We're...

And so excited!!

Wednesday night I started feeling really sick to my stomach and it lasted for quite a while until I was finally able to fall asleep. When I woke up Thursday morning for work I felt a little bit better, but in the back of my mind I thought, maybe the sickness is... "morning sickness" or it could be the flu, or something I ate, but there's one way to find out. :-) I had a left over test from last month, and though I was trying to wait til I actually missed my "time of the month", that test was very tempting. It was 1 or 2 days before my cycle was supposed to start back up again and I've read many women who are able to get a positive result at 12 days past ovulation (which is what day I was on), so I figured it was worth a try. After many many months of getting negatives, I was convinced this month would be the same. After all, it was only my first month of taking Clomid, and most women don't get pregnant the first try. But to my total shock, the test said "Pregnant". I couldn't believe it and still am having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I just started shaking I was so excited.

Now to tell Jake!! He was still sleeping at the time and I didn't really want to wake him because I knew he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep after he got the news. So I put the positive test in our medicine cabinet so it would be a surprise. :-) Of course, he being a total man, didn't notice it. So I told him he better go take a second look. LOL. He was like, "is this for real". Those were my same thoughts when I saw the positive. Yep its for real. He was just as excited as I was. He's been telling everyone, which surprises me in a way. Jake's not really what I would consider a "kid" person. He was the one that kept wanting to wait to have kids. I of course was ready about a year after we got married, but Jake wanted to wait, so we did. I'm thrilled that he's so excited!

So now we're praying for a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. I called the Dr. office yesterday and we scheduled my first appt. for March 11th. She told me all the things I need to be doing to stay healthy and she also figured that my due date should be somewhere around October 19th!!! Which I'm really happy about because we don't have any October birthdays on either side of our family. I'm also excited cause I'll get to dress them up in a cute little costume for Halloween!!! My sister thought of that one. :-)

So thats our good news, and I'll definitely keep you guys updated with all my pregnancy happenings. Continue to keep us in your prayers.

Good News and Bad News

Its only 10 a.m. and I've already had a crazy day. The bad news came at about 7:15 this morning. While I was finishing up getting ready for work, my husband called and said his brakes went out... Yikes!!! He was on his way to work and thankfully had only gotten to the end of our street when they started to go out. He made it to the shoulder safely, but he said it was a terrifying experience. Had there been cars coming, things would not have went so well. We had to call a tow truck to come pick up his car and tow it to our mechanic. While the tow truck was there, we noticed that Jake's car was leaking fluid (we're assuming its probably brake fluid). I'm hoping and praying its something that is easily fixable and relatively inexpensive. We shall see.

The good news is... once I finally was on my way to work, my cell phone rang and it was my OB/GYN with my progesterone test results. If you remember... my previous number before taking Clomid was 0.5, which meant I wasn't ovulating at all. They like your number to be at least a 15. Mine this month, with the help of Clomid, was 28.8!!!! Yay!!! I'm so happy. If I'm not pregnant, my cycle should start again sometime late this week or weekend. If it doesn't, I'll be able to take a pregnancy test by the weekend and it should tell me one way or another.The nurse on the phone said if I get a neg. pregnancy test this time, she'll prescribe another round of 50 mg of Clomid for next month since it helped this past month. I'm trying to wait patiently, but thats definitely easier said than done. This month makes it a full year of being off the BC pill. I'm praying we will get even better news this weekend! Please keep us in your prayers!

I hope you all are having a good day on this freezing cold Tuesday. :-)

Yay... its the weekend!

Happy Friday everyone!! I'm so glad its Friday and that the weekend is just a few hours away. Here's what we have on the agenda for this weekend...

Today I'm working, then on my lunch hour I have to go get my blood drawn to check my progesterone level... oh the joys of trying to conceive with infertility. ;-) I finished my first round of Clomid this cycle and got a positive ovulation test last Friday and Saturday. They like to check your progesterone level 7 days after a positive ovulation test to check and see whether you actually did ovulate.  They like the number to be above 15 (my # w/out Clomid was 0.5). So I'm praying that the Clomid worked and I did in fact ovulate this month. I had some ovulation pain last Friday night and Saturday as well, so I'm hoping that means I really did ovulate. I should get the results from the blood test sometime early next week. I'll let you guys know what the results are as soon as I get them.

Tonight we are having our bible study group over. We are now going through
the book, "The Next Christians" by Gabe Lyons. We are just starting it and will be covering chapter 1 tonight. I've only read the first chapter, but its very interesting so far.

Tomorrow we don't really have any plans other than getting ready for our Super Bowl party on Sunday. We've had a Super Bowl party every year since we got married. We have a 61" t.v. so we always have some friends and family over to watch it together. I'm hoping to decorate a little bit this year for our party. Normally I don't really take the time to decorate and go all out, but I'd like to make things a little more festive this year. I'll post pictures if I do end up decorating. I don't normally even watch the Super Bowl cause there's never really a team I care about playing... this year is no different. I really couldn't care less who wins, but I know Jake always enjoys watching it with his friends. I normally turn on the Puppy Bowl upstairs, and those of us who don't care about the football game just talk and have a fun time together. I'll switch the channel over to the game every so often to get an update on the score, but thats about as much as I watch. LOL.

Sunday we'll go to church and then we're having our 1st Sunday of the month Food and Fellowship after the service. I think another family in our church is making beef stew!! Yum. Then we'll have our Super Bowl party later that afternoon!! Should be a fun day! Go Packers... I guess ;-) Thats who Jake is rooting for so I guess I will too! 

I hope you all have a safe, warm, relaxing and enjoyable weekend!!

TGIF

Yay, its Friday and the weekend is right around the corner. And to make it even better, its a 3 day weekend for me. Being that I work for the federal government, I get MLK Jr. day off! :-)

I don't have an extremely busy weekend planned but I do have a few

things. Tonight we are having our weekly bible study group over to our house. Starting this year, my church decided to start having small group/home bible studies weekly, as opposed to bible study in our church building. We are trying to sell our church building and our pastor thought it would be good for us to start this now because when we do sell the church we will have to meet at homes for mid-week bible study anyways while we're in the transition period of finding a new building. So several small groups formed and there are about 8 of us in our small group. We have been rotating being hosts each week. Its our turn tonight. :-) We start with dinner and then have about a 45 min. or so bible study. Its nice to fellowship in a small setting. We're enjoying it.



My sister, our friend Holly and myself.



Tomorrow I don't really have anything on the agenda until tomorrow evening when I'm meeting my sister and a girlfriend of ours for dinner. The friend is going through a tough time so we thought it might be nice to have a night out. We haven't really decided where we're eating yet, but regardless it should be a fun night. Tomorrow is also the day I start my first round of Clomid. I'm excited and nervous all at the same time. I'll keep you posted on how things go with that. I only have to take it for 5 days and I'm hoping the side effects are minimal to none at all. My sister said her only real side effect was that she had hot flashes, so I figure I can handle that if thats all I end up having. I'm just hoping and praying it works!!





Sunday we have church and then we normally have my parents, sister and my sister's family over so the guys can watch football together. We have NFL Sunday ticket through Direct TV so that they can watch all the games, (rolling my eyes). I don't get it but its something my husband just had to have so he could watch his beloved Chiefs play. Since we live in STL, we don't get many of the Kansas City Chiefs games on local t.v. So anyways, us girls will fix dinner and and just hang out. :-)

Monday I don't really have any plans. Yay!!! It would be a great day to scrapbook, but I'm not sure what I'll end up doing that day. :-) I kinda like that I don't have any plans. Its nice to have a day to not do anything.

Well I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!!

The first week of 2011, so far...

With this being the first week of the new year, I thought I'd post a little update on how 2011 has been so far.

It started off with church on Sunday along with a little scrapbook social after-wards with ladies from my church (including my mom and sister). I hadn't scrap-booked in a couple months since I had been so busy with the new puppy and preparing for Christmas, so it was nice to get a few pages done. I'll have to take some pictures and post them for you. Sunday night we had some friends over to watch football which was a good time. :-)

I had a Dr. appt. with my ob/gyn on Tuesday, so I decided to take the whole day off from work and get some stuff done around the house, (like taking down all the Christmas stuff and cleaning). Unfortunately, things didn't go as I had planned for that day. Monday night I started feeling sick like I was getting a cold and Tuesday morning I woke up feeling even worse. So needless to say, I didn't get any of the house work done that I wanted to do. I did, however, venture out to my dr. appt. so she could go over starting the fertility drug Clomid this coming cycle. She seemed pretty confident that it would help me ovulate and I'm looking forward to trying it and hoping and praying it works for us. I would love nothing more than for us to get pregnant the first month of trying it. I'm trying to stay optimistic, but yet be realistic and know that it may take a few months (or it may not work at all).

Yesterday I spent the whole day in bed. This cold/flu is no fun. :-( I'm feeling a little better today so I made it into work. I couldn't take another day of watching garbage on TV. There is literally nothing good on during the day. I'm hoping I feel well enough to at least start taking some of the Christmas stuff down this evening. The weekend is looking to be pretty busy so I'm not sure I'll have time to clean the house then. Oh well, if it doesn't get done this week, I guess its not the end of the world. I'll get it done eventually. :-)

I'm hoping you are all having a great first week of the new year!!

The news I was dreading...

In a previous post, I mentioned that my husband and I were having some trouble getting pregnant. Well yesterday, I got the news I was dreading. I went to the Dr. last month because my cycle never started and I was worried something might be wrong. She put me on Provera to start my cycle (which worked) and then she wanted to do a blood test to check and see if I was ovulating. They like your progesterone level to be 15 or higher, which shows that you're actually releasing an egg. My progesterone level was 0.5. :-( So I'm not ovulating at all. She said she'd like to put me on the fertility drug called Clomid. So I will start that my next cycle. Please keep us in your prayers.

Just a little update on life...

Hi all.
  I created this blog a couple years ago to share pictures of scrapbook pages and crafts I've made. Then earlier this year, I decided to share a little more of my life with pictures of our house, wedding, vacations, holidays and just every day events. Since there haven't been any big events going on these last couple weeks, I thought maybe I'd just take some time out today to give a little update on some things going on in my life. No real big events or anything, just a little update.

  Right now is always a busy time for us with the holidays and because we have a childrens Christmas musical at our church every year and I always help with that. It takes a lot of time and practice. So a lot of my time is going to that right now. This weekend we are going to Jake's Aunt and Uncles house in Lee's Summit, MO (near K.C.) for Thanksgiving with his side of the family. I've also arranged for us to go to a Kansas City Chiefs game while we're there. Its a b-day present for Jake since his B-day is Nov. 23rd. It should be a very fun weekend. Then of course next Thursday is Thanksgiving and we'll be going to my Aunt and Uncle's house that day to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family.

  We also just adopted out one of our foster puppies last night. Little Perrier (or Marlee as we've been calling her) went to a great home where I know she'll be loved and adored. She will be living with a couple that has a dog that they treat as family and she'll get lots of play time and love there. They don't have any kids and treat their dog as if he were their child. So she's going to a great home and I couldn't be happier for her. I'm of course sad and I miss her very much, but it makes me happy to know she will live in a great home for the rest of her life. So now we're down to our 2 dogs and Vasser (or Max as we've been calling him). We've considered keeping him, but if we find the perfect home, we'll probably adopt him out too. It all depends on how long we have him and how much more attached we get to him.

  Another thing thats been going on is, Jake and I have been trying to start a family. We've been trying for about 8 months with no success. I'm 29 and he's 24 (almost 25) so our age shouldn't really play much of a role in things. I've been on the birth control pill for 11 years and even after going off of it in February, I've had pretty regular cycles. The latest I ever was in these last 8 months was about a week. Well this month I'm on CD 49 and counting and AF hasn't shown herself yet. I've taken pregnancy test after pregnancy test and all have come back negative. So last Thursday I had an appt. with my OB/GYN. They did a blood test just to make sure I wasn't pregnant and also checked out my thyroid to make sure that wasn't causing me problems. Everything checked out fine and the preg. blood test came back neg. so she prescribed me some Provera, which should jump start my cycle and then I should test for ovulation this month to see if I'm even ovulating. The lack of AF this month indicates that I may not be ovulating on my own. So once AF comes I will test for ovulation and see what happens there. If I get a pos. ovulation test then I'll have to go to the Dr. to have them check my blood for the Luteinizing Hormone to see how good of an ovulation it was. I guess theres a number that it needs to be at in order for it to have been a good enough ovulation for pregnancy to occur. If I don't ovulate or get a good enough ovulation, they will most likely prescribe me Clomid. Which is a drug that you take to help you ovulate. So I never thought I'd be happy to see AF, but I hope the Provera works and I start soon and can see whether I'm actually ovulating or not. That will tell us a lot and then we can go from there. Unfortunately, this is none new to me as my sister has had a lot of trouble getting pregnant. She has a son which took them 11 months to conceive. Now they've been trying for 22 months with no luck on a second child. She's gone through 6 rounds of Clomid and is now going to try IUI to hopefully get pregnant this month. I know this doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I find it so strange that my mom had no trouble getting pregnant with either me or my sister. She conceived both of us within a month of going off the pill. But now my sister and I are both having the same kind of problems when trying to conceive. It just shows how different we all are. Thankfully I know God is in control of it all and both my sister and I will get pregnant in His time. Its not really been all that long of a wait for me so far. Usually they don't worry until its been a year of trying without conceiving. But having patience for something you want really bad is still hard. I've been waiting for a couple years for my husband to be ready to start a family, so even though we've only been trying for about 8 months, its still been a lot longer that I've been waiting to have a baby. I'm trying not to worry about any of it and just hope and pray it happens soon. We'll see how things go. I'll definitely keep my blog updated so you know whats going on.

  Thanks for listening and I'd love to hear from anyone who has been or may still be in the same situation we are with trying to conceive. Any advice or recommendations are much appreciated.


Hugs,
~Amy