Something's been going on.

I just logged in and saw that I haven't blogged since September 3! Oh, mercy! And if you'll notice, even that was commentary on the news, nothing about me or my life. And yes, there is a reason for that. It's hard to write about anything when there's something big going on that you have decided not to talk about (at least for the moment).

So August was a crazy month, what with my birthday, my sister staying with us, a birthday party for my Mom and Sister, then getting Victoria off to college. It was one of those months where you're doing good to remember all of the things on your immediate radar and make sure everything gets done. It was a good month, but definitely a busy one.

Cut to the very last weekend of that month. I'll attempt to avoid the whole TMI phenomenon, but let's just say that visitor I expect every month had not shown up yet. And at first I had the "oh, tomorrow... tomorrow it'll be here" attitude about it. And then I had the "holy shit she's never taken this long to arrive but that probably doesn't mean anything" attitude about it. And then, I went to Target and bought a test.

You probably know where this is going now. :)

Because it's something that not enough people who go through it talk about, I have to tell you here that Bryan and I have been trying to have a baby for about two years. I'll also tell you that we went through quite a few (seven) cycles of fertility treatments until I was in an awful place mentally and we decided to take a break before moving on to more expensive forms of fertility treatment. So we did take a break... we went to South Africa, we had a lot of fun over the summer, but I was still thinking about it every month. Until August, of course. That month I was so convinced we were never going to get pregnant on our own that I even called and made an appointment with a different fertility specialist to get a second opinion before we launched into the next step.

Okay, back to the end of August. I went to Target with shaky knees and bought a pregnancy test. I'd been through so many of those buggers during the early days of us trying that I almost didn't want to take it and have the disappointment of the negative test. But I also knew that this was probably going to be the time that all of that changed...

I got home and immediately took the test. I brought it out to the couch and sat with Bryan while we waited for it to tell us our fate. I purposefully bought the ones that either say Pregnant or Not Pregnant, because I did not want any of this "one line or two?" interpretation business.

The little hourglass turned a few times, maybe for a minute, maybe two, and then, this:


I gasped. We laughed. We squeezed each other to pieces until one of us said, "Crap, don't squish the baby!" There were some happy tears. And a lot of... well, surprise!

I called my fertility doc the next day, got in to get some blood work to confirm, went in to see her to find out the results and had an early ultrasound. All you could see was a tiny black dot, but, still, it was obviously there. (Incidentally, our child spent weeks 4-10 being called TBD, for Tiny Black Dot.) We then got appointments with the high risk OB (since I have two autoimmune diseases) and the midwife, and kept our news pretty quiet. Since we had tried for so long, we wanted to have a little more certainty that everything was going well before we started spreading the news. We did tell some close family and friends, but tried to put off telling everyone else until after the first trimester.

Of course, then we had our 10-week ultrasound last week, and hearing that tiny heart beating 174 beats a minute, and seeing our Little Dancing Baby (LDB) moving all around in my belly was so amazing and wonderful that we decided we were ready to spread the word! :)

I've been feeling generally like crap, but my morning sickness and other pregnancy symptoms have been nothing compared to some stories I have heard. Plus I asked for this, so I can't complain. :) I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be one of those people who doesn't have any of that after the first trimester. I miss actually WANTING to eat food. :)

LDB is due on May 8, 2010. The thing that gets me the most is that, as amazing as last week's ultrasound was, it's only going to get MORE amazing from here. Wow.

Here's a peek at LDB from our ultrasound last week. This was after the American Bandstand audition... baby had to take a little siesta after all that hard work! :)