Hope + Faith = JOY: Some history of our pregnancy...

I feel like I don't have enough pics on the blog, so here are some random pictures!
The first one is my 18 week belly shot from last week. (I will have to take a new one, I am 19 weeks today!)
*Someone told me to start taking my belly pictures in a doorway, so that as I get bigger, it will be noticeable because less and less of the room behind me (and the doorway) will be seen! :)

*random note: I'm wearing this same dress today because today is St. Patrick's Day!

And here are some old pics that were part of our journey to get to where we are today!
This is from last November when I was giving myself 3 shots in the stomach every night! (shots to induce egg production).
**Yes my sink was filthy..it's since been cleaned!

This was Nov 23, 2010 - the day of our embryo transfer!
I am covered with a prayer shawl that my friend let me borrow. The woman who made the shawl, while she was making it, she prayed the entire time, for those in need who would one day wear it.

Our babies who were put in my womb! (don't know which one, but one is BBB!!!) Isn't that incredible? Who has a picture of their EMBRYO!!!

This is a side story that is so funny! I shared it on my infertility blog, but want to also have it here to remember the hilarity. This is the day of the embryo transfer, you know, the most important day of our lives, and this happens right before we are walking out the door to the doctor:
Inside the house, I hand Stuart my keys because he was going to drive, so he doesn't pick up his keys, as we walk out the door, I turn around and see Stuart throw my keys on the chair and shut the door. I scream 'I GAVE YOU MY KEYS!' He says "what? no you didn't!" He thought the keys he was throwing on to the chair were his keys, which he didn't need because we were taking my car, when they were really MY keys he was throwing down! So we were standing on the front porch, our door handle locks from the inside, with no keys, LOCKED OUT OF OUR HOUSE. Of course thoughts of 'I just knew something was going to mess up us doing this IVF, but I never thought it would be THIS!!!!" run through my head... It was literally crazy! We panicked, then laughed, then panicked some more!
It was a pretty day outside, so I had left the kitchen window open, I give out that great solution thinking we had a plan to get back in now, when Stuart says 'I shut that'... (we never leave the house with windows open, and it was just a whim that I had left it open! So he safely fixed that whim before we left...)
Then he remembered that his friend had to break in to our house one day because he was watching our dogs and locked his keys inside. So he called his friend and asked how he made the door open using a credit card, and as his friend was explaining it, Stuart was sliding his card between the door jamb and the lock non-stop, and just jiggling the handle, and MIRACLE OF MIRACLES, it opens! I was really starting to plan in my head what friend lived close to us and would be home that we could call and borrow their car! We could worry about how to get back in our house after we got home, but we couldn't miss our appointment! Thankfully, it did not come to that. So... in a moment that I'm supposed to be calm and relaxing, preparing my body to receive 2 precious babies, my heart rate and blood pressure got unnecessarily sky rocketed! : /
So! Because of all that, I rode to the doctor in the backseat, surrounded by pillows and blankets, and shut my eyes the whole way and tried to rest. It was good to have that time to calm down before our huge procedure!
Isn't that crazy?! So funny looking back on it now, but it was just unreal living it in that moment, of all moments!!! (we have never locked ourselves out of our house before then, or since then!)

Then immediately after the transfer, I was on strict bedrest for 2 days. Stuart made me a pallet on the couch, and I basically camped out for 2 days, and only got up to use the restroom!

The transfer was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so the first time I got up and got dressed after the transfer was to go to Thanksgiving at Stuart's mom's house.
She wanted a picture of us with our babies. :)
(the embryo picture is on my phone!)

The night before our pregnancy test was the Christmas Wassail Fest on the Denton square. We went with our friends Lori & Josh.

**We wore tacky Christmas sweaters! :) I bought them at a huge indoor garage sale in Fair Park the previous March before this Christmas. We were saving them all year! Stuart's sweater had shoulder pads! Mine had little bells and bows hanging off of it! Classay!!!!

Then the next day, December 3, 2010, we got the call!
I wrote this on my photography blog about that day:
The day finally came where I went in to the doc in the morning for my pregnancy blood test, and the nurse is to call you later in the day with the results. I told the nurse to leave the results on my voicemail so I could check the voicemail on speaker with my husband. I expected the call to come late in the day. I had heard it comes around 4pm or so. But my phone rang at noon! At the time, I was in Dallas dropping off an order and I saw on my caller ID that it was the doctor, and then that I had a voicemail, and MAN was that nerve wrecking! Seeing that I have a voicemail, and my phone knows the results of my pregnancy test, but I had to wait to find out. Not only that, but I was so afraid of it being negative that a huge part of me DIDN'T want to know! It was so scary! All of our prayers, hard work, and patience from the past year had lead up to that one voicemail waiting for me.
I called my husband and we had the hardest time deciding where to listen to the message! At first I said that I'll just come up to his work and we can meet in the parking lot (we didn't want to wait until he got off work at 5 to listen to it!) Then he said no, I'll come to your work and we'll listen to it there. Then we finally realized that we live just about one minute from each of our offices, so why don't we just meet at home?!!
So that is what we did! We stood in our living room, held on to each other, my heart was pounding, I put my phone on speaker, and turned on my voicemail. It was the nurse. She said some things in the beginning, then she said "I have fabulous news!" And then she continued to talk, but my head stopped listening at "FABULOUS"!!!! It was so so so SURREAL! My head could not wrap around the fact that I, Julie, indeed DID have a baby growing in my tummy. I have never been able to say that before! Shortly after we got the news, I had to take a pregnancy test so I could get my first positive test reading!

Right after we got the positive news, I gave Stuart a bag of baby things I had been collecting. Just some books for the husband/Daddy on having a pregnant wife, and some tips for a baby, as well as a bib that says "I Love Daddy", and some little baby toys.
Here is us, the new parents, right after the pregnancy call!

My mom knew that we were getting the call that day and she kept calling me and calling(!!!!) wanting to know the news, and I told her that I didn't want to tell her over the phone, that we would come to her house that night and tell her in person, (that was our plan for both my mom and Stuart's mom). Well, she said "I'm going to be mad if you make me wait!" So... I told her over the phone! We gushed and had a good time just being giddy together. :)
So then that night, we were still able to go down and surprise Stuart's mom in person. She did call in the afternoon/early evening, and asked if we knew yet, and Stuart lied and said no! So then when he got off work, we headed down to Arlington. He called her when we pulled in to her driveway, just to start a normal chat, then while they were talking, we walked up to her front porch and rang the doorbell. She said to Stuart "Oh! Someone is at my door!" She was surprised, because by this time it was maybe 7:30 or 8pm.(late). Then she says, still on the phone, "Oh! It's You!" Then she opens the door, still talking to him on the phone, and then realizes she can hang up now! :)
Then we tell her our wonderful news! It was surreal to get to say the words outloud "we are pregnant!!!"
We went inside and chatted about our lovely day!
She took a couple pictures of us:

I was holding the positive pregnancy test I had taken that afternoon. (I still have that test, and another one that I later took, in my purse. I don't know why! I started out just wanting to be able to look at it whenever I want, and now, they are still just hanging out in my purse!)
After spending a bit talking to Cissy at her house that night, Stuart and I were hungry because we had not eaten dinner yet since we came right over after work. Cissy was already in her pajamas for the night, (since she was not expecting company!), so she changed and we went out to eat at Mijo's (a yummy Mexican restaurant) by Cissy's house, just chatting and glowing in this wonderful, new time as a family!

And finally, here are some pictures from our first sonogram!
I was 7 weeks pregnant.