So you can imagine how fun it was to surprise people and tell them we were pregnant. It. Was. So. Fun. I felt like for years – we had been the bearer of bad news – and now we had wonderful, amazing news to share.
We couldn’t keep it secret long. Seth and I left two days after we found out we were pregnant to join my entire family in Ireland. My family would know something was up if we toured the Guinness Factory and I didn’t imbibe, so rather than try to keep it under wraps, we told them right away.
To put it plainly – they were so excited. I was so happy to give them this good news, but it also brought me deep, deep panic. I was so scared to see them happy because what if it went away again? What if I miscarried again? I was trying to keep my happiness in check – and it made me nervous to see them jump in the happy pool right away.  
With every person we told, I felt that panic and anxiety set in deeper and deeper.  
Anxiety. This is something that grew so much for me throughout the infertility journey, and pregnancy seemed to exacerbate it. I was so happy to be pregnant, but I was so scared to lose it, that I found it hard to just enjoy it.  
Anxiety is a common theme for people who go through this journey. I read in a Harvard Study* that, “women with infertility felt as anxious or depressed as those diagnosed with cancer, hypertension, or recovering from a heart attack.” Reading that made me feel validated. I don’t know if I totally believe it yet. I hope I never have to compare it to cancer or a heart attack, and part of me wants to argue that the major difference between these things is that infertility won’t kill you. However, infertility does kill dreams or hopes for your future. You go through a similar amount of appointments, invasive procedures, and possibly multiple surgeries. Also – it’s difficult to hide that you have cancer. People can hide infertility and unfortunately may go through it with much less support. (This ties into the second theme that comes up – isolation – but I’ll touch on that more later.) So while I don’t know if I totally believe this comparison (I never had to go through chemo) – it did let me feel like my feelings were real. In the midst of it, I would often tell myself to just not be sad because I had been blessed with so many things. What right did I have to be sad? Yes – We were blessed. But we had also gone through some legitimately hard things. We had gone through a very difficult four years, and my new-found anxiety was a battle scar of the experience.
I think being pregnant is an anxious time for anyone, but being pregnant after a miscarriage is terrifying. I was constantly reading my body – looking for signs that things were’t right. Was that a weird twinge? Was that a cramp? It was exhausting. I would try to relax, but you just can’t take a vacation from being in your own body. Fortunately (or unfortunately) – God gave me many assurances that this pregnancy was different. I got So. Sick. Puking 10-12 times a day is a pretty good assurance that you’re still pregnant. If I only puked 5 times a day – I worried that something was wrong. But don’t worry – the next day would be up to 12.  
I got on some medicine and rolled into the next trimester. Then I started showing, and I started feeling him kick. And I finally started to believe it. Actually believe it.

He was coming.

* https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/The-psychological-impact-of-infertility-and-its-treatment