Baby Puckett Announcement

GUESS WHAT?!

I am over the moon excited to announce that we are expecting a BABY February 3rd, 2019! Those words feel so good to type, you have no idea! This has been such an emotional journey and by far the hardest secret to keep so today, to be able to share with you all our news feels amazing. We can't wait to meet the little boo, but before then I am so excited to take this pregnancy journey (although it has been kicking my ass!).  

I will post a first trimester recap later on in the week but for today I am going to share our story on our road to becoming pregnant. Our journey has not been an easy one so I wanted to share the hard times we went through before we got to receive this overwhelming happiness we now have. 

Today, July 30th I am officially 13 weeks and 1 day. That seems crazy to say considering I never thought we would get to this point. Stephen and I got married in April 2016 and I wanted to be married for at least one year before we got pregnant. After we got married I really started paying attention to my cycle dates, noticing big time that for some reason I was always receiving my period. I mean always.  In October 2016 I started finally tracking of each cycle. Start date, how many days it lasted, and end date. I keep track in the notes section on my phone which by the way was quickly filling up. In May 2017 we moved to Canada. We have been married one year and one month, we have moved, and now its baby making time. Isn't that how it goes? First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage. Easy Peasy. Except, not really. 

I decided I wasn't going to stress about "trying"  I had absolutely no idea what trying even meant. You need to ovulate right? Well what day is that and how do you know if you are? Doesn't matter, i kept hearing to just have fun and practice A LOT and it will happen. So we did. May, June, July... nothing except random mensural cycles that was really staring to piss. me. off. In August I went to see the doctor for the first time. I had a full female exam, blood testing, physical, everything. And it all came back looking totally normal. No, no Dr. something is not right can we please do more tests? More test done, results are back... you are low in progesterone... insert googling progesterone. Doctor subscribes me a dosage that should do the trick and even out my cycles. For one month it did, then back to weird mid cycle bleeding as I was calling it.  We are now at the beginning of October and the emotional stress is starting to get to me. WHAT  IS WRONG WITH MY BODY?!

My Dr. quickly realized this was out of his realm of expertise and told me he had put in a referral to Dr. Wise, the ONLY fertility doctor in the entire Okanagan. He wasn't sure if she would take my case since we hadn't been officially trying for a year but it was worth a try. Fertility Specialist, once those two words were said to me I never thought I would be the same. I am infertile? As in I won't have children? My appointment date was set for January 12th, 2018. 3 more months.  During those 3 months I made sure I charted, calculate dates, changed my eating habits, stopped drinking alcohol, went to acupuncture, and gathered as much information as possible. There was no way I was going to wait this long and show up for her to tell me to try something else. 

January 12th's appointment came. I had all my information for the Dr. to look at and was expecting her to say, "I see this all the time" instead I got, "Wow, I have never seen this before".  We left the appointment with a plan, infertility is not a open and close case it is not black and white it is very much gray. A lot of trial and error, a  lot of tests and hopefully through the process of elimination we will figure out the issue. We started immediately, I made my self available whenever she had an appointment slot. Starting with ultra sounds to check my ovaries, then moved on to flushing my tubes, and finally doing blood testing every other day (yes you read that right!) for two months. I would be at the lab by 8am every other morning to have my blood drawn to ensure it made it to the main lab by mid morning and the nurse from the doctors office would have the results by 2pm. I got to the point where the insides of my forearms were black and blue from all the bruising. Thank goodness it was winter so log sleeves were a must!

By March we had another appointment with Dr. Wise and decided we were going to give hormone therapy a try. I think Stephen almost fell out of his chair, his already emotional raging wife is going to start hormone therapy. Well this shall be fun! We started the hormone drug Ferma aka Letrozole. Side effects being: extreme mood changes, hot flashes, tiredness, nausea, etc. Starting on day 3 of my actual cycle (which we knew because of the blood testing results) and would take the drug for 5 days straight. On day 10 of my cycle I would start blood testing again to find that on day 14 I ovulated (yes!!) until I started my period on day 31. Thats okay, I kept telling myself it would take more than one round but I was so happy to have a month where my cycle was "normal". I started round 2, same way as round 1. I made sure we started really practicing on day 10 because I wasn't sure just when ovulation would take place and we didn't want to miss it. Day 14 I get the call, it is ovulation day, go time (!!), until on day 31 my period came again. At the end of round 2 the emotional rollercoaster that had become my life had taken over, these months were extremely hard to push through. 

I called the doctor and scheduled a follow up. It was April 30th, she said do round 3 and we will schedule the appointment for the end of May and see what next steps we will need to try. Fine, I will wait and do round 3 which I was convinced was not going to work. I had loosened up on my diet, I had stared drinking alcohol again to the point where day 14 came and the nurse called me saying it was ovulation day and we happened to be wine tasting! We were headed to Arizona just a couple days later so there went our practicing daily for 10 days to get the right timing... everything was out the door. But I didn't care because we had our follow up appointment on May 31st! 

(my favorite photo of us, the day we conceived our baby according to blood test/science!)

On Monday May 28th my ovulation app (Ovia) told me to take a pregnancy test, I really didn't want to but I will. I had bought a bunch from the dollar store ($1.25 each!!) and was down to the last one. When I went to open the test someone had stollen the applicator out of the box. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Whatever I am not pregnant so it didn't matter, I'll go buy more at the dollar store and take one the next day. Our follow up appointment was in 3 days and I know the Dr. will ask if I ad taken a test. Tuesday morning, May 29th I woke up and took a test and jumped into the shower because lets face it, the test will be negative. When I got out I saw one pink line and one very faint second line. I opened the door and yelled for Stephen who was making Sofia's school lunch for the day. LOOK AT THIS!!! He looked at me and said babe, that's two lines, you are pregnant! No I am not silly, that is one line and one fake line. I had a clear blue digital test (you know the expensive kinds) so I took that as well. Guess what it said?! You guessed it, 1-2 weeks PREGNANT! 

The feeling still wasn't real. I called Dr. Wise and spoke to the nurse who sent me for blood testing that day to confirm. Results are in, congratulation you have a positive HCG hormone! I continued to get my blood drawn every 2 or 3 days for a couple of weeks to make sure my levels we constantly climbing. It wasn't until June 21st (7 weeks + 4 days) when we had our first ultra sound and saw little Baby Puckett's heart flittering away nice and healthy. 

Our journey by no means was the hardest, it isn't even close to being the hardest but for us and for me it was hard. It was emotional, it was trying on our marriage, and it was heartbreaking. I am SO THANKFUL for the strong women in my life who supported and helped me/us through this journey. A handful of friends who have and are currently going through the same thing. If you are reading this and are struggling with conceiving my biggest piece of advice is to reach out and find another women who is as well and let them help you. Help each other!  

I can't wait to share how we told Sofia and I will also have a first trimester recap coming up later this week and next. Thank you everyone for alway supporting us, we are so excited for this next chapter!!