I know that about, oh, half of you are curious about Where This Baby Came From since it is no secret around this blog that we were down to under 1% chance of ever getting pregnant. Neither Joey nor I were pleased about that.  Obviously.

After we finished up our round of IVF in winter 2009, Joey and I were just bone-tired from giving (and receiving) shots, having a jillion ultrasounds, and worrying about whether or not it was going to work.  And when it didn’t work, we were so, so sad.  It was awful.

We wanted a break.

We NEEDED a break.

So we said, let’s shelf this and come back to it in April or May…we might want to try again then, we might not.  But whatever we decided to do, it was going to be secrety this time.

Well, neither one of us could stop thinking about it.  Nosiree.  Not at all.  So sometime at the end of January, we both looked at each other at the same time and said OH MY GOSH LET’T TRY AGAIN AND GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY!

We had realized that if we did wait until March, as originally planned, if IVF did work we’d wind up with almost the exact same due date as our miscarriage…and that sounded like it was about 5 levels of trauma more than we could handle.

So I called up Dr. Babyplease and blurted out that we’d like to try again, and we’d like to try again RIGHT NOW, could we please skip the month of birth control prep?

Surprisingly, they said YES.

And five days later, an enormous box showed up with a massive quantity of injectable drugs, and – bonus! – a whole bunch of 1 1/2 inch, 28 gague needles because she had ordered me progesterone in sesame oil, y’all.

She was not taking ANY chances on this round.  And we were so grateful.

It was honestly really hard to not process through IVF via blogging like I had last time.  I didn’t realize how much that had helped.  SO many funny things happened, like we’d go in for a scan and she’d take a look at my poor ovaries (sorry, boys) and say “OH, those are GORGEOUS” and Joey and I would look at each other and try not to bust out laughing.

Because you don’t laugh when you’re getting an IVF sonogram.  It’s just not done.  It’s not wise.  Take my advice.

Retrieval went off like a snap, and transfer was amazingly easy too.  We had some really good embryos this time, and Dr. Babyplease originally guessed we’d be having twins.  As I was laying in the hospital bed following transfer, feet tipped up in the air watching Law and Order, I mentioned to Joey I wanted Burger King and Dr. Babyplease laughed and said, “Oh it’s DEFINITELY twins.”

And then she told Joey to take me to Burger King already; I’d just had a really uncomfortable procedure performed upon myself and if I wanted Burger King, by Jove, I should have Burger King.

Joey obeyed.

Two days later, at 9:00 p.m. as per our instructions, we broke out the first of the 1 1/2 inch needles for the Progesterone in Sesame Oil injections.  Those would have gone a lot better if I hadn’t had some kind of amazing panic attack as I saw Joey approaching me with an uncapped, fairly thick needle filled with OIL that was to be INJECTED INTO MY MUSCLE.  I started flapping around and hyperventilating and crying, so Joey packed me up into the car and drove me off to my friend Kendall’s house because she is a doctor and very good at giving scary shots.

After a week, I summoned the courage to actually shoot MYSELF in the hip with that needle.  And you know what?  It wasn’t so bad.  When I told Joey what I had done, he got real pale and looked wobbly and said, “You really did that to yourself?”

Ten days into the Progesterone in Sesame Oil and two days before our pregnancy test, I broke out into hives because I guess I’m allergic to sesame oil.  They got all worried about me and scooted me right on in to the clinic for an early pregnancy test.

It was positive.

But we had been 90% sure it would be positive because I had cheated and not obeyed instructions and taken a home pregnancy test the night before.  The nurse just rolled her eyes at me when I admitted that I had cheated.

Everybody cheats, even though you’re not supposed to.  They just don’t want you to with IVF because it’s possible to get a false positive.

Two weeks later, we waltzed back in for our 7 week sonogram, and I was so nervous I almost passed out.  All I could remember from the year before was looking at the machine and seeing NOTHING….nothing.

But it was fine.  Everything looked great.

And that’s when I realized that being pregnant after infertility and a miscarriage is extremely complicated.  Because pregnancy for us isn’t fun and innocent anymore.  Our only experience with it rocked our world and changed our lives.  We can’t be those happy-go-lucky pregnant people again…and we are learning that that’s OK.

We don’t get to be giddy, but we do get to have a deeper relationship because of where we’ve been.

And maybe in a few months, when we are pretty close to having a healthy baby, we WILL be giddy.

But if we’re not, that’s OK with me too.

We’re excited in our own way, and it’s a much quieter, more private way.  But every week we get a little bit more confident.  And we’re just really, really thankful.

Maybe next week we’ll allow ourselves to LOOK at the baby aisle as we pass it in Target (oh, not actually go in, just look at it with our eyes) instead of crossing on the opposite side of the path and looking at the floor like we’ve been doing for, oh, months.

Told you we were weird.