We had a wonderful 4th of July! So many things to celebrate. Freedom, friends, family and…

(photo courtesy of Missy Russell, Ayisha King’s backwards spelling abilities, and a whole lot of sparklers! Contact me if you are interested in seeing more of Missy’s photography skills!)

Yes, that’s right! WE’RE PREGNANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After years of praying, it’s finally happening! We are giddy giddy giddy.

Due Date: Approximately 3/2/2016

How Many: We don’t know. We have our first ultrasound next week so that will reveal if it’s one or more

HCG Levels: 426 at my first draw 10 days after transfer, 2014 at my second draw 6 days later.

I am 6 weeks pregnant today! Our little one is as big as a sweat pea–still itty bitty. Traditionally, most people do not announce their pregnancy until after they are passed the first trimester. So why are we announcing it now?

• We’re bursting with excitement!!! We originally weren’t going to tell anyone until after the ultrasound (which is happening next week…then we’ll know if it’s Baby Knoell or Babies Knoell!) just to make sure it wasn’t a chemical pregnancy where I was only pregnant long enough for it to show in my bloodstream. But we couldn’t wait! We ended up telling our immediate family that night. Even then, Jason still wanted to

It’s just so very exciting!

• A lot of you have expressed your eagerness to know the news. After all you’ve done for us, we decided not to hold out on you any longer.
• We still want to keep this blog real. Yes, there is a much higher chance of a miscarriage during the first trimester, which is why people usually wait to share their news. But miscarriage is a huge part of infertility and it is treated as such a taboo subject! I know several wonderfully strong women who have had miscarriages and it was such a devastating and lonely time for them. If something were to happen and we lost this baby, we would be absolutely heartbroken–but we wouldn’t want to not acknowledge our baby and not talk about that part of our life.
• Going along with the above, for support! Whatever happens with this pregnancy, we crave your support. We’ve been so spoiled with all the love and prayers and we don’t want those to stop yet! 😉 And again, if something were to happen…we would want to use our hardship to help those who are going through the same thing.

So what does that mean about this little blog? We’re going to keep it going! Our infertility journey is not over yet. We need to get Baby Knoell 1 here and in our arms, and then down the road when we’re ready for Baby Knoell 2, 3, 4, etc. we’ll have more to share.

But as far as sharing goes, we are unlikely to “share” very much on Facebook and other social media. For us personally, we’ve decided we would rather have our updates accessed by those who consciously want to see it versus having it show up on a news feed. Having been on the other side of this, we know how painful it can be to constantly see babies on Facebook. Not that there’s anything wrong with posting that kind of stuff, but for us we’d just like to keep this separate in order to be sensitive to our infertile freinds. So in other words, if you want to keep hearing more about our little baby(ies?), then hit that subscribe button!

Thank you thank you thank you for all the congratulations! We love you guys!