It’s now time for us to end our infertility journey and move on to this new one that will add another member to the Stone family. This new journey includes getting rid of the boxes of girl clothes and figuring out where to put all of that important stuff I’ve stashed in the baby room’s closet, formerly known as our guest bedroom. Like most journeys, we’ve had a few bumps in the road and luckily, our bumps have been minor so far.

We recently found out we’re having a boy. Finally, more testosterone to balance out all of the female hormones in our house! A sense of relief has come over Barry knowing he’ll have another dude to share the “boy smell” burden with in the family now. We have a male dog, but he doesn’t really count since he’s neutered. Of course, Maya originally preferred to have a little sister to dress up the moment it came out of the womb, but she is coming around to having a little brother. At 24 weeks, most of my fear has subsided, with a few panic moments here and there.

Some aspects of my pregnancy are similar to what I experienced with Maya – the insatiable cravings for watermelon and queso dip, nighttime back pain and the exhaustive quest to find the perfect nursing bra. But some things aren’t, like how

A few weeks after the failed IVF attempt, it was time to prepare for round two. After we got Nancy home from rehab, we agreed we needed a family vacation before we tried again. We hadn’t been to Florida in a few years so we decided it was time to head south and visit family and friends. The vacation also included a full day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom, a day at Sea World and a trip to the beach. We were able to put our infertility struggles behind us and relish in the present moment, which is what we needed to do for ourselves and Maya. It’s a good thing we did or we would have missed out on some great memories, like watching Maya give Peter Pan directions to her house.

After a week of fun, it was time to head home to Denver. We would be home in time for Memorial Day and I was looking forward to the long weekend. As the plane took off, I started to feel a little queasy. I didn’t think much of it because I hadn’t flown in a while and thought I was just out of practice. After we got home, I still couldn’t shake the feeling and began to think I had caught a stomach bug. After all, we just spent a week using public restrooms, touching theme park handlebars and exposing ourselves to airplane germs. A stomach bug makes sense, right?

On Memorial Day, I still felt nauseous and a crazy thought came to me. Maybe I was pregnant. Of course, my next thought was, there’s no way I could be pregnant.