According to our calculations, T's pregnancy is 7 weeks, 1 day along today. For future reference, that's 7w1d. Since we're still so early on in this growing a baby thing, I imagine counting each day matters a whole lot more than when she reaches, say, 30 weeks.
We tried for five months to conceive. Four of those months produced nothing but stark white negative pregnancy tests. Although we know very well the odds of achieving pregnancy is only about 20% per cycle - and that's for heterosexual couples using fresh sperm - still, we had hoped to get pregnant sooner. After the fourth cycle, we intended to put off trying again until next summer.
During this time, our foster children were spending their weekends with their birthmother in preparation to go home permanently the weekend before Christmas. Our time with them was drawing to a close, we weren't pregnant, and the holiday season was feeling very bleak. I'll be the first to admit that we were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves.
T thought about it good and hard, and decided that getting pregnant next summer wasn't going to be ideal, either. We previously decided to stop trying after the November cycle because having a baby after July 2012 would be too terribly inconvenient at her job. When the time came that T was going to ovulate, we just couldn't bear the idea of not continuing to try. With only hours to spare, I was able to contact our sperm bank and get some vials shipped to our home, hopefully in time for T's ovulation. Thankfully, the tank did arrive in time and we were able to inseminate. That next weekend, we said goodbye to our kiddos and set about getting things ready for our trip into the mountains with my family the weekend following that (Christmas).
Our kids left on a Saturday. The very next Tuesday, T woke up early and had to go to the bathroom. She took a pregnancy test, and left it sit on the counter while she crawled back into bed to wait. Each month when she took a pregnancy test, we always waited nine minutes and then would look at the test. After ten minutes, whatever results the test offers isn't necessarily accurate. So this specific day, I looked at my watch and nudged T back out of bed to check the test before going back to sleep. Usually she'd examine the test closely for about thirty seconds before sighing in exasperation and throwing it away. That was fully what I expected to happen this time, simply because it was all I was familiar with.
I had almost fallen back asleep when I heard the most beautiful, amazing sound : T's uncertain, echoing, "Uhhm..."
I immediately flipped over to face her and exclaimed, "WHAT?! Is it positive?!" I hopped out of bed to see for myself. T was looking at me, incredulous. We hugged and jumped up and down there in the bathroom and kissed and looked at the test probably a million times.
It really was positive. I couldn't believe it.
We reined ourselves in and waited until Wednesday night to tell T's parents, and tortured ourselves by waiting until Friday night to tell my parents and brother. See, we were taking off Friday late afternoon to drive five hours into the northern mountains to spend several days over Christmas in a cabin with my family, and we wanted to be able to tell them in person. We gave each set of grandparents a children's book called On The Day You Were Born, with a note attached on the front, saying, "To read to your next/first grandbaby, ETA August 2012!"
And now here we are, seven weeks and one day pregnant. I can't lie, I'm still nervous about a miscarriage. I know that one in four pregnancies ends up miscarrying. I also know that once a pregnancy makes it out of the first trimester, the odds of miscarriage decrease significantly. With bated breath, I'm willing these next six weeks to pass without incident. The longer our "Cupcake" lives inside T and grows, the more attached we both grow, and the harder it would be to say goodbye. Fingers crossed, right?
Looking forward to our first midwife appointment on Thursday morning!
That's enough for one night... Hope you're all well!
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