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"Isaac pleaded with the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was unable to have children. The LORD answered Isaac's prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant with twins." - Genesis 25:21
It took everything in me not to shout our news from the rooftops. I also knew the risks involved and wanted to guard myself from the heartbreak of having to un-tell people if I were to miscarry. I 100% leaned on my fellow infertility sisters that I found through the support website, DailyStrength. Yet, even though it was the internet, and I didn't know these women, I still didn't tell them that we were using donor eggs. I guess I felt ashamed about it. I guess I felt like, if no one knew, then maybe in my mind I could pretend or convince myself that they were really mine. (yes, I know, I've got issues)
Finally, the much anticipated day was here. I don't think I would let myself really believe that I was pregnant until I saw it with my own eyes. The nurse warned us ahead of time that it would probably be too early to hear a heartbeat(s), but that we would definitely hear them at the next sono scheduled for the following week. By this time, I was becoming much more comfortable with the "magic wand" aka the vaginal ultrasound stick, but it still took several deep breaths and finding my happy place in order for it to happen! I was a mess of emotions sitting in that little dark room, holding Jason's hands, praying that there would be a baby in there. I had been reading WAY too much stuff on the internet, including stuff about ectopic pregnancies and molar pregnancies, and I just knew that with our luck, we would surely have one of the two.
The nurse flipped the switch on the monitor, inserted the wand, turned the screen, and said, "there's your baby". Jason squeezed my hand and kissed my forehead. Tears started rolling down my cheek. Not 10 seconds later, she says, "...and there's another baby"! TWINS! Hold crap! It worked, it really freakin worked! Jason squeezed my hand again and said, "oh my god!". In my mind I was thinking, gosh I hope she doesn't find anymore in there! Nope, just two perfect little sacs. What happened next was the most awe inspiring thing ever... she turned the volume knob up and zeroed in on one of the sacs, Jason and I held our breaths, and then heard the most beautiful, wonderful, amazing sound in the world... MY baby's heartbeat! I am still just so blown away and can't even wrap my head around the fact that something as small as a grain of rice can have a heartbeat. God is so good! She then moved over to the other sac and we heard a second heartbeat, strong and steady! We had never felt so blessed as we did in that moment.
This was totally worth all the ups and downs and disappointments and heartaches... and HIVES! We wanted to wait a little while longer to tell our friends, just to be safe, but couldn't wait to share the news of twins with our parents! When we told them we were pregnant, we gave them a gift and in it were cute little onesies that read "Grandpa's Sidekick" and another that said "I love Grandma". Well, when we learned that we were having twins, we went out and bought the same onesies again, put them in a gift bag, again, and when we gave our parents ANOTHER gift, they were quite puzzled. I remember Jason's mom being quite confused, like "um, yeah you already gave these to us", and we were like, "yeah, we know, but you're going to need another set - do I have to spell it our for you?" #awkward #revealfail - once she got it though she was so excited and started crying. We did the same thing with my parents, except that we wanted to tell them in person, and since they live 5 hours away, we had to wait until after we already knew it was twins to even tell them we were pregnant. I felt sooooo bad that they were the "last" to know, but it meant so much to me to see the look on their faces.
A bunch of us were going to be taking a trip to Vegas in April for a surprise 30th bday of one of our close friends, so we knew we had to tell our friends before the magical 12th week, I can only fake being "sick" or "on medication" so long before they started to suspect something. confession, I'm kind of lush, or at least I was! So, we got everyone together for dinner one night, I ordered a beer just to through them off the scent (and don't think I didn't catch the glances darting across the table as the girls were thinking, damn I guess we were wrong) and when Jason told them all that we had something to tell them, they all thought we were moving, or worse, that one of us was dying or something. He told them all we were pregnant and the table erupted with congratulations and high fives, then a minute later, he said, oh there's more... it's twins! Once again the table erupted with a collective OMG! Lots of hugs and tears and fist bumps were had. It was awesome. These people who have supported us and encouraged us and shared in our suffering and sorrow for so long also got to share in our joy, finally! It was like, it wasn't just Jason and I that were pregnant, we were ALL pregnant. We owe everything to our support system, without them, I don't know how we would have been able to keep truckin' along. Of course, they were pissed that we didn't tell them anything about it, but they understood. We were just SO overjoyed and felt so, so blessed to get to be parents to these tiny little sacs. You pray and try for so long for just one baby - and then to get two - WOW! I think the greatest thing I heard at our 8 or 9 week sono appointment, was my doctor telling us that we now had a less than 5% chance for miscarriage - talk about a giant wave of relief! For some reason, I had this crippling fear of miscarriage - I guess that's normal though (or at least that's what I like to think). One cool thing about doing IVF is, you get to have lots of sonograms and check up on your little growing bundles of joy...
Isn't amazing how quickly they grow and change?!
I was 11 weeks along when we went to Vegas, and it could have been more fun, but I would sacrifice tequila shots for H2O shots any day!
Cheers!
Mmmm - H2O
Somehow, I managed to go my ENTIRE pregnancy without any morning sickness AT ALL! Finally, Candice caught a break! I also never had any weird cravings or any of the other strange things that happen during pregnancy (well, except the hives of course). In fact, if it weren't for my growing belly, you'd never even know I was pregnant at all! I was loving every single second of being pregnant!
I had a completely normal and healthy pregnancy - Praise the Lord! I won't lie, I held my breath in nervous anticipation at every.single.appointment until I heart their precious hearts beating. Literally, every time! I went in for sonos every 2 weeks until my 27th week, then it was every week! So you can imagine the pile of sono pics I collected :) My little mementos. I was able to fill an entire photo album with them and I treasure them so much. If my house were one fire, that would be one of the things I would carry out with me. Here's a little "evolution of the bump" pics from the baby book I made:
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