WE ARE PREGNANT...AGAIN!
So this is probably surprising to other people, maybe even wrong to them (Cara isn't even ONE I can imagine them saying), but we knew we wanted our kids close in age. After having Cara I realized pregnancy was one of the best times of my life and I love bringing a life into this world. I love being a mom, I love taking care of her and helping her learn. Larry joked about having Irish twins, but I vetoed that pretty quickly.
We decided to start trying the September after she was born, I wasn't finished pumping yet so I knew the odds were pretty slim I would be again, but couldn't hurt to just get back in the swing of things for a bit. This is going to be TMI, but I didn't actually get my first period until November so up until then it was all just fun practice, no pressure. So November's period comes and goes and I'm thinking "okay, NOW the clock is ticking" time to get serious about this. Now, November to December ended up being kind of a dud. I got a bladder infection, I got sick, we went to Hawaii (where we had to room share with our 7 month old), and I got sick again so there weren't a lot of opportunities and I felt it was a wasted month, but 4 weeks goes by and no period. I'm thinking NO WAY it happened that fast! I had heard of women who were more fertile for the first year after having a baby, but daaang! I wanted to wait until I was a week late, just in case, so once I reached that point I went out to get some tests, take one and it comes up negative (womp-womp). After a couple days, my lovely period shows up (so it was 5 weeks and a couple days after my last one). So now I'm thinking "great, I'm 30, my cycles are all funky, I'm probably infertile!" (Yes I can be a bit dramatic)
Trying not to stress out about it since we were still in the "whatever happens, happens" part we just continue on in January-February to try again. Low and behold, my cycle is 5 weeks and a day or two again. It felt promising that it was getting closer to 4 weeks, but only by a day or two and it was frustrating that I wasn't sure if something was wrong or not. So I decide to buy a few months worth of ovulations tests just to make sure I am ovulating. I got the digital ones that give you an O when you aren't ovulating, a flashy smile for the 2-3 days leading up to ovulating, and then a solid smiley for the couple days you do ovulate (these are important details). So I start doing that in February and on like day 3 I start to get a flashing smiley (which is weird since you shouldn't see that until closer to the middle of your cycle). This is followed by 8 more days of flashy smileys, 2 days of solid smileys, and a day or two of O's again. Even Larry was thinking the test strips must be broken and we were just so confused. That month obviously ended up being a bad cycle. So I decided the next cycle (starting at the end of February) I'd try and preserve test strips and only test every other day until I got flashy smileys and then test everyday. Well not even two weeks into the cycle I got a solid smiley, NO flashy smileys (to warn me it was coming), just a solid. So we decide "lets not waste this month!" The whole next week all I got were solid O's...weird! So I'm thinking that cycle was probably a bad one too. I probably have some bad test strips and who knows what my body is really doing. I figure I'll just talk to my Dr at my annual checkup to see if they can do some test or something to help us out. We had previously been against medical intervention to get pregnant, but I had decided I couldn't just have one kid, I needed at least one more so I figured we would bend our rules.
So after a couple weeks I realize I'm technically late from when the tests say I ovulated, if the tests were right. Technically I had another week to go until my usual 5 weeks was up, but I felt confident that I had ovulated when the tests said I did and we had a trip planned to go see my parents/siblings/nieces around the 5 week mark so I told Larry since we leave Wednesday (tomorrow, the 28th), I'd test Tuesday morning just so we're traveling safely. Well Friday (the 23rd) comes alone and I realize I don't want to wait, I want to know now. I had one test left from the December package I got and so I do my thing and wait for it to give the results. Inside I was thinking "hey, it's okay whatever it says. No pressure yet, we still have a few more months before I really wanted to be pregnant", but really I wanted to see a positive, like REALLY bad. So after a couple minutes the "PREGNANT" sign shows up and I'm shocked! I wasn't having any symptoms so I really wasn't sure what to expect, but this made me so happy. For some reason getting pregnant with #2 seemed more surreal and almost impossible than getting pregnant with Cara. I immediately smiled and told my belly "I look forward to you making me sick".
I decided I'd wait till Larry woke up to tell him, like last time, but this time I'd put the test on the counter and wait for him to see it. So I hear his alarm go off, I come out of the bathroom to turn the fan off and give him a kiss, and then I try and act as normal as possible to not give it away (though at one point I did say "hurry and get up and going so we can get this Friday over with"....smooth! Haha). He walked into the bathroom and I, being so sure he sees it in his peripherals, start smiling like a fool. He just looks at me and goes "what?". Cue my eye roll and pointed finger at the counter. He finally saw the test, smiled like a fool to match me, gives me a big kiss, and says "good job" (like it was all me!).
Once I got to work, I discreetly called my dr's office to make the first appointment, but it's not until the 16th. So now I have to try and be patient for 3 weeks before this is officially confirmed and I can tell a couple people (I promised Larry that our next one I'd wait until we knew the gender before making an announcement, but I get to tell 2 or 3 people once it's confirmed). I did end up calling them yesterday to get a blood test done to test my progesterone levels (they were a little low with Cara and since that's really the only thing I can do something about at this point I figured it was better to know before we leave) and I got those results this morning. We're in a decent range, normal at this point is between 12 and 20 and I'm at 15 (with Cara I was at 11) so it's good enough for me to not worry and just be as patient as possible for now.
Now I have to go visit a bunch of my family members while keeping in this pretty big secret and hope it doesn't end up coming out somehow! Wish me luck!!
We decided to start trying the September after she was born, I wasn't finished pumping yet so I knew the odds were pretty slim I would be again, but couldn't hurt to just get back in the swing of things for a bit. This is going to be TMI, but I didn't actually get my first period until November so up until then it was all just fun practice, no pressure. So November's period comes and goes and I'm thinking "okay, NOW the clock is ticking" time to get serious about this. Now, November to December ended up being kind of a dud. I got a bladder infection, I got sick, we went to Hawaii (where we had to room share with our 7 month old), and I got sick again so there weren't a lot of opportunities and I felt it was a wasted month, but 4 weeks goes by and no period. I'm thinking NO WAY it happened that fast! I had heard of women who were more fertile for the first year after having a baby, but daaang! I wanted to wait until I was a week late, just in case, so once I reached that point I went out to get some tests, take one and it comes up negative (womp-womp). After a couple days, my lovely period shows up (so it was 5 weeks and a couple days after my last one). So now I'm thinking "great, I'm 30, my cycles are all funky, I'm probably infertile!" (Yes I can be a bit dramatic)
Trying not to stress out about it since we were still in the "whatever happens, happens" part we just continue on in January-February to try again. Low and behold, my cycle is 5 weeks and a day or two again. It felt promising that it was getting closer to 4 weeks, but only by a day or two and it was frustrating that I wasn't sure if something was wrong or not. So I decide to buy a few months worth of ovulations tests just to make sure I am ovulating. I got the digital ones that give you an O when you aren't ovulating, a flashy smile for the 2-3 days leading up to ovulating, and then a solid smiley for the couple days you do ovulate (these are important details). So I start doing that in February and on like day 3 I start to get a flashing smiley (which is weird since you shouldn't see that until closer to the middle of your cycle). This is followed by 8 more days of flashy smileys, 2 days of solid smileys, and a day or two of O's again. Even Larry was thinking the test strips must be broken and we were just so confused. That month obviously ended up being a bad cycle. So I decided the next cycle (starting at the end of February) I'd try and preserve test strips and only test every other day until I got flashy smileys and then test everyday. Well not even two weeks into the cycle I got a solid smiley, NO flashy smileys (to warn me it was coming), just a solid. So we decide "lets not waste this month!" The whole next week all I got were solid O's...weird! So I'm thinking that cycle was probably a bad one too. I probably have some bad test strips and who knows what my body is really doing. I figure I'll just talk to my Dr at my annual checkup to see if they can do some test or something to help us out. We had previously been against medical intervention to get pregnant, but I had decided I couldn't just have one kid, I needed at least one more so I figured we would bend our rules.
So after a couple weeks I realize I'm technically late from when the tests say I ovulated, if the tests were right. Technically I had another week to go until my usual 5 weeks was up, but I felt confident that I had ovulated when the tests said I did and we had a trip planned to go see my parents/siblings/nieces around the 5 week mark so I told Larry since we leave Wednesday (tomorrow, the 28th), I'd test Tuesday morning just so we're traveling safely. Well Friday (the 23rd) comes alone and I realize I don't want to wait, I want to know now. I had one test left from the December package I got and so I do my thing and wait for it to give the results. Inside I was thinking "hey, it's okay whatever it says. No pressure yet, we still have a few more months before I really wanted to be pregnant", but really I wanted to see a positive, like REALLY bad. So after a couple minutes the "PREGNANT" sign shows up and I'm shocked! I wasn't having any symptoms so I really wasn't sure what to expect, but this made me so happy. For some reason getting pregnant with #2 seemed more surreal and almost impossible than getting pregnant with Cara. I immediately smiled and told my belly "I look forward to you making me sick".
I decided I'd wait till Larry woke up to tell him, like last time, but this time I'd put the test on the counter and wait for him to see it. So I hear his alarm go off, I come out of the bathroom to turn the fan off and give him a kiss, and then I try and act as normal as possible to not give it away (though at one point I did say "hurry and get up and going so we can get this Friday over with"....smooth! Haha). He walked into the bathroom and I, being so sure he sees it in his peripherals, start smiling like a fool. He just looks at me and goes "what?". Cue my eye roll and pointed finger at the counter. He finally saw the test, smiled like a fool to match me, gives me a big kiss, and says "good job" (like it was all me!).
Once I got to work, I discreetly called my dr's office to make the first appointment, but it's not until the 16th. So now I have to try and be patient for 3 weeks before this is officially confirmed and I can tell a couple people (I promised Larry that our next one I'd wait until we knew the gender before making an announcement, but I get to tell 2 or 3 people once it's confirmed). I did end up calling them yesterday to get a blood test done to test my progesterone levels (they were a little low with Cara and since that's really the only thing I can do something about at this point I figured it was better to know before we leave) and I got those results this morning. We're in a decent range, normal at this point is between 12 and 20 and I'm at 15 (with Cara I was at 11) so it's good enough for me to not worry and just be as patient as possible for now.
Now I have to go visit a bunch of my family members while keeping in this pretty big secret and hope it doesn't end up coming out somehow! Wish me luck!!
