Our Big News!

Zac and I have a pretty big announcement to make...

We are expecting a baby!!!

As of today I am 12 weeks along, which means that the baby is due March 16, 2010. We won't know for another 6 or so weeks what the gender is, but we will keep everyone updated when we know. As for an update on me, I am doing better. My mom said she had very easy pregnancies and didn't get sick at all, I was hoping to be the same; however, it doesn't appear that I am quite as lucky. Fortunately I have only actually thrown up twice; unfortunately I have had pretty bad nausea for the last 6 weeks or so. About 4 weeks ago when I started taking the prenatal vitamins I started getting really sick, I am pretty sure it was the vitamins so I started taking them at night, and I have been feeling much better.

Since this post comes so close to my last post, I am fully aware of just how chubby I looked in all of my sister's wedding pictures, so I would like to take this time to blame that on my pregnancy. :) Yes I realize I was only 9 weeks pregnant; however, it was right in the middle of when I was most sick and tired. I hardly got any exercise and I was very bloated! Any of you who were at the wedding, I'm sure you noticed my extra chub, and if you try to deny it, just go back and look at the pictures. Actually since I have been feeling a little better I think I actually look better now than I did then even though I am 3 weeks further along! But its not too long now before I learn what fat really looks like!

So that is the basic update, but if you know my writing, then you know I like to tell long, drawn out, detailed stories... I am pretty much incapable of telling the "short version" of any story. So if you like my long drawn out stories, continue reading on for the story of how we got pregnant (I bet you have an idea - wink, wink). But I will give a warning to anyone who doesn't like hearing about "that time of the month" this story does mention a "period" since that has a lot to do with getting pregnant. Don't worry I've kept it clean, just thought I would warn any potential male readers who are uncomfortable about this kind of talk. :)

So let me start by saying that the only possible conclusion that one can make from this story is that Zac and I were destined to have a child at this time because the series of events that led to this event can only mean that Heavenly Father was sending us a message loud and clear. Also, by telling this story I realize I am letting everybody and their mom (and their dog, if it has access to a computer) know that we weren't necessarily planning on this pregnancy (Shhh, don't tell anyone). But I couldn't waste a good story!

Our story actually begins back at the beginning of the year. Back in January I went into the pharmacy to pick up my birth control refill. When I went to pay I was quite surprised when my normal copay for a 3 month supply that was $5 turned into a copay of $90! Apparently our insurance policy changed over the new year and we didn't realize what a significant difference it would make. Well I had little choice other than to just pay for it, but I decided that we were going to need to find a different form of birth control because the one I was currently on didn't have a generic version, so I decided that I needed to talk to my gynecologist to get a new prescription.

However sometime within the next month I received a letter from Kaiser saying that my OB/GYN had left her practice, then a another letter that reassigned me to a new OB/GYN; however, this doctor was a male and I wasn't too comfortable with that. When I went online to find a new doctor, I couldn't find any female doctors accepting new patients. Well instead of actually doing something about it, or just going to a male OB/GYN to get a new prescription, I put it off and forgot about it until May when I ran out of birth control. Well I still didn't want to pay the $90 again and I didn't get a new prescription in time, so I decided I would just continue using the Nuva Ring for another month and just skip my period for a month, giving me more time to go in and get a new prescription. My doctor told me this was okay to do, and I had done it one or two times before and never had any issues, so it wasn't a big deal.

Now you may be thinking, a-ha! That's how you got pregnant! Well if that's what you thought then you would be wrong. :) All that did was make my period come 3 days early. No big deal right? It shouldn't have been except for perfect timing of the next few days. So here is the break down... I flew home to Vancouver to visit my family (to help Kayla with ideas for her wedding- you can reference an early blog for that story) on Wednesday June 10th. I didn't come back home until Tuesday the 16th. Try and follow me here - my period was supposed to start on Thursday the 11th but it ended up starting on Tuesday the 9th. The idea was that I would leave to go home on Wednesday, my period would start on Thursday, then I would come home the next Tuesday, bite the big one and pay the $90 to refill my birth control and start on it again on Thursday (the 18th). However when my period came on Tuesday, I left on Wednesday, and my period ended the following Tuesday, the day I came home. Now the problem was that I was suppose to have time to get home and reorder the prescription and pick it up in time, now there was no way I could pick it up on time. I was going to reorder the prescription online from home, but I forgot that I needed the prescription number which was on the box back home, and I couldn't have Zac look up the prescription number because he was on golf trip in Las Vegas (you can look back for that blog as well). So I had to wait until I got home to reorder the birth control, but of course, the online renewal site was down, and it was too late to call. So I reordered on Wednesday, but it still takes 2 days to fill the order, so we picked it up on Friday and started on the birth control, 3 days late. In the past I have been a day or so late starting my birth control, but we never had any issues so we didn't think that 3 days would really be that big of a deal, even though we have read the instructions with the birth control that say if you are even a day late, the birth control won't be effective for at least a week. Well needless to say, 3 days does make a bigger difference than 1, and well... basically that is the series of events that have led us to my present condition. :)

Well the story continues if you can handle it. At this point in the story we are still unaware of anything obviously. So this brings us to the first week of July, and I stop my birth control for my period. First I should mention here that Zac and I had talked about when we wanted to try and get pregnant, we had kind of unofficially decided that we would start trying in about a year from now, so at this point we were both not really considering getting pregnant, and Zac especially got particularly worried waiting for my period every month. My period usually took about 3 days to start after I stopped my birth control, and every month Zac would worry, freak out, and ask me every day until my period started. So of course July was no exception and Zac asks me everyday if it "has started yet." Days 1- 3... "No, not yet, stop freaking out." Day 4, "Not yet, calm down." Day 5, "How about I tell you when it starts." Day 6, "....um... not yet" Day 7, "okay this is weird, something must be wrong." Now my periods have never been irregular so I was more worried that something was wrong with my menstrual cycle, and that we might face fertility issues in the future.

So we sat and discussed what are were going to do now. Zac wondered if we should take a pregnancy test, he was really freaking out. I was like, "I guess, but there's no way. I think I would know if I was pregnant." (For some dumb reason I thought I would be able to "feel" a baby or something and it didn't even occur to me that most people do actually know by this point because they feel sick. I wasn't feeling sick, so that should have been my reasoning, but alas, I wasn't even smart enough to think of that.) So we decide that we should go rent a movie and get some snacks, and so we might as well pick up a home pregnancy test while we are out. So we picked up our movies and we went to our local Lucky supermarket and picked up a couple snacks and a home pregnancy kit. We got the only one they had which was some e.p.t. 3 for the price of 2 value pack, so we got it and and went home (by the way, at this point I ironically had no idea that e.p.t. stood for error proof test).

Zac was still pretty nervous about the whole situation so he insisted that I take a test before the movie so he could rest at ease. So we read the directions, opened one of the strips and I took the test. This is the result we got:

Now this may look clear to some of you, but we were not so sure. As you can see there is a strong vertical line, but only a faint horizontal line. Obviously if you are pregnant you are suppose to get a positive sign and if you are not you get a negative. Now we figured this looked more like a negative facing the wrong way than it did a positive sign, so we consulted the directions once again to see if the negative could be facing the wrong way. It didn't mention this as a possibile out come; however, we still weren't convinced. So we decided that we needed to take another test to get more definitive results. Now there are two ways to take the test, I tried the pee on the stick method first, and we decided that it was possible that our "odd" result could have been because of the way in which I took the test. So we decided I should try the other method of peeing in a cup this time. This is the result we got:

This test appeared to be a bit more definitive; however, we still weren't completely convinced. I suggested that we could have faulty pee strips or perhaps this could be somebody's idea of a sick joke to tell everyone that they were pregnant or something. So being the good scientists that we are we know that the only way to know for sure was to have a control sample. So Zac has the brilliant idea that he should take our 3rd test. Well I thought this made perfect sense so we went forward with this idea, and this is the result we got:

Apparently Zac was not pregnant. But it was starting to look like I might be. Now most people would be fairly convinced by this very clear negative, but we are not so easily deterred from our mission to prove that I was not pregnant. So the next thing we think of is, "hey this a home pregnancy test, these things are known for giving false positives, right?" So we consult the trusty instruction sheet again for the accuracy rates. This is one of those tests that you can take up to 5 days before your first missed period so it says: at 5 days before- 70%; 3 days before- 80%; 1 day before- 90% and day of- was something like 99.8%. So at 7 days after my missed period, the accuracy was looking to be pretty sure.

However, we were still not convinced. We decided that we needed to take a test at the doctor's office because that would be more accurate. So I emailed my doctor and she ordered the test for me, and about 2 weeks later (a Saturday) I went in and took the test. They told me my results would be posted in my online profile within 24 hours. I checked the next day, but they hadn't posted the results, probably because it was Sunday. I went to work on Monday and I got a call at lunch from my doctor. She asked if I'd checked the results, I told her I hadn't yet that day, and she then informed me that the test was positive, that I was in fact pregnant.

So we finally had no choice but to accept the news and start getting excited about it. Of course it was still hard to believe, but it started becoming a little more believable when I started getting nausea and getting really, really, really tired at about 6 weeks. Then when I went in for my first appointment with my OB/GYN (by the way- it's still the male doctor I was assigned, and it has been a little awkward but I got over it- funny I didn't decide to just get over it sooner). Zac couldn't make the first appointment, and I didn't think it would be a big deal since I heard at 8 weeks the baby is the size of a peanut and doesn't look like anything anyway. But I actually got to see the baby, and it even looked like a tiny little baby! I could see the head, arms, and legs! I could even see and hear the heart beat! I wish Zac could have been there, but at least he got to see the picture:

So basically this story is what I call "Our Path to Believing."

Here are the most recent pictures of little baby Greenhalgh. This is at about 11 weeks. I was amazed at how much bigger it is! Zac got to come with me this time, and it was really nice to share the experience with him. We saw and heard the baby's heartbeat, and we got to see it move around! The little guy (or gal) was going crazy! Doing somersaults rolling around, and we even saw it clapping! So cute! In the first picture the baby is in what the doctor calls the "teddy bear" position. In case you can't tell the head is kind of at the bottom and the arms and legs look like circles- kind of how a teddy bear looks. In the second picture the baby is in profile and you can see its big head on the bottom left.

So if you have made it through my very long detailed story... thank you! I know it was long, but I hope you enjoyed it. All in all Zac and I are still getting used to the idea, but we know this must be what Heavenly Father had in mind for us because this certainly seemed to be our fate. Of course we are like any expecting parents that are excited one moment, and completely terrified the next! This baby is really going to bless our family and we are very excited to bring it into our family! Plus as many of you can imagine my parents (especially my mom) are ecstatic! They are going to be first time grandparents so they are pretty excited. Zac's parents are really excited for us as well, even though this will be their 6th grandchild. Zac's sister Aubree is actually pregnant right now as well, and is about 3 months further along than I am with a little boy, so we are pretty excited that our baby will have a cousin so close in age. Hopefully they will get to be good friends!

We are very excited, and we will certainly keep people updated with pictures of the baby, and probably even of me getting fat. :( Even though I know I will eventually get huge Zac assures me he will be supportive and helpful to me so that I can get back into shape after the baby is born. :) I expect to take him up on that, and have him watch the baby while I go work out. ) Anyway, we know we are very blessed and this baby is just one more way the Lord is continuing to bless our lives. I hope that we can be the kind of parents that our parents were for us, and we can be the kind of parents that the Lord wants us to be.