Part 1 of a New Chapter...

This story starts mid-December...Well, actually probably a bit before that..You know, when by all indications, temperature climbing above cover line, a few other TMI symptoms that I was carefully charting, we were in the clear.

But passing by those details... This story starts one December evening when our almost-3-year old Pip made a picture of our family.
"Who is that person there up front, is that Nana?" I asked.

"No. Itsa baby brudder."

Haha. sigh of relief, so not happening this month child. We followed the rules. We have been successfully practicing NFP nearly 24 cycles. We're experts (well confident and careful). We're in the clear and you're cute...This is cute! Isn't this so cute? Yes. Cute. All it is. Cute cute cute.

Honestly, in the back of my mind I was a little tiny bit nervous. Not that we wouldn't welcome a baby. We enjoy our kids and another one would be exciting. But my pregnancies have been hard on our family. While blessed not to have serious complications or babies in need of intensive care, I still dealt with hypermesis (with my first) and general feeling of crappiness when pregnant.
Our babies have also been horrible sleepers and dealt with multiple food allergies (thanks to my autoimmune issues), and seem to come out with unusually over-sensitive/underdeveloped nervous systems.

We had more or less, agreed we were done. But we couldn't agree on HOW to be done. We were still praying until we were in agreement and had peace.
We had decided to revisit when we were both 30 (this year). In the mean time we were practicing FAM/NFP to a "T" -which has a similar fail rate [when properly used] of 1%. We felt those odds were good enough. I was comfortable going with this long term, we were both very committed to following the rules and it added a rhythm and structure to our life. Added a special intimacy and kind of felt like a spiritual practice of sorts. It was certainly right for that season of our lives.

Anyway, a few days after the picture incident  we went out for our Birthday celebration. My pants were feeling oddly tight and I was dealing with a little muffin top. I remember feeling frustrated that my usually fairly smooth tummy, wasn't.  I hadn't gained any weight, what was going on? Pregnancy still was the furthest thing from my mind... And at the same time, for some bizarre reason, Hubby Joy and I were still cracking up over the whole "baby brudder" thing. I don't know why we found it so funny, but we seriously had giggled over it for the past 3 days. Before our date Pip and AJ took a picture of us for our date, Hubby Joy put his hand on my belly as a joke. We talked about it later and he couldn't say why he did it...

Stinker...

Me brushing his hands off in surprise...

haha he's a brat...haha

Oh so so funny.

And then...I woke up the day after Christmas with a bit of a pit in my stomach. I wasn't feeling good, I hadn't been feeling good for days, it was Friday and my cycle should have started on Monday.  I realized that this pregnancy thing was actually a possability- it really was time to test. I pulled out an old pack of tests I kept on hand and peed on a stick, expecting 1 line.

2 showed up...very faintly...So much so that I was sure it was a mistake.

 I went out to celebrate the evening out with friends, feeling confident it was a false positive or a faulty test. I'm not sure why I felt so confident it was wrong, my cycle was 5 days late, but no couldn't be pregnant! Seriously, we couldn't have gotten pregnant. My charts were good, we were in the clear. Honestly I am still trying to figure out how this happened. And while I hate to chalk it up to an act of God, that's all I can conclude.

I am not a "take a bunch of tests" kind of person...With my first I took ONE test and that was enough, never peed on a stick again (then again, I was puking around the clock pretty much with in 2 days of the positive....).
With my second I got a positive even fainter than the one above and Hubby Joy wanted me to take another because he didn't believe it...I mean our oldest wasn't even a year old yet, surely not! I don't think I did retest- I just KNEW.

This time I needed some serious convincing! I just couldn't figure it out. HOW? How?

The next day I went out and bought the big guns, a digital.

And with that, I was convinced.

A baby! Really!  Telling the kids was the best thing ever. They were over the moon excited. They've been asking for a baby for months and Roo especially looked like we had just told her her wishes were coming true. Baby brudder or baby sissy we're looking at some big changes in the Joy home in the next few months!