Hello Baby!

We’re pregnant!

We’ve been trying since March and this is our third positive pregnancy test. The first one ended a few days later and with the second one I made it to week 7. We’re only a few weeks in right now so anything can happen but I’m aiming for cautiously optimistic.

Although we are sporadic in updating our main blog, I thought it would be a good idea to have a baby blog. This way I can talk about pregnancy, post photos of the baby when she gets here, etc., without spamming my Facebook friends. There can sometimes be baby overload on Facebook and with a dedicated blog only the people who are interested will actually see the information (hi Mom!).

I also want to use this blog to talk about things that are hard. I want to be honest here. Facebook is all about posting how great your life is and I want to be able to say, “today, I hate being a mom.” I mean, I hope I don’t feel that way, but let’s be realistic.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. This one may not stick, either. And I want to talk about that. Miscarriages.

I’ve had two. I’m not alone.

It feels lonely, though, when you’re going through it. I was surprised by how hard the second one hit me. How quickly I had become attached to the idea of being pregnant and then how much I hurt when the baby was gone. Even though every part of me knew, logically, that it wasn’t my fault, I felt broken.

The self-talk during that time wasn’t rational. “Millions of women and girls around the world get pregnant without even wanting to and I can’t do it if I try.” “Maybe I’m not meant to be a mother.” “Can we afford in-vitro fertilization? Do we want to go that route?”

I saw my doctor and she calmed me a little. Many women take months to conceive, she said. Don’t even think about IVF until you’ve tried for a solid year without success. The fact that an egg has been fertilized and implanted is a good sign! She patted me on the shoulder, wrote “threatened abortion” in my chart, and left. Threatened abortion? That’s a heck of a medical term for a miscarriage.

After that second miscarriage, in May, we took a break from trying. My cycle was a bit of a mess and I wanted to give my body time to reset itself. At the end of June we started trying again. And now, here we are.

If this one sticks, we’ll be due around April. And I think we conceived the baby during our cross-country roadtrip from Oregon to Washington, DC. To be specific, I think we were in Columbus. Is that too much information? I’m pretty sure this blog is going to be full of TMI…

Anyway, wish us luck. And if we end needing to try again- well, there could be worse ways to spend our time.