Have you ever counted the days to a big event in your life? Maybe it was a sports game, a wedding, a birthday, or even a pay day. I know that for me, I get encouraged when I see the "Days Left" count go down because it means I'm getting closer and closer to whatever it is that I'm looking forward to. Right now, the biggest thing Kyle and I are counting down to is Baby E's due date.

Baby E is due 100 days from today. 100 days! Considering it's been 153 days since the day Kyle and I found out we were expecting, 100 days will fly by.

When we first got married, we decided that we would stop preventing a growing family after we had been married for a year. That being said, January 2016 was the original plan for me to stop taking birth control and just letting nature decide. After some research, though, and my yearly physical with my OBGYN, I learned that it could take 3 to 6 months to become pregnant after stopping birth control, sometimes even longer. We didn't want to wait so long to stop birth control if it could potentially be even longer before we could start our family, so we decided that after my last month of pills was finished in October, I wouldn't get a refill. We fully expected to have the average wait time of 3 to 6 months before we would get a positive pregnancy test. Even so, my body wasn't back into the normal swing of things by the beginning of November, so I took a few tests. Each of them came back negative. I wasn't sure how to feel about it. We were prepared to have to wait, but at the same time, we would have welcomed a positive whenever it came. A few more days passed and still nothing, so I took another test or two and it was still negative. My birthday was coming up and I didn't want to take a test on my birthday, knowing I may be a little bummed if it was still negative but my body still wasn't back to the usual swing of things. To avoid those feelings, I decided to take a test the night before.

November 16th, 2015. Kyle was home from work and we were getting ready to make dinner and spend the evening relaxing. So we went upstairs to change into our pajamas when I figured "What the heck" and took another test. Kyle went downstairs to start cooking, unaware that I was going to use the last pregnancy test we had in the house. I left the bathroom and tidied up our room a little bit, trying to distract myself for the 2 minutes it would take for the results to show. When I walked back in the bathroom, I didn't look at the test immediately. I started putting things in the medicine cabinet and cleared the counter until I glanced over at the test, fully expecting another "NOT" in front of the word "PREGNANT". Instead, there was only one word on the screen. It definitely read "PREGNANT" and I wasn't sure what to think. I was excited! I was scared! I was in disbelief! All in the span of about 2 seconds before I literally ran down the stairs to the kitchen, calling Kyle's name the whole way. When I got to him, I didn't say anything. I just held up the test. Kyle's eyes widened and he said "Really?!" to which I nodded quickly as I started to cry. He hugged me and couldn't believe it either. I asked him things like "Are you ready for this?" and "Is this okay?" to which he assured me that he was overjoyed and ready to do what it took to prepare for this little baby.

I'd been reading a lot about false-positives and I wanted to be 100% sure that this was the real deal, so Kyle and I went to Walgreens. We bought 2 different brands of pregnancy tests and brought them home. I took 1 more that night, and 3 the following day. All of them were undeniable in letting me know that we would definitely be having a baby join our family in 9 months. I wanted to tell the world, but at the same time, wanted to keep it to ourselves. It was kind of fun to be the only two people in the world that knew this wonderful thing. After a good 24 hours of just Kyle and I knowing, we decided to go tell my parents the news.

I asked my mom if she still had the tape of my birth (don't worry, I was a C-section baby) and she said yes. So I asked if we could watch it together, just to reminisce my coming into the world that happened 20 years prior. As we sat in the family room and got the tape ready, I handed my mom a card. In it, I wrote a few things to her and my dad for raising me and all that they did for me from the day I was born to the day I got married and even still. After a few paragraphs of gratitude, I wrote a partial sentence at the end of the card. It said; "Now that your baby's all grown up..." and on the next page I wrote "...she's having a baby of her own." and we included a photograph of the positive pregnancy tests. My mom looked at me and started crying tears of joy while my dad sat happily smiling. They were very excited for us and mom said it was going to be a girl. (She was right!)

That same night, we skyped Kyle's parents and let them know our news. They, too, were very happy for us and a little surprised it happened so quick. (Trust us, so were we) But still, supportive and excited for us.

We had our first appointment on December 7th. We got to see our little one on the ultrasound for the second time. (The first time was a week prior. I went to InstaCare and learned I had kidney stones. No fun. But they wanted to make sure that I didn't have an ectopic pregnancy, so they ordered an ultrasound at the hospital. Although I was in crazy pain, I was happy to see that little baby on the screen at the hospital. I was so relieved that the baby was implanted in place and that an ectopic pregnancy was not causing the pain. It was just the kidney stones.) My OBGYN was a little surprised to see us back so soon, because originally he said he expected that we would have our first prenatal appointment in February or April. But all was well and he said that the baby looked great so far. With a print out of our teeny little one, we made our next appointment and left the office. This was real! We were really going to have a baby in our home come July 2016!

This pregnancy hasn't been so bad, but I don't have any others to compare it to. Yes, I've had morning sickness. Yes, we went to the E.R. once after I couldn't keep any food or liquids down for 3 days straight and ended up vomiting blood. Yes, I've been on some anti-nausea medication since then. Yes, all of this is so worth it. I still have some hard days where I don't take the medicine in time and end up living off of saltines and sprite, but those have been few and far between. I've experienced the ligament pains, the acid re-flux, the sleepless nights, and the recurring bathroom trips. Again, it's all worth it! Feeling Baby E kick and punch and move around is the best feeling. It tells me that we have a healthy little baby growing and that she's letting us know things are all good in her world. If there's a span of a few hours that she's less active, I use our Fetal Doppler to listen to her heartbeat. She's our baby girl and we love getting to listen to her and see her in the ultrasound photos.

Her nursery has been all set up for a few weeks now. Mommy is a little OCD about things getting done long before they have to be done so Kyle has helped out a ton. We were able to find most of her furniture on indoor yard sales and I pieced together the decor with items I found on sale or for very reasonable prices. It's been fun to get to experience this new chapter in our lives as we prepare for our family of two to be a family of three!



100 days until baby girl is set to make her arrival. Only 100 days! She could come early, she could come late, who knows. But whenever she decides to enter the world, Mommy and Daddy are ready.