Matt and I got married in May of 2001. We were young, but when it's right, it's right. We always knew we wanted kids, but were fine experiencing life, traveling, working, and having all kinds of adventures before we decided to start "trying" to have little ones. I think when we first got married we said we'd try for kids in 2-3 years, 8 or so years into our marriage we decided to "not prevent". We actually got pregnant pretty quickly the first time, but miscarried at about 7-8 weeks, in March of 2009. We were incredibly disappointed, but surprised to learn how many people experience miscarriages, how common they are, and that it likely was the case of something being wrong with the fetus. There was a lot of tears and heartache, but we moved on and understood it to be "right". After that, we decided to start trying, and not just prevent. Over a year went by and we were incredibly disheartened. I did have a positive home pregnancy test, which was followed by two tests at the hospital that were negative, and then an incredibly painful period where I laid on the floor crying and vomiting. Good times. It's too bad that getting the news that you're not pregnant includes physical and mental pain - there's gotta be a better method for that.
After that, we went into the hospital to try to figure out what was up (actually a few hospitals, and got the run around a bit, all in all it was frustrating, but probably not worth going into). This just added to the frustration, because they couldn't find anything. Matt and I both were normal in every way. I had a lapraoscopy to see if I had endometriosis, and plenty of other tests… but we fit into that 5% of people with undiagnosed infertility.
Then in 2011 I got pregnant again naturally. We were in Europe for several weeks, had a lay over in Boston on our way home, and bought a pregnancy test at a Walgreens while there in Boston. At 5 am we took the test and it was positive. We were beyond thrilled, though slightly cautious. Again, we miscarried at 7-8 weeks. This time was horrible. There was just a little bleeding on and off, we went into the hospital and saw the baby's heart beat were assured that things were looking good, then came home and bled more. It went on for a week and was completely awful, full of up and down emotions, and left me in a depression for many months. So where do you go from there?
We decided to keep trying for a while, another year, and nothing. We were starting to accept the fact that it might never happen for us. We got tired of "trying", buying ovulation predictor kits, etc… I know everyone says as soon as you stop trying, you get pregnant. That wasn't exactly true for us. We had stopped trying for well over a year and then it happened again for us. We had been in South America for several weeks (notice a theme here - vacation is a great time to get pregnant, you're relaxed, have time together, eat whatever you want...), and although my body often acted like it was pregnant by displaying many symptoms, I had a hunch this time. Matt wanted me to wait another week before I took a test, because I have a long cycle, but I bought one anyway. I took the test in the morning while he was still asleep, and woke him up with a "Matty, wake up, I'm pregnant". I think he was so confused and still asleep. But given our history, we were incredibly timid and cautious. This go round we didn't read many books, we took care of me, but we were very gun shy. I was so nervous to do anything the entire first trimester. I remember stepping off of a curb that was lower than I expected and I was nervous. I thought my body was just so fragile based on past experiences. I got into the hospital ASAP and they put me on progesterone and baby aspirin. I don't know if those were the variables, but it kept. of course, I bled a tiny bit at 8 weeks while Matt was out of town (had just landed), and he hopped on a plane to run home and take me to the hospital. But, everything was okay. We finally started telling people around 17-20 weeks, and overall the pregnancy went pretty smoothly.
At 38 weeks we had some concerns because my doc said it appeared that baby boy hadn't grown. Of course we were feeling like everything had been too good to be true. He was measuring in the 20th percentile for size, and less than 5 percentile for stomach size. What does that mean? We felt like we were starving our baby, but didn't know what to do about it. It was pretty rough, and we felt helpless. I was afraid to do anything… a familiar position. They monitored me closely for a week, and then induced me on Monday March 30. The labor story, to be continued…
