It’s still pretty funny for me to look back on pictures from “the early days” of this pregnancy and think about alllll the feels that were going on. (the one above is from 5ish weeks!)
There are times I wish I would have done some journaling during the first trimester – but I just wasn’t there. That season? Well, it already feels like a lifetime and a person ago.
So now, I wanted to take some time to write down those first weeks. They were special and unique and not at all what I would have expected.
The writings below is my heart’s way of documenting what I can about that time. It’s also here in the abyss of the internets because I know how much you care and how many of you have followed us over the 10 year journey we’ve been on. And I wanted to welcome you into those first weeks – please read along and now HOW MUCH you are appreciated here.
January 19th. That’s when this part of the journey began. It was the start of the a new cycle, we had just learned through at home testing that my progesterone wasn’t high enough to implant/maintain a fertilized egg and we were…
Hopeful.
We bought another round of test strips along with some progesterone cream (thanks Amazon!) and counted the days. LH tests showed that I had ovulated, the days past and the time to use the cream started.
I started taking the progesterone tests (which are a bit “backwards” from pregnancy/LH tests – you only want to see one line. One line means positive – aka – progesterone is high enough) and then, we headed out for our annual road trip to Tucson.
It was a Tuesday – actually, my in laws anniversary. It was day 25 of my cycle and all of the progesterone tests were showing positive – meaning – my progesterone levels hadn’t dropped. (They drop when you aren’t pregnant and you get a period)
Around roughly 3am I woke up to go to the bathroom (not normal for me) and thought I’d take a pregnancy test.
Yea it was still early…
But I’m not always that patient and I had spent the last few weeks pouring over reviews of this magical progesterone cream and the hundreds – maybe even a thousand women who had struggled with infertility (mostly “unexplained”) and how this cream worked. Even on the first or second month!
So I was cautiously optimistic that we would find the same was true for us.
So again, 3am half-asleep impatient Karin takes a pregnancy test in the bathroom of her grandparent’s home in Tucson. I waited what felt like an appropriate amount of time, checked the test under the *very* dim glow of the nightlight and nope. Just one line. Not pregnant.
Yet???
I knew well enough not to give up hope because it was early in the cycle, even with a “6 days early” test. So I crawled in bed and pseudo-slept until around 8am…
Again, got up, went to the bathroom and my gut said to check the previous test – so I did – oddly enough?
One crackled light line was there!
I was – amazed, confused and found myself taking any extra second of the day to Google how reliable a pregnancy test is 3 hours later.
Answers were mixed (the company line was 15 minutes and then don’t trust it)
As much as I tried not to think about it (HELLO – could you?) we had a great day hiking with Dan’s parents, dinner with G&G and then games with the 6 of us. It wasn’t until around 9pm that I finally found what I was looking for…
A forum with a comment on this very question from a lab tech who works on/develops hCG tests. The summation was that the test line for hCG can ONLY change color if hCG is present. (in only rare cases do you have any traceable amount of hCG in your body w/o being pregnant) And that sometimes, hours later, a test can show positive after the “testing window” because the urine has spent all that time going back and forth, drying out over the test area and it picks up even the smaller amounts of hCG.
So I went to bed – hopeful again that I would see more positive tests in the days to come.
Sure enough – up again to go to the bathroom around 3am, take another test (which this time was positive immediately!) and went back to bed. This time sleeping and sleeping well.
Dan and I took a walk together that morning and this *lovely* photo was from after I handed him a note and positive pregnancy test.
His response?
“Really? For real, really?”
Followed by, “We’ll be the appropriate amount of excited at the appropriate time”
An absolutely, perfectly Dan response and just what I needed to hear.
So we spend the rest of our road trip in Tucson, Sedona, Kanab and on home, reveling in the wonder that this may actually be happening.
After all this time, could some time, growth, research and a $20 bottle of cream actually work for us? Would that faint test line actually grow into a tiny human that makes it past 10 weeks? Or if we’re lucky enough, the first trimester?
Honestly… my brain couldn’t get much further ahead than that…
As surreal as if felt, Dan practically had to walk me through the first 10 (or so) weeks. Not because I was so sick, but I was just in a daze. I could function and work and do life, but anything baby related, I just shut-down in weird ways.
We had an appointment at 5 weeks and 3 days and I just – cried. Sitting in the midwives office not just for an exam or regular appointment, but for a BABY? It was as though someone else was there. Not me. Not this girl – nope. It was someone else’s appointment I happened to be sitting in on.
Our sweet midwife could (obviously) tell the state I was in – 10 years into this journey and although they only typically do 20 week ultrasounds at their office, they scheduled one for us around 8 weeks to help ease my heart and mind.
So! 3 (long?) weeks later we found ourselves heading in for our first ultrasound. The tears came once our car hit the parking lot and I could hardly get myself out of the car. 80% of me SO sure and SO positive I had made all of this up. (I had very few/no pregnancy symptoms. No food aversions, no sickness, no tenderness, nothing. Just positive pregnancy tests and elevate progesterone – which apparently wasn’t quite enough! haha)
But Dan got me inside and without sitting down we were called into the room and immediately there it was – a teeny-tiny jelly bean on the monitor.
Well – there is was! Could there be any better proof? (more on that slightly sarcastic question later…)
We had a another appointment in a few weeks and another ultrasound that would come around 14 weeks (my uterus was 4 weeks ahead in size and they found 2 fibroids, one quite large so they wanted to do a followup to check growth – more on that later too)
In the meantime? Still a good amount of shock, cautious excitement, disbelief and just waiting…
And Dan driving me to some stores to get maternity pants for me because I couldn’t fit in my jeans even at 10 weeks (thanks large uterus and fibroids!) and was in enough “denial” (disbelief?) over all of this that he knew I wouldn’t do it myself.
Bless him.
I never would have guessed he’d suggest spending $200 on a bunch of pants that would only be in use for a short season but boy did he treat me like a queen that day. He could tell I was far more absent from my body then present in those weeks.
Well – let’s pause there. There’s more to be said, more to write, but you’re a trooper for making it this far.
Much love,
K
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