I can't believe the secret is finally out!!! Brooks and I are going to be PARENTS!!
Ever since getting married, we planned on having our first baby after four years of marriage. (I got married at 18 so I had plenty of time to wait). However, the last year or so we have started to get increasingly more "baby hungry," and have talked about raising kids A LOT. I still wasn't ready though, so we kept our goal of 2015 for having our first.
One night in October, Brooks and I went to my parents house for Sunday dinner, when we all started talking about baby names. This wasn't unusual, because my sister-in-law had recently announced she was pregnant, so the subject was on everyone's mind. We were all talking and laughing and "calling" the names we wanted so that the other sibling couldn't "steal" them, and then we left for home. It's about a 40 minute drive, and we were both strangely quiet most of the way home. All of the sudden, I looked over at Brooks and said "Brooks... I think I want to have a baby." He looked back at me and said "I do too." We got home, and started talking seriously about it. There were lots of tears, smiles, and prayers. We agreed to go to the temple that week to make sure that it really was the right decision. Sure enough, we felt SO peaceful/giddy about it.
Now, I have always wanted my first baby to be born in October, I don't know why, but I just have, so we planned out the "schedule" with my handy dandy pregnancy app and decided to get off of birth control at Christmas, and give ourselves a month of leeway time so that my period would regulate (I'm pretty sure the only boys who read this blog are Brooks and my brother Jeff so don't freak out about me talking about my period, because I have almost no shame as it is), because I don't bleed while I'm on this particular brand of birth control, and you obviously can't get pregnant unless you have a period. (It's totally a normal side effect of Lo Loestrin by the way, I've talked to my OB about it and it has honestly been the best few years of my life not having to worry about tampons) So, sure enough, I started a "real" period on January 15th, marked it in my pregnancy app as "day 1" of my pregnancy, and waited. After being four days late for my next scheduled period, I took a pregnancy test that had a beautiful little plus sign instead of a minus sign, ran downstairs and jumped into Brooks' arms hysterically laughing/crying and screaming that I was pregnant! And yes, I got pregnant THAT fast. Words can't express how grateful I am that we are both so fertile!!
The next step in my plan was announcing it to our families. (Like I said, I literally planned out everything in advance) So far, I had only told three of my best friends who I knew could keep it a secret. For months I had planned to announce it on Brooks' birthday, which meant I had to keep it from our families for three weeks... and it was SO HARD. I thought I had become a pretty good liar from my rebellious teenage years, but man, it was tough. Probably the hardest part was hiding how tired I was all the time. I had no idea that when you got pregnant, from weeks 5 till about 10, you feel like you got hit by a bus EVERY SINGLE DAY. Thankfully, I'm one of those girls that you probably all hate because I didn't get sick....like at all. Randomly around week 12 I threw up a couple of times in the mornings, but I started taking my prenatals at night instead of the morning (the iron in prenatal vitamins can make you nauseous) and now I'm fine! Blessed I tell ya.
Anyways, so I entrusted my friends and their husbands to help me with the "Utah" surprise for my family. My dear friend/cousin Kristen helped me craft some cute cake toppers that read "Happy Bday Daddy," and the morning of his birthday I made a funfetti cake, because that's obviously the best kind. I had previously invited my family over for a "birthday party social," and I had my four helpers all came over beforehand to "rehearse." Kristen would come back in the laundry room/bathroom area where I had hid the cake, and then follow me out with a video camera, and the other three were all standing at different spots in the room taking pictures/videos. If you know me, you know I LOVE surprises more than just about anything, and I especially love them documented. (shout out to Brooks who knew this about me and made sure to get pictures and a video of our proposal!)
The surprise went PERFECTLY. I had literally dreamed about it for months, and had butterflies in my stomach for weeks. We came out singing happy birthday (I had everyone gather in the family room so that I could go get Brooks' "present") and sure enough, after two lines of Happy Birthday or so they realized what the cake topper said and all started screaming/crying. It couldn't have gone more perfectly, and I'll always cherish it as one of my favorite memories!!
^^^I obviously inherited my crying factor from my dad... we're both the biggest babies
^^^My mom and sister's faces when I told them I was already 7 1/2 weeks^^^
Seriously the best.
Next came the "Arizona" surprise. My father-in-law's birthday is just one day after Brooks' birthday, so we ordered a T-shirt online that read "World's Best Grandpa," mailed it to AZ and told him that we had sent him a hilarious birthday package, and that we wanted to facetime him when he opened it so that we could see his reaction. I was pretty worried that he might get suspicious, but thankfully we've done this in the past for his birthday so he didn't think anything of it. (our families were also aware that we had been planning on waiting at least another year, which is the main reason why they were all so shocked) Well, we couldn't wait until his actual birthday, so after surprising my family we went upstairs and called him on facetime. The family all gathered around as he opened it, and they reacted pretty similar to my family with tears, laughter, and lots of congrats. It was SO fun and we literally could not stop smiling all night!
After telling our families, we still had several weeks to keep it a secret before going "public." I know a few girls personally who have had miscarriages, and not wanting to go through the public humiliation of saying "we've lost our baby," I decided to wait until 13 weeks (well, 13 1/2 to be exact) to announce it, because the rate of miscarriage goes waaaaayy down once you hit the second trimester. Besides, Easter is a perfect occasion to make an "eggciting" announcement. (I love puns, can you tell?)
Two days before Easter, my friend Cami (the first person I told and she deserves a HUGE shout out because she helped SO much with all the surprises!) took some pictures of us close to our house with our decorated Easter eggs, and despite all the disasters that day with everything going wrong from the eggs to my hair (I guess pregnancy changes your hair a lot? Mine seems to be growing very fast, thick, and is very frizzy), we still got some cute pictures to announce with!
^^^ even Sonic decided to get in on the action - very last minute before church, so excuse the sign
Everything went so perfectly and exactly how I pictured it. Being pregnant is still so surreal to me, and since I haven't started showing yet I still just can't believe it. I keep waiting for my "freak out" moment but it hasn't come. I just feel so right about all of it, and know that it is all meant to be. We really could not be more excited and feel more blessed than we do right now. It's without a doubt the most fun time in our marriage so far! Thank you so much for all of your support, it means the world! Countdown till October beings NOW.
Xoxo
