A different kind of marathon

Looks like I won't be running the type of marathon I thought I would anytime soon. Instead, I have a different kind of 9 month marathon ahead of me (6 months at this point). 

Much to our surprise, we are having a baby and we couldn't be more excited! 

Our little family in Denver, CO

Here were my first thoughts on finding out I was pregnant:

"Is that right? Let me check the instructions on the box again. Does it really have two lines??"

"YAY!" Along with tears of JOY!

"Oh man, what have we gotten ourselves into? There's really no turning back now."

The above thoughts are pretty much exactly what I was thinking those first few moments we found out I was pregnant. The main overwhelming emotion was excitement, anxiety, thinking, "it's about time!", and some fear. The first night, I lay in bed for hours unable to fall asleep. I was excited, but really, really scared. My fear wasn't about labor or parenting or the enormity of having a child (I'm sure those fears will come at some point!). Instead, I was afraid it wasn't real or if it was, it wouldn't be for long. I was terrified to wake up and not be pregnant anymore. One of the risks with endometriosis is miscarriage and that first night I could not stop thinking about the possibility of it. Finally, I remembered to turn my thoughts to God and pray (why did it take me until 1:30am to do this?). I don't remember thinking about anything after that, but finally fell asleep.

Everybody loves a baby bump progression, so here we are with barely a bump to see:

4 weeks

One of the positive things about waiting for 3 years to become pregnant is you have a lot of time to do research. I have three books on pregnancy, one that I've already read the first part of, we've interviewed providers (that seems really ridiculous now, but hey, it's already done!), I have about 30 bookmarked pages of lists of things you should do while pregnant, what you should eat, things to register for, everything you wanted to know about breastfeeding and cloth diapers, and a million other topics no one cares about when you aren't pregnant. The first year or so that we tried to get pregnant I researched like a mad woman. This made me pretty depressed the second year and I had to put it all out of sight, but now I'm feeling pretty ahead of the game.
 

8 weeks

I think in the back of my mind (very far back) I held on to the possibility of becoming pregnant, but we had pretty much given up on it. We decided against trying fertility treatments and didn't think we would adopt (we are in no way against those things, it just wasn't for us). Even with my doctor telling me there would be a chance of conceiving since my surgery last August was so successful, I still didn't want to get my hopes up. Luke and I prayed for God to show us his plan for our lives. Maybe there were things we would do that others, who had kids, couldn't easily do. Maybe there were positive things about being childless (yes, there are many!). On one level I resigned myself to not having kids and I could even feel joyful in that, but I knew deep down what my true feelings were because they would creep up on me especially when I saw or read something about someone else's struggle with infertility. Amazingly I never felt sad when others announced their pregnancies and I'm glad I could feel genuinely happy for them. The hardest thing though was knowing how much Luke wanted to be a dad and seeing him with our friend's and family's kids and knowing what an awesome dad he would be! 

11 weeks with a tiny bump

We've made it 15 weeks and I'm breathing easier after hearing Baby Baine's heartbeat and seeing him/her on an ultrasound (5 more weeks until we find out the gender!). Everything is healthy so far! This pregnancy and baby are an absolute miracle! I can't believe how many doctors told me that I would never be able to get pregnant, how sure they were that I needed a hysterectomy, and how none of them knew there was a specialist in Atlanta who would look at my chart and confidently tell me that he could remove every bit of the endo and leave all of my organs intact. We are so thankful to have found Dr. Sinervo, at The Center for Endometriosis Care. My concern at that time was to get back my life, to not be in pain and nausea everyday. The icing on the cake is this miracle baby growing inside me. 




 My goal is to run a 5K in my second trimester. I stopped running in the first trimester because I was tired all the time and feeling nauseous (no change there!) but now I'm feeling less nauseous and a little more energy so I'm determined to get back to running. I went for a run yesterday with Luke and my dad, who is in town for the 4th of July. It felt great!

For all my mom friends out there, what kinds of exercises did you like to do when you were pregnant? I'm doing lots of walking, and a little bit of core and yoga. I'm thinking about finding a pool to do some swimming or pool walking.

Thanks for sharing in our excitement! I spent an entire day on Facebook reading congratulations messages from friends after we posted our announcement. Facebook gets a bad rap, but man it made me so happy to read all of those comments!! Here is our post if you missed it:

Ready to Roll January 2018!