Friday, May 11, 2012

Looking Back

Here it is; almost Mother's Day again! This will be my third year officially celebrating the "big day".

I've read a lot of great blog entries this week about what it means to be a mother, what it takes to be a good mother, and then the mother of them all... this Time article asking if I'm mom enough. (I'm not, by the way.)

Forget all that though, I think I'll look back to before I became a mom at all, when I was newly pregnant with Abbey.

For those of you who don't know me personally, my struggles with endometriosis had us concerned we may not be able to conceive at all. But as they say, God works in mysterious ways.

12/30/09

Some days it feels completely normal to be pregnant, and other days I'm simply amazed, awed and terrified all in one. It's such a weird thing to think that in less than 4 months from now, we'll be responsible for someone else's life. Just us. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, just us... Wow.

We stopped "not trying" back before the wedding. Yes, that may have been playing with fire, but I honestly didn't think it was going to happen (which, of course, it didn't -- then). We officially started "trying" then in September, just a few months after the wedding. Ultimately it took us over a year, but only about 10 months from when we started charting. We met with a new (to me) ob/gyn in early August. After reviewing all of my records and films, she estimated us at having about a 30% chance of getting pregnant on our own.

She told us that they'd test Hubby first, later that month. As for me - she was going to let us keep trying until December (which would've been right now), and then she was sending us to a reproduction expert (RE). She said she would normally give us a year from when she met us, but considering our ages (31 and 37), and my medical history, she didn't want us to have to wait too much longer.

Little did we know, we were already pregnant while we were sitting there, in her office, mapping out this game plan. Isn't it funny how life works? When we found out a few weeks later than we were truly pregnant we looked back at the charts and realized we'd conceived before meeting our new doctor. At our next meeting with her, Hubby embraced her (probably a little too tightly) and said "GOD Dr. F, you're GOOD!!!"

Needless to say, he is super, super excited. After hearing "30% chance", we were both a little dejected. I was upfront and honest with him about my conditions from the first time he ever told me he wanted kids, but to hear a doctor tell you those odds, it makes it pretty real. We truly are having our miracle baby.

We're not finding out the sex. We went back and forth about this, and trust me - the planner in me did want to know. But the part of me that thinks this might be our one and only, wants to relish every moment of suspense and wonderment. So in the end we decided to wait it out.

We do have names picked out though - that was surprisingly simple. For the most part I picked out the girl name and he picked out the boy name and we agreed.

As for a gut feeling on what the sex is- I have none. But everyone has told me they think it's a boy. We have not gotten one single "it's a girl". I think I've let everyone else convince me it's a boy at this point. We even refer to the baby as "him". Which we always try to correct, but sometimes it really is just easier to say "he". 

The pregnancy itself so far has been up and down. The first trimester was hard... I was getting sick nearly every day, sometimes a few times a day. Actually, strike that. It wasn't really getting sick, it was dry-heaving. Constantly. I only actually threw up a handful of times, but I'd dry-heave for sometimes 45 minutes at a time. Talk about painful.

Then the second trimester came and it was like someone flipped a switch. I felt better, I finally started gaining a little weight and I felt like myself. Now I'm just a few weeks away from entering the third tri, and I can see where people say that the second is the easiest. Already I can see where this bump is going to get uncomfortable. And all those jokes about not being able to see your toes, or bend over? Yeah, I can see I'm only a few more weeks away from that. Hard to believe how quickly time flies!

Yep, everything is coming together. I've never been happier, or more terrified. Thankfully happier wins out 90% of the time.


And, without further adieu, Abbey the newborn. Stink eye and all. Happy Mother's Day, everyone! 


1 comment: