Where have I been???

It has been such a long time since I have blogged that I can't even begin to talk about all that has happened. During the last post I made, we were just picking up Zeke, it was the middle of summer, and Jay and I were excited about the prospect of starting a family. Well......

Our Christmas Card Photo

Zeke is 8 months old, now, Christmas is finished, another semester of school has gone by, and most exciting.....I'M PREGNANT!!!!!!

We are so excited about starting a family, but I wouldn't be lying if I said that it has been a rocky ride. I was on fertility treatments for a few months and they completely made me a different person. The side effects were crazy and one of the medications would just put me into a fog for about a week-not good when your job is to control 140 7th graders!!!

I would take all of the medicine and go to the Dr. and they would tell me that it didn't work, meaning that I didn't ovulate-very frustrating. After this happened in October, I had a feeling one day and decided to go home and take an ovualtion test. To my shock, it was positive!! I was so excited and I called the Dr. and they told me to come back in for more bloodwork. After going back, they told me that it didn't work again-crushing. A couple of weeks later, I was feeling 'wierd' and just had a feeling that I needed to take a pregnancy test. I made Jay go buy 'the good ones' and BINGO, two lines!!!! I was so happy that I didn't even know what to do. I took another one the next morning and it was positive again. I called the Dr., AGAIN, and told them that I had a positive test. At this point, I was pretty sure that they thought I was crazy, but they told me to come back in for a test. To their surprise, it was positive!!!!!

At the first appt. I got the biggest surprise of my life, TWINS!!!!!!!! We were so shocked/thrilled that we didn't even know what to say to each other. Jay and I went to Target and just walked up and down all of the rows of baby things thinking about how we were going to need two of everything. I stared at that ultrasound picture constantly and tried to imagine how our life was going to change.

Unfortunately, that excitement was short-lived because at our next appointment, there was only one heartbeat. That was a feeling that I had never experienced because, on one hand, I was so sad to loose a baby, but on the other hand, I felt even more lucky to have one perfectly healthy baby inside of me. I have never been so torn in my emotions before in my life.

I remember getting in the car and telling God that I wasn't going to be mad at him (much like I had been for not letting us get pregnant easily). It was very odd the peace that he brought over me during that time, and the overwhelming sense that there was a very good reason that we experienced this. We didn't talk much about the pregnancy for the next month, and I slowly realized that it is very common to lose a twin. While it didn't make it any easier, it was reassuring to know that I wasn't the only one.

I think that I really healed the most when I was talking to my pastor. It was during that conversation that I realized that God had given me a gift. Many people are pregnant with twins, but don't ever know because they don't have an ultrasound until they are too far along to know. God gave me the opportunity to have an early ultrasound so I could know and look forward to meeting our son or daughter in Heaven.

As the months went by, and the checkups were continually good, we became more and more comfortable with being excited about the pregnancy. As I got closer to getting out of the first trimester, I got REALLY excited!!! We had our most recent checkup last Tuesday and, once again, heard a healthy heartbeat-164 beats per minute. We will have the opportunity to do a gender scan on January 31 and I can't wait to know if we will have a boy or a girl. I feel like after that, the fun will really begin.

I haven't been doing a very good job of taking belly pics, because I'm not really showing yet. I'm still in my regular jeans and I've only gained 5 pounds, so there's not much to see. I saw the cutest blog on the internet in which the blogger has done a WONDERFUL job of documenting her pregnancy. Her site is http://littlebabygarvin.blogspot.com/. I am going to use her as my inspiration and try to do a weekly photo and blog post about where I am at in my pregnancy.

If this isn't your cup of tea, just ignore, but I feel like this will be so neat to show the baby one day when they are old enough to realize and appreciate the experience. Hopefully, since I am making a public commitment I will stick to it. I'm 14 weeks now, so I guess I have about 26 posts to go....EXCITING!!!!!