this turned out way longer than I thought... my apologies :)
In my last post I said I would kind of write a bit about how we got here. I have read ALOT of other peoples' baby posts about their pregnancy journey and also about their journey trying to conceive. I am grateful for their insight and for being willing to share such things to help other people so I will throw in how we got here and maybe it will offer someone else some perspective or comfort in some way. If nothing else it is sharing one couples story, and since we are all so different, it's nice to hear all the different sides to the topic.
Anyways.. some background about us.. we have been married 6 years this month (seems like a long time to me) but in a way we still feel like we are just beginning our life journey together. When we first got married my hubby and I both said that we would wait a couple years before we started extending our family. Mac's whole plan was that he wanted to finish school and be started in his career and hopefully in a house before we did. I guess he underestimated how long it would take since a couple years of waiting turned quickly into 5. LOL. That's ok though. I know everyone is different and feels ready for children at different points in life. We got married really young so we have plenty of time.
About 3 years into it, I decided I was just about ready though. I had always been a little baby hungry but at this point it was different. I just felt like the time was right so I took it to the hubby who adamantly said NO. he wasn't ready. So I tried to be patient, tried not to nag the situation. But it was hard. I won't lie. It's hard wanting a baby and your spouse not wanting one too. In the beginning it was ok but after a year or so it started frustrating me. We had a few fights about it, and still hadn't reached a compromise.
I think after we had been married about a year and a half though, I somehow got him to agree that if we had been married 5 years and still hadn't started down the baby path that it was no longer up to him and I got to decide.. this came in handy later :)
don't get me wrong about that one though. I had SO many people tell me that I should just stop taking my birth control and have an OOPS baby. That is so WRONG in my opinion. sorry to those who disagree but I feel as though a baby should be a mutual decision and you shouldn't trick someone into having one with you. If it happens as a surprise, that's totally different. I look back and I am so glad I didn't follow their advice. If I had tricked my hubby into having a baby, it wouldn't have been a good thing at all. He would have a totally different attitude about this baby and it wouldn't be a good one either.
so anyway, hubby finished college, and still didn't want one. He said he needed a job in his career first. And those who read my last blog know how LONG and irritating that whole process was. So after months of frustration from that whole issue I told him he had to put a date on it. He couldn't keep me waiting for an undetermined amount of time for him to get a job. So at that point I reverted back to the whole 5 year agreement. Anyone who knows my hubby, knows that you kinda have to make him commit to something, almost put a deadline on it or it will drag on FOREVER! so the date was agreed upon. He said on our 5 year anniversary he would give in and go off all methods of birth control. (wahoo!) and believe me... he made me wait til the exact day too... not one day sooner. (he's a little stubborn if you hadn't noticed)
SO thus began the next chapter of the baby process.
The whole first 5 years of our marriage I constantly said it would take us a long time to get pregnant. I just didn't see it happening quick for us. Mac thought it would happen on the first try lol. I think he was a little worried. The reason I thought it would take a long time was because I knew SO many people who struggled with fertility. Including several in my immediate family. Both of my sisters took years to get all of their babies. My one sister was on all kinds of meds and tried for almost 4 years (with 2 miscarriages in between) to get her baby. so it was just something I expected. So when it didn't happen the first few months I wasn't surprised. I had been off of the pill for almost 6 months when we started trying. (I got mad in october when aunt flo was extra viscous and told mac that if he didn't want to get prego than he was in charge of prevention from then on cuz I wasn't doing the pill anymore) so when we started trying the birth control was pretty well out of my system. but month after month.. there was still nothing. I tracked my cycles and kept track of everything I could so I would know if it was possible that month or not. I didn't try and force it either. I didn't want to get to the point where it was chore.... ("hurry home honey... I'm ovulating!! ) LOL! I just left it to fate almost. I knew if I forced it, Mac would get annoyed too.. and since he was a little stressed about giving into the baby issue anyway.. I didn't want to make it worse for him.
I don't think I started stressing or getting annoyed til about 6 months in. I started thinking ahead to the doctors visits and making plans for that route. Doctors don't usually want to see you til you've been trying for at least a year, so I was waiting til I had reached that point before I made an appointment. I knew they would ask about what we had been doing to increase our chances and would want to see how my cycles had been in the past year so I was still keeping track. next step was to get a basal thermometer and ovulation test kits so I could say at least we tried them... so I bought the kits first in october and decided to try them first since they were cheaper.
took 3 of them and was convinced none of them would come out positive. I figured I was broken. and I told Mac all the time (jokingly) that I was broken and couldn't give him babies haha. good thing he is sweet and just tells me that he loves me even if I'm broken and he doesn't care if I give him babies.. that's not what he married me for. (I have a dang sweet hubby) luckily i'm not broken and the tests started showing positive signs. So without being too obvious about it, I tried to time it correctly that week.
2 weeks later I was feeling like aunt flo was coming. Had some cramping at night but nothing was happening. Previously in my journey I had decided that I wasn't going to waste lots of money on pregnancy tests and would only take them if I got to day 40 and still hadn't gotten my monthly friend (which puts it at about 10 days late)
so on day 31 or 32 I asked Mac on a saturday what he thought and he suggested I just take one so I quit worrying about it and could mellow out. So the following Monday I woke up at like 8:30. *nature calls. Then I remembered I was gonna take a test. So I hurried and opened it up. I sat on the edge of the tub... wanting to go back to bed... waiting for the little hourglass to tell me I wasn't pregnant.... but then when the result finally registered, that's all it said was 'pregnant'... not the usual 'Not Pregnant' I was so used to seeing.
Yep... I'm one of those people that totally took a picture of my pregnancy test lol.
So with it being Christmas time and all.. we had all our decor hung up. and I had kind of thought about it before... the 'what ifs' and all that. And I totally had a cute way that I wanted to tell Mac about it... but sitting there on the tub with a pregnant sign staring me in the face.. all rational thinking went out the window. Mac was on graves that week so he had been in bed for about 2 hours when I did all this... so me being an irrational idiot, I ran into the bedroom and woke him up lol... he gave me the best response he could after being woke up after 2 hours of sleep... it was less than enthusiastic though. my bad. he tells everyone that I violently woke him up and shoved a pee stick in his face... he's a bit dramatic. and he also tells people that I seduced him in the night to get this baby.. he had no part of it haha. men... right?
I tried to get in to get a blood test to verify it since I was in a bit of denial, but no one would do it so I had to wait a few weeks to see a doctor. I found out at 4 weeks 5 days. I saw the doc at 6 weeks 5 days. I took 2 more tests in those 2 weeks just to make sure I wasn't imagining it. Even though we were trying, we both were still pretty shocked. I think after having so many negative tests, you just never think one will turn up positive. So when it does, it's still a shock.
Mac is very happy about it, which is a relief. He still worries and stresses about things but overall he is excited. We waited til Christmas Eve to tell our families... it was the longest 3 weeks of my life! it was so hard not to spill the beans. this is how we told em...
we framed it and wrapped it up and gave it to our moms.. (we mailed mac's mom hers and said when to open it since she lives out of state). needless to say, my mom cried. those who know her, know that this isn't surprising at all. here's the only pics I got of it. wish I could have seen my in-laws faces when they opened theirs.
my sister even cried too. it was pretty epic. Everyone said they might as well take their gifts back cuz no one was gonna top ours :) it was alot of fun. I was glad we found out in December. our families are thrilled about the news and so are we.
I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and it happens when it is supposed to. Not necessarily when we want it to. if we had gotten pregnant back in march of last year when we started.. I don't know what we would have done. We probably wouldn't have gotten into our house when we did, that's one thing that would have changed. Mac would have died from stress lol.
Mac says he is pretty shocked at how perfectly everything fell into place. It took forever for him to get his job, then I got mine, then we got our house (which was such a mess, most realtors say that we shouldn't have gotten it based on all the special circumstances that occured too) then 2 months later we got pregnant. It happened exactly how we originally wanted it to! the timing couldn't be better! so even though it took us 10 months, I look back and think that it wasn't that bad at all- some have it so hard when it comes to these things and we are just extremely blessed. it's nice to see so clearly that there really is a plan in place for our lives and we just have to have a little faith and trust that things happen for a reason and they happen exactly when they should. We couldn't be happier about it.
the whole thought of having this baby freaks me out a little bit. I think it's a shock for everyone when they have their first baby. I've had alot of experience with kids so I'm not too worried about whats coming, and my pregnancy has been super easy which I am VERY grateful for. I guess just the thought of having my own kid is a little scary. now we just have to get everything ready for baby girl to get here (which is a whole new challenge in itself!)
Here's the latest (icky) prego pic :) I promise I'll try and look cuter in the future photos...
20 weeks, 5 days
more posting will be saved for later.. hopefully I'll have something exciting to post about.. a few pics from Vegas I guess.. if nothing else ;)
