Our Major Life Changing Update...

We are...... HAVING A BABY!!!

I'm so excited. SO. EXCITED. This will be our first baby, and I'm going to do a series of posts about my pregnancy journey and maybe section it out into trimester recaps. I am currently 22 weeks along (as of 3/28/22). This week will be my big anatomy scan in Birmingham, which I can explain more about later on. So, for this announcement post I want to go back to the beginning...

I got my IUD out in early May 2021. Yes it hurt but not nearly as bad as getting it put in. The doc told us that it could take up to a year to get pregnant but me being me was like eh I bet it'll happen really fast. Now, I was basing this off of what little sex ed I had lol. I knew how babies were made and that women had cycles but that was pretty much it. This was the start of my journey about learning exactly how my own body works which I am BEYOND ashamed to admit had taken me nearly 30 years to learn!

When I didn't get pregnant that first month I immediately thought something was wrong with me. I mean. There were no more barriers so we thought that was all it took? Hah. Wrong. So- I researched. And read. And googled. Learned allllll about the different hormones and what actually happens when a woman ovulates and how small of a window there is for fertilization to occur. So then I started tracking my ovulation. And then I learned about cervical mucus and what that means, so that got added to my symptom tracking. Honestly it was truly enlightening and I was at a loss as to why I (and many other women) are never taught the intricacies of our natural cycles. Even with the knowledge I had gained and tracking everything it still took us until October to get pregnant. In the grand scheme of things that wasn't very long at all, but during that time frame it felt like forever.

I found out I was pregnant on November 23rd 2021. It was funny- that evening I was supposed to go to a Christmas cookies and cocktails party so I was talking to Aubrey the night before about how I was sure I wasn't pregnant and she convinced me I should take a test before the party to know if I could drink or not. Fully expecting to see yet another negative test, I'm sitting in the bathroom alone at like 7am. Waiting and waiting. It didn't blink as long as the other tests had which kinda got my heart rate up. When I looked again I gasped and looked away. Then looked and gasped again- PREGNANT! I immediately started shaking and I ran into the bedroom and jumped on the bed to wake Derek up saying "Look, look!!!" He sleepily looks up and goes "huh?" And I say "I'm pregnant!!!" And then I collapse into a sobbing heap on him hahaha. I think the adrenaline got me. I was also relieved. And terrified. And in denial. Etc. So I sent Aubrey a picture of the test and said, "Can you make my drinks virgin tonight? ;)" and then I told Shauna and Autumn too lol. Side note- I had JUST started stripping my cabinets to begin my kitchen update about 2 days prior to finding out so we had to come up with a way to tell my parents pretty early so they could help me paint the cabinets since now I couldn't be around all those fumes ???? (sorry mom lol).

I went ahead and called the doc and got an appointment set up for an 8 week check up and then lived my life until then! I was focusing on finding cures for morning sickness which I had a very mild case of (thankfully) but I was also still in denial. Maybe I'll write a whole post on that too.

Stay Tuned!

JT