A very long journey

I've decided to jump on the bandwagon of family blogs and I have been told I should journal through this process so that I can look back on this time and reflect. Also have it to share with our new additions..... So here we go, my attempt to blog about food has always been a spotty process. I hope I can approach this task with a little more vigor and regularity.

Given the Facebook comments we received it seems people are very happy for us and also quite shocked we're pregnant! For many of you who know me, you know that his journey has been one that started almost twelve years ago, an entirely different life ago, it's been literal years of specialists and fertility care... a couple of surgeries, lots and lots of testing and really no answers to any satisfaction. After Jonathan and I were married and babies weren't happening, it just seemed like the right time to change the focus of our lives and spend some time having fun instead! So, that's what we did. It's only been since our move to Portland that we realized that this part of our lives was still calling for an answer: "are we or are we not going to have children?" After spending the majority of my twenties with a big question mark around this topic, we decided it was time, and we were ready to seek an answer. Whatever that answer was, we just wanted to know how to proceed in the planning of next stage of our lives together.

We saw an amazing team of nurses and doctors at a phenomenal local clinic and decided to move forward with IVF. The process is long, filled with un-fun things like shots (a lot of them), medications (a lot of those too), a million appointments, a lot of stress and anxiety... and of course, you go through it all knowing it's a gamble, that there are no guarantees when it comes to IVF. We were lucky and we know it. We ultimately (before the big day of our transfer, frankly the most important day in the whole process) ended up with only two viable embryos (blastocysts)... honestly, I was pretty devastated about it. I had hoped for at least 4 or 5, so we could have some to freeze and try again later if things didn't work out with this cycle. Alas, that wasn't in the cards. We determined there was no point in freezing just one egg, so we transferred them both. This increased our odds and also increased the chances we might have two.

After the transfer, we began the ridiculously long two week wait, arguably the hardest part of the process. There are no appointments to hang onto, no real protocols to follow for medications (ok, a few things). Literally, it's a sit-and-mark-an-X-across-the-days-on-the-calendar kind of wait. I HATE WAITING.

Since I hate waiting I decided, after much reading that there was a chance I could get a positive on an early home pregnancy test.... so of course, we decided to try. I made Jon buy two boxes of 2 pack pregnancy tests, yes FOUR tests. At just 6 days past our five day transfer (so 11 days after the egg extraction) I took the test, first thing in the morning. I couldn't even look at the results, I went and made the bed and then summoned up the courage to go take a look... to my surprise! There was a very, very faint second line! Seeing as how I had taken these tests for 12 years and had never seen even a hint at a line, I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time.... Hope. With a very unceremonious holler to Jon to come upstairs, I showed him the test and said, "I think that's a line!" It was a life changing moment, and while we didn't jump for excitement, we knew at that moment there was hope for us and that all was not lost.

Being type A I took a test every morning leading up to the first blood draw, and they each progressively got more clear to the point we used the blood draw to confirm what we already knew.  We were in fact, pregnant. For the first time in a decade of defeat... something had happened. Our leap of faith, the gamble, turned into something incredible, our first real chance at a family.