I’m so excited to be sharing this news with you today! I’ve been eagerly awaiting this day for the past few months. Nate and I found out we were pregnant at the end of 2020, and this pregnancy was a bright, sparkly gift at the end of what was otherwise a dumpster fire of a year. As life for many of us has been full of more difficulty than usual, this has been a beautiful secret to be holding through the holidays and new year. A new life is always a reason to celebrate!
I love reading pregnancy stories and announcements, so I’m going to share that with you today on the blog. If you just want the quick answers, here they are: I’m about 13 weeks along, due in early August, Milo’s little sibling will be about 21.5 months younger than him, and we don’t know yet if it’s a boy or girl but we’ll find out any day now (as soon as that dang lab is finished processing the genetic screening test!)
Ok, I’m all about the back story, and I’m happy to share all the details with you. Selfishly, I love going back and having it all in writing, because I forget some of this stuff. I love reading Milo’s pregnancy announcement to remember what I was feeling back in 2019.
On the timing between the two babies: I went through the first year of Milo’s life absolutely amazed that anyone could want to get pregnant again after going through pregnancy, childbirth, the newborn phase, and a year of breastfeeding. It just seemed way too hard to do it all again. I honestly couldn’t even believe that anyone ever had more than one child! The transition from zero children to one absolutely rocked my world, because everything in life changed overnight. Even at Milo’s first birthday I was thinking “no way, I’m not ready to do it all again.” And then…something just flipped.
I’m not certain, but I think that a big part of the mental shift was that we finished out breastfeeding journey just a couple weeks before his first birthday. I started to feel more like myself. I had more energy, I was able to gain some weight (my weight had dropped a little below a healthy spot for me due to all the stress of 2020, and I couldn’t get it back to a place where I felt dynamic and strong), my skin and hair started looking good again (ahhh, chemical peels and retinol..I had missed you so much!), and I just felt like myself again.
I had an upcoming yearly exam with my doctor, and Nate and I discussed whether we were ready to start trying again. Nate was also making huge strides forward, walking better and faster every day, and approved to drive a car again. He had one tiny wound left, but it was sooo close to being healed. It really seemed like he was completely healed, and all the injuries from the car accident were behind him. We had also just moved into our new house, renovations were under way, a COVID vaccine was about to roll out, and it just seemed like everything in life was lining up.
So I got my IUD out, and my doctor said, “just so you know, now that it’s out you can get pregnant right away, like, today.” Haha…
I’ve heard from friends that it can take 3-6 months to get pregnant after having an IUD, so I mentally prepared for the same thing. I figured it would be lucky if I was pregnant by early 2021, and then our two babies would be about 2+ years apart. And then…
Exactly 21 days later, I was at my parents house for Thanksgiving, pouring myself my second (or third?) glass of wine. I had this intuitive hunch that I should put the wine down and switch to sparkling water…it was very odd.
The only clue I had, other than not being on birth control, was that I had felt this teeny little feeling of pain in my lower right abdomen. It lasted about 2 seconds. And if you’re a female, you know that you experience all sorts of weird discomfort in your lower abdomen from about the time you turn 13, so I wasn’t sure if I should pay attention to this. But when I got pregnant with Milo, the sonographer had told me that the pain I had felt on that right side was probably due to the fact that my right ovary was the one that released the egg for him, so I just had some residual pain on that side. I know…soooo small and insignificant, but for some reason this sensation grabbed my attention.
I still hadn’t gotten my period after my year of breastfeeding Milo, but I just figured I’d take a chance and pick up a pack of pregnancy tests at CVS.
On taking a pregnancy test: I need to stop here and mention the slew of emotions that come from taking a pregnancy test. There should be novels, poems, entire songs and albums written about it. I don’t know how a 60 second test can produce a whole world of emotions, but it does.
A typical pregnancy test is a plastic stick with a sponge-like material inside. You pee on the stick, and the sponge absorbs the liquid up the stick until you can see the liquid show up in two tiny windows. One window is the control window; it always turns blue, and this shows that the test is working. The other window only turns blue if you’re pregnant, otherwise it stays clear.
1. Pee on stick. Thought: this is so dumb that I’m doing this, I’m probably not pregnant…but maybe I am? OMG maybe I am! But I’m probably not. I really shouldn’t get my hopes up. Why is my heart pounding SO hard?
2. Set the stick on a flat surface and watch. Thought: my fate is whatever this plastic stick tells me in the next 60 seconds, and I can’t do anything about it.
3. Control window turns blue. Thought: omg omg omg it’s working, this stick is not a dud! Whatever it tells me will be accurate. The other window is still clear, though. Ok, not pregnant. Calm down, Kelsey. You’re not pregnant, and that’s ok, you just need to take some deep breaths.
4. Second window slowly starts showing a faint blue line. Thought: Is…is it? Is that a blue line? Nope, I’m just imagining it. DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP! Hold on…that is definitely a blue line. Is it? I’m not sure. Yes, yes it is!! HOLY. FREAKING. CRAP.
5. Read the directions again. Am I 100% sure two blue lines means I’m pregnant? I’ve done this before, but it doesn’t hurt to read every single tiny word on the instruction manual at least three more times. My heart is racing and I can’t breathe. This is crazy. Also, I can’t believe that the trajectory of my entire life this changed, and I’m standing alone in my parents’ guest bathroom. This is so weird.
On telling Nate and family: Nate was downstairs making coffee at this time (hmmm, isn’t that what he was doing when I took Milo’s pregnancy test too? The man loves coffee..) I went downstairs right away, showed him the pregnancy test, and I think his first response was “what? Are you sure??” Both of us were a bit shocked at the timing of it.
Within 30 minutes we had told everyone in my family and FaceTimed his parents in Colorado. I waited a really long time (about 10 weeks) to tell anyone in my family that I was pregnant with Milo. That was because he was the first grandbaby, so I wanted to wait until a big family gathering when I could tell everyone in person. But I decided that I if I was able to get pregnant again, I would share the news with my support people much sooner. That first trimester is brutal, and I needed support to get thorugh it.
If you’re on instagram then you probably that shortly after we found out we were pregnant, we found out that Nate had to go back into surgery and have some hardware taken out of his leg, a wound vac put back on, and a couple weeks of non-weight bearing. That was not planned, and it wasn’t easy, but I had a lot of help from my family to get through it. I’m going to share a first, second, and third trimester for this pregnancy, just like I did with Milo’s. I’m just out of the first trimester, so now I can look back at it clearly and share my experience of the first pregnancy versus the second. It was a doozy, and I’m thankful to be finished with it.
I’m not sure who out there needs to hear this, but here it is: however you choose to space your babies apart is right for you. I remember when Milo as 8 months old and I’d see moms with a family of kids 18 months apart, and I would feel this pang of anxiety that I should probably think about having another baby, even though I reeeaally didn’t feel ready. I just want to say that there is nothing better or worse about having kids close together, or waiting a long time and spacing them out. A mom who has two under two is not better or worse than a mom who has her children 5 years apart. I’ve envisioned my children being about two years apart, but during Milo’s first year of life I started to seriously doubt that I actually wanted that. Ultimately, that’s what Nate and I wanted to choose (as much as you can actually choose your family planning…there is very little in our control). All this is tosay: don’t feel pressured to space your kids to match what anyone else is doing. Your own path is the perfect one for you.
I definitely took a trip down memory lane and read some of the pregnancy posts I wrote from 2019. Here’s my first trimester recap, my second trimester recap, and my third trimester recap. This is the day we found out we were pregnant with Milo, and this is the day he was born. And click here to see all of my posts about motherhood.
Thanks for sharing in our joy, friends!
Eeeeeeep!!! Loved reading this. What a joy. ❤️
The story was motivating
Congratulations Kelsey!
Thank you so much for telling me this story it helped me get tips for my second