After more than one year of trying, one miscarriage, and one round of infertility treatments, we are (obviously) super excited to announce that we are expecting our second child in early June. This will come as no surprise to some of you, but is certainly news to many of you, so I’ll try to fill in some of the details.
We learned when trying to get pregnant with Emilia that we are not one of those couples that can nicely plan pregnancies around our personal lives. It took us a full year of trying to get pregnant with Emilia, who defied all convenience by being born one month before the end of my first semester in the PhD program. We ideally wanted to have our second one about two years after Emilia was born; since we knew our history, we got to work on it early. But after about nine months of trying, I finally took my pile of charts (I’ve spent more than two years of my life trying to chart my body’s ovulation signs) to the doctor to ask why I was having so much trouble identifying when I was ovulating. Turns out I am not as incapable as I thought—I couldn’t identify when I was ovulating because, most months, I wasn’t. In the nine months we’d been trying, the doctor said I’d ovulated probably twice. We made plans to start Clomid—one of the most common infertility drugs, which is used to induce ovulation—in the following cycle. I went home with the newfound knowledge that I did in fact know what I was doing with all these charts—that it was just a matter of waiting until there was actually something to identify—and, in some sort of crazy coincidence, I ovulated and we got pregnant before even starting the treatment. That was back in May. On July 4th, however, during my first days at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland (on a holiday right before a weekend and while out of town for an extended period—I think that’s the definition of inconvenient), I started bleeding and eventually miscarried.
So it was back to the drawing board. Once my body was fully recovered, the doctor okayed us to start Clomid. This involved two early ultrasounds, a week of pills, and a shot to my stomach, all involving very precise timing. Thankfully, the first round was a success, and we found out about a month ago that I was again pregnant. I’m now about 10 weeks along. We had an early ultrasound (because of my history) that confirmed things were proceeding as they should, and have already heard the heartbeat twice. So, we are finally letting the reality set in that we’ll have another kid come summer time, and wanted to share the news with you, our friends and family.
Last Thursday we celebrated Emilia’s second birthday. On the day of, we just enjoyed Emilia’s favorite dinner (chicken nuggets) followed by cake at home the three of us. Then on Sunday we had a larger celebration with some friends and extended family. I hear about a lot of kids being overwhelmed at their own birthday parties, but thankfully that wasn’t the case here. As usual, Emilia was shy for the first minute or two, but then lost her inhibitions and got lost in the crowd. It helped that gifts kept coming out of nowhere and there was a cake and singing. Emilia just squealed with excitement when everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to her and the cake appeared. Here are a few pictures of the birthday girl modeling one of her gifts. Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate!
Here are a few random pictures of recent good times. Emilia has apparently appropriated her doll Gunther’s swimsuit (which is the old-fashioned 1920s full-body style). Although she can’t get the straps over her shoulders, she likes to take off her pants, put on what she can of the suit, and then show me her newest yoga poses (which she learns at school). Above she does her best Richard Simmons impersonation.
Lastly, here’s documentation of Emilia’s first haircut. We took her to one of those kids’ hair salons. It was kind of a crazy atmosphere, but Emilia was perfectly content the whole time, particularly since she got to enjoy a sucker during the actual hair cut. We just got her a trim (after all, some of that hair is two years old!), so you really can’t even tell she had it cut (we love those crazy curls too much to do anything more drastic!).
And here Little Bear is all bundled up for her first hayride at yet another Halloween party last weekend (surprisingly, the only one without nice weather). Below Emilia helps Yaya carve a pumpkin.
Emilia absolutely loved having all these visitors; she acts shy and innocent for the first minute or so around new people, but her true self soon shines through as she calls them all by name (or just “boy” in the case of my friend Kim’s spouse—apparently she doesn’t much care for the name Jason) and orders them to play with her. She kept telling Jason, “Boy make castle!” And make castle he did!
I turned in my written preliminary examination last week, which is a great relief. Yay!!! Now it's just classes, teaching, and on to the next hoop to jump through.