Starting at the Beginning

Where do I even begin??  Our pregnancy journey has been a long, hard 4+ years.  And yet, here we finally are.  Pregnant, and more joyful than we can both remember being in a long time!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I should start at the beginning.

Jon and I met on what I consider a blind date.  He considers our date to be the third time we met actually!  Potatoes, potaatoes : ).  Either way, some super great, super intuitive friends set us up, and after 2 years of dating, and 9 months of being engaged, we were married.  I was 22, he was 24. 

We were young. We were madly in love. And we had grand plans for our life.

We wanted to travel. And so we did...a lot!


Honeymoon in St. Lucia, 2005

Caribbean Cruise, 2007

Gatlinburg, TN 2007

Cambodia, 2008

Riviera Maya, Mexico 2008

Costa Rica, 2009

Cancun, Mexico, 2010

Napa, California, 2010

Cozumel, Mexico, 2011

Skiing in Colorado, 2012

Hawaii, 2012

Prague, 2013

Vernazza, Italy, 2013

Clearly, we LOVE traveling.  But after that, our next goal was to have kids. We initially said we would start trying after being married for about 5 years.  But about 4 years into it, we were ready.  We had thoroughly enjoyed every minute of being married. We loved spending time together. We certainly loved traveling.  We laughed a ton.  And we were ready to share all of that with some Little Lermas.

Even though I had started graduate school, we still went ahead with "trying".  Little did we know, pregnancy would not come easy for us.

At first, our difficulty in getting pregnant was chalked up to stress...and a lot of it.  I was working full time in the PICU while going to grad school.  Jon was out of a job.  On top of that, Jon's mom had cancer and was in the hospital after a stem cell transplant, when Jon's dad suddenly died from cancer. 

Yeah, so stress was in abundance. 

But then, once things started to settle down, pregnancy just wasn't happening.  That is isn't wasn't happening, until a few days before our 4th anniversary (June 2009).  I started having weird symptoms, thought I was pregnant, took several pregnancy tests several days in a row, but they were all negative!

But the morning of our actual anniversary, I woke up, was convinced I was pregnant, took another test, and YUP, it was positive! I made the most creative anniversary card for Jon and video taped the big reveal. It was one of the most exciting, fun days we've had. I still cherish that video.


6 weeks pregnant, day of grad school graduation!

Then 2 weeks later, on the day of my graduate school graduation, I started having a miscarriage.  It was supposed to be a day for celebration, getting my graduate degree!  And it was the night before we had a big trip planned to Cozumel, Mexico with my family, where instead of telling them the big, exciting news, we had to share with them our enormous disappointment. 

Fast forward 1 other miscarriage and one chemical pregnancy later, and we landed in a fertility specialist office. Fast forward many, many tests, biopsies, ultrasounds, poking and prodding, and we found out I have a clotting disorder (MTHFR compound genetic mutation, prothrombin compound genetic mutation, and a third component that 2 hematologists have yet to find a name of!). Add that to some severe hormone deficiencies, and you have a recipe for infertility wonderland.

Do another fast forward through 9 months of clomid (where I became a beast...no really, a BEAST!), a failed IVF stimulation cycle, and we are now officially caught up. 

To IVF cycle #2 in October, 2013. 

So that's the beginning. Because, really, where else should the story start!?  And without the background information, we certainly could not have gotten to where we are today. 

Despite things not going the way that we wanted them to, despite many, many of our plans falling through, despite the scripture that says "Hope deferred makes the heart sick" playing in the background like our theme song for years, we have come out on the other side.  We have persevered, we have stayed faithful and hopeful and confident, and we have done everything we could physically, mentally, emotionally and spiriutally.

And so I start this blog, as a way to document one of the most magical, special, joyful times in our lives.  Aside from our wedding day, I cannot think of something I have wanted more.  And I look forward to looking back at this pregnancy journey, reading of the things I was thinking and feeling, seeing the belly grow, and just relishing in how far we've come!  Here is the blog on welcoming our Little Lermas!