April 4th we had the IUI procedure done with Dr. Williams at Ohio Reproductive Medicine. Our appointment was early that Saturday morning, and while it didn’t hurt, or even take very long, I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and evening in bed with some uncomfortableness.  We had to wait two weeks post procedure before we could either A. expect a menstrual cycle, or B. take a home test. I have never in my life lived two longer weeks than those.
On Friday April 10th, I had blood drawn to check my progesterone level. In the past when we have had this done, we had to wait for the score to see if we’d even had a possible ovulation. In this case, because of the vaginal ultrasound (sorry boys) and the shot of Baby Making Mojo I took prior to the IUI, I knew I had ovulated. My score was 59. We were excited, but tried to maintain clam, as we had been burned by high progesterone scores in the past.
Thursday April 16th was day 27 in my cycle. I knew that I could take an early predictor test that day, but also knew it might be a tad early and register a false negative. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and take the test. I didn’t even tell Troy I was going to do it. When the test registered with a blue plus sign indicating a positive result I nearly passed out. When I collected my self, I walked into the other room, where Troy was checking his email, and said
” You’d better order those announcement M&M’s Daddy.”
He jumped out the chair and hugged me right away. He was so excited.
As I headed to work that day I was so excited, and still nervous at the same time. I called Dr. Williams office, and they told me to get blood drawn that night to confirm.
After work we went to Riverside, to the blood draw lab with which we have become all too familiar in the last 18 months.
The next morning Dr. Williams nurse Nancy, called me to tell me the results were in and we had a winner! My score was 68. They were looking for a score between 50 and 500 for this first draw.  She then informed me that she wanted the test to be repeated until my score was over 1000. The score is expected to roughly double every 48 hours. So at that rate I was in for 3 more blood draws.
My second result on Monday was 268, and my third on Thursday was 1018! I was super excited then because it meant that not only were we well on our way, but I also didn’t have to have that last blood draw. YEAH!
I used an online due date caluculator and determined that I am due on Christmas Day! We’ve already started talking about ways to make sure our poor Christmas baby still feel like they have a special birthday, that the day doesn’t get lost in the Christmas mess.

So what’s next? Sharring with the parents (now soon to be GRANDparents) as well as our siblings and a few close friends.
Because this time is still so precarious, we don’t want to shout it to the whole world, which is why if you are reading this blog post, you’ll notice I wrote it while things were fresh and new, but didn’t post it until we knew we were entering the “safety zone”
So, if we’ve seen you between April 16th and now, and have lied to you… sorry. You’ll just have to forgive us on this one.