BIG NEWS. We are pregnant (well mostly me but you get the drift). It feels so surreal to even type those words out. For those of you that do not know, I have battled ovarian cysts for the last decade of my life and already thought getting pregnant would be a challenge. Couple that with my sweet husband going through testicular cancer this spring, and us starting the fertility process (we froze samples back in May)..this was the last thing we expected to happen. The Lord sure does have other plans and we are over the moon..and a little terrified to say the least. With my position here at Bump to Babies I felt like it was only fair to take you guys along for the ride. I’m sitting here now at five weeks pregnant wanting to write the words while they were fresh. I am terrified. Excited. Calm. In love. Prepared. Scared. Ready or not haha either way it is happening. Not even quite sure if we are growing a baby or if this is some crazy fluke. Praying and hoping in Jesus that baby is safe and healthy.
I have spent my whole career helping mamas walk through their pregnancies, births, and the newborn & postpartum stages. Now here we are. Getting to walk through my own. Still can’t quite wrap my head around all of this. I am now seven weeks pregnant and adding to this blog post little by little. Once we share the news via the inter web, I will be sure to share weekly updates as we prepare! As of right now in the story, we have set appointments for gender, and our first ultrasound! We have met with our midwife already and we ADORE her! Literally she was the first person after Austin that I told (HA). I am going to write so much more in depth about why we chose her and the birth center down the road but just know she is INCREDIBLE.
Okay… a couple weeks have passed now and I am sitting here at 10 weeks and we have now officially seen our sweet baby and know they are healthy and safe and snuggled in there! It is such a surreal feeling and such a little miracle. I cannot even begin to imagine what words will be enough to convey how I feel…so in love, so enamored, so in awe and so beyond aware of what a miracle this sweet little baby is.
FLASHBACK; now that we know baby is healthy and snug in there..with my history of ovarian cysts and cycle issues we already knew getting pregnant wouldn’t be an easy thing when/if that day came but then back in May, Austin got diagnosed with testicular cancer and had emergency surgery to remove his testicle.
We found out the news on a Thursday and his surgery was scheduled for the following Monday because they were worried about about how quickly it was growing and didn’t want it to spread.
My nanny mom got us in with a fertility specialist that Friday before surgery because coupled with my health issues and now his, his doctor recommended that we freeze samples ASAP in order to potentially one day try to do an IUI (we had already decided against IVF) because getting pregnant naturally wouldn’t be in the cards for us. Due to COVID it was a nightmare trying to find an appointment that fast but being that it was an emergency and she knew the doctor we got squeezed in and
we went to the fertility specialist that Friday and I couldn’t come in aside from filling out paper work and then because of covid restrictions they sent me back to the car.
He gave his samples and we scheduled follow up testing for me to be able to come back at a later date to finish testing and see what next steps would wind up being but at this point.
He went in for surgery that Monday and then we started on our new normal. With the pandemic and now his recovery we hadn’t even considered kids until at least a few years down the road.
We had already discussed foster care and signed up for orientation for September to start that year long process and just gameplanned in the next two years that we would start to foster babies and then see how we felt about going back to do potentially do an IUI but we’re just giving it to God.
Fast forward from May to July and my nanny kid kept telling me he had given me a baby. Obviously they all knew what was going on and so my nanny parents were very like hey M can’t have babies right now she has you guys and one day she may need help for babies and he was like NO GUYS I GAVE HER ONE. And that weekend I spent the night with them for my nanny girl’s birthday and woke up super out of it and just assumed it was cause she was sleeping on me so I was hotter than normal…got home from their house the next day and told Austin what H had been saying about giving me a baby and he was like “well are you late?” And I was like “oh I mean I guess I am but my cycle has been wacky with everything going on so I didn’t think about it” so we went and got a test and I took it before showering and was going to throw it out and it was positive.
We honestly didn’t believe it and we’re scared something else was wrong because there was no way (TMI but we were actively using protection too) and given time frames I would have been only 4 weeks along so it was scary and we didn’t have the super happy oh my gosh we’re pregnant until about 10 weeks when we got the okay that baby is okay and somehow against all odds healthy so far.
As the weeks go on I will go more into detail and share a little more of our hearts but we just wanted to let you guys in on the news…
I am so so excited to take y’all along for the ride!
xoxo,
Mariana
Bump to Babies 