The Backstory

I have always wanted to be a mom. It was one of my life aspirations since the days of my childhood when I carefully tucked my baby dolls in for the night. But, being the total Type A planner that I am, I had a very specific plan for how and when that would occur. I was always very adamant that I wanted to do “me” first and have girls’ nights and drink lots of wine, and blow a (reasonable) amount of my money on clothes and designer shoes and travel with just my husband.

Some time around Christmas my husband got it in his head that it was time to have a baby and that he really, truly wanted one. His father had been just secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) dying for a grandchild also. I had recently gone off the pill and we’d switched to another method of birth control. My Type A self was not quite ready but decided it was time to make a schedule. And also let my hormones regulate. So I “scheduled” that we would start trying this winter and just assumed I’d be happily pregnant by February. 

Then, my plan started to get a little messy. My father in law was diagnosed with terminal cancer on March 31. The father in law who I absolutely adored and who loved babies and children and who had been yearning for a grandchild of his own to spoil rotten. So, I started to feel very guilty about my own desire to continue my wine drinking and shopping tendencies for the immediate future.

His condition deteriorated really quickly and those 12-18 months they told us suddenly became a matter of weeks and the stress level in our family was incredibly escalated. Back to Plan A. We would discuss this again in the winter.

Then I started having some trouble with my thyroid, except that not all of my symptoms were thyroid related. So, my doctor recommended that I see my gynecologist. It was about time for my yearly anyway so I made the first available appointment, which was a month wait and was in mid-May. Why is it always so hard to get in to the gynecologist anyway??

That did not go well. Another blow for my Type A planner self, who was positive we would get pregnant the exact month I wanted to with absolutely no effort. I had multiple cysts on my ovaries. 

Not enough to be classified at PCOS and the bloodwork wasn’t exactly what it needed to be for that diagnosis either, but they were there. And lots of them. This explained why my periods had been crazy for the seven-ish months I’d been off birth control, sometimes five weeks apart and sometimes eight or nine with absolutely no pattern. My progesterone looked good, my doctor said so the good news was it would be possible for me to get pregnant. It would just be difficult. My doctor explained we wouldn’t be able to easily calculate when to “try” and with Corey traveling two weeks a month, I was likely to miss my window when playing it by chance. She suggested we try Clomid. 

It had taken a really long time to get in for this appointment and at this point, Corey’s dad was very, very sick. This was only about two weeks before he passed away. Corey was spending lots of time at the Mayo Clinic and then spending the rest of his time traveling for work. He was hardly home and everyone was stressed. I told my doctor we would see how it goes and she and I could talk about that again in the winter. Because that was my plan all along, after all.

Then suddenly, everywhere I looked were cute babies. They were all over Instagram, Facebook, the mall, my neighborhood. Everywhere. And all of a sudden, I was absolutely terrified about not being able to get pregnant. All those years of trying not to so I could do “me” and Corey could do “him” and then this thing I’ve wanted all my life might not be able to happen. The thought of it was making me physically sick.

Corey’s dad passed away June 4th. I flew to Florida to be with our family for a week. I saw my mother in law smile when she played with and held her best friends’ grandchild. It was so good for the soul. Then, a week later we drove to New Jersey for my father-in-law’s memorial service. So many people were there who we hadn’t seen since our wedding and we got a few of those, “Wow. Three years already! No happy news yet?” comments from family. They weren’t offensive to me but I also couldn’t just laugh it off with a “Nope! Not Yet!” anymore. Now, they were terrifying because I was now afraid of having to endure the really long fertility battles of so many girls I’ve known.

After we returned home, the very next time Corey made a comment about being ready for a baby, I said “I don’t want to try but maybe we can stop preventing.” I really feel like that mindset was important. In my mind, the planner that by nature I am, I was calculating that it would give us six months to just see what happened and then December would be the month I would talk to my doctor again about the Clomid. And December is in the winter, as planned. So, even if we had a little trouble, I wouldn’t be totally off the master planned schedule of my life. 

So of course, that was mid-June. We got pregnant mid-June. First attempt, without really attempting at all-just the fun stuff! We were both a little shocked at first. Then we were so excited and just couldn’t help but laugh! 

You know what they say…

via

God’s timing is so much better than the timing I had planned. And I cannot even put into words how thankful I am that we were able to get pregnant the way we did without it being the battle my doctor had recommended I be prepared for. Our hearts were certainly put through the wringer this year but right now we can happily say they are very much full of joy.