Considering that yesterday, on New Year’s  Day, Sona and I ditched our plans to go to the gym and eat healthfully to instead laze on the couch, take naps, and order takeout, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that we don’t take New Year ‘s resolutions very seriously around here.

Still, with all the craziness of the holidays, I think January provides a good time to reset, re-norm, and reevaluate our plans for the coming year.

(Writing this prompted me to look back through previous blog posts to see whether or not I’d blogged resolutions before. And, to my surprise, I had! Here is my post from 2016. Looking back through it now, it feels good to know that many of those goals were realized. And yet, there are many that we’re still trying to make happen.)

So, while I’ll stop short of calling these “resolutions,” when I take stock of what is to come in 2018, here are some goals–some more lofty than others–that I’d like to be mindful of in the coming months.

• • Yes, workout more. Yes, make healthier choices. Yes, this is cliche. But still, Sona and I have done a really, really bad job committing to any kind of fitness routine since having Finn. As I’ve written about a gazillion times, most days, we’re just trying to keep our heads above water. I’ve struggled with my weight been heavy most of my life. (For what it’s worth, even though that phrasing came to mind first, I don’t really identify with the word “struggle.” I have not, in any way, let my weight be life-defining, but that’s for another post.) So, for me, it’s really about trying to establish a realistic and maintainable routine that makes me feel better, gives me more energy, and helps keep my health in check. For Sona, it’s really more about feeling strong mentally, as she does when she is running routinely.
  • Get Finn out of the crib and onto a potty. Okay, those are actually two steps. But with his turning 3 at the end of this summer, I really hope that before we ring in 2019, he’s  in a “big boy bed” and out of diapers.
  • Be smarter with managing our money. In the past couple of years, we’ve bought a house and enrolled a toddler in a Chicago-priced daycare. Just those two things alone have increased our monthly expenses by about 40%. This year, we also had a lot of  fertility-related expenses, some unexpected home repairs that were necessary, and a bathroom reno. All of that means that we were under a bit more financial stress than typical, and we had to make some sacrifices as a result. We need to get it together, this year.
  • Adventure more. The biggest sacrifice we’ve had to make since buying our home is that we’ve been able to travel much less than we did before. We still managed to get in a few trips in 2017–Washington D.C., California, Tennessee, Italy, Grand Cayman–but Sona and I have a dream for our family’s future that involves a lot of adventuring. I know that, with a new baby on the way and the majority of Sona’s time off eaten up by maternity leave, we likely won’t be able to travel very much in 2018, but I hope we find ways to squeeze in little adventures where and when we can. My soul needs it.
  • Continue to prioritize our marriage. Oy vey. I’ve said a lot about this before, too. Keeping a marriage alive is hard work. Keeping a marriage alive while parenting little ones and maintain two full-time careers is really hard work. Sona and I are really good about developing marriage-maintenance game plans, but we are really awful at sticking to them. I hope we can take more tangible steps to put one another–and our relationship–first: more date nights, more meaningful conversations, less time spent on our (my) iPhone and more time giving attention to one another–more time paying attention.
  • Pay more attention to who and what I love. We recently saw the movie Lady Bird, which is FANTASTIC, and I highly recommend it. There’s a moment in the movie–and I can say this without spoiling anything for you–where the lead character is talking to one of the nuns at her Catholic school.  The lead, Lady Bird, says something like “I don’t know if I love it. I just pay attention.” And the nun replies, “Don’t you think they are the same thing?” That hit me hard. I’m not always the best at paying attention to the right things. That is,  when I feel the most bogged down by life, it’s usually because I’m paying attention to the wrong things. I did a lot of that this year. I paid attention to the little annoyances more than I should have, and in 2018, I want to work on turning my attention towards the people and things that bring me joy. Showing them my love. Focusing on what matters more. Giving 100% of my attention to the areas of my life that I want to nurture.
  • Meet–and really fully enjoy–what will very likely be our last baby. Having a baby that is due towards the last third of the year inevitably means that everything that precedes that due date will just go down in history as “the time spent waiting on the new baby.” Because let’s get real: every single memory from 2015 shrinks under the shadow of our having Finn, and I know that–down the road–2018 will also be remembered, almost entirely, as the year when we grew to a family of four. The first 6 months of Finn’s life were some of the best months of my own. Sure, we were exhausted and stressed and had no idea what we were doing, but I had taken a full semester off of work, and I threw my entire being into mothering that little boy. For those 6 months, I thought of virtually nothing else other than Finn, and it was glorious. Sona remembers that time differently. It was harder on her–harder on her body, at first, and much harder on her emotionally. She looks back on the photos of Finn as a newborn and frequently bemoans how little she remembers of–or let herself enjoy–that time. This time, we want to do it differently. She’s going to take more time off, and we are really hoping that–as hard as we know it will be (and we’re a little scared of that, too)–we can be completely present, focusing on nothing but our little family and slowing down time for as long as we possibly can. We want to pay attention.

Disclaimer: If you aren’t actively trying to conceive or immensely interested in fertility, you should probably stop reading right this second. If you choose to continue, I must apologize for the boredom–and for the onslaught of acronyms–that’s sure to follow.

Disclaimer #2: We’ve had a lot of questions about how we ended up with a successful pregnancy, mostly from other same-sex couples TTC (see, acronym). I want to provide answers to those questions because I know how hungry we were for similar answers during our own process. That said, it’s important to underscore something: Sona and I haven’t cracked the code of conception. Our answers may be helpful to some, but they aren’t meant to provide a step-by-step instructional for how to get pregnant, obvs.

Also, if this post shows you nothing else, I hope it shows you this: Pregnancy is a miracle, yes. But conception? Conception is science. Nothing but science. There is a bit of chance and luck involved, too–but it’s all about whether or not you are lucky enough to time the science correctly. Knowing this, for some reason, helped me cope. It prevented me from internalizing outcomes too much. It kept me from constantly asking, “But why? What does this mean?” If we didn’t get pregnant, I knew there was a very pragmatic reason why: We didn’t get the science right, that time.

So, let’s get to those numbers, shall we?

Before we zero in on how we conceived, I’ll go global. In the past year, leading to this pregnancy, we did a total of 8 IUIs over the span of 11 months.

We spent $8385.00 on donor specimen (sperm) and around $3500.00 on fertility clinic-related expenses (IUIs, ultrasounds, etc.). OUCH. Goodbye, vacation.

Sona took approximately 120 digital ovulation tests. We used these: Clearblue Digital Ovulation Test, 20 Ovulation Tests.

She also took about half as many cheap-y ovulation tests, once we realized that the CBE tests were sometimes inaccurate. I think that doing both of the tests alongside one another really helped us nail her ovulation timing. Here are the cheapies that we used: AccuMed® Combo 50 Ovulation (LH) & 25 Pregnancy (HCG) Test Strips Kit, Clear and Accurate Results, FDA Approved and Over 99% Accurate.

She took her temperature every single morning for nearly a year.

We did a single IUI for 4 cycles and we did two IUIs for 2 cycles, including the last one.

We saw 4 different doctors at 3 different practices: a women’s health center, an LGBTQ clinic, and, in the end, a specialty fertility clinic.

We got pregnant with the latter.

Sona was pretty religious about using Fertility Friend to track her cycles. It’s a really helpful app, and we strongly recommend it! Here are her charts from October and November, just so you can see the various patterns–and discrepancies.

She menstruated from October 26th-30th.

On October 30th, she got baseline bloodwork.

On November 2nd, she started taking 50 mg of Clomid, which she did for 5 days.

On the morning of Wednesday, November 8th, she went in for bloodwork and an ultrasound.  Her LH was 26.14 and her E2 was 522.

She had one 18mm follicle visible in the ultrasound.

That night, she did a 250 mcg HCG trigger shot at 6:45PM.

According to ovulation tests, she peaked the next morning, November 9th.

On that same day, she did her first IUI at 4PM.

The second IUI was at 7:15AM the following morning, on Friday, November 10th.

So, we did our IUIs roughly 21 and 37 hours after the trigger shot. We are pretty certain that she ovulated late Friday evening.

A week prior to inseminating, Sona’s progesterone level was 0.91. She started taking 200mg of progesterone each night, beginning on November 11th, which was the evening after the second IUI. Her levels immediately rose to 35 and have consistently hovered at around 41 since conception.

Currently, as of today, the fetus is measuring 6.5 weeks old, which puts our due date at around August 3, 2018–one week before Finn’s 3rd birthday.

And that’s all we’ve got, folks. If you made it this far, I’m impressed. I could barely get through half of this post in proofreading.

Still, I believe–as I’ve said many times–that knowledge is power. The more you know, the more empowered you are to make decisions for yourself, your body, and–hopefully–your baby. I hope this is helpful to some of you on your own journeys.

(Couldn’t resist.)

This morning, we all got up super early to make Sona’s first ultrasound appointment, which was scheduled for 6:50. Since she has to go to work after and wants to try to get there as close to her 7:00 start time as possible, she always nabs the first appointment.

I wanted to be with her, of course, but daycare doesn’t open until 7AM (Finn usually gets up at around 7:30-8:00 and doesn’t get to daycare until 9:00 on a normal day), we had to take Finn with us. At first, he wasn’t too happy about being roused so early, but he rallied later. (This is one of those days when it’d be realllllllly nice to have a grandparent nearby.)

To make matters worse, he woke up with a blaring case of pink eye: eye swollen shut, redness, a lot of yellow gunk. Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly a stress-free start to what we were hoping would be a special morning.

But it was nothing that a little medicine, a blueberry muffin, and Frozen on the iPad couldn’t fix. We were a sleepy and crusty caravan, but we made it to the clinic on time.

Once we got to the doctor, we had to wait about 5 minutes before Sona got called back for bloodwork. Luckily, they let Finn and I (and the iPad and the muffin and Monkey) tag along for all of it. Finn held Sona’s hand while they drew blood, which was the sweetest thing ever. She’ll get her progesterone levels tested for the next few weeks, apparently.

After that, it was time for the ultrasound. Since it is so early, they do a vaginal ultrasound, and they told us not to expect to see much, yet. I think Sona really just wanted confirmation that SOMETHING was there–and by “there,” I mean in the appropriate place.

Luckily, pretty much immediately, the ultrasound tech located the gestational sack, which is measuring exactly as it should be for 5 1/2 weeks, and right inside the sack, just as they hope to see, we got a clear view of a yolk sack.

It was all done in about 10 minutes, but it was actually really nice to have all three of us there. Finn was perfectly behaved the entire time (which is always a gamble, obvs), and we got yet another reassuring sign that things are progressing in a positive way.

As it stands, the due date for baby #2 is the first week of August–just a few days before Finn’s birthday.  It’s still very early, of course, but we continue to be cautiously excited.

For now, I have to go run and shower. I have a week and a half of classes to go before the end of the semester (insert praying hands emoji, here). Sona ended up having to take the day off to stay home with Finn and his crusty eye. We are getting a very tiny glimpse into what life with two kiddos will be like: even when you want to stop and revel in the glory of one, the other is going to be running around like a mad-man,  demanding your attention (and your antibiotics), and making sure every surface of the house has been contaminated.

We’ll take it.

That’s the acronym for BIG FAT POSITIVE in online fertility speak, which we’ve become pretty proficient in, lately.

Let me take a minute to have an appropriate freak-out: OMG!$l#@>$@#!!@! YOU GUYS! WE ARE ALMOST COMPLETELY SURE THAT SONA IS PREGNANT!!@#!@!#!

Okay, that’s better.

Here’s how it all went down:

Sona was inseminated on November 9th and again on November 10th. That meant that we could have done a reasonably reliable at-home pregnancy test as early as Thanksgiving–if not earlier. Her blood test at the fertility doc isn’t until tomorrow (20 days post IUI), and we knew we didn’t want to wait that long. However, we also didn’t want to ruin Thanksgiving with the news that she’s not pregnant, again, and we didn’t want to have to suffer through that news with family in town. So, we waited.

Then, unexpectedly, Sona’s grandmother passed away this past Wednesday. That meant that our plans to have Sona’s family come up for a Big Ole Family Holiday Weekend got cancelled, and Sona actually ended up taking the overnight Amtrak to Kentucky to be with her family, leaving a few hours after an early Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.  It was another blow in what has already been a difficult year, and neither of us wanted to even think about doing a pregnancy test. Therefore, we planned to test when Sona got home on Sunday (yesterday).

I had a lot of anxiety about the test while Sona was gone. I was also worried that, with her traveling 16 hours in 3 days, getting relatively little sleep, and taking care of her family, she was going to push herself beyond her limit. I texted family to make sure that they kept an eye on her, and–she doesn’t know this (sorry, honey)–I also sent myself the contact info for on of the doctors she worked with, all with the plan to text her, plead our case, and beg for Sona to get an extra day off in lieu of the one she lost traveling for the funeral. I was a worried wife.

Yesterday, Sona got home at 9AM. We had brunch plans with friends who we only see once a year, as they live out of town. The babysitter came at 10:00. Sona was tired, and she hadn’t been home in a few days, but we wanted to push through with plans to see our friends, as we both needed some fun. I thought, for sure, that we would wait and do the test later in the evening–after brunch, after we’d rested a bit, and after Finn was in bed. I was hoping to push it off for as long as possible, scared of the result.

I was playing with Finn, trying to get him ready for the babysitter, when Sona got in the shower. Twenty minutes before the babysitter was set to arrive, I went into our bathroom to blow-dry my hair. I saw a cup of urine on the bathroom counter, and my heart stopped.

“You do it,” Sona said from inside of the shower. “Do what?!” I asked, knowing full-well what she meant.  “Do the pregnancy test. I didn’t want to do it without you.”

In my head, I was panicking. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I kept thinking. I wasn’t prepared, and I wasn’t ready to see Sona’s heart broken, again.

Still, I did it. I took the test, held it in the urine for 5 seconds (Sona made sure I read the directions, even though we’ve done this a thousand times, now), and I didn’t even get it out of the urine before the two dark pink lines appeared. Meanwhile, Sona was in the shower, expecting to wait a few minutes for the results.

So, I did exactly what I did when we tested for Finn. I coyly snuck away, pretending I was buying time, grabbed my phone, and came back in. I hid the phone behind my back, because I knew if she saw it, she’d know the test was positive.

Then, I put on my best sad face, lowered my tone, and said, disappointingly, “I’m sorry babe, it is negative. I knew we shouldn’t have tested. This is going to ruin the whole day.” “I knew it,” she said. “I figured it would be.”

This is what happened next:

(Trying to get a SFW video of your wife who is freaking out IN THE SHOWER is not easy,  people.)

As you can tell, I think, she totally fell for my prank.

She was elated. And relieved. And then, she just cried.

It was a special moment, and–you know me–I had to capture it. THERE WAS SO MUCH RELIEF, THERE.

Of course, we had to take a couple selfies, too, and I couldn’t love them more.

Yes, the lighting stinks. Yes, one of us is naked and half-covered in soap. Still, I can’t wait to show these two baby #2 someday and say, “See, this is how badly we wished for you.”

The funny thing is, this is almost exactly the week we found out we were pregnant with Finn, who was also a Thanksgiving baby. And, if all goes well, baby #2 will likely be due in August, too.

Of course, we have to be cautious. It’s early. VERY, very early. At first, too, we were worried about the chance of a false positive, as Sona did an HCG trigger shot. Those worries have been pretty much dispelled, though, as we’ve heard from several reliable sources that we are way beyond the window of concern.

But also, with Finn, we waited the requisite 3 months to announce widely. We waited about 3 minutes, this time. Is that risky? Of course. Are there superstitious folks out there, wagging fingers at us? For sure. Is there a chance that this pregnancy won’t stick? Sadly, yes.

But regardless of the outcome, we’ve committed to sharing our journey, and this is a huge part of it. Whatever comes next, we’re committed to sharing that, too. There is NO SHAME here, people. NONE. NO shame in trying to conceive. NO shame in being a same-sex couple, haphazardly navigating these often enigmatic waters. NO shame in fertility struggles. NO shame in whatever comes next.

Today, though, there is a lot of joy.  And that’s what we are choosing to focus on. Today, at the end of a very rough year, there’s joy–all thanks to the promise of another sweet, sweet soul.