YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!

January 30, 2012 - Russ had come home from basketball practice, we had dinner, and he started working on something online.  I told him that I wanted to give him his birthday gifts that night, so I went into my closet to gather them up.  I had to go to the bathroom, and considered taking a pregnancy test.  I was supposed to get my period that day, and I didn't...which is completely normal for me.  Since I stopped using birth control, my periods haven't been regular at all...not even close.  I figured I would take a test anyway, just to see, because how cool would it be if I could actually tell Russ we were pregnant on his birthday?!

I took the test, didn't really think too much about it, and started getting his gifts ready to take to him.  I glanced at the test - it was a digital test that actually spelled it out if you were pregnant or not...and on the stick, I saw for the first time ever - PREGNANT!  WHAAAAAAAAAT?????  I was almost shocked.  I started tearing up - this is what I had been waiting for for so many months! - and scrambled to get Poochie.

Let me back up - when Russ and I first started trying, he told me he wanted to be surprised when I found out I was pregnant.  He didn't want to know I was taking a test or anything.  So back in June, I decided I would let Poochie help me tell him.  I bought her a shirt that says "I'm gonna be a big sister!" on it, and had planned to put it on her and let him discover it that way.

So of course when I need Poochie to come, she WON'T come!  I was in the bathroom with tears in my eyes and stick that says PREGNANT calling my dog to come see me.  I didn't want Russ to see that I was crying, but since she wasn't listening to me, I had to go out into our main room and get her.  I grabbed her, struggled to get her in the shirt (she was really fluffy at the time), and then I called Russ into our room and told him to come see Poochie.  He noticed she was wearing clothes (probably thinking it was just another dumb outfit I was forcing her to wear), then got a closer look at what the shirt said.  He looked at me with a cautious look - he was thinking the shirt had meaning behind it, but wasn't exactly sure.  That's when I showed him the stick that said PREGNANT.  Both of us had tears in our eyes now...but then I started thinking...what if I'm getting a false positive because of my medicine?  I had only been on it for 2 weeks, and I was already pregnant????  What if the medicine contained some chemical that skewed the results of a pregnancy test????

I started searching online to see if the thyroid medicine could make that happen.  I found that as long as it didn't contain HCG, then I really was pregnant.  So, my next frantic Google search was it the type of medicine I was taking contained HCG...NO!  I really was pregnant!  However, we decided that I would take another test the next morning anyway.

We woke up the next morning, Russ' 29th birthday, and I took the last pregnancy test that I had.  This time, Russ got to see the results before I did.  It was another PREGNANT on the stick!  We took some pictures and called our moms, who both knew we had been trying and were having problems.  It was a great morning and great day!  That's when I received the call from the nurse who works with my Dr., who told me that I in fact had ovulated (duh) according to my latest blood test, and I told her that I got a positive pregnancy test that morning!  She set me up for an appointment at 8 weeks, which is February 28th.  This concerned me a little, what with all the crazy stuff that had been going on with my body the past month, so she said I could get two more blood tests done to measure the amount of progesterone and to check that my hormone levels were doubling like they should.  When those results came in, my progesterone was right where it should be during the 1st trimester ("high enough to sustain a pregnancy" said my nurse), and my HCG levels went from a 74 to a 193 over the course of 72 hours, which more than doubled!

Which brings me to where I am today.  I am currently at the end of my 6th week, and feel pretty good!  I've been more tired than normal (sometimes I go to bed at 8 and sleep all night!), and I have felt a little queasy here and there, but overall great!  I can't WAIT for my first appointment - which includes an ultrasound! - in about a week and a half.  That's when we're planning on announcing the news to more family and close friends...it's gonna be tempting to tell everyone at that point, but we'll see if we can make it to the end of the first trimester before making it public.