30 Weeks and a Photoshoot!

So i have this best friend who is a pretty amazing photographer and yesterday she did maternity pictures for me! They were so fun and i love how they turned out! If you are looking for a photographer she is your gal!
I wanted my pictures to turn out kind of woodland dream feeling and i feel like that's what i got and I'm so so happy with it so i figured i would share some of the photos she gave me with you!!

I love them and am so happy with them!!! Thank you Courtney you are the BEST!!

Also on other news, I am at 30 weeks!!!! The count down begins! 10 weeks left at the most! Great news is that my Dr. doesn't like his patients to go past their due dates so its pretty exciting to know that there are only 10 weeks at the most left!!!! AHHHH I cannot believe it! After 4 1/2 long years and many many tears, prayers, needles and trials of loss later we are ALMOST holding our baby girl! I honestly never thought this day would happen but i am so glad that it is!

2 weeks ago i had to do the Glucose test and my results came back perfect which was nice! I wasn't worried but there is always that small worry. Baby girl is growing just perfect and her heartbeat is still nice and strong! She still moves ALOT! Now that she is bigger its not so much kicks anymore but just her rolling around kicking, elbow knees shoulders on my hips and all that fun stuff! I'm loving it! The only part that isn't so fun is when she kicks my bladder and no matter how much is in there i always feel like i have to pee soooo bad! But all in all i have LOVED being pregnant i have had such an awesome experience!

20 Weeks, Halfway there!!

Tuesday May 13th, we had our 20 week ultrasound and check up. I'm not sure why but i was SO nervous for this check up! I wanted everything to be perfect with our little angel that i was afraid of surprises. But the Lord has blessed us tremendously and we have a healthy perfect little girl growing a week ahead of schedule! However our Dr. does not want to move up the due date, which I am ok with :) While checking everything out and measuring her we caught her yawning and then sucking her thumb! Cutest thing EVER!!! Its amazing how much i love this little girl already. You think you know what love is when you find your life partner, the love of your life, your other half, your spouse. But I honestly think that for a woman, you never truly understand the deep love as that of a mother. To feel that life growing inside of you, to feel them kick and squirm. Its amazing and even though I had to go through SO MUCH to get this gift i am so thankful and wouldn't have it any other way. I know Travis and I were meant to wait those 4 1/2 long years so that he and i could grow stronger together and so that we were truly ready for this little girl to enter into our lives, to make sure that we could give her the best life possible! I cant tell you how excited i am to see Travis in action as a father its going to be amazing!
Travis actually finally got to feel little Alice kick last night! She has been getting strong and she has finally gotten strong enough where he was able to feel her little kick! It was so cool!
 The Dr. mentioned that my placenta is in the front so i wonder if that made it more difficult for him to feel her or not.
Something cute our Dr. told us was one of his theories about the placenta being in front. He said that for babies with the placenta in front the baby is closer to the heart and feels that beat more strongly than if it were in back. So his theory is that children grown with the placenta in front are more musically inclined, that they will carry a beat better and that to comfort that child holding it close to your heart will be the most calming thing for her. Now he says obviously he cant prove any of this, but i liked his theory and so im going along with it haha! How sweet is that? Anyways. Im growing good. My belly gets bigger and bigger everyday and so does my sweet tooth which im starting to worry about! I dont want to gain excessive weight because of all this junk im eating so ive decided to start being better about how i eat and not always giving into those sweet temptations.
I have started to get painful leg cramps when i stretch first thing in the morning, they hurt so bad!!!
Also a little back pain and sometimes i feel a sharp pain shoot down my butt to my leg... its awful, thankfully it doesnt last long.
Other than that.... things are just peachy and i am loving being pregnant!
It really makes me sad to hear of expecting mothers just complain non stop about being pregnant, granted i dont know how they are feeling or how their body handles it but it does make me sad that not everyone is able to enjoy pregnancy.
Its crazy to me to think that i am already 21 weeks.... i never thought i would make it here. Honestly after losing 2 babies already and going through infertility struggles that end goal just seemed to get farther and farther out of reach. So i am so grateful each and everyday that this baby girl grows strong and healthy and i love feeling her kick because i know her heart is still beating strong!
To all my Infertility friends, i know how hard it is to wait and watch everyone else around you getting pregnant, honestly it sucks and its so hard to be happy for them even though you want to be. I hope because i obviously dont know when it will happen for you but i do hope and pray that it does happen for each of you! I do think of you all the time even if i dont always reach out to you, for that im sorry. Women who have to go through infertility in my opinion are some of the strongest women i have met. And through my experience not a whole lot can be said to make infertility easier or to make you feel better so i wont do that. Just know i think of you girls often and pray that in some form you get the opportunity to become moms! I love you all!!


Here are just a few pictures to show progress on the belly growth!

18 weeks and an Appendectomy

So this week has been CRAZY! I know people say that all the time but listen to this. Travis just got hired on a new job Monday morning he was to go do the drug test for that job. Sunday night before bed he was complaining he had a bad stomach ache. We thought this was from drinking too much soda. Travis woke up Monday morning in A LOT of pain and had been throwing up off and on all night. He still went to do the drug test but felt like he was dying (the employees thought he was shady and was hiding something.) As Travis is driving home he calls me and tells me he needs to go to the hospital that something is very wrong. So we get to the ER and poor guy can hardly stand. They get an IV in him and some morphine for the pain. We thought he was having kidney stones. Sadly not a whole lot you can do for kidney stones but wait to pass them unless something is really wrong then they would do surgery. They didn't find any stones in the ultrasound so they sent him home with pain meds and said,  "Good luck hope they pass soon!" Not 3 hours later we were back in the ER in the same amount of pain. After doing a CT scan we realized there were no kidney stones.... It was his appendix. Travis went into surgery late Monday night. The surgeon said his appendix was dying, that it had turned black and blue and had puss coming from it. It was close to erupting all that poison into his blood! Thankfully we got it out in time! We stayed the night at the hospital, (those hospital pull out chair beds are so uncomfortable especially at 18 weeks pregnant) and then he was released Tuesday morning. He was feeling great and did a little more then he should have and by 7 that night started to get hot and have a pretty bad headache. 3:30 am we were back at the ER. Travis was in excruciating pain from his headache and had been throwing up and after just having surgery he was in a lot of pain. We got him on morphine and did another CT to make sure none of the stitches had busted from the trauma of throwing up. Everything looked great. The migraine they concluded started from caffeine withdrawals (since he is a big soda drinker) and because he had the headache couldn't keep up on the pain and was throwing up all his pain meds. So after we got the pain under control we went home Wednesday at 6am and went to bed. We have been keeping up on his meds ( I was waking up every 2-4 hrs to give him his meds in the night) and he has been doing great!
Sadly yesterday evening we found a leak in a downstairs bedroom from a broken pipe in our bathroom, thank goodness for good neighbors who helped us out so Travis didn't have to do it all on his own.
Is this week over yet?! Haha I am so exhausted!

Friday was our 5 year anniversary!! Crazy it's been this long already and at the same time crazy it's only been 5 years :) hard to believe there was a life when I wasn't married to the man of my dreams!!! They have been amazing and I'm excited and looking forward to many many more years together!!!

On a plus note we were impatient and found out 2 weeks ago that we are having a little GIRL!!!!!!! We cheated and paid a ultrasound tech to check the gender for us at the end of our 16 weeks!!!! We are so so so happy!!!! We have already started on her nursery it's going to be amazing!!
Today we are 19 weeks! We are almost HALF WAY!! Can you believe that? Because im having a hard time believing it myself if it weren't for these little kicks that im starting to feel more and more each day!! Im loving feeling our little girl move, it is honestly the greatest feeling in the WORLD!
Its crazy since becoming pregnant i haven't gained that "Trucker appetite" in fact i have to force myself to eat sometimes because i've realized i haven't eaten in hours. And when i do want to eat its almost always something sweet that im wanting! Which is not me at all, this girl is definitely her daddy's little girl because he loves sweets and eats them all the time. Im having a harder time sleeping at night and finding a comfy position. My nose is constantly feeling stuffy but there is nothing up there its just swollen i guess from the increased blood flow i guess. The headaches are pretty much history, I might get one every few weeks which isn't bad. I have gained about 3-4 pounds since learning i was pregnant. My face is still having battles with acne but ive learned to just live with it. :) And that's about all my updates from the last post to this one :)
Here are some pictures.

Our 16 week gender ultrasound :)

Our gender announcement and name reveal!!

16 weeks avocado status.

17 weeks

6-18 weeks difference. wow.

Cassie had ankle surgery and Trav had appendix surgery.

pumped up on morphine getting ready to head into surgery. 

post surgery recovery, still out of it from the anesthesia. 

Pictures!

So things have been going great since my last post. My nausea mostly went away, it still comes and goes but its nothing compared. I have become uncomfortable at night when trying to sleep... since i am a stomach sleeper this has been really hard for me, i love sleeping on my stomach and since i found out i was pregnant i haven't been able to sleep that way because it makes me SUPER sick to my stomach. blah! I get a few headaches every now and then but thankfully nothing unbearable. My acne is relentless and will not go away but I'm learning to live with it... being pregnant is like a do whatever, dress however, feel however you want card in my eyes ;) so Ive learned not to care so much because, I have a beautiful baby inside that is making that happen and it is all worth it to me!! Lets see other than that not a whole lot is going on, I'm feeling great and growing week by week! I LOVE IT!! I am 15 weeks 4 days today and have my 16 week check up on Tuesday!!! YAY heartbeat time!! My Dr. doesn't do the gender ultrasound until 20 weeks so I still have another month to wait. I was hoping that i could know by week 16 but id rather know for sure at 20 than find out early and possibly be wrong. So i am happy to wait but still so anxious! I want an ultrasound just to see my baby i don't even need to know the gender yet i just want to see "her" which is what we call the baby until proven otherwise.

So there you have it. My prego life update and now for some pictures....

Also my parents are back here in Utah living with us. Things are going great so far. I know my dad is itching to get a job and a place of their own but I'm not in a hurry for them to get their own place things have been working out nicely i think :) We are happy to have them here!! Cassie is loving school and all the boys!! So that's good. And now.... that really is all the update of info i have for everyone.

until Tuesday. 

Almost a year....

Wow where has the time gone? Its almost been a year since I last posted on my blog. And A LOT has happened....
 Where do I even start?
Well my last post on here was about our unfortunate Dr.s visit last March when we found out our IVF baby didn't make it past 10 weeks. I ended up miscarrying the baby about 2 weeks later just as my family had arrived from California to send my sister off on her mission, it was horrible timing. And in all honesty it was the most painful experience i have ever gone through not just emotionally but physically, it physically was horrid! I had miscarried before but it was at 6 weeks and was almost nothing compared to this! I thought i might die from the amount of pain and blood i was loosing but i guess thats normal? If not, im still alive i was just very pale the few days after and very week.

After that happened we waited about 3 months before going in and doing our frozen IVF cycle which was so much easier than the low stimulation IVF thank the heavens!! I was SO scared to do IVF again just because its so taxing on your emotions and your body and really just EVERYTHING!! So with doing the frozen cycle all i had to do was take the progesterone injections daily after getting the embryos transferred once it was known my body was ovulating. Unfortunately I got a negative pregnancy test and started the next couple days, Dr. wasn't really sure as to why it didn't take, but it didn't. It was hard but much easier to deal with then a loss after being excited about pregnancy.
So after the failed 2nd attempt we decided to give ourselves a break, we had been trying constantly for 4 years to have a baby trying everything that we could. That we finally agreed to take a year break and have fun together as a couple and enjoy our blessing that we had each other and were able to be spontaneous and get up and go do things! Life was great, my family came out again in August to take my brother to the MTC for his mission so we got to see them again :)
We had an awesome thanksgiving in Cali with my family and a fun spooky Halloween party at our place with a bunch of our friends! It was great
Then Christmas time came and it was time for our Christmas cruise!!!!! We had been waiting for this for what seemed like ever! And it finally came, and let me tell you it did not disappoint at all it was amazing! Travis and I went with his parents and mine along with my two younger siblings so it was especially nice to share the vacation and holiday with both sides of the family!

After the excitement and planning of the cruise was all over it was back to real life, and again Travis and i were unable to ignore that empty void we were feeling.
While Travis was away on a business trip he called me up one night and asked me, " I know how you feel about adoption, that you want to wait until your 30 but i just feel that is too far away and what if it takes us that long to even get a child through adoption?" I had originally said i didn't want to even talk about adoption as an option until i was 30 because im still young and i CAN get pregnant its just harder for me to get pregnant and apparently stay pregnant. But at this point in my life when Travis mentioned it i got really excited and i told him, " Yes i agree lets do it, im finally ready and willing to go through the adoption process, i just want a child of our own!!"
He was so excited and so was I!
I wanted to start the process right now so that we could have our baby by the weekend!!! (I know it doesn't work that fast but i was so excited.)
So when Travis returned from his trip we started looking up agencies. A friend of Travis' from high school had recently adopted and we talked to her about it and decided we wanted to use the same agency, we told a few family members about it just because we needed some reference letters but we wanted to keep it a secret from the rest of the family so it would be a huge surprise!
Everything was moving along, we had a social worker coming to do a house inspection on a Friday when the unthinkable happened. I was late...... but there is no way i could be pregnant im not able to get pregnant on our own.... i told myself. I held off on taking a test because any of you who have gone through infertility know that the dreadful negative or NOT PREGNANT that you see on that pee stick is just so depressing.
So i waited 2 days before Travis finally told me to just take a dang test! I had one extra from IVF #2. I took it first thing when i woke up. i put it on the back of the toilet just like i always do and went washed my hands and put my contacts in, then went back over and picked up the test. PREGNANT it said, clear as day.... I started to shake I walk out of our bathroom into the bedroom and hand it to Travis. "Does this say what i think it says, or am i seeing things?!" I ask him. a HUGE smile spreads across his face as he sees the test and he says "WE ARE PREGNANT!!!!"  Of course I start to cry immediately tears of joy! But this old test wasn't good enough proof so we ran to Walmart and grabbed 2 different kinds of tests and headed back home... all 3 types of tests said the same thing.... PREGNANT!! How is this even possible I thought to myself. Its honestly a miracle, thats the only explanation!!

After a day of celebrating, I called my Infertility Dr.s office and told them the happy news! They shared some happy words of excitement for us and told us to come in the next day to do a blood pregnancy test just to be sure. And sure enough my levels were good and high I was pregnant and it was a fact!

I had a 6 week ultrasound with my Infertility family and all looked well, we even got to hear a heartbeat for the very first time ever! It was so good and strong that the ladies at the front desk heard it all the way at the front of the office! It was amazing especially because the Dr. said normally this early its not very common to be able to hear the heartbeat just yet! We were happy with our results.

I saw my  OB/GYN that i will be working with the next 9 months and had an 8 week ultrasound with him. He told me the same great news that everything looked perfect and on track, we got to hear the babies heartbeat again and it was just as amazing! We scheduled an appointment for our 12 week check up and went home.

I thought i had pregnancy symptoms with our IVF baby boy was I wrong. With this pregnancy I have been SO SICK luckily because I hate it so much I haven't thrown up at all!! Bonus! But I have been so nauseous that eating was so hard for me to do. One day water and goldfish would be the only thing i could eat and the next those things made me want to be even more sick! And then on top of the nausea my face broke out horribly!! I haven't had that much acne on my face since i was in Jr. High I believe. It was awful but then i reminded myself that all these wonderful symptoms were proof that our little gummy bear was growing and was healthy so I never complained about it even though sometimes i wanted to so bad just so i could get some extra love :)
Now I am ending my 10th week of pregnancy and thank the heavens again, my nausea is going away and some of my energy is returning. It feels great. And on the plus size, this is Travis' favorite part, my boobs have grown so much!! I feel like they have doubled, although im sure thats not the case. But i have never had boobs this big, its awesome! :) Things are going great, sometimes i wonder that because im not sick as a dog that something is wrong but i just keep having to remind myself  that everything will be ok im just passing through that phase and getting new symptoms that are more enjoyable to deal with.

And that is what has happened in the last almost year. Pretty much. For the pregnancy side of things at least and sadly thats what i remember most in my life events. That and vacations :)

On a non pregnancy side of life, my parents are moving in with us in about 2 weeks!! Im so excited for them to be here! Life in Cali is expensive for them and my dad has been looking for a new job and is getting no luck so we told them to save money come live in our basement (since thats what its been planned on being for since we moved in) and come back to all the family in Utah. So Cassie came out 2 weeks ago and started going to school down here in Payson. She says she likes it so far and it seems to be going well :) I think it will be easier for her once the parents get here since she is the baby of 8 and relies heavily on my parents. But im happy and excited to have my parents close by again especially with being pregnant it will be great! Plus we had all that extra room for them it just makes sense :)

And that's about all I have for you, for this post! hope you enjoyed. If i even have any followers anymore haha!