What could be better than one baby???

Well TWO, of course! And where does this other baby come from?

hmmmm, well, yes, we have more news. I am PREGNANT!

True story.

It's a very long, long story. But it's an amazing story. I will do my best to sum up. Back in June we got a call out of the blue from our fertility doctor. They were doing an In-Vitro trial, using new methods, and they thought we were good candidates for it, so they were offering us this amazing opportunity to participate in the trial. Of course I said yes we want to participate. duh! But I/we were So shocked!!

Wow. Didn't expect THAT phone call in a million, perhaps billion, years. Kirk and I discussed it and decided that we wouldn't tell anyone about it but our parents. We have been through two previous rounds of InVitro that didn't work and It was just too hard when it didn't work and we had to tell all our friends and family. It sucked. We were working so hard on our adoption stuff and trying to find our baby and we decided that we would put our faith in the Lord for this InVitro, and in the meantime keep working on adoption and the things we were doing. After all, the Lord gave us this opportunity, we just decided to put it all together in His hands.

So we started all the meds and stuff we needed to do in July. There was a timing issue and the doctor called on my birthday to tell us the timing was off and we need to scrap this cycle and go again in August. Ok. why not.

So we started it all over again in August. I should insert here that when the doctor called us in June we weren't currently corresponding with any birth parents. But by the time we started things in August, we had already talked to like 11 birth parents, four of which were pretty seriously considering us. Kirk and I were SO stressed about how everything was coming to a head all at the same time. We kept thinking "what if this works? Holy crap that will be crazy? What will we do?, etc. etc." But we also thought.. "ahhh.. it's not going to work" Not trying to be downers, just really had low expectations about it. I think we were trying to protect ourselves.

So we had our embryo transfer on August 24. Then during the next two weeks we met our first two birth parents face to face! They both made their decisions pretty quickly and were off the table so to speak. Then on September 5 we had our pregnancy test. They took my blood in the morning then called in the afternoon... and told us I was pregnant. I couldn't even talk. I was so shocked I didn't believe it. I went downstairs and told Kirk and he was like "WHAT????" It was so crazy. It didn't really hit us for about 8 weeks to be honest :) (side note, september 5 was the day BYU beat Oklahoma in Football.. Kirk says "this is one of the best days of my life" hilarious)

So in the next two weeks, we met two more birth moms, Mariel included. Then on Monday, September 14, I had an ultrasound to see the embryo and heartbeat. We thought it would feel more real when we saw the heartbeat.. but it didn't really. We're a little slow.

The VERY NEXT DAY, Mariel, the birth mother of the baby boy we are adopting in January, announced to us that she wanted to place with us! We were so excited.. but at the same time felt ultra guilty because we hadn't told her we were pregnant yet. We hadn't told our case worker either. We really debated when we were going to say something. It was still so early in the pregnancy, and we didn't want to have a miscarriage and then lose our chance at adoption. But also.. we just really felt strongly that we were supposed to adopt Mariel's baby no matter what. So anyway... we called our caseworker and said.. "uh.. can we come talk to you immediately? we have something we need to talk to you about" Our poor case worker's head was already spinning from all the face to face meetings and action we had going on. We sit down on her couch and tell her we're pregnant. She totally BURSTS out laughing. :) What do we expect. So a furry of phone calls were made, to her supervisor and Mariel's case worker and the news is broken. Basically when you become prego you are OFF the adoption lists, but because of the timing and just the whole situation, and because Mariel had already announced to us, they said it was OK for us to adopt Mariel's baby if it was what she wanted!

So that night I emailed Mariel and told her basically the whole story, in even more detail than I am writing here if you can imagine, and told her that if she still wanted to place her baby with us we would be so thrilled and honored. We still had our dinner date for the following night, which I posted about two posts down, and I knew we would of course talk more then. Mariel had originally planned this dinner to be a huge and wonderful surprise, but then we dropped this HUGE bomb on her and just didn't know how she was feeling. She didn't respond to my email that night, which I was totally hoping she would. She admitted later that she didn't respond because she still wanted there to be some element of surprise.. stinker. We were so stressed about how she was taking it all. We hadn't meant to be deceitful, we just really didn't know how things would turn out with the pregnancy so we were being careful. In fact, we were planning to tell her that week about it since we had seen the heartbeat and everything.. but she beat us to it! whooooopsie! :)

So we went to dinner.. and the rest is posted below :)

I am 15 weeks pregnant right now. We barely told our family at almost 13 weeks. They couldn't believe that we had kept it a secret, cuz, those of you who know me, and you don't have to know me well, know that I'm quite the open book extrovert. We wanted to wait to tell people until we were technically "out of the woods" at 12 weeks. Kirk was very stressed about it. He even gave me the sturn "IF YOU LOVE ME, you will not say ANYTHING to ANYONE". Sheesh, mister dramatic. Kirk was very proud of me keeping my promise, although it was torture. There are lots of other parts of this story that I've left out.. just more details. I didn't mean to even write this much, but believe it or not this is the short-medium version :) You'll have to call me if you want more.

So there you have it! I'm PREGO!!! I am due May 11. I never ever thought I would have this opportunity. We are so thrilled, and so blessed and have felt our Father in Heaven's loving guidance through this entire process. It has been a roller coaster that's for sure, but He has been beside us the whole way, strengthening us and giving us courage. We are so grateful to Him for the many blessings he has given to us and is giving to us, and that we are finally going to start our family. We just can't believe we will have TWO children in the next 6 months. We know we will get our butts kicked. But we are so excited.

Thank you all for your love and support and friendship. You mean so much to us.

Now maybe I can blog about our life now that I don't have to keep it all a secret anymore! Woo hoo! I probably still won't that often, but it's nice to know it's an option :)