My pregnancy

Step 1: getting pregnant

This whole journey started like most pregnancy stories do. Waking up one morning and feeling like your house is suddenly emptier than it was the day before...baby time:). We tried on our own for over a year and no dice. my OBGYN gave me a card to some reproductive center and that was that. We felt so lost it the mix of where to go and where to start. after almost another year of back and forth and doc's blaming it on my cancer treatment, but never looking into it further and not knowing where to send me, I was frustrated and ready for a break. My good friend from nursing school was working at an OB office that specialized in infertility. She got me into her doc who started me on fertility treatments right away and was really great. after 2 months of oral meds, shots, and daily ultra sounds still no baby. He said my best and probably only shot was IVF. So off to and IVF specialist. Our meeting with him was one I'll never forget. it was an hour of telling us he was the best there is, and that is why he is based out of LA and will only be here for us part time. he told us it is going to cost double what the other doc told us, not including the shots. Then eventually going through the process which came to a halt when he got to the egg freezing. They use a preservative called DMSO so freeze the eggs. this is a preservative that I know well because we use it in Stem cell transplantation, and I'm very, very allergic to it. When we told him that he said that there is no other way to do IVF and I will not be able to get pregnant any other way, so if i want to try any other methods he will send me to another doc, but not to get our hopes up. This experience was very sad and confusing for us both, I'm so glad I have such an amazing husband.
It was another 4 months before we would see our next doctor. We agreed to a much needed break and didn't say the word baby in our house or watch any shows with babies in it. in April I went to boston with 2 friends from work for an oncology nursing conference. It was so much fun and a trip I will never forget. One of my friends was 9 weeks pregnant on the trip and was sick. I found myself weirdly motion sick on the plain and in the morning too. we laughed it off as empathy sickness...it turns out it wasn't. 1 week after getting home we saw our new doc who was a breath of fresh air. We didn't know I was pregnant at that first appointment and am glad for that because that established us as his patient which has turned out to be great.
Before taking my first fertility medication that month I had to take a pregnancy test, which I threw away because I didn't believe it was positive. I took 3 of them before I ran to show Rick.
Moral of the story- Doctors don't know everything, I learned to never stop trying. Every experience we have is for a reason and part of a bigger plan.

Step 2: the pregnancy:
I don't know if it was because I was so excited to be pregnant, but I had more energy during pregnancy than I have ever had! I lot of it was also because my diet changed a lot. With 3 years of nursing school, graveyard shifts, fertility treatments, an ankle reconstruction surgery, and just getting lazy, I found myself Very out of shape! The responsibility of being pregnant hit me like a train! this was the one chance my baby had at properly forming a body and she was 100% dependent on me to get the nutrients to do that. wow. After a while of only eating healthy things, the thought of grease and sugar made me sick. I felt better during my pregnancy than i had in years
We found out she was a girl at 17 weeks along. We went to fetal fotos because we were too excited to wait. it took over an hour of me moving in different directions, going to the bathroom, and finally saying we would come back another day for her to finally show us what she was:). Rick was hilarious when we found out. He is such a sports guy that when he heard girl he didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't know what kind of toys to get or how he would play with her. this was short lived when he studied the toy isle and got her some cute sporty clothes. she is definitely his little princess and had him wrapped around her little finger from the day we found out she was a girl:)
My first kick i felt at 21 weeks while we were at the farmers market and I had a hand full of bear lake raspberries:)
She loved bath time during the pregnancy. she seemed to always be in my right hip so warm baths helped me a lot with that discomfort. during the bath I would watch my belly move back and forth. She still loves bath time:).
She also LOVES music. I would listen to music loud on the way to work in the mornings and loved to feel her dancing. Music still calms her down when she is having a rough night.
Around 27 weeks she established "dance off time" from 8-10ish every night turned into a dance off in my belly, even making me loose dinner a couple of times. She was pretty calm through the night after that. I was hoping this would continue after birth. It has to some extent, she is very active and talkative in the late evening and sleeps great!