How it happened.

It's funny because when a "normal" person becomes pregnant, you never wonder for a second, "How did that happen?!". Because, well, the answer is fairly obvious. And you probably don't want the play by play details.

When a person who has previously dealt with infertility becomes pregnant, though, I think it's fairly natural to wonder, "How did it happen?!" And, so, here's how it happened this time around.

We decided to start the fertility treatment process again back in September. For us, fertility treatments entail a combination of oral (Femara) and injectable (Gonal-F) medications combined with IUI. (You might recall that our fertility "issue" is endometriosis on my part.) So, we did an IUI in September. On paper, everything looked perfect that cycle. And still, the IUI resulted in a back fat nothing. We made the decision to take the month of October off from treatments, as I was heading out of town for a friend's bridal shower and bachelorette party and the last thing I wanted to deal with was excusing myself from catching up with old friends to go inject myself in the bathroom at a party. Not really appealing. We resumed treatments in November, and once again, our cycle was ideal in theory. And, once again, nothing came of it. With two failed IUIs under our belt, Matt and I took the month of December off from fertility treatments to go to the same friend's wedding out of town.

On our road trip, we talked about our failed IUIs and what would come next. Since Camden was conceived on our very first IUI attempt a couple of years ago (granted, I had just had surgery to remove my endometriosis), we hadn't really considered the "what ifs" that might be involved this time around. What if IUI didn't work? What would our next step be? Or would there be a next step?

We both agreed during that car ride that we wouldn't do anything more extensive (or expensive) than a few more IUIs. Camden would always be enough for us, we agreed, even though ideally we'd love to add another child to our family. More than anything, we really didn't want Camden to miss out on having a sibling, since neither Matt nor I could imagine our childhoods (and our lives) without our siblings. So, even though it felt a little sad to potentially not have another child, we felt beyond grateful for Camden and were okay with being a family of three if our IUIs weren't successful.

Fast forward three weeks. It was a few days before Christmas, and my period was late. The first and second days it was late, I didn't allow myself to feel an inkling of hope. After all, it wasn't totally abnormal for my cycle to be off by a day or two. But when four days passed and there was still nothing, I could feel myself starting to hope. I didn't tell Matt, because I had this dream of giving him a positive pregnancy test all wrapped up on Christmas morning. I also daydreamed about how I would tell my parents and even sketched out a draft of a little poem I might give to them for Christmas. And yes-  I did all of these things before I'd even taken a pregnancy test.

I did finally allow myself to buy a pregnancy test but kept putting off taking it. I was so afraid I was wrong, so afraid to see that one sad little pink line I'd grown accustomed to repeatedly seeing years ago. Then I woke up at 2am on Christmas Eve and I couldn't stand it anymore. I snuck into the bathroom and forced myself to pee on that pesky little stick that had been calling out to me for days. My hands were shaking as I waited for the verdict. And then, a minute later, the verdict was in: Pregnant. During the cycle we took off. After our two failed IUIs. After I was told that we had a  5% chance of conceiving without treatment. I was pregnant.

I think I went back to sleep for a couple of hours but I can't be entirely sure. When Camden woke up the next morning, we wrapped the pregnancy test together. And on the morning of Christmas Eve, I had Camden wake Matt up and hand him his gift. It was perfect.

That night, we headed to my parents' house for Christmas Eve dinner and I typed up two rough drafts of the poem that I had written hopefully several days before. It was a lighthearted poem written from Camden's perspective, and it ended with "There's something important that you need to hear/I'm going to be a big brother next year!" I handed sealed envelopes to my parents and instructed them to open them while we were all sitting at the table before dinner. Their reactions were priceless: my dad finished reading first and threw his arms up in the air victoriously; my mom seemed to reread the last line over and over again before looking up at me with tears in her eyes and saying, "What?! Really?!" Once again, it was perfect.

But oh, it wasn't that simple. I didn't know it then, but we were in store for some pregnancy drama over the next two weeks. More on that later.