As I’m writing this, I’m less than 2 months away from my due date with our first baby (a boy!). It is also right around one year since we started trying to get pregnant. While we were obviously successful in the end, it was not easy, so I wanted to share a little in case anyone else is in a similar situation.

It should come as no surprise that I was the one nagging Jared to propose (even though we’d been together 9 years at the time). So while we were engaged, I made it very clear to Jared that I wanted him to decide when we should have a baby. I said, “I’m cool getting pregnant tomorrow, I’m cool getting pregnant in 2 years. I want you to make that decision when you feel 100% ready.” His immediate response was, “After the honeymoon sounds good.”

Jared has always had a huge heart and natural ease when it comes to babies and kids. Even before we were engaged he would say, “Yeah, marriage will be cool, but I feel like we’re already married. I’m excited to start a family.” So it wasn’t a huge shock to me that he didn’t want to put off having kids.

Due to my school schedule, we got married in January 2021, but didn’t go on our honeymoon until July 2021. We still got to “be married” before we started trying to get pregnant. And as Jared often said, we already felt married since we’d been together so long and were already living together. We just wanted to make sure I’d be able to enjoy all the fun of Hawaii (surfing, fruity drinks, UTV tour, etc.) before getting pregnant.

I did all my research and found that when it comes to getting pregnant, it’s not as easy as it seems. Every single star basically has to align to actually conceive. I downloaded a fertility app (Flo), bought ovulation strips, and started taking prenatal vitamins (I started taking them a few months prior as recommended). We did everything exactly as we were supposed to in order to get pregnant, knowing it may take a couple months for it all to work. Really, there are only a few days a month you have good odds of getting pregnant and even then, there’s about a 15%-25% chance a couple who is trying to get pregnant actually will each month.

One month went by, then another, and another, and…nothing. I couldn’t understand why, when we were doing everything by the book, nothing was taking. We were both starting to get really frustrated and disheartened. Every month when I would get my period, I would just be angry at the world. Getting your period sucks enough. Getting it when you’re hoping to be pregnant is even worse.

One weekend at the start of October, we flew to Kentucky for the UF game. By the time we got home from the trip, I was three days late. I tried not to get my hopes up, but when you’ve been trying to get pregnant to no avail for 3 months, it’s hard to not get your hopes up. I took a test without mentioning anything to anyone and it was negative. I cried. I thought for sure it was going to be positive. My cycle is always right on schedule. Turns out, it just shifted from 23 to 25 days out of nowhere.

Quite a few people knew we wanted to get pregnant after our honeymoon, but we didn’t really tell people when we started really trying for a baby. I started getting so upset every month when I wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t know what wasn’t working. They say to try for a year before seeking fertility treatments, so the unknown is essentially “normal.” I was scared something was wrong and we wouldn’t find out until we’d already been trying for a year.

It was lonely sharing this experience with just Jared when he was dealing with the same darkness in his own way. We were both processing what was happening in different ways and it was hard to not get frustrated with one another since we had no one else to talk to about it. I’d put on a happy face every day and pretend like nothing was wrong because you don’t want to put that burden on anyone if you don’t have to. Why worry other people when we were already so worried ourselves? We were both in a dark place with no silver lining or hope to hold on to.

It was hard seeing people announcing their pregnancies in October, November, December because I felt like that should have been us. Had things worked out as planned and we got pregnant in July, August, or September, we would have been announcing our pregnancy then. Why did it work for them, but not for us?

We would visit with Jared’s cousin, Jessica, who had her baby Jhaniyah in July. We adored our time with her, but it made it hurt that much more that we didn’t know if our own baby would be in our future anytime soon, if at all.

About 6 months in with no hope that anything would work for us, we decided to stop actively trying to get pregnant in December and January to avoid having a due date close to my brother’s wedding (October 1st). I didn’t want to chance missing the wedding or being uncomfortably pregnant for it.

However, a few days after Christmas, on a day my fertility calendar said there was basically no chance of conception, Baby Johnson went from being a dream to becoming a reality. Of course, we didn’t know until later in January. We didn’t even know I was pregnant when we went to Indianapolis January 8-10 for the College Football National Championship to watch Georgia win (sorry for all the shots we took Baby B!). The thought that our baby was able to “experience” Georgia winning the National Championship is so cool to us!

I was supposed to start my period around January 10th and when a few days passed without it making an appearance, I tried not to think anything of it. We’d been trying to get pregnant for 6 months, what were the odds that the one month we don’t try to get pregnant is when it actually happens? I was still scarred from being 3 days late in October and not being pregnant so I told myself I would wait about a week before taking a test. I didn’t tell anyone I was late. I didn’t want to get anyone else’s, even and especially Jared’s, hopes up.

We were thinking about going out in St. Pete that weekend, so I knew I had to take a test before then just in case. So, on January 15th, being 5 days late, I took a pregnancy test before going to workout and then to Charley’s for work that day – and it was positive! I immediately started crying half out of overwhelming joy and half out of shock because the odds were not in favor for this baby!

I did a quick Pinterest search for pregnancy announcements I could do for Jared and decided to make a onesie that said “Every dog needs a baby” with my Cricut. Luckily I had some blank onesies lying around from making gifts for other expecting moms. I was crunched for time, but managed to make it before I had to leave. I made a little video while I made the onesie that you can watch here: Pregnancy Announcement for Jared.

It was killing me not to tell anyone all day! I worked with Janice at Charley’s that day and she often would ask if I was pregnant yet because she knew we wanted a baby. I decided if she asked at work that day, I wouldn’t lie to her even though I wanted Jared to be the very first person I told. For some reason, Janice didn’t bring it up at all that day! She couldn’t believe it when I told her after the fact that she could have been the first person to know!

When I got home from work, Jared was sitting on the couch watching TV and I grabbed the onesie I’d packaged up with the pregnancy test and told him I had a belated Christmas gift for him. He didn’t think anything of it and when he saw what was inside he was in pure shock! He couldn’t wrap his head around finally getting “accidentally” pregnant after so many months of trying and doing everything we could to have a baby.

My favorite thing he said was, “This is the best week of my life – Georgia won the National Championship and I find out we’re having a baby!”

We told our families the next day because we knew there was no way we’d be able to keep it a secret even though I was only 5 weeks pregnant. I made Moose a shirt that said “Big Brother September 2022” and we brought him over everyone’s houses to surprise them. You can watch the video of me making Moose’s shirt here and the videos of surprising our families and friends here, here, and here.

To me, the fact that we got pregnant sort of on a whim after trying for so long just tells me that this is the exact baby we were meant to have. That he was always our baby and this is when he was supposed to come into our lives. I’m the farthest thing from an “everything happens for a reason” person, but I do know that this baby was always meant to be our baby.

We’re so grateful for everyone who has loved and supported us thus far on this journey and we are so eager to meet Baby B in less than 2 short months!