It's Positive!

So I'm 16 weeks and I *think* I'm starting to feel baby move!  Eek! Last night in bed I felt the lightest flutters and today while the boys were napping, I felt the same thing again.  So I think I might be starting to feel this little one!  It's hard to distinguish real baby movements between food digesting and random round ligament spasms.  And when I think back on baby movement (by far my favorite part of pregnancy other than labor), I don't think of these tiny first flutters... I think of the jabs in the ribs or head-butts to the bladder.  Time will tell if this is really the baby.  I turned 16 weeks yesterday, so this would be early.  I felt James for sure at 19 1/2 weeks and Luke at 17 1/2 weeks.

 

So... What this post is actually about... How I got my positive pregnancy test!  Back in September, we decided that we'd try for a third baby.  Luke turned one in September and I didn't want to get pregnant before he turned one because pregnancy can mess with milk production and I wanted to nurse him for a minimum of one year.  We use the Fertility Awareness Method (read Taking Charge of Your Fertility for more info on this method) to both avoid pregnancy and achieve pregnancy.  I was on hormonal birth control before I got pregnant with James and it never settled well with me.  I can't believe I stuck with it so long.  I just didn't research other options and thought that hormonal birth control was the only way to really prevent pregnancy.  Thankfully, now, I know better.  FAM teaches you to monitor both fertility symptoms (which are easy to see once you know what they are) and your waking body temperature to see when you ovulate.  A woman is only fertile for a maximum of about 7 days of her cycle, so this method teaches you when those fertile times are.  We have easily avoided pregnancy between children and when we tried for Luke, it happened the first cycle.  When we tried for this third baby, it happened the first cycle.  I'm in several Facebook groups with other mamas and women who want to be mamas and I'm so thankful and do not take it lightly that we have been able to get pregnant so easily. 

So - back to September - we decided to try for another baby.  I knew it happened fast last time but I didn't know what to expect this time.  I wanted to prevent trying for one more month because we already had family vacations planned to the beach and the mountains in October and I knew that if I got pregnant, I'd be sick during those vacations.  But then Ray somehow convinced me to go ahead and try - the one thing that made me ok with this decision was that I'd be done with the first trimester and hopefully feeling better by Christmas.  So, all that in consideration, we decided to go for it.  Since I know (within a day or two) when I ovulate, I know when I can start taking pregnancy tests.  I like the First Response Early Response pregnancy tests because they are very sensitive and pick up even the slightest amount of hCG in your urine.  In laboratory testing, they claim to detect a positive test in pregnant women 5 days before your expected period (or 9 days post ovulation (DPO) 76% of the time.  At 10 DPO they detect a positive 96% of the time and by 11 DPO they detect a positive 99% of the time.  It's maddening to wait to take a pregnancy test.  You know you *could* be pregnant, but you don't know for sure and don't want to get your hopes up.  I told myself I wouldn't test until 10 DPO, but I was in Target at 8 DPO and I had a weak moment and bought a pack of tests.  I came home and used one immediately.  The odds of getting a positive, even if you are pregnant, at 8 DPO testing in the afternoon is NOT promising.  Typically you want to test with first morning urine because the presence of hCG is more concentrated.  But... Alas... I tested.  And there was only one line.  It was very white on the other side of the test where the second line should be.  But then I decided to walk outside and look at the test a bit closer in natural light.  If I squinted the right way, I kinda saw a crazy light line.  I immediately took a picture of the test on my phone.  Pregnancy test results should be read between 3-5 minutes after taken.  If it's older, you can just see an evaporation line and not an accurate result.  So I took the picture and then "tweaked" it by editing the color.  After editing the color, I saw a line.  Unless it's an evaporation line, if you see a line, it's a positive test.  If it is light, it just means that there is not much hCG yet.  Here's the tweaked photo of the test I took at 8 DPO:

After I tweaked the test, I was fairly certain that I was pregnant.  Ray came home a few minutes after I tweaked the photo.  I was all excited and showed him the test.  He was NOT convinced.  He could not see a line at all.  Now, did he really look super hard and squint his eyes like I did?  No.  He just said "If you're really pregnant, we will find out in a few days."  I am not like that. I need to know... and I need to know as soon as possible.  So all evening I was convinced that I was pregnant and Ray wasn't.  It was sad to me and Ray kept laughing at me because I was somewhat upset.  I'd test again in the morning and I knew by that point, I'd know with certainty if I was pregnant.

I woke up at 6am the next day to test.  Ray wasn't home because he went to a bible study that meets early in the morning.  So I tested and it was obvious at that point, at 9 DPO that there was a line.  So I texted a picture to him.  When he came home from bible study a few minutes later, he laughed and was convinced and we got excited.  Since that test was so light (which is common when you test that early), I took two other pregnancy tests just to make sure that my hCG was increasing and all looked well.

So - There's my long story about deciding to try for a third baby and getting that amazing positive test!  I want to remember the details so that I can recount them to this little baby one day.