in-law were guessing girl! My brother is a nut! :D 


Blue Silly String everywhere!

This little boy does have a name already. We kept with our tradition and his first name is from the Bible and his middle name is a name from one of our families. We will be announcing his name soon. We are in the process of choosing a name for twin A (who we believe was a girl, since we think they were boy/girl twins). Once we do that, then we will announce the name.



And just because I love the way I look when I am pregnant. My latest bump pic! Having 3 babies in less than 4 years makes for a big belly when pregnant.
Barefoot and pregnant. :D 

Look at my oldest little boy in that picture! Isnt he handsome?!? I hope that this little guy looks like his older brothers. 


Psalm 66:5 "Come and see what our God has done, what awesome miracles he performs for people!" (NLT)

Monday, January 12, 2015

Vanishing

Vanishing Twin.

Something most people have never heard of and something even less people experience. Now I can add that to my list of losses.

At 5 weeks pregnant I went to the Dr. so he could do blood work to check my progesterone and HCG. Progesterone helps to sustain a pregnancy and HCG is the pregnancy hormone.
I had low progesterone with my pregnancy with Silas in the first trimester, so I wanted to make sure it was not a problem in this pregnancy too. My results came back with my progesterone as normal, but my HCG was very high and elevated past what is normal for a singleton pregnancy. My doctor had me come in for an early ultrasound. I was 5 weeks 2 days.

When the ultrasound tech scanned my uterus, that is when I saw it. 2 little sacs. 2 sacs. Twins! I said to her "is that what I think it is?" She said "looks like possible twins." I instantly started laughing. I could not stop. We looked at it and I saw something in both sacs, the early development of a baby but it was too early to see anything clearly or a heartbeat. But there was no denying, there were two babies! I thought "I am a twin mom!"

One of the sacs was round and the other was smaller and more flat. The ultrasound tech labeled the smaller sac Baby A, and the bigger sac Baby B. See those 2 beautiful sacs? Those are my twins.

There was a problem.

My doctor explained to me that in cases where one of the sacs isn't as developed, there is a 50% chance that the baby wont make it. Its called a Vanishing Twin. He and his staff were hopeful for me and excited at the possibility that I would be having twins come August.

I started praying that I got to keep both babies! I had church family, MEND family, my biological family and my friends all praying that both babies would make it. That I wouldn't lose one of the babies. We prayed that Baby A would make it. That Baby A would beat the odds. That when I went back in 2 weeks for a follow up ultrasound, that there would be two babies with two beautiful heartbeats. However, I had a feeling things would not work out the way I hoped. I think God was preparing me for what He knew would happen. I just felt in my heart that both babies would not make it. But I hoped and prayed constantly that God would allow me to keep both of them.

We went to our ultrasound appointment at 7 weeks and 2 days to check on the twins.

Baby A went to heaven sometime in the week prior.

Vanishing Twin.

The ultrasound tech scanned my uterus and I saw one baby. One baby with a heartbeat. One beautiful baby. But one baby, one heartbeat wasn't there. I began crying and so did Todd. My mom was there with me and I didn't look at her but I know she was crying too. We all wanted both of these babies so much. It was extremely bittersweet. One baby gone. One baby healthy with a beautiful heartbeat of 160.

Here is the surviving twin at 7 weeks 2 days. Pretty cute if I may say so myself.

There was life that was and yet was never was in my arms. This life that deserves to be honored and remembered. This baby that I loved so much already. Gone. Just gone. No physical evidence of his/her existence except for an ultrasound picture. I have had no bleeding, the baby literally vanished. My body will absorb the baby in time and there will be nothing physically left.

Some might say, think or wonder why God would allow us to know about this baby if we were just going to lose him or her. That was actually said to Todd by a friend of his. He thought it would have been better had we never known about the baby at all. Honestly, this really offended me!! Yes, it would be easier on my heart if I had never known this little life. But oh, I would miss out on the love. I would never want less love. I would never want to not know about one of my children!,

 I am glad I know about Baby A. I am glad I got to be a twin mom, even if just for a couple of weeks. Because God allowed us to know about Baby A, I believe He will bring gifts and good things from his/her life.

I always said as a kid that I wanted 5 children. Though I would have been happy with 6 children too (hehe). When we were not sure of the outcome for Baby A, my dad said  "No matter what happens, you will now always have 5 children." And he is so right, I may have 3 children in Heaven, but I am the mom of 5 kids! They are always mine and nothing can change that. I have one in my arms, one in my belly and 3 in my heart. My sweet Gideon who changed my life more than I can even say. Our Avery who was lost before I got to see her at all. And Baby A (who we will give a name, but we are still deciding) who I got to see but never got to know.

My sweet MEND family sent me flowers in memory of Baby A. I am so thankful that his/her life is already remembered. Only here for a few weeks, but he/she made an impact on our life. I cannot say how much this means to me. That my MEND family values the lives of each one of my children.

This year at the MEND Walk to Remember, I will be getting one more ornament. I will get 3 instead of 2, one for each baby I have in Heaven. I will have to order a new memory sign for the Walk to Remember, since the one I have now only has Gideon and Avery's names and dates on it. I will need one more name and date added to my sign. One more child to wonder what they would have been like. What it would have been like to have twins.

Part of me will always wonder.

Its hard. I am sad. I miss my baby. I miss what could have been. I keep seeing twins everywhere. I saw a set of twins today at the doctor's office. Instead of 2 car seats, we will only be buying one. Instead of preparing and reading up on nursing twins, I won't need to do any reading on nursing, because I already know how to nurse one baby. I wont be buying 2 of everything. I wont get to see my babies interact. I will never get to see the connection they would have had as twins. I will not get to feel 2 babies move inside of me, 4 arms and 4 legs to kick me.  I miss Baby A. But I am so happy and praising God for one healthy baby.



I had an ultrasound this week of our surviving twin. And he/she is perfect and growing! Baby B had a heart rater of 183 and is growing perfectly. Look at my cute little gummy bear!! You can see his/her arms and little legs! Look at that giant head! Must take after his/her daddy and big brothers!


Please pray for us. Pray as we are grieving Baby A. Please pray for our surviving baby. Please pray that he or she comes home and is in our arms come this August. Pray for my anxiety for this pregnancy. I am feeling positive but as I know, anything can happen at any point in my pregnancy. Just pray for us, this baby and our hearts.

Thank you all.

2 Thess 3:3 "But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one." Thank you Lord for your promises!