We're pregnant!

If you know me, you're probably aware that it has been a long road to get to this point.  After trying on our own to get pregnant for close to two years, we finally visited a fertility specialist last March.  I was diagnosed with a uterine wall, scar tissue from my appendectomy and endometriosis.  In May I had surgery to correct all of these issues.  In August when I was still unable to get pregnant on my own, we decided to go back to the fertility doc for some extra help.  That began our journey with IUI.

IUI is short for Intrauterine Insemination.  That basically means that I take meds to help me ovulate and produce more eggs, and with very careful timing, they inject the washed sperm directly into my uterus.  The first try I failed to ovulate.  The next two trys I had successful ovulation, but no luck getting pregnant.  For the fourth try they switched me from oral medication to injections (woo-hoo).  But, this seemed to do the trick as I am currently 4 weeks pregnant.

I had my fourth IUI on November 28th, so that means that I was supposed to wait until December 12th (two weeks) to take a pregnancy test.  Well, I'm not so good with instructions.  After a mere 10 days, on December 9th, I was feeling "weird" at work all afternoon.  I can't really explain what was weird, or why I felt that way, but something just seemed off.  I decided to take an early response pregnancy test when I got home from work.  As soon as I took it, I hid it under the sink for three minutes so I wouldn't go crazy trying to watch for a second pink line to develop.  After three minutes, I went to look fully expecting one pink line with a sea of white around it.  To my very great shock, this is what I saw instead.

I took it out to show Kevin, who was in the kitchen, and we both just stared blankly at it and each other.  After three years of negative tests, we were afraid to believe a positive one.  I called my fertility doc and made an appointment to come in the next day for a blood test.  The hcg beta came back at 34.  Anything over 25 is considered positive for pregnancy.  They scheduled me to come back in 4 days to see if my numbers were doubling.  They like to see the number double every 48 - 72 hours for a viable pregnancy.

Four days later (after taking a pregnancy every morning in between to make sure I was still pregnant), I went in for my second blood test.  The hcg beta came back at 201.  This means my hcg is doubling every 37 hours, which is very good.  My next appointment is next Thursday on the 22nd for our first ultrasound.  I can't wait to see the little dot and know that it is really there.  At this point everything still seems surreal.  I'm definitely excited, but it's going to take a while for it to sink in that I'm really, truly, finally pregnant!  Stay tuned for the next 9 months, I'm sure it will become more real!

Here is my first belly picture at 4 weeks pregnant.  I will try to post one every week to see the progression.

I know, I know, it already kind of looks like I'm pregnant but that's just my regular 'ol belly. ;)  I can't wait to see a real baby belly develop!