September 24, Thursday...I'm Pregnant!!!

That's right, see it says so right here on one of the countless...literally, I lost count but am sure it is around 10...pregnancy tests tests that I've taken since this time last week.


This is gonna be a long one, so kick back and enjoy. We're keeping this under wraps for another month or so, but I want my blog posts about it all to be fresh so I'm writing them now and just saving them to post later. That way ya'll get the story in the now and not in hindsight.

Back Story: Rich and I started officially trying for a baby back in June, and I got pregnant on our 4th cycle trying. Since I don't do anything halfway (except for the marathon, since I've only done halves), I dove into Operation Baby Morris headfirst. I bought the Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor, started drinking green tea and organic red raspberry leaf tea daily (both rumored to increase fertility), and put both Rich and I on fertility-boosting vitamins. I know. I am crazy. I accept that. The fertility monitor is actually great, you basically pee on a stick a few days a month and it tells you the days you are most likely to conceive. I'm sure we would have gotten pregnant just fine, and probably just as soon, without any of these measures but being passive is not my style and doing all these things made me feel a bit more in control of the situation. Remember this post where I announced that per doctor's orders I was cutting way back on running and officially stopping marathon training? A few of you cried baby then, but I was most definitely not pregnant at that time. My hormones were a little bit wacky and I found some studies that showed that running long distances could cause problems getting pregnant, my doctor agreed with me unfortunately, and I got pregnant the first month after decreasing the running. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe not, I guess there's really no way to know. I know that runners who run much harder and longer than I did get pregnant every day, but for me something wasn't working so I decided to do whatever I needed to do to increase my chances.

Finding out: For the months we tried unsuccesfully, I still took several pregnancy tests and just got so bummed seeing each negative one. It seemed like I would test, then start my period later that day. Waste of money and emotion. This month I vowed I WOULD NOT test until my period was late to avoid the letdown of seeing that empty space where a line should be. FAIL! 10 days after ovulating (just about the earliest a test would show up postive), 5am I am up to pee and can't resist the lure of the First Response test calling my name from the cabinet. I rub my blurry sleepy eyes, only see the control line, mutter a curse word or two and toss the test in the trash. We sleep a few more hours, run some errands, go to Body Pump and come home. As I'm about to get in the shower, on a whim I pull the test out of the trash and....there was a very very faint 2nd line!! I run into the other room and shove the stick in Richard's face and ask "How many lines do you see? How many lines do you see?" He's like "Uh, I have never seen one of these before I have no idea what I'm even looking at." After giving him Pregnancy Test 101, we both agreed that yes, there is in fact a 2nd line, but since it was about 7 hours old at this time we couldn't rely on it as a true positive. Of course, I had just gone to the bathroom again so I had to wait several more hours before testing again. I think I used 2 old fashioned tests that came up with faint lines again, and Rich was still a bit skeptical since he didn't believe me that the positive line didn't have to be as dark as the control line. But then I used a digital and it popped up with the word "Pregnant" and he teared up. I on the other hand, did not cry. I cried every month when I wasn't pregnant, but the one month I actually was I was suprisingly unemotional.

One week later: So that all went down last Thursday, and I think I have taken a test just about every day since then. I am not going to be able to send this kid to college because I spent it's college fund on pregnancy tests! I am officially (according to my calculations and the help of some online pregnancy calculator sites) 4 weeks and 3 days pregnant today. The next few weeks are critical and I'm really nervous. I know of way too many women who found out they were pregnant, but unfortunately did not wind up having babies for one reason or another. We have told our immediate families and a tiny handful of friends, but other than that we are keeping this quiet until at least 8 weeks. I have my first ob appointment on Oct. 19 and I'll be 8 weeks then. If all goes well, and we see a heartbeat and things are looking good, then you'll know because this post will be up:)

There is SO much that is going to change in our lives in the next year, and it's incredibly overwhelming to think about. Right now I'm just taking things one day at a time, and focusing on taking the best possible care of myself and our little jelly belly.

One neat thing for those of you who made it this far: I had a good feeling about this month for superstitious reasons. About a week before I found out, I had a ladybug land on my shirt. I looked down at it, and thought...hmm..this means good luck, I'm going to be pregnant this month. We all know how superstitious runners can be, and women trying to get pregnant are right up there as well, so I definitely saw it as a good omen at the time, and it turned out to be true. I'll have to find a little ladybug something to put in the baby's room so I'll always remember that day I saw the ladybug.

Here' s my first belly shot, taken at 3 weeks and 4 days pregnant. Goodbye abs.

I'm sorry for those of you who only like running posts, as this blog will likely be lots of pregnancy and baby posts for a while. I am running and working out almost every day, so it will still be somewhat a running blog.