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.

The Lesson and The Reason

Wow.  After reading my two posts from last year, I feel older and wiser.  I've had to learn a big lesson for myself, and had to dig deep to find patience and trust.  I've had to change my attitude and belief about working hard for something and expecting it to happen.  Things don't always go as planned (even if they seemingly have your ENTIRE adult life), and that was a big pill to swallow for me.

I foolishly believed that things would work out just as I had hoped they would in my first blog post.  It would be PERFECT:  getting pregnant in 2011, having a baby in 2012...following my trend of cool things happening to us every year.

Except that God's plans are MUCH bigger than mine, and are more perfect.

The first couple months we started trying and ended up empty-handed, I wasn't too worried.  I figured it would take a little time.  When October hit, and still nothing, I started freaking out.  As in, "Why is this not happening yet, what are we doing wrong, I can't believe it didn't happen this month, it would have been PERFECT timing, we need to have a baby in the summer" etc., etc., etc.  And of course, when you want something so badly, it seems like every person around is getting that ONE thing.  Sigh.

Sometime in October/November, I calmed down.  I HAD to accept that this wasn't going to happen on my time at all, and there was nothing I could do about it.  I no longer had control over this.  I actually never had any at all.  I started to believe that I was bound to have children, but had to wait for the most perfect time, even if it didn't follow my "perfect" timeline.  It was helpful to think that after a year of trying had passed, I would get the opportunity to see my Dr. and seek out her help.

Thankfully, I didn't have to go a whole year.  Strange things started happening to me in December.  I ended up having a period/bleeding for almost the entire month.  I made an appointment with my Dr., who prescribed me some pills to take for a week to stop the bleeding, and who also, after hearing about my trying to get pregnant for 7 months, scheduled me for some preliminary blood work in early January.  I was happy to get the pills and be taking the next step toward conceiving, but at that appointment, she also found what felt like a lump in my right breast.  I went on Christmas break not really knowing what all this could mean.

The month of January was filled with Dr.'s appointments.  First, I had to have a mammogram and an ultrasound to find out if I did have a lump in my right breast.  Luckily, it was absolutely nothing.  And I'm glad I (hopefully) won't have to have another mammogram for another 10 years!  I started to get a lot of blood work done.  After my first appointment, they noticed one of my hormone levels was elevated.  It was my thyroid.  Did this mean I had hyperthyroid?  That's what I assumed "elevated" meant.  Needless to say, further testing needed to be done, and I was put on a synthetic hormone to balance out what was going on in my body.  I had more blood work, plus an ultrasound on my thyroid, to make sure there were no growths.  When those results came back, I learned that my thyroid antibodies count was EXTREMELY high (normal is from 1-9...mine was over 1300), and that my antibodies were attacking my thyroid, causing what I think of as beyond hypothyroidism.  I was told that I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, and that I could expect to be on medication and monitor my hormone levels for the rest of my life.

MEANWHILE, my Dr. wanted to monitor if I actually was ovulating or not, so I went in for an ultrasound and appointment to check if any follicles were present around the time I expected to ovulate.  Luckily, there was a healthy sized follicle at each of my (ovaries?  fallopian tubes?  I really don't know) that should be released at ovulation, and hopefully fertilized.  My Dr. told me theoretically I should conceive that month...then she told me the ultrasound showed something else that they hadn't been looking for.  It appeared that my uterus is heart-shaped, which is called a bicornuate uterus.  She told me that a bicornuate uterus can't be corrected with surgery; it's just something you live with.  She said it would put me into the "high-risk" category if/when I became pregnant, because there are higher odds of miscarriage.  Sigh again.

I left that appointment feeling hopeful, but still pretty discouraged.  When you're not even pregnant, it's hard to hear that one day you might miscarry because of something you can't change within your body.  However, Russ and I went along through January like normal, still trying to conceive, with me thinking that nothing was gonna happen anytime soon.  Russ was more optimistic, and convinced me we should keep trying that month.  My Dr. had actually said at the end of our appointment that I should give my thyroid medicine three months to kick in, and that I should come back and see her in April.  She actually said I would be pregnant by then and was extremely hopeful sounding, so I didn't worry about things too much.

I had one last appointment to get blood drawn.  The purpose was to check if I had actually ovulated in January.  I received a phone call that my progesterone levels increased, which showed I did ovulate. :)

Since this post is already extremely long, I'll start another post right now.

Officially...

...off birth control.  Not officially trying yet, just trying to figure out my natural cycle, not my cycle controlled by birth control hormones.  Thinking this will take a couple months to figure out, and THEN the actual trying will start! :)

The Next Step

Since Russ and I have been a couple, we've shared some pretty big milestones every single year...

2004 - Started dating, and I graduated college
2005 - Russ graduated college, we moved to Florida, started teaching, and got engaged - big year!
2006 - Bought our furbaby, Poochie! :)
2007 - Got married :)
2008 - Moved to South Carolina
2009 - Bought our first home
2010 - Graduated with our Masters Degrees

So it's 2011, and we've been thinking for awhile about "The Next Step."  Obviously, the next logical step would be to add to our family, and I don't mean by buying another Pomeranian (although I would love it!) 

Russ and I are excited to begin trying to have a baby!

As I'm writing this first blog entry, only a very small handful of people are aware of our plans...so I will be writing to NO audience for awhile.  Once we've actually conceived a Baby Cammann and are ready to share it with the world, you will get to see my posts that were happening before the big news broke.

So, we're hoping we can add to our list of years:
2011 - we're having a baby!
2012 - Baby Cammann is born!