Am I really writing this post right now?! It feels too good to be true! Yes, you’ve been reading everything right. Justin and I are PREGNANT and expecting our first baby next spring!! There aren’t enough exclamation points or happy tears to convey just how ecstatic we are to be growing our family!
We recorded a podcast episode all about how we found out we were pregnant, whether or not it came as a surprise, what we didn’t expect about the first trimester, and some of our biggest confessions from the first three months of being pregnant! You can listen to that podcast below, or…
Click here to listen on iTunes!
These past few months of being pregnant have been so sacred and special. Honestly, for the longest time, it just felt too sacred to talk about publicly. How could I share just how much this means to me? How romantic and deeply bonded our relationship has been since finding out we are growing a little person that’s half Justin, half me? How God began to change my heart and prepare it for starting a family long before we even considered “trying” to have a baby?
My friend Callie mentioned on the phone one day that my thoughts on this season and how sacred it feels reminded her of the verse, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). There is something really intimate about having life growing inside of you. A life you don’t even have to think about sustaining, really… an innocent little human whose heart starts beating just days after conception and whose legs start kicking shortly after that.
The first ultrasound brought tears to my eyes. Up until that point, I couldn’t quite accept that we had a baby. Seeing that little head on the screen made it all real, all at once… we had a child. One God was forming and knitting together in all His perfectly mysterious ways and all we had to do was thank Him for how good he is for the gift of being this baby’s parents.
How can I relay in words what I felt in that moment? Seeing that little heart beating on the black and white screen… I had so much fear surrounding pregnancy leading up to this moment. Since I was a little girl, I would beg God that I would be able to have children someday. (Maybe all those stories of the barren women in the Bible really stuck with me.) Getting pregnant was never something I just assumed would happen, or a concept I took for granted. So many women in my life have not been able to feel the flutters and carry babies of their own. It’s not lost on me just how much of an INCREDIBLE gift this is, one I don’t deserve more than anyone else.
I wanted so badly to protect my fertility that I never went on any sort of birth control pill or implant. When we got married and making a baby became a physical possibility (lol), I remember shaking in the bathroom every month when my period was due because I was so overwhelmed by the thought of being pregnant and having a baby. It was nothing short of terrifying to me. How could I be so scared of something I wanted so badly someday, just not TODAY?
I had to hand my fears and release a lot of control in this regard after we got married. It was like suddenly, we had to look at each other, not as boyfriend and girlfriend, but as husband and wife and… potential mom and dad to our kids. I had to say to Justin, “We can’t have 100% control over this, and I trust you to be the father to our children, whenever that may happen.”
It was still scary, and we were still preventing pregnancy in many aspects. It just felt like we didn’t have as much control as we might have had I been taking a pill every day or relying on an implant in my arm.
I honestly think the release of that portion of control was one of the most beautiful things about our newlywed season.
I also felt so empowered as a woman who understood my body and knew when I could and couldn’t get pregnant. I read the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility, got in touch with a few friends who were also preventing naturally, and prayed that the Lord would prepare my heart if and when we did get a positive pregnancy test. (Trust me, there were plenty of negatives out of curiosity but also paranoia, especially at the beginning of our marriage. Haha.)
Last Fall when we got our dog Coco, we started joking how she HAD to be training for a baby straight from the Lord. She wants to sleep in our arms, she’s extremely clingy, so adorable, and the way our eyes light up when we come home to her and just look at each other like, “This is our family…” It just felt so special and new, and like a preview of some other new thing that was soon to come. Maybe not right now, but someday… and now, maybe someday soon.
It wasn’t until my cycle stopped halfway through this year that “someday” threatened to be “never.”
I have had a few long cycles here and there in the past, but never anything longer than 40 days. I was past Day 65 when I was diagnosed with PCOS due to a hormonal imbalance diagnosed via blood test, and ovarian cysts visible via ultrasound.
I told Justin somewhere in the midst of this, “I wake up every day and just want to cry.”
It felt so heavy. We had never even tried to get pregnant, and yet I felt hopeless. We’d been saying throughout the year, “Wouldn’t 2020 be a fun year to have a baby?” and “I think we should take next year off from traveling altogether…” and “If we want to be done having kids by X age, we should start pretty soon!”
It was like we were just starting to get there, and then suddenly those dreams felt extremely threatened. Maybe even impossible.
Every reason that we had for preventing paled in comparison now to every reason we had for releasing that last bit of control we were holding on to.
And in the midst of my fears I’ve carried for a lifetime, in the midst of the hopelessness I felt, in the midst of the longing God had begun to stir up in my heart…
We got pregnant. Right away. On the first try.
The day I received my official PCOS diagnosis from my doctor’s office was the first day our baby was starting to form inside me.
God is so good.
The beauty in these details is not lost on me.
And even in the midst of what turned out to be a first trimester full of more release of control and absolute surrender to the Lord, we felt so much joy.
The first three months of this pregnancy brought growth, transformation, so much prayer, and again, absolute surrender over this little life that we can only protect so much.
We go into the next part of this story and talk all about the first trimester in the episode below. This is an extremely candid and intimate conversation about being pregnant for the first time and all of the emotions that come with this season. I hope that it encourages and entertains but also respects the sanctity of life and just how sacred this time is.
We are so, so thankful and we can’t wait to share more of this journey to becoming parents with you.
