Our Pregnancy Story, Continued...

Sorry to keep you waiting on the rest of our pregnancy story. I'm really trying my best to balance work, family, our excitement over our miracle, AND blogging :)

So when I left off (on the last post), I had taken a ton of pregnancy tests and they were all coming back positive. We went in to get blood drawn to confirm our pregnancy and sure enough, my BETA was right on track. I specifically asked for another blood draw four days later to confirm that our baby was continuing to grow. To be honest, I requested a third one too...but who's counting :)

As if the two week wait wasn't long enough, the wait for our six week appointment was even worse. Unfortunately, we had not had a successful six week appointment yet. For our first pregnancy, the baby had stopped growing at five weeks and no heartbeat was detected. The second pregnancy, we didn't even make it to the six week appointment because I had a miscarriage. So as you can expect, we were on pins and needles for this appointment. The Sunday before our ultrasound, I came home from church and discovered that I had some spotting. I was devastated and called the on-call nurse. I'm a little embarrassed to share this, but I was absolutely TERRIBLE to the on-call nurse when she told me that spotting was normal and that she was sure that everything was fine. I gave her a lesson on our pregnancy history and demanded that I come in for an ultrasound the next day to make sure the baby was doing fine. There was NO WAY I could wait until Wednesday for our six week appointment. I kept my feet elevated and did absolutely nothing for the rest of the day and we went in for the ultrasound on Monday. The baby looked perfect and the doctor didn't see any more bleeding...Praise the Lord!! We kept our appointment that Wednesday and left feeling OVER THE TOP at seeing the little flicker of a heartbeat on the ultrasound screen.

At our fertility doctor, we had the privilege of having an ultrasound every week until 10 weeks. And let me tell you...each appointment got better and better and better. I thought my heart would EXPLODE with thankfulness when we saw our little baby moving around, hiccuping, wiggling, and kicking at our 10 week appointment. We brought along Jilly (my mom), Pops (my dad), and D-ma (David's mom) for that appointment and it was by far one of our favorite ultrasounds...the entire room was in tears that afternoon.

That 10 week appointment was also bittersweet...as it was our last appointment with the fertility doctors and nurses that we came to know and love. We had been through so much and they were there to hold our hands, give us advice, and encouraged us to keep trying. At the same time, we were so grateful to be taking the next step in our baby's life and moving on to our OB.

At our first OB appointment we were able to finally hear the baby's heartbeat...which was music to our ears. At each of our ultrasounds, we only saw the heartbeat, so to finally hear it was priceless.

Because of my age (39), my history with infertility, my diagnosis of APLS, my Crohn's disease, AND the two miscarriages...I'm considered a high risk pregnancy. So as expected, we will be seeing a high risk doctor along with our OB. We actually had our first appointment today and it went VERY well. We had, by far, the BEST ultrasound appointment and can't believe how big our baby has gotten. He/she is 13 weeks and 1 day and has the prettiest little profile I've ever seen!!

Just when I think that things couldn't get better, I'm overwhelmed with another positive ultrasound, result, or test.

 Praise be to God!!!