We had gone back and forth about when to start "trying" for our little miracle. We originally were going to wait until the Fall of 2013, then we moved it up to the Fall of 2012, and then last Summer I had a minor freak out about whether I was actually ready to quit my job to be a stay at home mom and bring a child into this world. Needless to say, I got over my short-lived "freak out" and we felt compelled to start trying last Fall, although it was a little later than expected.
We tried not to put any pressure on ourselves, and told each other that if it was meant to happen at that time, then God would show us that we were meant to be parents sooner rather than later. I know everyone tries to "time" getting pregnant, but with teaching, I really didn't want to have the baby in the middle of the school year and have to worry about going back to work or potentially quitting halfway through the year, so we decided to just try for four months, and if we didn't end up pregnant, we would resume trying late Summer/early Fall.
For some reason, I've always had a feeling that I would have a difficult time getting pregnant. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure if every woman experiences this, but it was always in the back of my mind. It took my mom a year to get pregnant with both my sister and I, and that was with her taking Clomid so I was expecting it to take at least that long for me. During the months that we were trying, I really tried hard not to get my hopes up, and to leave everything up to God. I knew that He had a plan for our family. Although I LOVED taking pregnancy tests and using the ovulation predictor kits, it was disappointing to get the negative reminder each month.
We finally got that positive test on our last month of trying until the Fall. I knew that we were meant to get pregnant that month, and it was truly a sign from God. I started having some early pregnancy symptoms, but also thought I had a few the months before, so I wrote them off as me over-thinking it. I ended up taking a pregnancy test four days before I was due to start my period. Of course, I was disappointed when it turned up negative, especially since I was using the tests that were supposed to indicate if you were pregnant up to six days before your missed period. However, my period date came and went, and I'm usually very regular, so I wondered if I could be pregnant. I didn't want to take the test on a morning that I had to get up and go to work, so I waited until Saturday morning, four days after my missed period, to take the test. I woke up early Saturday morning, around six-o-clock, and went in the bathroom and took the test. By this time, I had a pretty strong feeling that I was pregnant, but it was still very nerve-wracking waiting to see if the plus sign would show up in the test window. Sure enough, it showed up and I can't even begin to describe the emotions that I felt when I saw the results!
I had this big plan of how I was going to tell Josh that I was pregnant, but my plan back-fired. Of course he knew I was late, and he knew I was planning on taking a test on Saturday morning, but I was still hoping to pull it off. I had ordered shirts for our dogs, Huey and Juno, to wear that said "Huey is going to be a big brother" and "Juno is going to be a big sister". However, the morning that I took the test, they decided to stay in bed with Josh while I came into the study to get on the computer. He woke up about an hour later and came in the study and asked me if I had taken a test. Of course I couldn't lie to him, and when he asked me, I immediately started crying and nodding my head yes. He couldn't believe it, and started crying and hugging me. It was such a surreal moment that I will never forget!
The test!
The dog's shirts that I ordered from Etsy, that we were later able to use to announce our pregnancy to our families.
Rice Krispie treat cupcakes that my sister made for family dinner the day after we found out!
