April Fool's

A year ago today, I had one of the biggest surprises of my life: I found out I was pregnant.

We haven't shared this journey widely, but having a baby didn't come particularly easy for us. In fact, we were close to the realization that perhaps this all wasn't meant to be.

After seeing one specialist on and off for the better part of a year, we were told that I wouldn't be able to get pregnant without a costly procedure. We thought about it and prayed about it and decided against that option, at least for the time being. Since I was never too thrilled with her, I decided to go for a second opinion. Ready to try this all one more time, I met with the doctor, they explained the testing and took some preliminary blood work. I was encouraged but knew it was going to be a long process. As in, months.

Here we go again, I thought. And if this doesn't work, we'll just be the world's coolest aunt and uncle (and be able to take lots of kid-free vacations in the process).

I went for a second opinion on March 31. On the afternoon of April 1, I was working from home when my phone rang. It was the nurse I'd met the day before.

Well, she said, your blood work came back. I've got some good news and some bad news.

The good news is, you're pregnant. The bad news is, the hormone levels are really low. It will likely end in a miscarriage.

It was April Fool's Day. The irony did not escape me. Based on all the testing they'd done, there was no way I should have been pregnant. A big part of me thought that maybe the lab had screwed up the test.

How did Chad find out? It was very anticlimactic: I called him at work and said something along the lines of, "Well, you'll never believe this. I'm pregnant though it's not going to last. But the good news is it can happen." We didn't celebrate but we were encouraged for the long term.

Over the next few weeks, I returned multiple times for blood work. Instead of going down, my numbers kept going up. And up. And up. By about the middle of April, I started to wonder if this was really going to happen. The next several weeks went painstakingly slow as we kept getting morsels of good news but needed to be realistic that it was still very early.

We all know what happened next but in case you need a refresher...

One year to the day later, I'm on my last day of maternity leave with a beautiful little boy who makes me laugh more than he makes me crazy. While I dream of sleep and a real vacation and an impromptu evening out, I can't really imagine our lives without him anymore.

Oh my, how life can change in an instant. That April Fool's was apparently no joke.