Cliche

Everyone says "What a difference a year makes" at some point or another in their lives. Yesterday, I was talking (emailing) to one of my best friends, and she said "Think how far you have come since last year this time".

And since bloggers have an awesome history of themselves saved in a cute little drop down menu, I went to check what I was doing May 20 last year.

I knew it was around when we found out our IVF failed.

I didn't remember it was officially May 20.

Or, as I so succinctly put it, "It's the end".

I can't even begin to sufficiently describe how different this morning was, and now that I have the perspective of how far we have really come, I am having trouble putting the awesomeness (literally) of this morning into words. Let's just say we are so blessed; this baby looks perfect. We are so grateful, it is beyond anything we could have ever dreamed would happen to us, and we just pray for this child that they will continue growing beautifully and healthfully.

I'll update the ultrasound/belly page with a new belly pic and photos from this morning momentarily, so keep checking back!! (Pictures are up now!)

Oh. Were you wondering if this baby is a boy or girl? Well, let's just say we can't wait for HER to arrive in October!!! :-D

Is this really me?

It is really hard for us to believe that I am 20 weeks pregnant.

We went from thinking we'd have no problems having kids, to maybe we'd have problems, to what the crap is the problem, to I guess we just won't have kids, to maybe we'll start a scholarship program for a kid in our area's college, to by a miracle, we can see our baby on the screen when he's the size of a sweet pea?

I have said before that way back in the fall, I chose Isaiah 66:14 as the verse that would be the cornerstone of any pregnancy and/or baby we would be blessed with and/or any conclusion we might make to be okay with living child free. Every day I would look at it, posted on my computer, and I'd say it to myself. And let's be honest, there were days when I finished repeating it where my next thought was, "Oh sure, like that is ever going to happen."

I always had a hard time figuring out which Scripture was supposed to be speaking to me about the direction our infertility would take, or what would happen during that particular cycle, or how much I could be sure that God would remember our hearts which ached to be parents. Many times, I interpreted verses so literally and ended up feeling wounded and abandoned. (Hello, "He will give you the desires of your heart", etc.!!) Of course the better way to have read them may have been with a more open perspective, but that was nearly impossible when everyone else around me was claiming that they have just discovered- through Scripture- the exact plan for their life. Why couldn't Scripture tell me the same thing?

So it wasn't surprising to me that, in retrospect, I chose a verse that could be sort of vague, but still literally encouraging and optimistic that we would eventually be happy someday. It didn't relate directly to having children, in case that wasn't in the plan for us, but it still comforted me that we would be alright. Here were my thoughts at the time:

You shall see

Some day, I would understand God's plan for us and any family we'd be blessed with- even though I certainly couldn't see any sort of happy plan, i.e. including children, at that point.

Your heart shall rejoice

God would give me peace and happiness someday, in the fulfillment of His plan for our family. Maybe it wouldn't be rejoicing over things I'd imagined (like I said, in December, we were so convinced that we would probably never have kids, we honestly talked about starting a scholarship fund for a local high school student, and we even began to feel excited about that!), but someday, my heart would be light instead of heavy.

Your body shall flourish like the grass

I would be healthy. I felt confident that by changing our eating habits to nonprocessed/natural/organic, we had already made great strides in living the healthiest we could, and I felt sure that when we finally understood God's plan for our family, it would implicitly give us another boost towards healthiness. I knew we would thrive in that situation.

And it shall be known that the hand of the Lord is with His servants

Even though it was apparent that my plan for our family did not match God's plan, I just wanted to make sure that whatever path our lives took, we were sure to always attribute our blessings and fortunes to God's provision and love for us. Even if He never blessed us with children, I knew that however we impacted the lives of others around us would be in an effort to demonstrate that God brings good out of bad situations.

As you can (hopefully) see, I tried my darndest when taking this verse to heart to really think outside the infertility box. Every fiber of myself wanted to interpret it literally, though, and there were days when I let myself dream...

You shall see (two pink lines)
Your heart shall rejoice (we have a baby!!!)
Your body shall flourish like the grass (everything will be great and healthy!!)
And it shall be known that the hand of the Lord is with His servants (God finally blessed us in His time!!)

And after all of the times when I felt so burned by letting my heart run away with Scripture, here I sit, preparing to see our baby again tomorrow morning. Here I sit, feeling like I can finally claim that God really did put His plan for our family in my heart, even though I didn't know it at the time.

I so appreciate all of your prayers for our little one, and please know that I am hoping that somehow God will encourage those of you who are waiting that He has not forgotten you. I am praying for all of you who are carrying little ones after a long struggle with infertility that God will encourage you to remain confident that He has a plan for your baby. And I am praying for all of you whose children are running around in your homes that God will encourage you to stay strong in the hard moments of motherhood and to relish the happy moments.

This is really me, folks. Less than 24 hours till we see our little one again. Praying my heart out that he/she is healthy and happy!!

Cold, etc.

Along with some great memories, I came back from spending the weekend celebrating my little brother's graduation with a stubborn cold, too.

I am never sick, and since it didn't start until I got to his state, I thought at first maybe it was allergies to something in the air there, but when my symptoms hung around well after we got home, I guess I picked a dumb cold up somewhere.

I went out and got my mom's solution to colds when we were younger: ingredients for a cocktail!! A sick-child cocktail, that is....Orange/grapefruit juice plus sprite/ginger ale. The ultimate placebo.

I also got CVS' version of Tylenol Cold, because apparently Tylenol had some big recall recently, and I went to two stores trying to find it with only empty shelves before I asked a pharmacist for an expanation. And my midwife said the CVS version was okay. I think I might have been the only one ever to call and ask if the generic version was fine to take.

I didn't really want to take any medicine, but I don't want this to balloon into anything worse than a runny nose and occasional cough. And plus, when I woke up this morning and dug out my thermometer from my temping days, it showed 99.2 at 630am, so I definitely don't want the fever to get out of control. (It was 99.6 at about 830am, but has gone back down to between 98.6 and 98.8 since then...)

After getting Mr. A off to work, I have been sleeping on the couch with Banana and Bert. Like literally, except for 15 second intervals of going to the bathroom or blowing my nose or taking a drink of my cocktail, I slept from 730am till about noon. It was even raining to complete the cozy ambiance.

And I know that chocolate frosted mini-donuts and OJ/sprite cocktail isn't exactly a balanced diet, but it is going to have to do for now. Maybe I'll cut up some carrots later this afternoon... Mr. A goes "why don't you make some chicken noodle soup?". Haha :) Oh yah, I totally feel like standing up in the kitchen to put that together....My thought is "Why don't you pick us up some chicken noodle soup for dinner from the deli?" Hahaha :)

But I think Bert has had his fill of sleeping the day away because in the last 10 minutes, he has brought me every one of his toys, as if to say, please play with me!! Hopefully he will accept me playing from the couch...

In the "etc" portion of this post, some (baby) bullets:

• Mr. A recently told me (without me asking first) that my maternity clothes are "hot" and that my little bump is so cute. SWOON.
• Thank you for the comments on my post wondering what you want to read about!!
• I added some belly pics to the ultrasound/belly link to the right -->
• I had never really thought about turning this blog into a book for our baby. That is a really neat idea.
  
• I think I am feeling the baby about once a day! It is so cool, and I am so grateful for this little one.
• We have an ultrasound on Friday morning- praying our hearts out that this baby looks completely healthy!!!
  

In-law's (v. 2.0)

I don't know if you remember this post, but things have not improved. I sent out new u/s pictures last Monday , and I heard NOTHING from MIL until I specifically emailed her again on Wednesday to "make sure she got them". And then when she emailed back she said she had looked at them a couple of times and could maybe make out a body part or two. Hmph. And also, I should note that there were NO exclamation points. I have been known to use exclamation points a little too extravagantly, but STILL. Would it kill her to use just ONE?

Mr. A emailed her almost at the same time on Wednesday to ask if she had gotten the pictures (because I was complaining to him the night before about her complete lack of response), and she responded to him that she is just really busy from 9-4 and is exhausted when she gets home.

Which to me is a lame excuse. We all work full time. The people who respond with evident excitement do not all sit on the couch all day eating bonb.on's.

I will say again that I don't expect everyone to be falling over themselves with excitement, but I am definitely disappointed and feel a little neglected when it comes to her response. Maybe that is irrational and it is entirely reasonable that maybe my expectations were too high. But for the first grandchild, I thought for sure there would be more exclamation points.

I think that she has maybe realized that her response has been lackluster, because she called our house on Saturday morning and told Mr. A that she was thinking of making me some maternity tops and what was my size? Ironically, I had left at 8am for a nearby city to go shopping for maternity clothes with my aunt and cousin for the weekend. Maybe if she was more interested, she would have known that.

But I give her credit (I suppose) for taking this step, and hopefully the patterns she is considering are cute. (And I got some really cute things this weekend....I think my maternity wardrobe is way more stylish than my normal one- hopefully I will get pregnant again right away. HAAAAAAA. Joke of the century.)

But there has surfaced a new in-law issue this morning. My sister is visiting us and our other sister in a few weeks! She is coming on Good Friday and staying the whole next week :) The three of us girls had planned on going to church together on Easter (with hubbies) and then hosting brunch at our house.

My inlaw's don't go to church. My MIL raised her boys in her childhood denomination, and my FIL never really went with them. (I think he now regrets not being a more prominent spiritual leader of their family.) She then decided it was too much of a pain to go (and she disagreed with some of the current events within the denomination), so she stopped going once her boys were out of high school. What kind of message does that send to your family? To me, that says that she doesn't feel like church/spirituality is all that important. Luckily, it IS important to Mr. A and I, but neither of his brothers have continued going on a very regular basis.

So as you may imagine, there is nothing spiritual about their Christmas or Easter celebrations. Even if we hadn't already made plans with my sisters for this Easter, there is NO WAY ON EARTH I am missing the chance to worship this Easter. (However, if I'm being honest, I have a midwife appointment on Good Friday, and there is the tiniest voice saying "What if it is bad news?" Depart from me, Satan!!!)

But today they emailed that they wondered if we could get together for Easter lunch?

Of course this is just for show in my opinion. They do it because everyone else is getting together with their families, but they don't want to acknowledge that everyone else is getting together after getting all spiffed up in pretty dresses and new suits to go to Easter church to celebrate. (Okay, maybe not everyone. But chances are, even if you are not a regular church go-er, you go on Easter.) (And, if God is not a part of your life, I don't mean any offense to you, but I would encourage you to find out the Christian meaning of Easter and what it might mean to celebrate it instead of celebrating chocolate bunnies!)

We emailed that we had previous plans, and so did one of Mr. A's other brothers (going to see his girlfriend, and presumably to attend church with her family). Whew, at least we aren't the only ones.

But the funny thing is that I think they are surprised when their kids don't automatically assume we will all be together for spiritual celebrations/events. In my opinion, they have no place to be surprised because they don't set an example that it is important to them.

I know this is kind of rambly, but I was very frustrated about all of this this morning. The tone of their emails was to the tune of "What do you mean you have other plans in the morning on Easter?", and I didn't appreciate being made to feel guilty about it. Luckily, we agreed to have a "delayed Easter" the week afterwards, but we might as well just call it what it is: us going to have dinner with them. There may be chocolate eggs and jelly beans, but there won't be anything mentioned about the real reason for it all.

Ultrasound Today (updated with pics)

We're going today at 1:30 to the pregnancy center where I used to be a volunteer counselor to be a "practice" client for the nurses who do the ultrasounds :)

Everyone who is fertile tells me "Oh, I just LOVED ultrasounds! I was so excited to see the baby again! I looked forward to them for weeks!"

And while I do look forward to them for weeks, and as much as I am excited to see our baby's heart beating once I'm there, the main emotion I associate with them beforehand is nervousness.

So far, there have been no indications that this baby and pregnancy is anything but totally healthy, and I have alot of confidence and faith that everything will continue that way. But ultrasounds (and even regular heartbeat-hearing appointments now) are scary!

It is like if you were on injectables and so far all your follicle scans had shown a wonderful amount of ripe, plump, perfect follicles, and you were going again today to see them again. Maybe I am just tarnished by awful follicle checks, but isn't there some worry in everyone's mind that their beautiful follies have somehow vanished into thin air?

I pray all the time for the health of our little one, and this morning's prayers were no different: I pray that we'll be able to see a wiggly baby with a perfect heartbeat. I will be sure to post pictures when I get home in the ultrasound section to the right. Thank you for praying for us!!

UPDATED to say that baby looks great! Long legs and very stretched out and kicking up a storm (I can't feel it yet). Heartbeat of 154 and measuring 14w :) PRAISE GOD!! Pictures are in the Ultrasound link to the right :) Thank you all for your prayers :)

An infertile walks into an OB office...

Actually, it is my normal ob/gyn's office. And, by some cosmic wierdness, I think there were probably 8 other women in the waiting room, and they were all visibly pregnant. It must have been Divine intervention that the times in the last three years that I've gone there for my annual appointments there were only older women and younger (not visibly pregnant, if they were) women there.

So I filled out all the intake paperwork (because, of course I had left the exact same paperwork that they had mailed me and that I had filled out...at home). I get called back, and the tech asks me what I weighed before I was pregnant.

Time sort of stood still at that point- I couldn't believe that I am here, talking about me being pregnant. I am going to pee in a cup, and the test they do will be like the 6 I've done in the past month that were all positive.

Turns out I am up one pound from what I weighed in August. I consider that to be not too shabby, considering I ate (and drank) plenty of extra calories over Thanksgiving and Christmas. I guess I may have weighed more 4 weeks ago, but with the nausea that so pleasantly reminds me that there's a little one along for the ride, I may have lost some recently (just by not wanting to eat anything). I refuse to buy a bathroom scale, so day-to-day, I am blissfully ignorant.

The midwife is awesome. I am so glad I decided to see her. She didn't even blink an eye when she asked me about what I'd written on the "questions or concerns about this pregnancy". It went something like this:

Having struggled with infertility, I imagine I will be fairly "needy" when it comes to this pregnancy- as far as hearing the heartbeat often and coming for ultrasounds as often as possible/safe/waranted. That being said, I haven't had any indication that there is anything wrong, and I'm praying for a healthy pregnancy and baby!"

Yes, I wrote that I am going to be needy on a medical form!!! Hahaha :) I was cracking myself up, but the midwife needed to know this!!! She responded with wonderful empathy and interest in what we'd been through. It was perfect.

Since my last annual was just in August and it was normal, they didn't do another pap. THANK THE LORD. And I do mean, thank God. Because I was really nervous about someone messing with my cervix right now. I was going to beg and plead to not have one if they were going to make me.

I asked her about ultrasounds, and she said that basically only two are authorized under normal circumstances- one to confirm/date the pregnancy, and the big 20-week one. (I declined the NT scan and the other malady scans- it wouldn't change what we'd "do" about the pregnancy, and I think if there were even a tiny thing wrong or even debatable, I'd spend the rest of my pregnancy worrying about it.)

I may have neglected to interrupt her here and tell her that we already had one at 6w2d. I don't know if that is hugely shameful or not, but I am hoping that (from insurance perspective), this one will still be covered because it is the first from the OB office. It's not like I was under the RE's care when we conceived, so.... AND, it is good to have another one to confirm that the baby is growing healthily and the dates we thought are still on track. RIGHT??

Then she told me that this ultrasound would be transvaginal, and had I ever had one? I've had hundreds, I told her! She laughed, because she realized as soon as she said it that I would have had some from all the procedures last year.

The ultrasound tech was fast! My midwife was in the room, too, and she was rubbing my shoulder when the baby came onto the screen. I think she knows how much this little one means to us, and how blessed we feel. The baby looks right on track- even wiggling some!- and has a heartbeat of about 150. She said that was great, and the ultrasound tech told me that she had struggled with infertility, too, so she knew how I felt. They gave me 4 pictures! I added a new page for ultrasounds (to the right, above my ticker), so if you want, you can see what I think is the best one.

I still have a hard time believing that this is all happening. It is extremely difficult to put into words how grateful I am, and how amazing it is that this baby is here and growing perfectly! After all we tried last year (and the two-plus years prior) that failed, I really didn't think that we would ever have success on our own. I am speechless with how remarkable it is that there is a wiggling PERSON inside my very own womb whose heart is beating and who is growing up a storm. I am not taking one second of this experience for granted- it is really sad to me how many women take pregnancy and children as totally routine and normal and boring.

I honestly was 2% sure that God would bless us with a baby (pregnancy), and probably 0.5% sure that it would be the old-fashioned way. Just goes to show you that your estimations of what God has in store for you have a good chance of being way off. If you are still waiting for your miracle baby today and your mother's heart is broken, perhaps this verse (which is one of my top three post-it'ed on my computer) will comfort and encourage you today. I can't tell you how many times I repeated it to myself in the darkest of times! God's purpose of expanding your family cannot be thwarted!!!

I know that You can do all things,
and that
no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
(Job 42:2)

Assumptions

I am here: gratefully, thankfully, humbly, unbelievably pregnant at 7w6d.

I have my first midwife appointment on Friday at 8w3d. I want so much to have another ultrasound to see/hear that precious heartbeat again, but from what I can tell, because everything is going seemingly well, and since we already had one, our next peek at our little one won't be until 20 weeks?!?!????!

I cannot even put into words how thankful I am to have had a good, uneventful pregnancy so far. No bleeding, and plenty of symptoms (although I think relatively mild compared to some others' experiences).

But it is just CRAZY to me how the rest of the world assumes that once you are pregnant, unless you are a twin/multiples mama or you start bleeding profusely, that things are all hunky dory and that you don't need more frequent ultrasounds and that your healthy baby will be here around your due date. I guess once you get to 9-10ish weeks, the practitioner can hear the heartbeat on the doppler, but STILL. When you have been through infertility and are used to ultrasounds every other day, one every 15 weeks is unbearable!!!!

I sure hope that my midwife can empathize with a pregnant-after-infertility patient. I fully plan on asking to try to hear the heartbeat and if we can't, then if I can have an ultrasound to make sure.

I wish people wouldn't take the miracle of life for granted. I am sorry, insurance company, if ultrasounds are expensive. There is a miracle happening right now, and maybe if you gave people more chances to witness that miracle, they wouldn't consider it to be so normal and so easy and so sure.

BABY!!! (updated w/ photo)

Our precious miracle is measuring 6w3d and has a heartbeat of 110!!!!

We are speechless and so in awe of God's creation. And of course SO EXCITED!!!!!

Will post a picture when I get home (see below)!!!

Thank you for all your prayers!!!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Surreal

After all we have been through, it is hard for me to believe that we are 6w1d today. (And yes, I am still taking tests at home, thankyouverymuch.) We have known about this baby for almost 2 weeks, and from all we can tell, everything is so far so good.

We have an early pregnancy ultrasound tomorrow. That is unbelievable!

We are so thankful and grateful for this little one, and we are praying he/she is healthy. I know that sounds dreadfully boring, but it is hard to put the magnitude of all of this into words.

I think tomorrow morning I will be the most nervous I have ever been in my life. My RE moved to a different suite in the same building, and I am sort of grateful because there was alot of disappointment and sadness associated with the previous suite. Now they are in a new suite, and I am on a new journey. Seems very appropriate, if I do say so myself.

I know there are a ton of you who are still waiting for your precious babies, and I have not stopped storming heaven on your behalf. I (we) so appreciate everyone's prayers for us and for our little one. If you have some spare moments, if you could please pray that everyone looks healthy tomorrow, and that we might be able to see a heartbeat!!

I will keep you posted!! Y'all are the greatest friends a girl could ever ask for :)