I need to write this all out before I forget. Already it's so easy to not remember.
So what we're going to do right here is go back. Way back. Back into time.
January 2018
I felt like there was someone missing from our family. Louisa was almost two years old. If you remember, I never got a period between Asa and Louisa. I stopped nursing Asa when he was fifteen months old and immediately I got pregnant with Louisa. Which was great, because with both our boys it took 6-8 months of trying before they were conceived. But now three little kids and oh my goodness I was drowning, so I got on the pill. Not ready for another one. But as I was saying, Louisa was almost two, things were good, we love our family, but we both felt like we should try for another baby.
Once January hit I wanted to get off the pill immediately. But after nine years of wanting/waiting we were finally going on a cruise/honeymoon in February. It'd be foolish after all this time, to get pregnant right before that and either not be allowed to go or be too sick to enjoy it. So we waited.
February 2018
I took my last pill shortly before we left for our cruise. I would have LOVED to have gotten pregnant on that trip. Oh how romantic. But that didn't happen. Not for lack of trying. Awkward. Should probably delete that. But, ya know, married people having sex is great and I don't think that's said often enough. So there, it's out there, into the universe. Moving on.
Summer 2018
No period. Like at all. All summer long. So weird. And a little discouraging if you were trying/not not trying to get pregnant. I switched up my diet. Stopped drinking Coke (for awhile), was eating a salad (go green leafy vegetables) everyday, and started buying beef from a local farmer instead of at the grocery store. Didn't make a difference. Also note, a bought and wasted negative pregnancy tests each month.
August 2018
I had a consultation with a midwife/women's wellness specialist and she was very helpful and recommended a handful of things. I did a six week session with them which included vaginal steams, reflexology treatments and abdominal messages weekly, plus a boatload of disgusting teas.
These six weekly sessions lasted about an hour and a half each time, and for most of them I brought Louisa with me. I would bring books for her to look at and then turn on youtube on my phone for the second half to make it work. She's my little trooper.
They also recommended doing 30 min "castor oil packs" everyday. Which was basically just putting oil and a heating pad on my tummy for 30 minutes every night. Surprisingly, that was really a pain/difficult to remember to do. - Lame excuse I know.
I also took something called rejuvaflow - and basically everything tastes nasty. After about two weeks of this, I got my period. Yay! Now I can start the Fertility Cleanse which, you guessed it, is a bunch of nasty tasting teas, along with like flower drops that I'm supposed to drink several times a day. And for the most part, I did it.
November 2018
All my cleanses and treatments were done. I had spent hundreds of dollars. Probably closer to $600 or a little more I'm guessing. Which is a little embarrassing for me to say. Sort of feels like a big waste of money. But Micah was really supportive and understanding and really helped me not feel bad or guilty. The midwife ladies really knew their stuff but ultimately I was right back to where I started. No period. No real answers.
January 2019
A friend had been bugging me to go into my Doctor. And maybe I should have done that to begin with. Maybe I even did, honestly, I can't remember. Either way, we'd been trying for a year and just not getting my period can't be normal. According to my calculations I was sort of on like a 75 day cycle. If you can even call that a cycle. First off, ultrasound to look at what was going on in there. I had a ton of eggs in there, but they weren't budging. The Dr. said my ovaries looked like a classic case of PCOS. I didn't have any of the symptoms except an irregular period and fortunately I didn't have any cysts growing either (I guess your eggs can just like grow in there and not release each month and then they'd turn into cysts or something that'd need to be removed. Boy, I hope there's no OBGYN's reading this, bc I could totally be wrong!) But good news I didn't have that. I just had eggs that weren't growing and weren't going anywhere equalling no period. They said it was easy to fix. People do it all the time and have healthy babies. So, I guess we should try that.
February 2019
Started taking Letrozole.
Week one: One pill, once a day, for five days, then an ultrasound to see if any eggs were growing. None growing.
Week two: back at Walgreens, two pills, once a day, for five days, ultrasound. A little bit of growth, but not enough.
Week three: Walgreens, three pills, five days, ultrasound.
March 2019
Remember how like over a year ago I felt like someone was missing? At that time I was like 95% sure someone was missing. But now, after all this, I was only like 50% sure someone was missing. Through all of this, for the most part, I really had peace. I mean, it's easy to have peace when you already have three kids. I know what I went through is nothing compared to what others dealing with infertility have gone through. I'm not saying it was easy either but we really prayed for God's will and plan for our family. And honestly, at this point, I started to battle with thoughts of, are we doing too much? Is this God telling us to be content with our family size? Our family is perfect the way it is, we had always said we wanted four or five kids. But three is ok too. How much meddling and drug taking should we do at this point? - Of already having a family.
At this point my Sweet Lou and sometimes Asa knew the drill. Another week, another appointment. Sit in a darkish room, watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on moms phone while mom did who knows what. This time my eggs had grown. Three of them. Three of them were big enough to possibly be released.
I should explain. The reason for the weekly ultrasounds was to ensure that there weren't like six eggs growing at a time. It wouldn't be safe for anybody to release six eggs, get pregnant and have six babies at the same time. No argument here, let's avoid that.
But now we've got three. Three eggs is the most they would allow us to try to conceive with. If there were more or if we were 100% against having multiples they'd recommend we, ya know, not do it. But after all this, we thought we might as well try.
Three weeks later, and the first day that my Ovia fertility tracker app said I could, I got a positive pregnancy test.
April 2019
Three weeks after that, Micah and I went in for an ultrasound. We knew going into it that there was a chance more than one would have worked. I didn't think it would really happen though.
I've had enough ultrasounds lately to know my way around and recognize a few things. I knew what my eggs looked like six weeks ago - basically black blobs. And I knew right away what it meant when I saw two black blobs on the screen.
Two babies.
We pretty much started telling people right away. It was amazing. Probably one of the funnest things in my life really - telling people we were pregnant... with two babies! Hannah, Micah's sister had the best, most shocking reaction. Literally screamed and scared her own baby half to death, he started crying. Poor guy lol.
I so wanted to be sharing this journey with the world while I was going through it. But I'm really bad at wanting to know how things are going to end before I share them. If anyone can tell me how to positively wrap up a blog post that'd be great. So often I just wanna be like "the end" or "so that's pretty much it". Good enough right?
But it's scary to share things while you're going through them. When we went on our cruise a year and a half ago I wanted to be like "WE'RE TRYING TO GET PREGNANT!!!!" all over a blog post. But what if nothing happened? What if it doesn't work? What will people think of me? I don't want people asking me if I'm pregnant every month. I don't know, all silly reason to keep things in I suppose. We've all got our reasons for keeping our secrets.
I just want you to know my story. And know that's it's ok to sometimes be open and vulnerable. Although it is scary and I understand why it's easier just to not. I feel so incredibly lucky to be pregnant with these babies.
So that's pretty much it.
So what we're going to do right here is go back. Way back. Back into time.
January 2018
I felt like there was someone missing from our family. Louisa was almost two years old. If you remember, I never got a period between Asa and Louisa. I stopped nursing Asa when he was fifteen months old and immediately I got pregnant with Louisa. Which was great, because with both our boys it took 6-8 months of trying before they were conceived. But now three little kids and oh my goodness I was drowning, so I got on the pill. Not ready for another one. But as I was saying, Louisa was almost two, things were good, we love our family, but we both felt like we should try for another baby.
Once January hit I wanted to get off the pill immediately. But after nine years of wanting/waiting we were finally going on a cruise/honeymoon in February. It'd be foolish after all this time, to get pregnant right before that and either not be allowed to go or be too sick to enjoy it. So we waited.
February 2018
I took my last pill shortly before we left for our cruise. I would have LOVED to have gotten pregnant on that trip. Oh how romantic. But that didn't happen. Not for lack of trying. Awkward. Should probably delete that. But, ya know, married people having sex is great and I don't think that's said often enough. So there, it's out there, into the universe. Moving on.
Summer 2018
No period. Like at all. All summer long. So weird. And a little discouraging if you were trying/not not trying to get pregnant. I switched up my diet. Stopped drinking Coke (for awhile), was eating a salad (go green leafy vegetables) everyday, and started buying beef from a local farmer instead of at the grocery store. Didn't make a difference. Also note, a bought and wasted negative pregnancy tests each month.
August 2018
I had a consultation with a midwife/women's wellness specialist and she was very helpful and recommended a handful of things. I did a six week session with them which included vaginal steams, reflexology treatments and abdominal messages weekly, plus a boatload of disgusting teas.
These six weekly sessions lasted about an hour and a half each time, and for most of them I brought Louisa with me. I would bring books for her to look at and then turn on youtube on my phone for the second half to make it work. She's my little trooper.
They also recommended doing 30 min "castor oil packs" everyday. Which was basically just putting oil and a heating pad on my tummy for 30 minutes every night. Surprisingly, that was really a pain/difficult to remember to do. - Lame excuse I know.
I also took something called rejuvaflow - and basically everything tastes nasty. After about two weeks of this, I got my period. Yay! Now I can start the Fertility Cleanse which, you guessed it, is a bunch of nasty tasting teas, along with like flower drops that I'm supposed to drink several times a day. And for the most part, I did it.
November 2018
All my cleanses and treatments were done. I had spent hundreds of dollars. Probably closer to $600 or a little more I'm guessing. Which is a little embarrassing for me to say. Sort of feels like a big waste of money. But Micah was really supportive and understanding and really helped me not feel bad or guilty. The midwife ladies really knew their stuff but ultimately I was right back to where I started. No period. No real answers.
January 2019
A friend had been bugging me to go into my Doctor. And maybe I should have done that to begin with. Maybe I even did, honestly, I can't remember. Either way, we'd been trying for a year and just not getting my period can't be normal. According to my calculations I was sort of on like a 75 day cycle. If you can even call that a cycle. First off, ultrasound to look at what was going on in there. I had a ton of eggs in there, but they weren't budging. The Dr. said my ovaries looked like a classic case of PCOS. I didn't have any of the symptoms except an irregular period and fortunately I didn't have any cysts growing either (I guess your eggs can just like grow in there and not release each month and then they'd turn into cysts or something that'd need to be removed. Boy, I hope there's no OBGYN's reading this, bc I could totally be wrong!) But good news I didn't have that. I just had eggs that weren't growing and weren't going anywhere equalling no period. They said it was easy to fix. People do it all the time and have healthy babies. So, I guess we should try that.
February 2019
Started taking Letrozole.
Week one: One pill, once a day, for five days, then an ultrasound to see if any eggs were growing. None growing.
Week two: back at Walgreens, two pills, once a day, for five days, ultrasound. A little bit of growth, but not enough.
Week three: Walgreens, three pills, five days, ultrasound.
March 2019
Remember how like over a year ago I felt like someone was missing? At that time I was like 95% sure someone was missing. But now, after all this, I was only like 50% sure someone was missing. Through all of this, for the most part, I really had peace. I mean, it's easy to have peace when you already have three kids. I know what I went through is nothing compared to what others dealing with infertility have gone through. I'm not saying it was easy either but we really prayed for God's will and plan for our family. And honestly, at this point, I started to battle with thoughts of, are we doing too much? Is this God telling us to be content with our family size? Our family is perfect the way it is, we had always said we wanted four or five kids. But three is ok too. How much meddling and drug taking should we do at this point? - Of already having a family.
At this point my Sweet Lou and sometimes Asa knew the drill. Another week, another appointment. Sit in a darkish room, watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on moms phone while mom did who knows what. This time my eggs had grown. Three of them. Three of them were big enough to possibly be released.
I should explain. The reason for the weekly ultrasounds was to ensure that there weren't like six eggs growing at a time. It wouldn't be safe for anybody to release six eggs, get pregnant and have six babies at the same time. No argument here, let's avoid that.
But now we've got three. Three eggs is the most they would allow us to try to conceive with. If there were more or if we were 100% against having multiples they'd recommend we, ya know, not do it. But after all this, we thought we might as well try.
Three weeks later, and the first day that my Ovia fertility tracker app said I could, I got a positive pregnancy test.
April 2019
Three weeks after that, Micah and I went in for an ultrasound. We knew going into it that there was a chance more than one would have worked. I didn't think it would really happen though.
I've had enough ultrasounds lately to know my way around and recognize a few things. I knew what my eggs looked like six weeks ago - basically black blobs. And I knew right away what it meant when I saw two black blobs on the screen.
Two babies.
We pretty much started telling people right away. It was amazing. Probably one of the funnest things in my life really - telling people we were pregnant... with two babies! Hannah, Micah's sister had the best, most shocking reaction. Literally screamed and scared her own baby half to death, he started crying. Poor guy lol.
I so wanted to be sharing this journey with the world while I was going through it. But I'm really bad at wanting to know how things are going to end before I share them. If anyone can tell me how to positively wrap up a blog post that'd be great. So often I just wanna be like "the end" or "so that's pretty much it". Good enough right?
But it's scary to share things while you're going through them. When we went on our cruise a year and a half ago I wanted to be like "WE'RE TRYING TO GET PREGNANT!!!!" all over a blog post. But what if nothing happened? What if it doesn't work? What will people think of me? I don't want people asking me if I'm pregnant every month. I don't know, all silly reason to keep things in I suppose. We've all got our reasons for keeping our secrets.
I just want you to know my story. And know that's it's ok to sometimes be open and vulnerable. Although it is scary and I understand why it's easier just to not. I feel so incredibly lucky to be pregnant with these babies.
So that's pretty much it.
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