Valentine's Day we received the best news of our life. We are finally, gratefully, blissfully PREGNANT!
I'm writing this to provide a background on how we came to receive this blessed gift, for this pregnancy was long sought after. The journey here has been bumpy and certainly no fun. We've spent five years hoping for a surprise, but receiving disappointment month after month, year after year. For "not trying but not preventing", I became VERY well-acquainted with negative pregnancy tests. I do believe I held up quite strong in spite of it all, due to my faith.
I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2006 with longish and/or missing cycles, but only [very] recently did we come to accept something was truly physiologically amiss. Ideally, I wanted this baby to come without any thought on our part, but the more time skipped away, the more we warmed up to seeking help. I had been ovulating unmedicated for nearly a year (due to weight loss), but still no baby. I felt something more had to be going on.
In October, we started our first cycle of Clomid 50 mg with my OBGYN-- no success.
We repeated the protocol in November--- again, no success.
November/December we consulted with a group of Reproductive Endocrinologists (I'll use "RE" for short) at the wonderful Heartland Reproductive Center here in Omaha. We underwent a battery of tests, including bloodwork for each of us, a hysterosalpingogram for me (ouch.) and a semen analysis for him (blush.) Things with me looked as they should, but Stephen had an interesting issue with "the troops". Their number was exponentially massive (>1 billion --- when "normal" is 20-60 million), but only a straggling few (8%) were in good shape. The screwed up boys were blocking the way for our good-looking stragglers. Apparently, crowding was our problem all along. (I googled the heck out of this, btw, and couldn't find a case like it!)
January, we started our first protocol with the RE. I took Clomid 5o mg again. I visited the clinic for a series of ultrasounds to make sure my follicle was growing as it should (it was!). At the beginning of February, I gave myself a shot of hCG to ensure the egg's release was nice and strong. The following day, I went in for an intrauterine insemination (IUI), lovingly called "the turkey baster method". The RE "cleaned" the troops before the insemination so ONLY the good guys would get through. It was easy and painless-not a big deal in the slightest. I was actually shocked at how fuss-less the procedure turned out to be, less significant than a pap.
Two weeks later, I returned home from visiting my sister in Colorado Springs, accompanied by car-sickness-prone-nausea, sore breasts, and a weird knot sensation in my abdomen. Stephen prodded me to test-- even though it was late at night--- and so I did. For him. For laughs. And, boy, did we laugh when we saw that second line! We couldn't stop laughing! Test after test, that second line appeared. On the 15th we read the word "Pregnant" on a digital test and our world hasn't been the same since.
6 weeks - a tiny speck of baby at barely 3 cm
7 weeks and almost a whole cm long, with beautiful beating heart!
"Erfurt" is expected to arrive October 28, and is perfect as can be, currently the size of a raspberry. We are approaching 8 weeks Thursday- very smooth sailing so far with mild symptoms. I do need a nap most days, and smells tend to be a bother. Some days I eat like a pig; other days I would happily do without food, if not for growing a person. It's hard to believe we have only a month left of the first trimester!
*We have a new widget on our blog's right sidebar - watch Erfurt grow!
