I am beyond thrilled to announce that the hubs and I are expecting our first little one in April 2018.
To be honest, the whole thing came as a bit of a shock to us. I had been told by numerous doctors over the years that I may never be able to have biological children. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get pregnant – it was that I couldn’t carry that child. I shared this with Cody early on, and while I knew he wanted kids as badly as I did, we were both happy to adopt, if that’s the way we were supposed to build our little family.
Knowing the adoption process is long and arduous, and we’re both in our thirties, we opted to have some tests performed a few months before we got married to confirm what other doctors had told us. We wanted to make the choice about whether to begin the adoption process with as much information as possible. Surprisingly, the tests all came back normal. Barely. But for us, and for my doctor, that was enough to give us hope that I might get to experience pregnancy – and adoption still might be an option, or even a choice, for us in the future.
We waited a month after returning from our honeymoon to start “trying, not trying” (my doctor advised a short waiting period because we had been on malaria preventative through the last day of our honeymoon). The doctor said it could take a while for us to get pregnant – her best estimate was six months to a year, hence why we decided not to wait longer. And surprise, surprise – 6 weeks later, we were pregnant.
Sharing the news
We waited more than a month before we told our families. There was just this constant fear – a fear that anything we did, or didn’t do, or nothing at all, could take this little life away from us. And more than never getting pregnant, the idea of getting pregnant and having to let go of our little one so early, was terrifying. And still is.
It may sound silly, but we never really celebrated our little one until October 2nd, five weeks after that first test was positive and one week before the end of the first trimester. That was the day the genetic tests and sonogram results came back letting us know that our baby was unlikely to have a major chromosomal abnormality, everything looked fine for me, and little baby H was a GIRL. The news was such a relief.
I know there is still some risk that something could go wrong, and we are so thankful every day we get to spend growing this little one. But, it feels so good to finally get excited for this huge life change. To start decorating a nursery. To share the news with all of our friends. And to start making new, different plans, because life is going to look a lot different in six short months!
Here’s a little clip from our gender reveal (we already knew Baby H was a girl, but wanted to share the news with our family in a special way. These gender reveal cannons from Etsy were perfect!)
A huge thank you to the always talented Becca Sue Photography for coming out last-minute on a Sunday to shoot our announcement photos!