just in case you missed my pregnancy announcement the other day on IG, we are pregnant with baby #3! aaaahhh it still feels SO surreal to write or say those words! i announced the pregnancy on IG a few days ago but today i wanted to share the WHOLE story with you guys and fill you in on exactly what these past 4ish months have looked like! it’s definitely been a journey and so hard to keep it a secret!
SO let’s go way back. i know a lot of you guys know i did not necessarily want to try for a 3rd baby. when i was growing up and when michael and i got married, i always thought i wanted a ton of kids. when we got married i thought 4 was a great number. but then we really struggled with infertility for years and that kind of changed my mind. getting pregnant, and staying pregnant, was so hard for us that emotionally…i wasn’t sure i could try again after lyla. i was not opposed to a third baby but honestly didn’t want to go through IVF again, didn’t want to experience loss again…and felt content with two girls.
however, michael really wanted to try for a third and really wanted a son. we were fortunate enough to have gotten more than one healthy embryo in our last round of IVF. (we did our second round of IVF october 2022 – which is how we have lyla now! when we did that round of IVF, we actually got several healthy embryos. we transferred one [lyla] and then froze the others). i kept thinking michael would change his mind and come around to loving just having 2 kids. but he was certain he wanted to try for a 3rd.
a few of y’all have DM’d me asking ‘how did you decide to try for a 3rd since you didn’t really want to?’ and to be honest…a lot of the reason why i didn’t want to try for a 3rd was based out of fear and self protection. when i pictured our lives, big picture, 10+ years down the road…i wasn’t opposed to having more kids. it was more like in the short term, the idea of doing another embryo transfer, potentially facing another loss…just felt really hard. but since i knew michael really wanted a 3rd and i was not opposed to having a 3rd, i felt peace with just trying and seeing what happened.
so we prepared to do an embryo transfer in april. if you’re not familiar with the IVF process, the egg retrieval is really the most challenging part in my opinion. with an embryo transfer, you do have to start on a lot of medication leading up to the transfer, as well as shots. but it’s not too bad. we transferred an embryo in april and unfortunately it did not take. that was actually the first embryo transfer we’ve ever done where i didn’t get pregnant. (we’d done 4 embryo transfers previously – the first 3 all took and i got pregnant, but then i miscarried every time. and then lyla was the 4th transfer!). so we were both pretty devastated when this transfer in april just didn’t work. but honestly, i wasn’t surprised. during that whole ‘two week wait’, i just didn’t feel pregnant. i didn’t FEEL like it worked.
i could do a whole other blog post on this failed embryo transfer – the emotions, the questions, talking with my dr etc. but, we can save that for another day so this post isn’t 85 pages long haha.
so we geared up to try again in may. same process – start the drugs / shots / meds all over again. we transferred our little embryo on may 29th, and that’s the baby boy i’m carrying today! truly SUCH a miracle and i have chills even as i type this. i am 15 weeks pregnant today! his due date is feb 14 – valentine’s day!
some of y’all might now – my pregnancies with both shiloh and lyla were very easy! i didn’t have any morning sickness or food aversions. i felt tired but that was about my only symptom. so i thought ‘wow i must be one of the few lucky people with pregnancy’ but maaannn this little boy has thrown me for a loop haha. i felt super nauseous, sick, tired, pretty much the entire first trimester. it wasn’t just morning sickness either – it was all day. it was actually worse at night!
even though i didn’t feel great in my first trimester…i honestly felt grateful even for the nausea. i remember when we were trying for years to get pregnant and i would hear other moms complain about being nauseous and i remember thinking ‘you have no idea what i would give to feel pregnancy nausea right now.’ so even though it wasn’t necessarily fun, i knew it was a sign that a little baby was growing inside of me and i could honestly only say ‘thank you Jesus’.
shiloh has been praying for a baby brother for about 6 months now. so when we told her Jesus heard her prayers and she was going to have a baby brother, she was over the moon (and also told everyone lol). we told shiloh when i was around 10 weeks!
overall now i’m feeling pretty good! still feeling tired and battling frequent headaches but…the nausea has somewhat subsided and it’s just starting to feel more real now! i truly cannot believe we’re going to have THREE kids…and a SON!!! i randomly pause in the middle of my day all the time, put my hand on my belly and just tear up and say “thank you Lord”. i can’t believe he’s blessed us with this miracle.
so, that’s kind of a high level view of what’s been going on in my world since last april! would love to chat with y’all more about this if you have any questions or want guidance on anything! feel free to comment below or send me a DM.
thank y’all so much for reading and for following along on this journey. i know so many of y’all have been praying for us and it truly means THE WORLD to our family. love you guys!!
follow along @laurenkaysims
xo Lauren
