Mothership Confessional

Its funny how differently I feel with this second pregnancy. Not necessarily physically, but emotionally. With Ava, I truly felt happy and thrilled  and  ecstatic pretty much every single day of pregnancy, even despite the first trimester sickness and third trimester hugeness. It was my first time experiencing pregnancy after trying for 4 long years. I was enjoying every moment of it. I wasn't taking any day for granted and I honestly felt like I was glowing every day. I also had nothing better to do than to sit and daydream, plan and organize for little girl's arrival. This time around, the pregnancy itself was a complete surprise. I mean, we weren't preventing pregnancy so obviously we knew it could happen, but seeing how we didn't get Ava without medical intervention made us have our guards down a little. I still feel the timing for a second pregnancy couldn't have been better. I have absolutely zero regrets or hesitations about being pregnant again. ...

**This post was written a few weeks ago, and I am just now publishing it.** I don't even know how to start this post so I'm just going to start putting my thoughts down. I find it so ironic  that my post from earlier today included a part about wondering how I'm going to store all of Ava's baby things. I found out just a few hours ago that I will only have to keep them in storage for 9 months!!!!!! ...yes, I found out today that I am pregnant...AGAIN!!!!!!!! Oh my gosh. Obviously I am writing this up just a few hours after seeing that positive test, so things are just sinking in. It is just so  wild!  God sure does work in mysterious ways! So let's rewind to how I got to this joyous moment! Chris and I decided when Ava was around 8 months old that we would forgo the birth control and let nature take its course. We want to have kids close-ish in age, and once again, we felt confident in going the "no birth control" route sinc...

I can't believe it. I just can't!! Ava is 10 months old! And she's acting like such  a big girl! We thought it would take forever of her to crawl and pull up and sidestep. And then one week, it was like an explosion of milestones! She can do it all now, and she's so fast! She doesn't like her jumper as much, mainly because she can't get around! I have to stick her in there for dinner prep some nights before Chris gets home.  She's not happy in there for very long anymore! Her favorite thing is to walk around the house with help. She seeks out our hands and grabs them and starts smiling and squealing, pulls to standing, demanding for us to help her walk! She can now pull to stand, and then stand for a bit without holding onto anything. She's getting so brave! Last week she surprised me and crawled up a few steps! It gave me a heart attack because I didn't think she could do it! She has really become an adventurous little girl...

This post sprung up from my last weekly update. I realized my post had taken a turn and really needed to be it's own post. It's not as happy-go-lucky as my weekly posts are. It's about infertility. ***** (Ava will be here in 6 short weeks. And these are some thoughts I've been having lately.) All these "just you wait" statements are about to end. Yes, we've done our fair share of waiting, thank you very much. Babies cry a lot. We will want more sleep. They make a mess. Blah, blah, blah. Yes, parenthood is not always rainbows and butterflies...I already knew that. I don't need a lecture. We are just ready for our lives to feel more  complete. To feel like we have more of a purpose. To have more  joy . To grow our family. Don't squash that with your attempts at horror stories. People who have tried to conceive for a long time have a different perspective and don't want to hear your crap. ...

Read Part 1 and Part 2 We talked for awhile that day. Like nonstop. He still couldn't wrap his brain around the fact that I was pregnant. I told him that I've had 4 weeks to process this, and I still couldn't understand it. Here's my theory on what happened: 1. I began my period on Aug. 30. I took Clomid as prescribed. 2. Clomid did not make me ovulate; the blood test on day 21 was correct. 3. I was testing for pregnancy between day 30 and 40. 4. I took Provera between day 45 and day 55 after taking a lab urine pregnancy test. 5. I ovulated on my own on or before day 45 of my cycle, October 11. We conceived shortly thereafter. I was NOT charting, so I have no idea what day was "the day". You can't know for sure anyway, unless you only try like once every 7 days. 6. I starting feeling pregnancy symptoms around day 55. Some of them were the same as PMS symptoms, so I was still expecting a period after ending Provera. 7. I got a positive p...

I have debated for a long time about whether I wanted to include a post on my blog about the journey my husband and I have been on to achieve a pregnancy. It's quite personal. And some people may think that it's too much information. But without the other blogs I came across during my research, I would have felt MUCH more helpless and alone. And my hope is, is that another woman will stumble across this post and find comfort and hope in hearing someone else's story. Now, I will go ahead and include a disclaimer: men may find this post frightening as you will probably read way more than you ever wanted to know about the female body. It's nothing embarrassing, its just biology. I will warn you again when things get personal. For now, let's rewind the clock back to June 6, 2009: the day Chris and I got married! We both had talked during our dating years of if we wanted kids, how many, and when we wanted to start trying. We both agreed not to start trying righ...