My favorite moment from 2016

I had a lot of them.

All with L and W.

But my favorite moment by far was the moment I got to tell my husband I was pregnant.

We tried for years to have L and were under the impression we would never have children without medical intervention.

So after a couple weeks of feeling really crummy, days before my first half marathon (and Mother’s Day) I was prepared to give my doc a call to see what was up. I knew they’d ask about dates of things so I took a pregnancy test anyways – just because things were getting back on track from breastfeeding.

The shock of all shocks was that it was positive!

Never in my life did I think that would happen. I literally fell to the ground crying and my sweet little 11 month old at the time came waddling up to me for the best hug of my life.

Until my husband came home – and we got to tell him the news.​ So here is the video of my favorite moment of 2016. 

​

Happy New Year everyone and may 2017 bring you much joy and happiness! 

Advertisement

Last Night Was a Good Night

There are some things that seem so distant, so unreachable, that you can never fully picture them.

You can’t visualize what something will be like because it seems so impossible.

But luckily for me, I had one of those magical, unreachable moments happen last night.

Every night when my husband is home, we put our sweet little guy to bed together.

Tonight I put him in jammies, we brushed his teeth and took him into his room. W read to him while I tried to snuggle him in his bed. Just like we do each night, but we swap, one reads while one stays.

But tonight L seemed like he wanted us both, so W laid down next to the bed so neither one of us had to leave him.

L wiggled and scooted around like he always does. But then…our Itty-Bitty started kicking. The strongest kicks I’ve felt with this pregnancy, high by my rib cage. I didn’t move for a moment, enjoying the happy baby.

I finally thought to get my husband’s attention, and he rested his hand there, and behold! A kick!  W hadn’t felt kicks like this yet. He’d been deployed almost my entire first pregnancy, coming home just days before the c-section. He’d felt movement then but not kicks like this.

This is never a position I thought I’d be in. Having my husband home is a novelty in itself it seems like. But cuddling with our sweet angel of a boy while he drifts off to sleep, while our second little miracle bounces around happily.

Thank goodness for these two little miracles we never thought we’d have.

And when you’re not looking…

So I’ve been sitting on this post for a few months now because I wasn’t sure I even believed what was happening.

After all the struggles we went through to have our sweet L, we knew we would start thinking about a sibling sooner rather than later.

So in March I called a fertility clinic out here, since obviously we’d have to switch since the move from Hawaii.

We had an appointment scheduled for mid-May. I wasn’t sure I was ready to go through that process again, to put L through it. I didn’t like how I felt on Follistim and I hated the person I became during cycles, counting days, timing things, watching the clock. It was exhausting and I couldn’t imagine doing that with a one year old around.

But we scheduled the appointment, wanted to see what our options would be here, and hoped that we’d be adding to our family by the end of the year.

Instead, we had a little miracle happen.

At the beginning of May, I’d been feeling awful. Short of breath, dizzy, exhausted. Just not myself. I was getting ready to call a PCM because I knew something wasn’t quite right and I was just days away from running my first half marathon.

I took a test to rule that out because I knew in my gut there was no way. Not even an option with our issues.

I was shaking and confused when I saw, very clearly, a positive.

I remember falling to my knees and sobbing. Sweet L, with no idea what was happening, came over and hugged me. As I sat there and hugged him back I said thank you over and over and over to him, for helping fix whatever was broken with me. He healed my broken heart and his existence made this possible. He changed everything for us.

Here are some photos we shared of our sweet guy, telling the world what an awesome big brother he will be!

Infertility after a baby

L has been the most amazing little person we could have hoped for. His smile lights up our entire world. He gives the best hugs. He has the bluest eyes. He’s funny and adventurous. To us, he is perfect no matter how many sleepless nights we have.

Now that he is nearly a year (how did that happen?!) we have to look at the reality we face.

We had always dreamed of having at least two children, never knowing how difficult just  having one would be.

We love L and our world is complete with him in it. But we never wanted him to be an only child. And that’s what we’re facing.

I’m an only child and I had a great childhood. But that wasn’t our dream for our family.

So do we accept that this is what our family will look like? Or do we fight again? What if we have another miscarriage? Is it fair to put L through it?

The thought of going through all of the testing and the disappointment again weighs on me enough. But putting Logan through that emotional roller coaster with me breaks my heart.

I was not my best self those two years of infertility issues. I hid. I cried a lot. I ruined friendships.

This time we know what to expect, so maybe it will be easier. This time I have this tiny human who makes even the worst day better, so maybe that will help. And maybe knowing that it can work, and what the outcome is, will help.

But still, the disappointment and the frustration of something you thought would be so easy, just eats at you.

I wonder what it’s like to look at your spouse and say hey, let’s have a baby. And couple weeks later, boom! I’ll never know that feeling.

You Are Not Alone – Infertility and having more children

I am currently 37 weeks pregnant and my whole pregnancy has been well, crazy.

I saw this great article a few weeks back and I wanted to share it and talk about it for a moment.

People make comments about how they’re sure I can’t wait to be done since pregnancy is so awful, etc. (I’ve blogged elsewhere about comments like this if you’d like to see more). There have been comments about…well what did you “really” want in regards to me having a boy, or before we knew what we were having. This is all besides the point.

Another question I’ve been asked is about what birth control I’ll be going on after, how long we want to wait to try again, etc.

But the thing I feel like most people don’t understand is that…we have come to terms with the fact that there is a very good chance this is going to be our one and only child.

Even now it’s a painful question when asked about our future family plans — and it is no one’s business.

After a miscarriage and two and a half years of fertility treatments, five medicated cycles – including 3 IUIs, we’ve been through a lot already. We are so grateful for our little miracle we have on the way. But the sheer exhaustion, both physically and emotionally of going through fertility treatments was hard enough on just me and my husband. I can’t imagine having a small child and going through all of that again.

I know the physical effects that the medications had on me was hard. I was exhausted, temperamental, clingy and a whole slough of other emotions. Plus the two week waiting window, both to ovulate and to find out if it had worked or not, combined with several appointments a week…I can’t imagine dragging a toddler through all of that.

Maybe I’ll feel really differently when our son is two or three years old and feel that we can all handle it. But I may not.

Plus the fact that when our son is a few months old, I will be moving away from the wonderful team of doctors I had.

Yes I realize that we would be making the conscious decision to not have more children but beyond that it’s the decision to not put ourselves and especially our child, through what was the most difficult journey we have ever been on.

For the meantime, we will enjoy these last few weeks of this pregnancy and our time with our sweet baby, who we are so excited to meet.