Life After Infertility | Conceiving Baby #2

The cat is finally out of the bag! We are expecting baby Smith #2 in mid November. If you’d like our full infertility backstory, I’ll link it here. In short, we stopped all preventive measures 4 years before we finally conceived our first child. We started questioning our OBGYN once two unsuccessful years passed by. By year three we started our infertility workup and discovered Brent had exceptionally low motility. My workup came back entirely normal. After months of fertility medications and two failed rounds of IUI, then several months of stepping away from “trying” so that we could pursue personal goals and regain mental stability, we finally got pregnant naturally a month after I had an HSG test in May 2017. Adelaide was born in February 2018.

Conceiving Baby #2

We have always known since before conceiving Adelaide that if we were to have 1 child, we would prefer 2. We are well aware, though, after our difficult journey conceiving that frankly our “preferences” don’t really matter in the grand scheme, but it’s a matter of God’s will. Growing up with a sibling was an experience I wanted our child to have. I myself have an older and younger brother and Brent has an older brother, but we would have gladly accepted Adelaide being our only child because she truly is so exceptionally special to us and I feel so blessed to be her mom. Now on to how baby #2 came to be. I exclusively breastfed Addy her first 6 months (meaning, no water or solids, just breast milk) then gradually introduced solids. My postpartum “period” did not return until Addy was 10 months old (November 2018). I use the term “period” loosely because they were in no way comparable to my pre-baby periods. They were exceptionally lighter and less painful. When you spend 4+ years so in tune with your body while trying to conceive, you pick up on what your “normal” is in every sense. My second “period” did not come until January 1, 2019. During these two irregular cycles I did track for ovulation using OPKs, but my luteal phases (the post-ovulation phase before a period starts) were very short meaning conception wouldn’t have been possible and possibly an egg wasn’t released at all during the LH surge detected on the OPKs. After the January period, my cycle was longer than 60 days. I clearly gave up on using OPKs around day 20 (who seriously wants to test for 40 days straight?!). Being super in tune with my body, I started feeling true ovulation coming on around cycle day 64 and decided to do 1 random OPK- blazing positive! We had just celebrated Addy’s 1st birthday a week or two prior and I thought surely this was a long shot. No one just conceives on possibly the first postpartum egg release. Surely not. So I carried on over the next week per usual. 8 days past ovulation came around and I thought “why not just take a test and maybe get the disappointment over with. So I did. I looked at the test after 5 minutes and wasn’t surprised by the result- no second line. I sat the test back on the bathroom counter and continued momming. A few hours had past and I was picking up the bathroom and as I was about to toss the test, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Surely it wasn’t a faint line? If you’re new to our fertility story, we found out I was pregnant with Addy at my routine obgyn appointment, not an at home test so I’d never experienced a positive at home test. Each day there after, I’d test a few times waiting to see if the line would get darker. And it did each day! I hadn’t told Brent at this point because I wanted a concrete positive result. By day 10 I decided to purchase a Clear Blue test. POSITIVE! At this point I wasn’t sure how or when I would tell Brent.

8 DPO

10 DPO

I finally decided to tell Brent that I was pregnant at 12 DPO! I think he was more surprised this time around than he was with Addy! I didn’t do it in some spectacular way but gathered on our bed with our sweet girl. I told Brent that Addy had picked him up something at Target, which in fact is where the test was from LOL.

I can honestly say this pregnancy and experience has been very different than the experience with Addy. There has been far less stress and anxiety and I think that I’ve been able to remain so positive and hopeful just knowing no matter what happened, I have a perfectly healthy baby girl who has always been enough for my longing heart. And truth be told, my immediate reaction the first months of pregnancy were struggling with the thought of “did I make the right decision? Am I taking away from Addy’s toddler experience?” , but I’ve countlessly had to remind myself that God chose this timing. He knew my children would be 21 months apart and I’m not being given a scenario that both her and I can’t handle.

9 weeks 4 days

Infertility will always be this looming cloud that never fully clears, but I’m so grateful for the clarity and perspective that having a child has given me. I would never want Addy growing up thinking her and her alone wasn’t sufficient, but I’m so grateful to be adding to her childhood experience by giving her a sibling.