Backstory

Well, since we waited until around 17 weeks to tell people that we were pregnant, there was a lot going on in Michael's and my lives that I didn't blog about.  I didn't want to leak the news too early and have something go wrong and then have to untell people.  So today I think I'll share the backstory to this baby.  :)  I've mentioned parts of our baby backstory in previous posts, but I'll try to make this post a little more comprehensive.  :)

Miscarriage
I'm not going to say too much about this, because there's already a long, detailed post on it from back when it happened in June.  Long story short, we went in for our first appointment and there was no heartbeat.  We were devistated, but we survived.  We had a D&C a few days after we found out.  Michael was great through this whole process.  We had a lot of people praying for us and we leaned on each other.  We made it through one of the worst situations of our lives.

Waiting
We weren't allowed to start trying again until after my body had gone through at least 1 normal cycle.  I got really impatient when it was taking over 6 weeks for my cycle to come back.  I tried to be patient, but at that point I was wondering if it was going to come back at all.  Finally, 7 weeks and 1 day after the D&C my cycle returned.

Trying
Michael and I have never had any problem getting pregnant when we decided we were ready to try.  However, after the time lost on the miscarriage and waiting for my cycle to normalize, I didn't want to waste any time.  I used an ovulation prediction kit anyway, just to make sure we had the timing right.  I got very excited when I finally got the smiley face, saying that I was ovulating.  After that we just had to wait a couple more weeks to take a pregnancy test.

Testing
Anyone actively trying to get pregnant knows it's hard to wait the appropriate amound of time to take that pregnancy test.  We want to take the test early so we can know and be excited, or know and prepare ourselves for trying again another month.  However, pregnancy tests run between $7 and $15 each!  So testing when it may be too early can get expensive.  Lucky for me, I had two left over, and they were off brand.  So when I started testing early, I used them first.  The first one was negative (a few days before I should have tried testing).  The second one, I thought I saw something, but couldn't be sure, if the line was there, it was veeeeeery light (a day before I should have tried testing).  I sent Michael to the store for tests, and he got fancy digital ones.  I was a little irritated, because they were expensive and I didn't pee on one (of the three in the box) for long enough, and it showed me an error message.  That meant I just wasted the money on that test for an inconclusive result.  I took another one immediately after, still a little grumpy, but only for the briefest of time, because I did the test right and had waited an appropriate amount of time, so the test showed me exactly what I wanted, "Pregnant".  :)  I used my last test again almost 2 weeks later (to see if the week indicator changed), it showed me that my hormone levels were rising.  :)  A moment of relief.   :)

Pregnant
Well it was hard to stay mad about the expensive tests with such wonderful news.  ;)  Michael and I were very happy!  We took lots of pictures to remember that exciting moment when we found out.  :)  It was September 1st when we found out we were going to be parents again.  :)

Worry
If you've been following my posts the last couple of weeks, you know that I've been worried about something going wrong, and not finding out about it until our doctor's appointment.  That was at almost 20 weeks!!  To say that I was worried before our first appointment at almost 8 weeks, would be a complete understatement.  Every time my brain went blank for a minute, I was praying.  If I wasn't actively thinking about something else, I was praying.  Sometimes it was out loud, sometimes in my mind, sometimes is was in the car, a lot of times it was laying in bed, sometimes I would write my prayers out or type them, sometimes I just sang the words, "I need You, Lord, I need You.  Every hour I need You.  My one defense, my righteousness, oh God, how I need You."  I was petrified to go to the doctor and receive terrible news again.  It made it difficult for me to be excited about the pregnancy early on.

7 weeks, 5 days
We finally had our first doctor's appointment.  To my surprise and excitement, there was a blob, with a heartbeat, doing great.  :)  I had been calculating the days and thought the doctor would change my due date from my cycle date of May 9th to my ovulation date of May 14th.  However, the blob was measuring ahead a little bit, at May 12th.  My doctor decided to keep my due date the same as my cycle date with the understanding that the baby may need an extra few days.  It was such a relief to see that everything was going well.  :)  But I was still worried.  I asked for our next appointment to be 3 weeks later instead of 4.  My doctor is great, so he had no problem with that.  :)  But he let me know that when I came back, the baby might not be big enough to hear the heartbeat with the doppler, and we may need another sono.  I assured him it was fine by me.  ;)

10 weeks, 5 days
Our next appointment was right before Michael and I left for Vegas.  I had already asked my doctor if it was ok to fly and he had cleared me.  This appointment would give me peace of mind before the trip.  As expected, the nurse couldn't find the heartbeat with the doppler.  The same thing happened when I came in early with Avery.  At that time, I didn't worry much, just happily moved to the sonogram room to see my baby again.  This time, I worried.  To make matters worse, the sonogram room was backed up and several other people were ahead of me in line, so I had to wait a while.  Luckily I had my amazing hubby with me to keep me calm and assure me that everything was fine.  We got into the sonogram room and took a look.  Our baby was tiny, but you could see the arms and legs moving all around.  :)  It was a relief to see everything doing well again.  :)

First Trimester
After that appointment there were only a couple more weeks until we finished the first trimester.  It was a relief to hit that milestone.  After the first trimester your risk of miscarriage greatly reduces.  It helped me to worry a little less, but didn't eliminate my fears.  But every successful appointment after that made things a little easier.

Second Trimester
I have had 2 appointments since hitting the 2nd trimester.  One appointment was at 14 weeks, the other at 19 weeks.  At the last appointment we saw the baby wiggling around again, the baby was measuring perfectly, and we found out if we're having a baby boy or a baby girl.  :)  We'll enter the third trimester at the beginning of February, only a little over a month away.  :)  We're halfway done now.  And I'm more confindent each and every day.  :)

So that's the backstory.  :)  I'll include some pictures in this post.  Hopefully they've been explained well enough.  ;)  Maybe I'll revisit the backstory again later.  For now, I hope this helps you understand how much this baby means to us, and the emotions we've felt throughout the process.  :)  Love you all!