Here We Go Again!

I read once that you should never apologize in a blog post for a long hiatus from writing. I don't know whether that's true for a 20-month hiatus, but alas, no apologies here... just jumping right back into the swing of things.

R and I decided after E was born that we were a "one and done" family. We were adamant, and not falsely so - we really believed this was the family we were meant to have. The infertility struggles and treatments we endured, my discomfort during the late part of my pregnancy, my extremely challenging labor & delivery, our utter satisfaction with our one perfect and beautiful child... why would we do it all again when we were finally on "the good side" of the journey?

But then E started growing out of her clothes and I cried when boxing them up. I suggested giving them to friends with little girls younger than E, but R resisted... "just in case." When she turned one and rocketed out of the sweet baby phase and into busy, independent toddlerhood, I started to feel an achy longing for a baby in my arms. We talked for months about maybe possibly considering perhaps thinking about having one more child. One more try at pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting a new and different person than E. We talked about what it would mean for the life we had planned as a family of three - the changes and sacrifices it would entail from the tidy little vision we'd crafted. The more we talked, the less we wavered, until one day we both agreed that we wanted to take the leap.

Taking the leap for us, given my PCOS, meant jumping back into the fray with our reproductive endocrinologist and starting fertility treatments again. I blogged the details elsewhere for posterity's sake, so won't go into it here. Suffice it to say we didn't luck out with the first treatment cycle in trying for our second child, as we did with our first, but eventually we ended up with the good news for which we hoped.

Due to the uncertainty of any new pregnancy - but especially those stemming from fertility treatments - we kept the news close to ourselves and waited through several early tests on pins and needles. We've seen the pictures at 6 and 13 weeks, we've passed the tests and heard the heartbeat, and we've made it safely through the risky first trimester and stand here at 14 weeks, 1 day excited, hopeful, and eager for what's to come. Join us, if you'd like, for the road ahead as we journey from life as a family of three to a family of four.