I don't think I've ever told the story about the beginning of our pregnancy adventure. In truth, the entire TTC process was incredibly hard on me emotionally and stripped a lot of the confidence I had been developing in my body to shreds. As I feel the little Berry moving more and more each day it takes me back to those days and really does make everything worth it.
I went off my birth control pills in mid-August 2009. Like most females I was ready to be pregnant, and I was ready to be pregnant right away. The first month I got my cycle was hard, but it was more of a "well, that sucks" kind of reaction. Surely I would be pregnant by Christmas and what an awesome present that would be to the family! This is also when we were house hunting and had a tentative closing date that fell the week of Christmas. This would be perfect!
The week of Christmas fell and I realized I was a few days late, and started to get my hopes up. We got the news Mon that the house fell through, and my period came Christmas morning. Safe to say it was a very rough Christmas for me, but I internalized most of it and kept it bottled up.
January rolled around, then February, then in March I started to feel a bit strange. I was exhausted to the bone and falling asleep at 8pm. When I attempted to do my daily work-outs I would get through the warm-up and be panting for breath and have to stop. I started to get my hopes but decided to wait until I was 5 days late to take a pregnancy test. At day 4 I started to get a pain in my abdomen, and later that day got a very abnormal period. I will spare you the details but I strongly believed that I had miscarried at 5 weeks.
April was slightly easier as we were finally able to close on, and move into, our new home. May passed, then June, July, and August. Every time I got my cycle I would break down sobbing because what kind of wife was I when I couldn't even give my husband a child. (My husband would chime in here and say "a damn good wife" but it's a very dark place you go to when faced with infertility)
I went back to work at the high school and forced a happy smile upon my face and shrugged good naturedly as my co-workers teased that they had expected me to come back pregnant and ready to pop. I looked at the pregnant ladies surrounding me and felt nothing but emptiness and envy all rolled into one. It was our one year of trying anniversary, and I went to see my gyno who set me up for fertility testing in February.
One day at school I felt as if my stomach was burning, and when I went to use the restroom there was that same abnormal period from March. I felt completely betrayed by my body and started to wonder if I would ever get pregnant. I also began to look into adoption and realized that we were at least 5 years out from being able to afford that, and that many local adoption agencies would not have worked with us anyway due to stupid factors that ultimately have little bearing on child raising (such as being an interracial couple, H being close to 40, both of us working full time, having animals, etc.)
Now in late August I had humored my mom's pleas for me to go gluten free, well, half way at least. After my Sept experience I decided to give it my all and see what happened. I also stopped charting to give myself a mental break. I figured that I would begin to chart again in December. October went by without to-do, and we rolled into November and I was preoccupied with having Thanksgiving at our house that year.
In fact I was so preoccupied that I had to check my account at fertilityfriend.com to see when I would be getting my period. I was not charting daily, but checked my temp when I noticed my CM change so I could be prepared for my cycle. You can imagine my shock when I realized I should have gotten my period 5 days earlier.
But I had been down this road before, and refused to let myself get excited or hopeful. Besides, Scott had a potential for promotion so all of our excitement was going into that! I wasn't willing to ruin that excitement with another negative test.
We received the phone call on Tuesday that he got his promotion and was being transfered and given a 4% raise. My dad joked that I should go pee on a stick and ride the good luck wave and I rolled my eyes.
Wednesday was Scott's day off, so I decided to pee on my digital test stick and see what happened. If it was negative I would just toss it with the others and he would never know. I still get giddy when I think about the moment I looked at the stick and saw YES very plainly written across it. So giddy in fact that I may have teared up just writing it.
I then proceed to jump into bed (pee stick in hand, oops) and start bouncing up and down going "omg omg I thought it was going to say no but it said yes, oh my god honey it says yes!" My poor sleepy husband didn't know what hit him. He woke up, realized what I was talking about, and got the biggest smile. This was then followed by him asking what we needed to do. Did I need to go to the doctor? Did I need to change my diet? What did I need him to do?
It was a fabulous morning.
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