Starting at the beginning.

Because we are in Atlanta, and away from most of the folks we love so much, we thought it best to create a blog to share this experience: the welcoming of a baby and beyond!

We decided to try and start a family this year, 2010, the beginning of a new decade. I wanted to go ahead and get a head start and decided to remove my bit of contraception, a copper IUD called Paraguard. I figured it might take us a while since we're not spring chickens. We're people in our early 30's who enjoy having fun and traveling often while also mixing in exercise and laziness, respectively. We had no idea how fertile we were, since we removed the IUD on December 18, 2009 and likely conceived Baby Rowland on December 19.

Over the Christmas and New Year's holidays we were so busy with friends and family we really didn't think anything of actually trying. By "trying" I mean tracking ovulation cycles, and noting the texture and consistency of one's cerivcal mucus. All those lovely elements of observation that come along with trying to find the 24-hour window of time required to conceive a baby. We actually didn't find a lot of time to even "have fun" in a biblical sense over the holidays - our first married together. But, as God would have it, we were given the gift we wanted to plan for anyway.

On Friday, January 5th, an ice storm came through and I had to work from home, which worked for me since I'd planned on taking a weekend trip to spend time with my best friend. My last period was December 5th, so I was pretty late. So late in fact, that the previous Monday I took a test that came up negative. This Friday, still nothing, I decided to rough the now melting icy roads to get a pregnancy test. Steve was working from home that day too. So, I came home barely able to contain myself and peed on the stick. The line was so faint! Steve came up to look at it, and said, "yep, it's definitely a line. See it?" I said, "I'm not so sure. I had a lot of coffee this morning. This a two pack, so let me drink some water and take another." The second test showed a less faint line, and in a quicker manner. At this point, Steve began to walk around the kitchen with his chest puffed out like a rooster. Excited that he was able to help me create this miracle that was slowly dawning on us, and very manly at his ability to do it so fast. We sat there and stared at one another. "Surely we couldn't have done it this fast?" we say. We hug. We kiss. We giddily begin to talk about it. I go to the store for another round of tests - just to make sure. This time, I get the ones that spell it out: "PREGNANT" or "NOT PREGNANT" - and it came up pregnant of course.

Because I had so many tests, I saved one for my best friend as proof. I still made the trip, this time without picking up my usual six pack of dark beer and half case of red wine. She was the first person to know, besides us. I couldn't wait to get back home to Steve, though, and begin to plan doctor's visits and Baby Rowland's arrival.