Our Baby Story – Part 3

If you missed Part 1, click HERE.  For Part 2, click HERE.

First of all, we would like to thank everyone who has read our story.  We are so blessed to be able to share it, and we continue to be amazed at how similar so many people’s stories are to our own.  We know that God brought us through all of this for a reason, and we are thankful to be able to share it with so many of you.

(Michael’s thoughts will be in italics.)

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Our Baby Story – Part 3: Treatments and a Positive Test

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Our last installment ended with us being referred to a fertility specialist in Houston.  We’d had all of the tests we could have under my OBGYN.

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post was what a blessing it was to have people encourage us who had been through similar situations.  One of my family members had struggled with infertility, and it was a gift from God to be able to talk with her about everything.  One of our close family friends had also had a miscarriage years ago, and she really encouraged me a lot.  She copied part of “Heaven is for Real” and sent it to me.  In this particular part of the book, the little boy talks about seeing his sister that “died in his mommy’s tummy” in heaven.  It was so sweet, and just what I needed to hear.

We met with the fertility doctor in Houston in the middle of August.  We were so impressed with his professionalism, warmth, and knowledge.  He talked to us in his office and explained a lot of things, including possible treatments, and then he did an ultrasound.

One of our favorite things was that during the ultrasound, the doctor called me over to the ultrasound screen to show me all the different things he was looking at.  Typically during ultrasounds, you sit there while the doctors or technicians scan everything and then they talk to you about it all later–it’s typically a rather cold procedure, but our fertility specialist made it very comfortable and informative.  

During the ultrasound, he found a 3.5 centimeter cyst on one of my ovaries.  He explained that he didn’t want to surgically remove it since it could harm the other eggs, but that we couldn’t go forward with treatments until it was gone.  So we set an appointment date for about a month and a half later to see its progress.

We prayed for the cyst to shrink on its own or burst so that we could proceed with treatments.  We had a lot of family praying as well.  One of my family members had had a 2.5 centimeter cyst a few months ago, and it took her months for it to go away.  But we were praying for a miracle.

When we went back to the doctor, the ultrasound tech scanned me again, and the cyst was completely gone!  God answered our prayers and gave us a miracle.  Because it was gone, I was able to start the first step of the treatment plan.  This month, I would take Clomid, which is a medicine that stimulates follicle growth, which will hopefully make it where your body can ovulate those follicles/eggs.  I would come in for an ultrasound later in the month to see the size of the follicles.

When I came in for my ultrasound, it showed that I had 3 eggs that were growing, but none were big enough to ovulate yet.  I’d also been instructed to use an ovulation predictor kit, which had only frustrated me in the past since I didn’t usually ovulate.  I was pretty sure that I had a positive, but I wanted to be completely sure.  So we had another ultrasound scan, and sure enough, I’d released one or two eggs!  So we didn’t have to have a shot to induce ovulation.  My body responded to the Clomid just how we were hoping it would.

That day, we left for San Antonio for me to attend the Women of Faith conference with my mom, Michael’s mom, one of my friends from Pine Cove Bluffs Family Camp, and lots and lots of other Christian women.  It was an incredible weekend!  And throughout the weekend, I just kept praying that God would be creating a baby inside of me.  One of the mornings in our hotel room, my mom and mother-in-law prayed that God would bless my womb and that we would be pregnant this month.  The weekend was a wonderful time to draw close to the LORD, remember His faithfulness, and be surrounded by so many wonderful Christian women.

When I got home from the conference, Michael and I continued to pray that God would bless us this month and give us a baby.  We had more hope than we’d ever had because we knew 100% that I’d ovulated.  But we still tried to not get our hopes up too much.  We were so used to soaring and then crashing when it didn’t happen.

During our last ultrasound, we’d set up an appointment in case this wasn’t our month–so we could discuss the next step.  That date kept getting closer and closer, and we still didn’t have a natural negative, but we continued to just wait.  I was also still taking my Basal Body Temp every morning, and it continued to remain high, but it hadn’t been 18 highs yet.

Finally, the day before my appointment, I knew that I was going to have to take a pregnancy test so that when I called the doctor and told them that we might have to reschedule my appointment, and they asked if I’d taken a test, I could say, “Yes, but it was negative.”  That was really what I was expecting.  Even though I felt like I might be pregnant, I thought it would be too early for it to test positive.

And after having test after test, month after month, be negative, although we hoped there would be something, we weren’t expecting anything.

So I took my test so I could cover all my bases for the doctor.  I decided to check it to make sure it was working (which is what I always did with these things), but I knew it wouldn’t have any lines yet.  I mean, it’d only been about 30 seconds, and they say to wait 5-10 minutes to read the test.

But we were wrong!  It was already clearly showing a positive line!

I started yelling “Michael!  You need to come here!”  He rushed in, thinking something was wrong, and I just pointed to the test.  I started crying.  We were just blown away!  We’d waited for this moment for almost two years, and now it was clearly showing a positive when we weren’t even expecting it.

I really didn’t know what to say or do, so I just started to laugh!  And being the cautious person that I am, I kept saying “Are you sure?  Are you sure?  Does the line have to be darker? ….”  And then I realized that the test only needed to show a line no matter the color!  So I picked Staci up and kissed her belly (our new baby’s temporary home) a million times.

We hugged and laughed and he kissed our little baby in my belly.  All I could say was “Thank you, Jesus!” over and over.  We were in shock.  But a good kind of shock!  It just didn’t seem real.  I mean, we were hoping and praying for this, but we weren’t expecting an answer so soon.

When we could once again talk coherently, we got on our knees and prayed, thanking God for this blessing growing inside of me.  We thanked Him for this whole process, because it made it that much sweeter to finally be pregnant.  And we thanked him for giving us this wonderful, wonderful blessing.  We also prayed that he would make us into parents that taught our children about God and showed them what it looked like to love Jesus.

Then it was time for some pictures!

One really funny part of the story is that on the day that we found out that Staci had officially ovulated we went to eat lunch at Pei Wei because we love it.  After our meal I opened up my fortune cookie and found this fortune…

So I kept it just in case… because at that point, you never know.  So we took a picture with it and our positive pregnancy test.

Hands on my belly, now that we knew our child was growing inside!

Proof!

4 weeks, 1 day.  No sign of a baby except my smile!

Our very messy front room.  Now it holds all of the things we haven’t put away yet, including our old kitchen table, decorations, and all of our toys from when we were little.  Soon it will be the baby’s room!

I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced as much joy as I had that morning.  This was something that we had longed, prayed, cried, and tried for for so long.  And now God had chosen to bless us with a child inside of me.  And to be able to share this excitement with my best friend, my amazing husband, was just more than I could ask for.

It’s been such an exciting blessing to be pregnant with my wife and best friend.  We are so thankful to God for bringing us through this very long, very difficult journey.  We’ve seen God’s hand moving in our marriage through it all, and our continual hope is that our story would be one of encouragement to those who may find themselves in a similar situation. 

God is SO good, and this is just one more testimony of His faithfulness.

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Up Next: Our First Ultrasound and more

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–Michael and Staci

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