My first due date

Today our first baby should have been born. Today I should have been in the most excruciating pain in the world, but receiving the best gift imaginable at the end of that pain… our first child.

Today was our due date for our first baby, the baby that we miscarried just short of 6 weeks. I often think about that baby. Was it a boy or a girl, what would we have named it? I miss our first baby a lot. I think about that time in our lives a lot. I long for that unknowing joy that we had, the peace that we had, not knowing how it felt to have a miscarriage.

But today, instead of delivering our first child, I am thankful for the wonderful gift that we do have… a new hope, a wonderful beating heart, a perfectly formed baby inside of me right now. I am thankful for this baby that will bless our lives beyond measure in 7 short months.

Although I know that I’ll never forget our first baby, the first positive test that we got, or the first time that I told Matt we were pregnant; I do know that this baby, this miracle, has helped soften the pain of this day beyond words.

I am trying to prepare for the whirlwind of emotions this day will inevitably bring, moments of sadness for the loss of our first baby, and moments of extreme joy knowing that everything with this baby looks perfect right now.

I don't think I can truly prepare myself, so instead I'll just sit back and take each moment for what it's worth.



Here is the video that Matt took yesterday during our ultrasound. Be warned that it's very dark (they turn the lights off to better see the ultrasound screen) and we took this video with our crappy point and shoot camera on video mode, so it's a pretty bad video. And, it doesn't zoom very much so we couldn't get close enough to actually see the heart beating, etc. Either way, I think it's kinda cool to have on video.


(In case you missed the post from yesterday with information on how our ultrasound went, scroll down and meet baby King!)

An unforgettable moment, a life changing day, an answered prayer

The flicker on the screen became more clear as the ultrasound tech began to zoom in.

There it was. The magical moment we had dreamed of for 16 months, and impatiently waited for for 17 days. The entire reason that I had endured invasive, painful and miserable moments, tests and treatments for was right in front of me.

Our baby’s heartbeat.

Our lives have forever changed because of this one moment.

My heart is overcome with joy. My eyes are filled with joyful tears. My soul is full with thankfulness.

This is what I was made for, to be a mother.

We are elated right now. I am more in love with this tiny tadpole-ish baby than I had ever realized was possible.

I am relieved beyond words that this day has ended like I had prayed it would. God has given me a child to grow and nurture for the next 33 weeks, and for the rest of our lives, and I am thankful.

Our tiny creation has made me the happiest woman in the world today.


We were released today to a "regular" doctor closer to where we live. I called to make my first appointment and after talking to the nurse about some of our "issues" and our previous loss, they want me to come for an 8 week ultrasound and to meet the doctor. So we will get to see our precious babe again in just a week and a half, super excited!

Thank you for all of the prayers, they definitely worked. You are all amazing, and so important to us.

Life couldn’t get any better right now.

Love,
The 3 Kings =)


Meet baby king! (this is a picture of a picture, needless to say it's not very clear)



Matt and I with our baby's first picture



Matt, Me, & Lois (nurse nice- also the nurse that did our IUI and has been amazing the entire time)

one perfect little heartbeat

More info and pictures to come later! Baby King looked perfect, measured perfect and had a perfect beating heart! We are thrilled beyond words.

One more day

Somehow our lives will change tomorrow.

I’m hoping and believing the change is for the better, but being completely honest with myself, I know it could also change for the worse.

I’m scared, really scared. What if my body has taken the life of another innocent baby? What if this perfectly growing baby’s life has ended because of a blood clot that my body has once again produced, and cut off the very blood supply that gave life to our baby?

I can’t take the what if’s anymore. I need to see our beautiful baby on the ultrasound screen, and it’s beautiful heartbeat thumping away.

I’m trying so hard to not let myself thinking negative thoughts, to remain positive, and to ultimately put my trust in God.

I think about this baby all of the time. I have dreams for this baby. I want nothing more than to be a typical pregnant lady with no fears of a miscarriage or complications.

Stay strong baby King, I can’t wait to meet you tomorrow.


**On a different note, happy golden birthday to my beautiful sister Keri, wish I could be there to celebrate with you!**

6 Week Survey

How far along? 6 weeks 1 day

Symptoms? Tired, sore back at night, nauseous feeling between 4-8pm most days, runny nose, sore.


Food cravings/aversions? In love with fiery hot cheetos and McDonald's french fries. Chunks of plain chicken breast makes me gag.


Total weight gain/loss: I haven't braved the scales since starting our last round of treatments, I have a feeling the Dr. will make me get weighed on Thursday. :0(


Maternity clothes? Surprisingly, yes, I'm already wearing some maternity pants and bella bands. I am SHOCKED at how bloated my stomach is. Matt and I were talking and I am really wondering if my Crohn's Disease has something to do with all of the bloating. When I get the flu, hormone shots, etc my intestines really get huge and I am wondering if the same effects are taking place now that I'm pregnant. Oh well, I'll wear my maternity pants with pride. =)



Best moment this week: Feeling quite queasy yesterday, I love any and all symptoms that make this pregnancy feel real.


Movement: Nope, not for a long time still.


Gender: I'm thinking boy, but we have no clue.


Labor Signs: No thank you.


Belly Button in or out? Definitely in still.


What I miss: Sushi



What I am looking forward to: I absolutely can't wait to see the heartbeat on Thursday, and also to see if we're having more than one baby!



Weekly Wisdom: Enjoy every moment of being pregnant, even the morning sickness is a blessing from God.



Milestones: We've officially passed the point when we miscarried in August.

6 Weeks: a sweet pea

Week 6:

Your baby is the size of a sweet pea this week. If you could see inside yourself, you'd find she has an oversized head in proportion to her body. Your baby’s facial features are forming with dark spots where the eyes are, openings where the nostrils will be, and pits to mark the ears.

Protruding buds that will become her arms and legs are even more noticeable now. Your baby’s hands and feet look like paddles. Other developments include the growth of the pituitary gland, which releases hormones, in the brain and muscle fibres. You can't hear it yet, but her heart (which has divided into the right and left chambers) is beating at about 150 beats a minute – twice the rate of yours.

5 weeks: apple seed

Apparently this has been a big week for our growing baby! (Since we're almost done with week 5, I'm a tad bit behind with this info.)

5 Weeks:

Being 5 weeks pregnant, your little one is as large as an apple seed! Your baby's muscles, central nervous system and even bones start forming this week. Other important changes occurring during pregnancy week five include neural tube development. Your baby's skin, nails and even hair will also start to form in the top layer of cells. At this point your baby’s heart, no bigger than a poppyseed, has already begun to beat and pump blood. The heart is dividing into chambers and will find a more regular rhythm soon. Your baby is about a quarter of a centimeter long and looks more like a tadpole than a human. He undergoes a growth spurt this week.

Major organs, including the kidneys and liver, begin to grow. The neural tube, which connects the brain and spinal cord, will close this week. Your baby’s upper and lower limb buds begin to sprout – these will form your baby's arms and legs. The intestines are developing and the appendix is in place.

As early as this week, facial features are forming. Nostrils are becoming distinct and the earliest version of the part of the eyes that is sensitive to light (retinas) are forming.


Holy cats! No wonder I'm so tired, there's a lot going on inside me this week. Keep on keeping on Baby King! I can't wait to see you in SIX DAYS!

Have you seen this man?

Have you seen this man?

Commonly referred to as: Mr. King, Kinger, Kinger-Dinger, Kingdizzle, lovey, hun, babe, Matt, Matthew, Matty, Matty T., and loser (an inside joke between Matt & my dad)


Characteristics: Handsome, fun, outgoing, athletic, caring, loving, Christian, amazing


Job Titles: Engineer, husband, brother, son, cook, chef, maid, landscaper, comforter, counselor, comedian, runner, golfer, friend, listener, father (hehe)


You probably haven't seem him lately because he's been busting his butt to make this girl happy, comfortable, full, and loved. Ever since we found out we were pregnant he has cooked every meal (except for the eggs that I boiled last night, does that count? =) He has kept up with the lawn, cut down a few trees (with my dad's help) taken out the trash, taken care of our cats, picked up the house (with a lot of help from my awesome mom) and performed every other small task on my mental to-do list that would stress me out at this point.

To sum it up, he's pretty much amazing, I'm pretty much in love and incredibly lucky.

No, you can't have him, and yes, you can stop drooling at his picture now. =)

Soooo tired

This afternoon we are driving 4 hours to go visit my cousin, his wife, and their brand new baby, Hudson. We are taking newborn photographs tomorrow afternoon for them. I'm excited to see them, and be around a brand new baby. But... I'm exhausted right now, and can't wait to sleep every minute in the car tonight.

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not complaining, trust me. I promise to do everything in my power to NEVER complain on this blog about pregnancy symptoms, rather I'd just like to keep some sort of record on our blog of how I'm feeling.

Yesterday at work I could hardly keep my eyes open. During recess when the kids were outside I caught myself having "extra long blinks". =) I'm loving this new stage of pregnancy, where I actually feel like I'm having somewhat normal symptoms. I have also started having a major aversion to chicken. Matt made me a wonderful supper the other night, and just a few bites in I felt a gaggy sensation in my throat. The same feeling followed the next night with a different chicken recipe. I’ll gladly take it if it’s any indication that our baby is growing.

Another weird symptom that I’ve noticed since a few days before I even got a positive is a runny nose. I’ve gone through more Kleenexes in the last two week than I did all winter! It’s a symptom that I never knew was normal, but apparently I’m not the only one that has this issue.

Overall we continue to have joy over flowing from our souls. We think about Tiny (as Matt has affectionately named him/her- and is also the nickname that my family gave Matt when they met him a few years ago before he lost 65 lbs) all of the time. It’s amazing how something that is still so mystical is on our minds every day.

On a different note, only 14 days until we can finally breathe a big sigh of relief. I wish these days could go just a tiny bit faster. I absolutely can’t wait to see our baby’s heartbeat, what a life changing day it will be.

Surreal

This all seems so surreal. This morning my mom called to see how I was feeling and to tell the babies good morning (she too is convinced it's twins). So. Stinking. Weird.

I'm pregnant. I have a human life (that I've been dying to have for a long time) growing in me. I can't even believe it. I don't ever want this joy to go away. I feel like I just won the lottery.

Lots of my colleagues at work follow our blog and obviously now know that we're pregnant. This morning as I was walking down the hall one of them asked how I was feeling, then I realized she was staring at my belly. It made me smile. On a "normal" day I would have thought she thought that I looked fat in the dress I have on today, but today, I didn't care, I love the fact that she was looking at my belly.

Speaking of bellies...my oh my. I never knew you could start to get a bump at 4 weeks!!! I know it's all bloat from the medicines and hormones that are raging, but my goodness. I seriously could not get into a pair of pants last night that I wore just a few weeks ago. I was mortified for a second, then I actually smiled at the fact that they already don't fit. Who cares if it's technically not a "baby" bump yet, I'll still claim it!

Matt laughed at me last night as I made a post-it note countdown for our fridge showing how many days until our ultrasound. In case you were wondering, I peeled off post-it note #16 this morning, so we have only 15 days left.

I feel like a bit of a teeter totter. I go from a tidge of anxiety wondering if everything will continue to grow and do well in the next week as we pass "the milestone", to just simple happiness over the fact that we are pregnant, and that we have to have faith that all will be well at the ultrasound.

Thank you to the countless supporters that we have in our corner right now. Your emails, facebook messages, and comments on here truly meant the world to us. Thank you.

Today's Beta Results- EDITED

(If you have no idea why I'm even talking about being pregnant, you likely need to skip down to the post below first, then come back and read this)

I am thrilled with our numbers!!!

Thursday: 14
Saturday: 44 (tripled!!)
Today: 112 (tripled!!!)




Remember, we needed a doubling time of at least every 48-72 hours, so for once in our infertility journey we are NORMAL!. So we are way more than on track, we are rockstars! Matt and I are extremely excited. We continue to laugh and giggle and be incredibly happy, like elementary school girls in the bathroom.

Our next step is to continue with all of the meds to help with MTHFR (baby aspirin, extra folic acid, and metformin) and we have, get this...

A SEVEN WEEK ULTRASOUND TO SEE OUR BABY on April 29th to see our baby's heartbeat (or maybe more than one)!! That is so flipping weird to write, but I love it!


I can't wait to get past Saturday which is 20 days after the IUI, which is also the same day that we found out in August that we would soon have a miscarriage. Unfortunately the nurse told me that we don't need any more bloodwork. I pushed to keep going for at least another week, but she said it wouldn't change anything and all is looking good for now, and they are confident the MTHFR is taken care of. Plus our numbers are much higher than last time, and we are earlier than last time with the tests.

So now I attempt to relax, be excited, and patiently wait 17 days for the most awesome day of my life (besides marrying Mr. King of course!).

A video to share

Watch this video before you read on. (Make sure you click pause on the music box on the very bottom of this blog so you only hear the video music). Enjoy!







































Yes, we're pregnant! Yes, we've waited 16 long months for this and we're ecstatic! Yes, I'm already feeling sick, tired, and sore (and loving it by the way!).


However... (ugh, I hate to even have to write this)

We aren't out of the woods yet. Let me back up. I started "feeling" pregnant last week. I took a test on Tuesday (9dpo) and got a very, very, very light line on the pregnancy test. I convinced myself that it was still the medicine from one of the shots that shows up as "pregnant" on a test, so I tried not to get excited. I retested on Wednesday, there was a full line, however it was still very light. But the fact of the matter is, any type of line means pregnant, no matter how dark it is. At this point I started to get excited, and began scheming for how I would tell Matt (see video above if you cheated and did not watch it first like I told you to! Matt was just finishing up his run and I happened to know his route so I was able to surprise him =)

I then got really nervous. What if we miscarry early again? What if the MTHFR isn't under control. So I called my infertility clinic, told them that I had a positive test at home, and that I was worried about another early miscarriage because of PCOS and MTHFR and I was wondering if early blood tests would help the doctors to better understand what would need to be changed IF something happened again like last time (especially because we were headed into IVF after this, and I'm not excited to waste our very last chance and $15,00 + on a miscarriage because I wasn't being treated properly- what I mean by that is that I've done a lot of reading and a lot of people with MTHFR have to go on blood thinner injections to prevent miscarriage).

The doctors agreed with my thinking. They told me to go in the next day for bloodwork to confirm that I was pregnant. I went and got the bloodwork done during my lunch break on Thursday (11dpo). I then called the office after school to get the results. 14. I suddenly felt every bit of fear and anxiety from our first miscarriage rush to my chest. Not again. Please God do not let this happen again. During August when we miscarried my numbers were low, which the nurse said was concerning. The final straw last time was that my numbers quit increasing and doubling, and eventually started to fall, which signaled a miscarriage.

The nurse seemed much calmer than I was. She told me congratulations, and that 14 indicates pregnancy. She said to go back for bloodwork again Saturday, and Monday. Then I would have 3 tests 48 hours apart. She said we want the numbers to at least increase by 60% every 48 hours. So yesterday I got blood drawn, and tomorrow at lunch I will go for another blood test and then wait to hear our Saturday and Monday results sometime Monday afternoon.

I've done a bunch of reading (you're shocked, I know) and there has been a ton of research on what numbers generally lead to successful pregnancies. At 15dpo (which would be tomorrow) results averaging around 59 is a good sign of a strong pregnancy.

So here we sit. Trying to enjoy every minute of being expectant parents, but having a somewhat difficult time with worries for the future. We are worried. We have the right to be I believe.

We've soaked up and enjoyed every second of what we could this weekend knowing that we are pregnant and thanking God for this gift. We've smiled a lot, laughed a lot, and been happy. Now we pray that we can continue enjoying this pregnancy for 8 more months.

I know we will now have people praying for Baby King, and that's why we put this all out there. We need your prayers more than ever. I don't think I can do this all again. I need this baby, we need this baby, we have wanted this baby for far too long. Please keep us in your prayers, we appreciate all of them. (By the way, I am SO sorry to the co-workers that I had to lie to at work this week, I just needed more information on everything before I could share.)

A nervous buzz

Today I feel a nervous buzz in my stomach (I know, I JUST wrote about what amazing peace I have been feeling, apparently I shouldn't have said that, because it has greatly diminished today), and thoughts race through my head today as fast as the bee can fly that's buzzing in my stomach.

Is this the one? How will I feel if I am pregnant? Will I get to feel that joy that a "normal" pregnancy has? Are we ready for the choices and decisions that come with IVF? Will I have to tell my parents that once again, they aren't going to be grandparents yet? How many babies can we afford? Will I be sick? Oh the thoughts...


On a somewhat separate note, I've had lots of people ask me if we are going to share the news when we find out on Monday. I'd love to have a normal pregnancy, tell our parents and close friends right away, and hide our big secret until 12 weeks... but I just can't justify that.

Why, you might ask. Well for one thing, you all (family, friends, and online friends) have been with Matt and I on this journey for a long time. Many of you have prayed abundantly for us this cycle, and cycles in the past. How could I shut you out now?

Another reason, hold on- this is going to get selfish. I need your continued support and prayers. If we find out that we are in fact pregnant, I'm going to need oodles of prayers that things will go well and that we have healthy babies (yes, I just used a plural). We are at an incredibly high risk for another miscarriage because of my PCOS and also because of the MTHFR gene that I have. So more than anything, I need you guys. And, if we find out that this wasn't our month and we'll be going onto IVF, I'll still need your prayers, for peace, comfort and strength to go on.

So yes, friends, you will find out right along with us.

Our last IUI- in pictures

I was doing some thinking this week, and realized that last time (with embarrassment) I put pictures from our IUI on our blog, and we got pregnant. So, I will attempt to plug into that same "luck" again. =)

Matt and I at the hospital waiting for our "buzzer" to go off telling us it's TIME!


Me with a banner on the way into our clinic- the picture of the lady looks IDENTICAL to nurse nice, who actually did our IUI too. (Unfortunately I opened my big mouth during the IUI and tried to compliment her on the banner, and she said that it actually wasn't her, just identical hair and eyes and that she hears that comment all the time, oops!)



Just waiting to be released to go home.



My view.


Only 6 more days to wait! Hoping the time flies!

thank YOU

Thank you all so much for the prayers, they are truly working.

This week I was with a close friend and she asked me what "day" I was on... I had to stop and think. I like not obsessing, and having to stop and think.

I have never had this kind of peace during a treatment cycle in my life! I am not anxious, I am not worried, I am calm. I am so thankful for this new found feeling.

I am not sure if this cycle will end in a baby or not, but I do know that God has a plan for us. I have trust in what we're doing and what He is doing.

Today marks halfway through our dreaded wait. These first 7 days have flown by, I'm hopeful the next 8 will also.