SURPRISE!

For the last year and half, Ryan and I have been going through some different fertility treatments, and lots of blood work and testing while trying to have another baby. It started out with different amounts of Clomid, the drug we used to get pregnant with Easton. But after the Clomid was prescribed in higher and higher amounts, and I was responding less and less, the doctor suggested we try a more aggressive approach. He started me on Follistim injections in conjunction with low doses of Clomid, hoping that the combination of the two would get results. When you are on Follistim, they check your blood work, looking at your estrodial levels, and once those are over 100, you go in to the doctor to get an ultrasound to measure the follicles in each ovary. The hope is that a couple will grow to at least 2 cm, which would make them ready for the HCG trigger shot to release the eggs into your Fallopian tubes, and hopefully from there be fertilized. Sexy right? Anyway, I did two rounds of this process, but the follicles never grew enough for me to receive the HCG trigger. The last and final time we did the whole process, my follicles had finally matured! I had three nice big ones, and they sent me home with the HCG shot. Ryan gave it to me that night, and we waited a good week and half with high hopes that the pregnancy test would show a positive result. Unfortunately we didn't get the result we had hoped for. We had already decided that would be our last round of Follistim for the forseeable future, and we would be putting the idea of baby #2 on the back burner for awhile and instead turn our focus to the family we already had. I had some of the Follistim and HCG left over in the fridge at home, I asked him if it would be ok to use the remaining amounts during my future cycles and just see what happened. He didn't want me to use the Follistim without being closely monitored by him and his staff. But he did say I could give myself the HCG trigger shot if a home ovulation test showed that I was ovulating during a cycle. So, we did that shot during my next cycle and then completely forgot about it. When my next period was due, I took a pregnancy test and expected to see the negative result that I had gotten. A few weeks later was when I headed up to Utah at the end of March. While I was working and staying with Kristin in the hotel I kept telling her how crazy of symptoms I was having, I also told my mom all about them. I was feeling super exhausted, light headed, and having a very tender and sensitive chest. I kept joking that they were all pregnancy symptoms, but my test had clearly been negative! I even took another test in Utah, I swore I had seen a very faint positive result, but chalked it up to wishful thinking because when I showed my mom and Kristin, they both sadly told me that they didn't see it. 

As soon as I came back home to Las Vegas, I scheduled two appointments: one with my family doctor, Dr. Allen to have allergy testing done, and another with Dr. Swainston to have my hormone levels checked. I thought for sure that all these symptoms were being caused by all the fertility treatments I'd been on.

I went into Dr. Allen first, and told him I wanted an allergy shot because it had been such a miserable spring for me! He said if I even was thinking of trying to get pregnant, the shot was a bad idea, and we should do testing, and take a blood sample to get a precise pregnancy test result. 

MUCH TO MY SURPRISE, they called back the next day, while I was at our neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt, and the nurse told me my blood test had come back positive! I was completely blown away, and went to Walgreens right after the hunt to get a test, that one came back positive too! I was totally floored, and so excited! I called Dr. Swainston's office and changed my consultation appointment to a new pregnancy appointment, and I was able to get in to see them the next week! We didn't hear the heartbeat yet, and it was confirmed that I was just 6 weeks along. 

We are SO excited, and can't wait to have this next baby join our family. Easton can't wait, he changes all the time between thinking it's a boy or a girl, he has named it multiple different names, but the one he comes up with the most is Alex. Haha, don't know where that came from! He loves going to appointments with me and seeing the baby on the ultrasound screen. It's definitely our favorite day of the month to go in! 

can you believe it!?

second appointment ultrasound: 7 weeks, 2 days