I’ll get to writing more the actual content mentioned previously, but I am all in my feelings right now. I’m sitting here power pumping and pumping 4-5 times a day to make sure Robert has enough milk for day care tomorrow and to help increase my supply to meet his growing needs so we’re not supplementing with formula too often (more on that in my breastfeeding post.

Today sucks. My heart is hurting something fierce. This morning Robert started day care. In an ideal world, he’d stay home with a sitter or family member, but that’s not our reality, at the moment. We chose a very nice day care for him that had all the elements I, as a former child care director, wanted for him. They use a curriculum I am familiar with and a parent communication system I was working on bringing to our after school programs. But I am seriously missing my little buddy and our morning conversations, playtime, and cuddles. I know eventually we will be in a place where I can work part-time from home or on the weekends and spend more time dedicated to our little guy, but we have a couple financial goals to achieve before that happens.

We knew early on we were going to need to look into day care options. We ran into a bit of a struggle though when it came to several key things that were important to us. 1) We wanted somewhere that allowed him to grow at his own pace and didn’t move him up based solely on age. 2) We (read: Maggie) wanted a place with evidence-based curriculum and parental communication through an app. 3) We wanted a place that was not going to break the bank. 4) Location, location, location. We chose a day care that meets all four of those criteria near where Andrew works.

I read an article on Working Mother this morning, 12 Things You Should Never Say to a Day Care Mom. One that is not mentioned on there is, “So you’re ok with someone else raising your child?” or “You’re letting a stranger spend more time with your child than you will?” I say these because I have had people say the former to me, and having spent most of my career working with children, youth, and families; I am well aware of the fact that the staff of day care centers will spend more time with a child than their parents in a week. Knowing this information makes putting him in day care really hard for me because we’ve waited so long for him and my life experiences have taught me just how quickly children grow up and how easily the people in their lives at a young age, impact them the rest of their lives.

So yes, I am an emotional wreck because I have a week left until I return to work and the bliss of the past 11 weeks is quickly coming to a close. We are working towards a future where I have the option to stay home or work part-time, but we are still several months away from that. So today I am mourning this part of life and cleaning the kitchen to take my mind off of it. Tomorrow, I’ll work on another part of the house. Anything to keep my mind busy and off the fact I’m missing lazy morning snuggles, mid-afternoon pre-nap snuggles, seeing Andrew light up when he comes home from work, and pajama days.

As someone who has been the go-to social media expert for several years at work and sometimes for fun, I am actually terrible at following my own advice. When my mom wanted to start a blog and vlog of her travels, my advice is always, “Just start. Don’t worry about making things pretty yet; get the content out there and continue to learn as you go.” Several moms in my Facebook groups have inquired about where to start blogging and my advice is still the same, just start. However, each time I have blogged, I get bogged down in perfectionism and trying to find a niche to attract a particular audience. Did I mention I am terrible at following my own advice?

With that being said, baby boy is here! We are thrilled, in love, and enjoying every second of parenthood. I plan to publish his birth story as soon as possible, I have a couple of other posts I would like to make that deal with my prenatal care and the months and days leading up to his birth.

My maternity leave is drawing to a close, which has left me a complete basket case; I will get into in another post. So I will be spending the next week before I go back to work, playing catch up on the list of posts I wanted to create prior to his birth, getting the social media active, developing a content calendar, and setting some goals for this blog. All this while playing catch up on housework and trying to get back into a routine before going back to work.

Some things you can expect to see coming up on the blog:

• Prenatal Care Options and Opinions
• Our Son’s Birth Story
• Our Top 10 Favorite Baby Items
• Adventures in Breastfeeding
• Post-partum Anxiety
• Life with a Newborn/Infant
• Maternity Leave Recap and Thoughts

Someday I will write a book about our story, if for nothing else than for a our kiddo to know how much his parents love each other and for how long we have loved each other. This post may get a bit TMI, but the reality is infertility needs to be talked about more because it affects at least 1 in 10 women, some studies are showing as many as 1 in 4. Regardless, this post is rather long to explain my history and then finding out we were about to become a family of three.

In late 2010, I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). A disease which is marked by cystic ovaries and many symptoms, one of which is infertility. Over the course of two years following my diagnosis, I was seen by a reproductive endocrinologist who basically told me after a chemical pregnancy I had little to no chances of conceiving on my own and after 3 failed IUI (for various reasons), the best course of action would be IVF. I was gutted. My dream for as long as I could remember was to be a mother and to be told at 30, when I wanted to have my 2 kids and be done having kids, that it would likely not happen, felt like the end of the world. Andrew was my biggest support during all of this, listening to me cry and vent, and offering several times to come hold my hand.

Fast forward to spring 2018. After some upsetting news and generally being tired of the upset. I made the decision that it was time to move on from the dream. I was finally with the person who loved me at my worst, saw me through my darkest, and laughs through life with me. Despite not having kids, we were the happiest we had ever been individually and together. I started to focus more on becoming my best self. #bestme2018 I joined a gym, which helped me really focus on my weight loss goals and helped me lose 25 pounds and regain my self-confidence. We started planning vacations: a cruise, another backpacking trip, possibly Europe. We started planning to update the house with new floors, painting, hardscaping, new landscaping, and making it our home. We started talking about planning a summer elopement, on what is technically our 19 year dateiversary, and then a big party at our favorite brewery. We were making plans and there was a lot of change coming our way.

In October, I made the painful decision to put my best friend of 11 years, Spaz, down after a very difficult year of old age and heart disease. The day after we put her down, I started getting my usual “aunt flow is coming” symptoms. Another part of PCOS is the absence of a regular cycle. It was a pretty rough month for me after losing Spaz. I slept a lot because I was depressed. It was hard to get up in the mornings. I didn’t have an appetite. I chalked it all up to depression. One of my dearest friends got married at the end of October and the day we left for the wedding I thought, “hmm it’s been three weeks of this mess, I’ll give it another week and then I’ll take a test.” Never fully intending on taking a test because I didn’t want to deal with the disappointment. After the wedding, I immediately had to leave for a work trip. The day after I got home from my work trip, I decided to take a personal day because I was exhausted. After taking care of a few things at the office, I came home and passed out for almost five house. This is completely unheard of for me. While sleeping I had a dream Spaz was laying on my chest, I felt like I could feel her; her ears, her tail, her breathing against my neck. It was the most vivid and surreal dream I’ve ever had. I woke up and thought, “might as well get this over with since I’m already sad, upset, and crying.” So to the bathroom I went, I put the test down to put a load of laundry in the washer, came back two minutes later, two lines. Not just two lines, but a darker test line than control line. To Google I went: Could this be a false positive? How common are false positives? Sent a picture to one of my best friends: Is this real? Sent a picture to my mom: I don’t know if this is false or not? The resounding answer was “no, oh my God!”

One of the reasons I had been told I would not be able to have children is because I had very low progesterone, which is why I didn’t have a monthly cycle regularly, and why PMS was such a pain for me. Immediately, knowing this information, I panicked. I hated the ob/gyn I was seeing and knew I needed another one, but had put it off. So I called my primary care doctor and told them “I just received a positive home pregnancy test, can you run a HCG beta and progesterone serum for me?” They said they could do all of that, but could not prescribe progesterone if it was needed. I was scheduled to go two hours later.

Oh crap, I need to tell Andrew. He’s at work. On a Wednesday, which were his busiest days. Oh and he just made the decision to turn in his notice over the weekend. This is going to go well. I text him asking if he could leave early. Nope, he’s in meetings until 4:45 that day. What’s up? Picture. Ok? Wait, I just sent you life changing news and all I get is “ok?”?!? Fine. Don’t get too excited, I am going to the doctor to have blood work done because of my history of miscarriage and low progesterone. Ok. At this point, I’m rolling my eyes and thinking “typical Andrew.” He offers to go to the appointment with me and instantly redeemed, followed by a picture of him grinning.

While waiting for my appointment, I text a couple local friends about their experiences with ob/gyns in the area. Got the name of one who was able to fit me in the following Wednesday. I explained my history of low progesterone and miscarriage and that I was having the bloodwork drawn later that afternoon, they told me once I had the results to call them and have the doctors office send it over and they will bump the appointment based on the number. So off to the primary care doctor I went, blazing positive test, no need for HCG, but they’ll do the progesterone in case it needs to be supplemented. First phlebotomist couldn’t get a good stick. I am very much a you get one try girl because I am a very hard stick and I let everyone know right off away. Next day, girl gets it first time. Friday I get the results. Progesterone: 7.58. It should have been somewhere around 11-20 for how far along I thought I was at that point. I called my new ob/gyn and my appointment was bumped to the following Monday.

To say I was a nervous wreck, understatement. I knew my history, but I also knew I had a natural progesterone topical which I could use until I spoke with the doctor. So I started that, just in case, as was suggested by a natropathologist I visited after the two years with the RE. The entire weekend every time I had a cramp or twinge, I immediately ran to the bathroom to check for blood. Monday rolled around, a scan confirmed there was a little sweet pea in there, with a good strong heartbeat. I thought I was between 6 and 7 weeks based on PMS symptoms and some basic charting I have done over the years. I was right at 6 weeks 1 day. With prescriptions for folic acid and progesterone in hand, I got in my car and cried tears of happiness and then of worry and then of happiness. I messaged Andrew who was a little upset he hadn’t gone because he wanted to see the baby on the scan and hear the heartbeat, I honestly didn’t expect a scan, just more blood work.

On November 4th we found out we were officially going to be parents sometime around the end of June.

It truly is the most exciting time in our life. We have both wanted to be parents for as long as I can remember. We used to talk about it when we dated in our late teens, but knew we needed to “grow up” a little more before we could start on that path.

Throughout my struggles, it never occurred to me my anxiety-induced depression would rear its ugly head and completely overshadow the joy of expanding our family. I was diagnosed with depression when I was 18 years old, it wasn’t until I was in my mid-20’s that I realized my depression was directly correlated with my anxiety. After miscarriages and all the things that are outside of my control in pregnancy, it has been a rough few months and a lesson in letting go.

Adding to this stress is wanting to make sure I am as present as possible in our son’s life. So letting go of work stress and perfectionism I know is going to be a struggle.

Thanks for stopping by our little piece of the internet.

I’m not sure how exactly I want to utilize this page just yet, other than using it as an outlet to write and share tidbits about our little family, while re-familiarizing myself with web design and maintenance.

I stepped away from writing and blogging in general after a, what can best be described, as a traumatic experience which made me doubt my abilities as a creator and writer; despite spending years writing marketing materials, manuals, policies and procedures, and blog posts. Having stepped away from it, my writing is not at its best, but I know I will get back to where I was as I practice.