House buying and Peanut farming

Corey and I have affectionately dubbed the one yet-to-be-born "Peanut". I'm not sure why Peanut, especially since she looked freakishly like a gummy bear on all of our early ultrasounds, but Peanut it is.

The official date we will find out if Peanut has boy parts or girl parts is July 30th, which is both exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. I keep waiting for it to hit me that there is an actual, living being a few inches below my belly button, but still it is surreal. In fact, the only indication I have of her presence (besides the constant vomiting) is the fact that I ate a McDonalds cheeseburger a few days ago. No baby = no meat, but this little one is a carnivore just like her daddy, so I gave in to her demands. Thankfully, McDonalds' meat is very un-meat like and I was able to chew it while pretending it was a dry, bland mushroom.

Corey has been in ninja mode, rushing here and there almost so quickly that I can only make out a blur where I know him to have been. Between work and classes he has been trying extra hard to figure out a way to keep our real estate agent and the seller's agent from killing each other before we buy the house we want. The deal has been called off because of their antics several times, and the boy has had to make late night phone calls smoothing things over more than once. I never thought we would be mediating between two grown men, but a move-in ready house is a rare thing out here so we're doing whatever we can.

We've seen dozens of houses that have been trashed (quite literally) to levels anywhere between dirty and condemnable, and unfortunately the premium for buying one that has new carpet, paint, tile, and landscaping is around $30k. Normally I'd never shell out that kind of dough and we would buy a fixer-upper ourselves and HGTV it to our heart's content, but my expanding belly does little for my energy level or my propensity to inhale copious amounts of toxic paint fumes, so we're accepting our self-appointed titles as Mr. and Mrs. Sucker and springing for the huge markup on the bells and whistles. Apparently we are not the only schmucks in Surprise though, as every house we've put an offer in on has had several more by the end of the day. End result: outbidding the other lazy shoppers. Cha-ching. Let's all just cross our fingers that our overpriced abode holds value for three years so we can break even at the end of this ride the Air Force calls an assignment.

Pregnant

I'm fairly certain that anyone who reads my blog is also my facebook friend so this is old news, but just in case: I am pregnant!

It feels very strange to type that, especially since I still don't feel pregnant even though I am now in the second trimester. Depending on which one of my doctors you believe I am either due on the last day of this year or the first day of next year.

In the marathon world of infertility, Corey and I managed to win in a sprint. It seems like we have been going through things forever, but in reality so much of infertility is in testing, diagnosing, meeting with overbooked specialists, forming game plans, getting referrals and insurance approvals, and testing drugs. The amazing fact is that we actually got pregnant on our very first fertility cycle with our infertility specialist.

Mentally, I was prepared for it to take many more months or years. I was not prepared for it to work. Even taking the test seemed silly to me, but as we were leaving in three days for a cruise that would certainly involve me sampling many new varietals of red wine, I thought it would be the responsible thing to do.

"Something looks weird on this pregnancy test," I told the boy on the phone while he was at work.

He came home and we tried a new stick. Something definitely looked weird. I expected a true blue line, and I saw a shadow. I thought it was a fluke.

So, we went in for blood tests. Sure enough, two days before flying to Miami, we found out we were (barely) pregnant.

That was eleven weeks ago, and I was sure we wouldn't make it to this point. Morbid, I know, but I'm not programmed to be a glass-half-full kind of girl. It was too easy. Too quick. It will go away.

But, the peanut has hung in there. Through two hour workouts prior to the cruise, through motion sickness, through food poisoning, through long brutal flights and terrible car rides. Every time we go in to see his/her little heartbeat I am amazed that the baby is still going strong. But she (I am the only one that thinks it is a she) is growing, and most recently has started sucking her thumb.

Our NT scan showed low risk for many genetic diseases, my blood type is compatible, my scarring due to my horrible past problems is holding strong, and Corey and I are thankful that we don't carry the CF gene, so we are definitely so-far-so-good.

In about four weeks we will go in for our anatomy scan and check all the necessary functions of the baby, and hopefully get an idea of which color to paint the nursery.

I hope that at that point it will start to seem real, because right now all I feel is that I contracted the world's longest lasting stomach bug.

I have what our infertility specialist referred to jokingly as 'survivor's guilt' and I have no idea why God chose to bless us so quickly while there are so many loving, deserving parents out there who have struggled for much longer than we did. Every time I complain about the puking, or I struggle to choke down my prenatal vitamins, I think about those women out there that would gladly throw up thirteen times a day to be able to bring a baby home and I thank Him with all of my heart.

We thank everyone for their support, prayers, thoughts, and good wishes and humbly ask you to keep them coming as we navigate through the world of pregnancy.

In return, we'll let you babysit.