Oh Baby!! It's a long one!

I have not been in a blogging mood lately and this is why. Forget the obligatory waiting period before sharing the news.....here ya have it:

6 week ultrasound (last friday). pretty hard to see anything on this pic but you get the idea.

We are pretty pumped!! As most people close to us know, this took a little longer than we thought but if at first you don't conceive...try, try again!!! And try we did for 14 months, 2 fertility consultations, and finally a plan that worked.

There are so many places I want to start when talking about this journey but pregnancy brain and being utterly exhausted make it hard to have a coherent thought! I can say that this time getting pregnant was totally different than our first time. It took us 2 months to conceive with Claire. Easy as pie...the whole pregnancy was great. This time we had more of a challenge. There were moments of disappointment, tears, hope, stress, and simply trusting the true blue fact that God had a plan no matter we wanted.
Backing up to early 2009. We struggled even making the decision to even have another child which for most people isn't a decision at all. They know they are having 2 or more (God willing) but we honestly weren't sure. Eric and I have a 17 yr age difference and our lives are pretty stable with just Claire. Another baby was hard to imagine for many reasons (that we listed!). We were done so we thought then we had a change of heart. We both felt it.
After the obligatory year of trying to get pregnant we headed to the OB. We did all the testing, blah, blah, blah. It was boggling. I was healthy as could be and everything looked great except that I wasn't producing mature eggs. What?! It had been me all along. Each cycle had just been a bust. I needed more answers so we moved to a fertility specialist. This place was amazing and the doc was super encouraging. She felt confident that all I needed was a little tweak. So we gave it a try. One round of meds, a shot in the stomach (given by myself. ouch!), one HSG procedure, and of course the good ole wam bam thank you mam method and we have ourselves a little bean!!! It worked on the first try. On June 11, we finally got the positive "pregnant" sign!!! WOOHOO!

Last Friday we heard that miraculous little sound of a tiny but strong heartbeat. We were elated. It makes it all very real when you can see that little blinking dot on the screen. I feel so lucky that my body only needed a little nudge. So very lucky that this worked.
I started to blog about this so many times but didn't have the strength to put it all out there in writing. I didn't know how to talk about wanting another baby knowing the challenges of other women and friends who try for years or never conceive. I knew how blessed I was to have one baby already and even though I had invested emotionally in this second baby it was never mine to lose if it wasn't in the cards. I truly had come to a place of peace once the treatment began which made it easy to move forward.
Our little bean will be here around February 24! My dad's birthday is February 27. How amazing would that be to have the same birthday. Fingers crossed and lots of prayers for a full term, healthy pregnancy.

our very own label creation. "preggo" bottles we gave to e's family at dinner to share the good news. so cute.