I haven’t shared anything about our pregnancy journey here on the blog, but today feels like a good day to spill the beans. We couldn’t be more thrilled to have a healthy baby baking in my belly, made that much more special seeing as it wasn’t the easiest road to get here…
So…Let’s start where every good story should – from the very beginning – Our Road to Getting Pregnant.
I originally started writing this post as my 21 Weeks Pregnant post, but it soon morphed into a post on Our Road To Getting Pregnant, so if you’re interested, read on, if not, see my first pregnancy post here. It’s wild to be almost 22 weeks preggers!
Michael and I met a little later in life – you can read our engagement story here, and see our wedding day here.
We didn’t rush into anything or make decisions based merely on our age. We took our time in getting engaged and married, and we didn’t rush into the huge, life altering decision to have a baby.
For some reason I always thought I would get pregnant at the drop of a hat. No one else in my family has ever had any issues as far as I know, and while I was 36 at the time, I’m fit, healthy, and saw no reason why getting pregnant might be a challenge.
(Side note: I still don’t subscribe to the “you’re too old” mindset, and have met many ladies recently who have busted this myth. There are some cases in which age might be a huge factor, but for many of us, being in your late 30’s does not mean you can’t have a healthy and safe pregnancy).
*Read to the end to see why I think I wasn’t ovulating naturally, and what lifestyle changes I made that I think allowed my body to start functioning normally again *
Imagine our surprise when, 18 months, 3 fertility treatments, many tears and countless difficult days later, I’m still not pregnant.
It just didn’t make any sense to us, and trying to accept it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to tackle mentally.
At the end of last year, we started thinking about a trip to Bali in April this year. We went back and forth about whether or not to go, but eventually decided to book it.
Best decision.
While it wasn’t our favourite holiday to date (more on that soon when I share our Bali trip on the blog), we really did need to get away, gain some perspective, and I speak for myself when I say, just let go.
I had to let go of the disbelief that I wasn’t getting pregnant naturally, I had to let myself off the hook and stop feeling guilty about it all. And I had to fully accept that if we never had a baby, I’d be ok. We would be ok.
Even if you’re not religious or particularly spiritual, I’m sure you’ve had a moment in life where you’ve just had to release the thing that you wanted so badly. Because trying to control life never works out well. At least certainly not for me.
So, long story short (kinda;), we spent a whole month in Bali, I think we had just one conversation about babies, and the rest of the time we just let it go.
Life was going to be what it was going to be, and I found some peace in releasing my expectations of what our life should be.
We decided that at some point this year, we would do IVF. We weren’t sure when as we needed to sell our house (which was always the plan anyway).
Now we get to the fun part of Our Road To Getting Pregnant…
We had been home from Bali for less than a week, it was a Friday morning, and we had a friends birthday party the following night.
I decided to take a pregnancy test just so that I could have a glass of wine on Saturday at the party without a doubt in my mind…but I had absolutely NO expectation of being pregnant. I had fully accepted that it wasn’t going to happen naturally, I just needed to see the “not pregnant” test result, because wine.
It’s so ironic because for the first time, I took the test without obsessively going over the instructions, threw it to one side, didn’t even time it. Went back a while later and…
Huh?
There was a very, very, very faint second line.
Okaaay. Let’s read the instructions now. Which said ‘please note, even if the second line is extremely faint, this still represents a positive result’
Complete disbelief.
I went and told Mikey, who, like me, reacted with an ‘Okaaay’.
Once again, long story short, I messaged our fertility specialist who said go in for bloods. Which I did. I spent the whole day expecting them to come back negative. So at 5pm when she messaged to tell me that I was indeed pregnant, I still couldn’t believe it was true.
(For timeline perspective, this is now 5.5 months post fertility treatments)
Only catch was that my progesterone levels were high, but my hcg levels quite low. This could either mean it was verrry early on, or that it wasn’t a viable pregnancy.
I’d have to go in on Monday for more bloods to see if my hcg levels had doubled. Hello stressful weekend!
Mikey was so positive that all would work out fine. I, however was still very reluctant to believe in a happy ending until we knew for sure.
Monday was our 2nd wedding anniversary. It was either going to be one of the best days, or one of the very worst.
We went out for a casual lunch, more to fill our time and take our minds off things than anything else. I was expecting my blood test results to come in much later that day like they did the Friday before.
I get a call at lunch from an unknown number. It’s our doctor, (who also happens to be family, and we are so grateful to her for all her help through our fertility journey!) and she says have you seen your results?
I haven’t…So she says your progesterone levels are nice and high still, and your hcg levels have more than tripled!! It’s a viable pregnancy, congratulations!
Well, the relief was astounding, finally, I could relax and believe in this little miracle.
I have to add here, in case anyone else may benefit from this information, what I think made a HUGE impact on my body’s ability to start ovulating again, and why I believe my reproductive system was in “freeze mode” before.
I was doing excessive amounts of cardio up until February this year, when I came across EVLO fitness and took their free workshop which explains the detrimental effect that over exercising and under eating can have on a woman’s body.
Basically we only have so much energy to burn on a daily basis, and if you’re over extending yourself daily, your body is smart and will stop sending energy to parts of your body that are not essential to life…And our reproductive system will be the first to shut down.
This made SO much sense to me! I had been absolutely over working my body, probably under eating, and there just wasn’t enough energy to sustain all the inner workings.
I spent February, March and April eating more (mostly healthy food, but bigger quantities), doing a LOT less cardio, and following EVLO’s resistance workouts which are usually not more than 20 – 30 minutes per day. And only 2 x 10 – 15 minute cardio workouts per week. That’s IT.
It was quite a mind shift for me. Because we are made to believe that cardio is what will keep you fit, and keep you from putting on weight. I now know this to be absolutely untrue. It’s far more beneficial to build muscle for long-term weight maintenance, and a little cardio each week is good for your heart and lungs.
I really think that changing my exercise and eating habits played a massive role in allowing my body the space it needed to start functioning as it should again.
If you’re struggling to conceive and you think you might be over exercising and under eating, it might be something to try.
Thank you SO MUCH for reading this post on Our Road to Getting Pregnant.
I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and go check out my 21 Weeks pregnant post if you’re interested in the rest of our pregnancy journey so far.