Getting Pregnant & Finding out

I plan to talk about my birth story very soon, but I thought I would talk a little bit about our experience getting pregnant.

Dennis turned 38 last year, September 2016, and he suggested that we go ahead and maybe REALLY TRY to get pregnant again if we were going to have another baby because he didn't want to have another baby past 40. So, I called the Reproductive Medicine and Surgery Center in Charlottesville, VA and we made our first consult appointment in November of 2016. In November, he prescribed me Femara, opposed to Clomid, told me to track my ovulation, and to call once I got a smiley face.
So, I took the medicine, tracked ovulation, and called once I got that solid smiley face.

not quite yet..... 

Once I got the smiley face, I called, we made an appointment for the next day, and Dennis and I packed a bag, headed to Charlottesville, and stayed at a hotel to prepare for our appointment. This was December 15, 2016 pictured below: 

It was a cold day, and I was so nervous to do this. It was actually a really quick appointment. I did ask for an ultrasound first because I wanted to see how many follicles I had, how big it was, and decide if I wanted to go forward. They obliged, and we discovered that I had only 1 34mm follicle that had not yet dropped. So, we decided it was worth a try although I thought were immediately out because I thought that a 34mm follicle was most likely a cyst, too big, and was going to be a bust.

For the next week and a half I kept myself busy with shopping for Christmas, wrapping, etc. On December 25th, we woke up, I took a test, and we had a very faint positive. But I wasn't confident enough in the test, and so we didn't make any big announcements or even feel convinced ourselves. So we waited another morning to test.

December 26, 2016, my 31st birthday I felt pretty sure that we were indeed pregnant, and we felt like we could share with some family and a couple of friends. 

December 27th and 28th I continued to take tests just to be sure they were getting darker, and looking normal. And they were! 

I called the clinic, we made an appointment to drive up (2 hours one way) to draw some blood and check some levels. I had great numbers. . . and we were all very confident!

 At 6 weeks, we made the drive one last time for an early 6 week ultrasound to see how baby Maggi #3 was doing. (Baby #2 was lost in an early miscarriage, if you want to read about that experience, look at previous posts) And all was well. We had a perfectly normal looking little baby! We were so excited!

At a normal 8 week appointment, we went to see how baby was doing and (she!) was still doing great! 

Because I had suffered a miscarriage before this pregnancy the year before, I was very nervous, very cautiously optimistic, and I was happy at the same time. Next post: bumps, symptoms, etc.