artist & athlete | a glimpse into real life, Heidi style

My new journey is off to a pretty solid start. I joined the Community Weight Race, which is a competition in our community to lose weight and get healthier. I was part of a team with new mamas, so we have a lot of the same struggles. I’m so lucky to have connected with these women, because they were so supportive and encouraging, even when I was beating myself up.

The first month was awful. January is so hard- it was hard to get outside, and we didn’t know what was going on with Teddy yet, so he was still tiny and throwing up, and it was the one year anniversary of my mom’s death. I ate an entire apple pie that day. Sometimes I think that it’s great that I’ve chosen to self-medicate with food, rather than hard drugs, but it doesn’t always feel great. I gained a few pounds that month.

Thank God for those teammates- they encouraged me and let me know that I was doing a great job despite these awful circumstances. I was able to restart in February, and tried my hardest to get to the gym and make good food choices.

As most of you know, I already lost 100 pounds once. I spent 4 years in my late teens and early twenties kicking my own ass and getting to a healthy place. After I lost all that weight, I got into running, and the rest is history (or easily findable on this blog😜).

I am used to restricting my food and working out hard. I can’t do that now, at least not in the same way. I’m still finding the balance of eating the right foods in the right calories to lose weight, but enough that my body still keeps making milk for Teddy. It’s also tricky as I’m mostly avoiding cow milk dairy, soy, oats, and rice- I had to cut them out of my diet completely as an experiment to see how it affected Teddy. It eliminated some of my healthy food go-tos- like Greek yogurt and oatmeal.

Finding balance is the same challenge with working out, with the additional difficulty that everything hurts! I got a second gym membership up in Weston so I can get to the gym a little easier on the days we’re staying at my mom’s house, which is now mine. It was too hard for me to get Teddy all packed up and drive down to Point to get to my regular gym, Adventure 212. I love that gym, and it has a great daycare, so it’s an awesome choice when we’re at home. The gym up here is nice, but has no daycare- so I often end up going at 9 or 10 o’clock after Teddy is settled into bed. I know that’s dedication, and I’m proud. I still run, but not as far and not nearly as fast. I give myself grace when I start comparing my previous running performance by picturing my former self running with a 50 lb weight in each hand. That probably would have slowed me down, and I’m proud that I’m still getting out there.

I miss the days when I could knock out five easy miles in 45 minutes with no problem, but I’ll get back to it.

There is some encouraging news- we did our final weigh in for the community weight race yesterday, and I lost 14 pounds since we started in the second week of January. It’s a total of 16 pounds since I reset myself after the apple pie incident. It wasn’t even a good apple pie. What was I thinking?!

Losing weight the first time was difficult, so I’m nervous because I know how much of a challenge it will be- and this time, I’m a mom, and own two homes, and have a lot of other things on my plate. I’m thankful that I have been through this process before, so I know what to expect and I have practice with self control.

I’m proud of a great first quarter and I’ll be keeping on keeping on!

As always, thanks for reading and following my adventures.

2019 weight lost: 16 pounds

A lot has happened.

We successfully got pregnant via IUI. Thank you, UW!

We traveled.

We bought a big new house and started our renovation.

My beloved mama died suddenly, and I was tasked with handling her estate.

We traveled some more.

I was re-elected to the city council.

I decided to meet with a psychologist and a psychiatrist and made some big changes for my mental health.

I defended my thesis and graduated with my Master’s Degree in communication.

Our sweet little Teddy was born, and I was very sick for months. Then he was sick, and it took months for us to get a diagnosis. I was in a very dark place, both physically and emotionally, and I struggled to make it out.

This blog has always been a place where I shared the challenges and joys in my life, but I was unable to write through most of these things. I’m looking forward to getting back to it and telling some of these stories.

I am going to start by going back to my roots and sharing the adventure that is getting back to running. Through the course of the years of hormonal fertility treatments, pregnancy, and medication for postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety, I’m running races now almost 100 pounds heavier than when I ran my first marathon.

I have faith that as I train for my upcoming races and find a new balance between my family, my business, and my health, really wonderful things will happen.

Thanks for sticking with me through my writing hiatus, and I’m excited that you’re here for the new updates.

A new woman has emerged- a mama, a grieving daughter, and one tough cookie. I can’t promise this process will be glamorous, but you know that I’ll be real with you, as always. 😘

I have so many thoughts, emotions, and physical symptoms that defy description after yesterday’s passage of SB 76 through the assembly. I cannot figure out another way to process them, so I’m writing about it. Many of you are not involved in politics (I understand why), you don’t think this will personally affect you (I understand the detachment), or you just don’t have the time to worry and work on these types of issues (I probably don’t, either). However, I feel like I owe it to my community to explain what happened in real, understandable language, and share why I’m so out-of-sorts.

Spoiler alert: I’m understandably dissatisfied with the contents of the bill, I’m experienced in this issue, and the way that the Republican leadership changed the process of bill approval to cut out the involvement of citizens leaves me feeling worthless.

A little background:

I’ve been involved with groundwater issues for about five years. I was drafted into Trout Unlimited because of my artistic ability, but I was quickly educated on trout streams and their connection with groundwater. It was only a short hop, skip, and jump away to discover the unique groundwater challenges that we have here, living in the Central Sands of Wisconsin.

(Disclaimer: This is obviously my opinion, and I’m not representing any of the organizations that I’ve worked with on this issue)

The Central Sands area encompasses portions of Portage, Marathon, Wood, Waupaca, Waushara, Marquette, and Adams counties- including the Stevens Point area.

This area is defined by a sand and gravel aquifer that was left when glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age. This unique feature leads to regionalized groundwater challenges.

One of my largest concerns is the impact of pumping water through high capacity wells and the large number of wells that have been installed in this area. Over pumping of groundwater can lead to the draw down of surface water bodies- like lakes, rivers, and streams- among other environmental concerns. In this case, streams can run dry and lakes can lose depth or dry up completely.

Dry stream beds and shallow lakes cause challenges for the aquatic ecosystem and recreation, among others. Shallower water becomes warmer and stresses wild fish populations. Water can become too shallow to navigate in a kayak or fishing boat, limiting public access.

These types of issues spurred my initial involvement with politics, and groundwater is by far the area where I am the most politically active and involved. My election to the city council here was spurred by my interest that was initially started in groundwater management and protection through political means. It is fair and accurate to say that my interest and political involvement with groundwater has changed the course of my life.

With that being said, the process that SB 76 went through to be passed is criminal.

(I deleted the word criminal, and tried to find a different word to use… but I honestly can’t think of one. Shameful? Delete. Wrong? Delete. Dishonest? Obviously.)

Here is where you can find information and the full text of the bill: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2017/proposals/reg/sen/bill/sb76 …

…but if you want me to give you a shorter recap, here it is. This bill deals with permitting for high capacity wells. A high capacity well is one (or a system) that is capable of pumping 70 or more gallons per minute. If you live in farming country, you often see these types of wells at the center point of the large irrigation systems in farm fields. The giant sprinklers rotate around the well.

Key points? This bill provides:

• No additional permit review is required for the owner of a high capacity well to repair or maintain a high capacity well, to construct a new replacement high capacity well within a 75 foot radius, to reconstruct a high capacity well at its same location and depth, -or- to transfer an existing high capacity well permit with the land upon which it is located.
• Direction for the creation of a new study area in the Central Sands, hoping for more information in the future.

What does that mean? SB 76 grants permits in perpetuity, forever. No other permits are like this- we need to renew our driver’s licenses, and work permits… it just makes sense to have a periodic review. They don’t give you your drivers’ license on your sixteenth birthday for perpetuity. They ask you to renew your license and require you to take a follow up vision test.

What will happen in ten or twenty years, when we have more hydrologic information and science that supports a different groundwater management plan? We won’t have an option to ask water users to change their current water use- at least not one that is efficient. We’ll have to go through this whole bill creation process again.

My friend, Henry, has a great analogy that he used while testifying against a version of this bill last year. I can’t remember his exact quote, but it essentially draws a connection between locking ourselves into permits granted with our current scientific knowledge-  and opting to have surgery with the medical techniques used a couple decades ago. Why would you choose to make important current decisions with old science? That is the predicament we will be forced into in the future, with SB 76.

Since I’ve been teaching public speaking, I have well-rounded arguments at the forefront of my mind. In general, I usually try to understand all the counter-arguments, and fully wrap my head around an issue before I make a decision on it. In fact, it is part of what makes me agonize over my job as an alderwoman- I don’t just vote on the premise of something. I research and learn and ask lots of questions. In the sense of fairness, I asked a lot of questions about the other side. Here’s what I understand, so far.

I understand that farmers want certainty that if their well fails, they will be able to repair or replace it. It has been implied that farmers are tied up in this regulatory process, and that they have lost crops in times of drought- if their well(s) failed, they couldn’t replace their well without DNR approval, and they couldn’t wait for the process to provide the needed irrigation. However, the testimony at the March 15th hearing for this bill showed that agriculture and industry are able to get their well permits approved in a timely manner when they need to repair, replace, or transfer their well.

No one is trying to take away their wells.

We want to make sure that there will be enough water for everyone to use, now and in the future.

What happens when there is the inevitable problem with groundwater caused by a high capacity well (or 20)? Individual landowners can’t always afford to go to court, and if the problem is urgent… well, we all know that both government and law don’t move quickly. My heart breaks for all of the future people that will be impacted by this bill. One of the frustrating aspects of this bill, as I stated in my last testimony at the Capitol, is that it seems that some legislators are treating this as a future problem, instead of a current one. There are already problems with groundwater that are manifesting in surface water, so why would we pass a bill that does anything but try and solve the issue?

I feel like I own high capacity wells. As an alderwoman, our city manages wells to provide drinking water for our residents. Agriculture has the highest number of high capacity wells, but it isn’t the only use– we also have wells in Wisconsin for industrial and municipal use. With this being said, I understand the delicate balance of knowing when to pump and how much we can pump without adversely affecting our neighbors. Technology has really improved the amount of information available to us about when to pump and how much to use, and it makes efficient operation of wells, while quite sophisticated, definitely possible. If our municipal pump is on the outskirts of the city, and borders rural areas with residential wells, we need to make sure that we don’t adversely impact the other wells. We also protect our own wells, with wellhead protection areas. I’m not sticking my fingers in my ears and humming when I talk with pro-high capacity well folks. In fact, I think they’re important and necessary for the type of agriculture that is being enacted on here (whether or not large farms are the answer to our food problems is a different issue). However, we need a larger management plan, and we need to be able to change the limits on permits if when we discover the extent of their detrimental impact to the watershed.

Of course, I’ve met with my legislators. Many times. Via email. At the Capitol. On the phone. Over lunch or coffee. If you’ve followed me on social media, you’ve seen my selfies with these legislators all over the place.

In fact, I’ve taken my current representative and our previous senator out to our local Tomorrow River, loaned them a spare pair of my waders, and hopped into the cold, clear trout stream. I explained exactly why this water means so much to me and why we work so tirelessly to protect it. We have a new senator now, and even though we disagree ideologically on almost everything, I think we have a good working relationship. His small amendment to the bill (the only amendment that passed) was introduced on the senate floor, and is almost like a super tiny step in the right direction- it expanded the area of future study. However, it’s not expanded to a large enough area- if we are all trying to really understand the craziness of our groundwater here. It is important to note that there is no identified funding for this study within this bill, so it could very well happen that the study isn’t funded and nothing happens. It doesn’t even feel like a real attempt at helping us- it feels like a multi-year stall tactic… and this, coming from your resident curly, science-loving friend, who tries to see the best in every situation. If the bill authors wanted to really help, they would include a fully funded, region-wide study.

All of this aside, my concern about the content of the bill, is completely overshadowed by the process that the legislature took to pass it.

The senate had their committee meeting on labor and regulatory reform on March 15th. Why did they choose to use the labor and regulatory reform committee, instead of the natural resources committee? Your guess is as good as mine. That’s the committee that I’ve spoken to in previous iterations of this bill. It was a long meeting with a nine hour public hearing- people from all over the state came to express their concern on both sides of the issue. It is obvious that groundwater is of high interest to many citizens.

I was looking forward to hearing the senators discuss and debate this topic, but the committee instead chose to cast their votes via paper ballot. No discussion. No amendments. I was disheartened.

It passed the Senate committee, and went to the full Senate. I watched the Senate floor on Wisconsin Eye and heard legislators discuss all the points of this bill. It was clear that many people had contacted their senators and expressed concern or support for the bill. Several senators referred to the long public hearing, and were amazed at the amount of public involvement in this legislative process. Of course, it passed the full Senate, along party lines.

The next step would typically include going to the assembly committee on agriculture. They should be the one to hold a hearing, and discuss this bill publicly. The assembly should be voting on SB 76’s partner bill, AB 105, but Assembly Speaker Vos decided to skip the last step in the committee process and have the full assembly vote on SB 76. Disheartened doesn’t even begin to explain how this makes me feel. Why wouldn’t the Assembly want to have an executive committee discussion about this bill when the public has clearly demonstrated their interest in the contents of the legislation? Whether you agree with the bill or not, I truly believe that we deserved a chance to talk to the assembly committee face-to-face and our elected representatives deserved a chance to discuss the merits and create amendments, if necessary.

I don’t get paid to do this work. I didn’t go to school to study political science or policy. I just care about it. I’ve done research. I’ve talked to people who know more than I do, and I try to keep up.

Just like I work for my constituents in the city, these legislators work for me. To have the Republican leadership slap citizens in the face like this flies in the face of everything I believe as an active, fairness-striving, people-loving woman. It’s wrong, it feels personal, and no one seems to know about it. Now you do, and my stress-induced stomachache is easing a little. Thank you so much for sticking with me through this short novel.

You can see how it was literally impossible for me to work on my grad school research, even though the final research papers are due next week. I was over the moon excited on Monday about receiving the results of my first study indicating attitude change using visual communication about this very subject (groundwater use in the Central Sands). It’s hard for me to feel like this work matters anymore. Why bother trying to change attitudes and educate the public when our elected officials don’t listen to our concerns? Please tell me this line of research and all my work in grad school isn’t for naught.

So what is the message here? What are Senate and Assembly Republicans trying to tell me?

I hear it, loud and clear.

I don’t matter. My friends don’t matter. Our scientists don’t matter.

The landowners with real concerns? They don’t matter. Their financial problems as their property values have gone down? Not the problem of their elected officials.

All the time that I spent learning, studying, and researching groundwater? Unimportant. It’s better to run your mouth about something you don’t know about than to waste time learning and try to make an informed argument. You don’t want to hear from me, anyway.

Every day that I took time off work and drove down to Madison to meet with legislators? It doesn’t matter. Those lost wages? Unimportant.

The meetings with other concerned citizens? A waste of time. Our sign on letters of concern with hundreds of land owners? Probably went straight to your recycle bin.

All of the phone calls and emails that I made? Not even noted. Not even a blip on your radar. Your staff is kind, but they probably didn’t even pass on the message. That’s easier for me to swallow than to think that you Literally. Don’t. Care.

And you know what? I’m PISSED about it.

Brace yourself, kids, as I’m about to tell you what my secret life has been like since 2014.

I want to have an Oberstadt baby.

I desperately want to have a curly, dimpled, brown-eyed, wildly talented Oberstadt baby.

Brian and I started talking about it seriously in 2014, when my endocrinologist gave me the thumbs up to go ahead and try. We always knew that we wanted kids, but things are complicated without a thyroid. I usually take two different thyroid hormones, and one of them is not the best to take during pregnancy.

It’s a shock to my body to stop taking one and only rely on the remaining hormone, plus it takes a while for my hormones to level off, and of course, I feel like shit when I’m not taking both. We decided to wait until after the crazy holidays, and I would stop taking the second hormone on the day after Christmas. We celebrated that Christmas with a sweet little secret, thinking it would be our last Christmas “alone,” and I imagined what our Christmas card photo would look like the following year: when I had a baby bump.

It took two months for my hormone levels to become “safe” to try and conceive, so we gave it a go in February. Of course, I wasn’t feeling the best, but I didn’t tell many people. I am always paranoid that if I tell people when I’m not feeling well, my business will suffer. I’ve written about that first year, 2015, and the crazy thyroid-related problems that I had, but we tried solidly to make our little Oberstadt baby for all of 2015.

It has been a nightmare of a rollercoaster.

Every month, I’d track my ovulation with these little strips, and pray like crazy, and every month, I’d wait anxiously to see if I was pregnant. The “Two Week Wait,” as well known in infertility circles, is the two weeks of hell between when you ovulate and when you find out you’re pregnant… or not. Every little twinge in my tummy or weight gain or bloating or change in my body caused me to wonder… is something happening inside me? Will this finally be the month? Every month, I’ve come up empty. Only one little stripe on the pregnancy test. I would stare at those little strips and think maybe I saw a faint little line, or maybe it was all in my mind. Was it there, or was I imagining it? I started buying ovulation kits and pregnancy tests in bulk, and I spent my free time reading forums filled with posts from other women clinging to hope that they may be able to get pregnant.

Mother’s Day came and went, and I was a little sad.

Father’s Day came and went, and I was a little more sad.

I didn’t register for a fall marathon. I thought, “If I’m pregnant, I won’t want to be running such a tough distance. I better not register.”

I thought I was pregnant in August. I probably was. Without giving you all a serious case of TMI, I’ll just say that my breasts were huge, my sense of smell was incredibly perceptive, and I cried non-stop. All I know for sure is that when my period came that month, it was horrendous.

My current fertility specialist thinks that I miscarried very early, and that it might have been caused by the large amounts of uterine polyps that I’d been growing. Needless to say, my uterus wasn’t exactly welcoming to a fertilized egg… but I didn’t know that at the time.

Our birthdays came and went, and I drank a lot of wine. I thought for sure that I’d be pregnant by now, but I kept hoping. I was sure that this would be our last September without a baby. I turned 30, and that’s a pretty serious thing for a woman trying to get pregnant. 30… the year when everything gets difficult.

I regretted not signing up for a marathon. I watched all my friends do races and sat here, with an empty womb, thirty pounds heavier than I’d been when I started the year.

I talked to my endocrinologist, and went back on both thyroid medications. We decided to just stop one of them when we discovered that I was pregnant, since I was feeling so miserable.

I had testing done at the UW in November, where they found the polyps. The test itself was terribly painful and I laid there, awake, with hot tears streaming down my cheeks and dripping into my ears. They showed me all the many growths, and explained that they really shouldn’t be there. They scheduled me for polypectomy surgery in December, and it went well. I asked my surgeon to place a “Welcome!” mat in there- I don’t know if he did. I tried to be brave and joke around with stuff like that, and I was hopeful that this would make things finally work for us. I was pretty lucky that our insurance covered the surgery, but I had to fight to get them to do it. I was pre-approved, then they said they wouldn’t cover it, and then I asked them a lot of questions and wondered why I even bothered going through the whole pre-approval process, just to discover that it didn’t matter…? Eventually, they paid for it, and I was relieved.

In December, Brian sponsored a Compassion child for me, through Compassion International. We send a little money each month to help our little 5 year old friend, Fernando, have access to school in Mexico, learn that God loves him, and be healthy. We send him letters and pictures, and he sends us drawings and notes through a translator. Every time I receive a drawing from him, I cry. I wish I had my own little kiddo.

We took our Christmas card photo: no baby bump.

In January, we discussed treatment options. Apparently, the polyps could have contributed to our difficulty getting/staying pregnant, but they’re not sure. At the UW, they skip all oral fertility meds unless they’re paired with in vitro fertilisation (IVF). It was a very expensive option for us- almost $1,000 a month. We didn’t have an extra $1,000 laying around. 😦 I also worried about the logistics of the treatment- Brian and I would have to make the two hour trek to the UW every month at least once, and I’d have to go down again a second time each month. So much driving, and so much stress.

I asked around up here for a local OB/GYN who specializes in fertility to see if I could try something different. I did a bunch of research and decided that I wanted to see if I could find someone who would work with me on just oral medications, without IVF. I did, and I started hormone therapy in March.

Hormones are not something to be messed with. Basically, this medication made my body think that I wasn’t producing enough estrogen, in an effort to get my body to create even more, and hyperstimulate my ovaries. Simultaneously, I had all the symptoms of menopause- the night sweats were the worst. I’d wake up in the night and have to change my clothes, so I was always a little sleep deprived. I wondered if this was some kind of preparation for the pregnancy hormones and broken up sleep that I’d be lucky to have when I made my own little bundle. I had terrible mood swings (buy Brian a beer the next time you see him, he deserves it!). I’m so thankful that a friend of mine has a wife who took the same medication, so he warned me that the side effects are often the same as the symptoms of pregnancy, so at least I knew in part of my brain that everything I was feeling was from the medication, and I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

The first month, I started on a very low dose. I didn’t get pregnant. They didn’t tell me that the medication changes everything about your cycle, so I was five days late, and swore I was pregnant. I had to go see my doctor and have him feel up my ovaries to make sure they were okay.

The second month, they increased my dose. I didn’t get pregnant. I had to go see my doctor and have him feel up my ovaries to make sure they were okay.

The third month, they doubled my dose over the first month. I didn’t get pregnant. I had to go see my doctor and have him feel up my ovaries to make sure they were okay.

The fourth month, they increased my dose again. The side effects were awful. I alternated crying and screaming then switched back to crying. I felt broken. I felt like less of a woman. I wondered what I did in the past to make this happen. I snapped at Brian, and felt bad about doing it. I wondered if he’d be better off with another woman who could give him a child. I was convinced that I was too fat to get pregnant. Any time that I was having fun, I wondered if I was having too much fun and wasn’t taking our fertility attempts seriously enough. I tore myself to shreds in my heart and in my mind. The pressure of treatment and the effect it was having on me took all the romance out of the conception process, and made the whole thing feel like a calculated routine, instead of something special.

I was elected for my second go-around as an alderwoman. Constituents would tell me, “Oh, you must not have kids…” They wanted me to know that not many people on city council have little kids, and that’s for a reason. They told me I wouldn’t have time to be in local politics when I had kids, then they’d look at me like I had some crystal ball and I was supposed to tell them that I was only planning on finishing this second term, or that I was already pregnant and I’d be resigning in a few months. I never knew what to say to that. My childlessness has nothing to do with with my ability to help run the city, and if I’m lucky enough to have children, I’ll still be just as capable- maybe even more so.

People make well-meaning comments to us all the time. People ask me when I’m going to settle down and have kids… as if my general enthusiasm for life is what’s keeping me from getting pregnant. They tell me that I won’t be able to keep up all my work and my hobbies once I have kids. I wish I could tell them all that I’d give it all up to have the chance to make my own Oberstadt baby. One person told me that I was selfish to spend my life as a career woman and not have children. That one has stuck with me in my heart, like a little parasite. They ask if we’ve considered adoption, which I have thought about a little, but it mostly makes me feel like I’m giving up on trying for our own. On Father’s Day, a family member with three kids asked Brian when he was going to join their club. I sat next to Brian and held back tears. We wanted to join their club quite a while ago, buddy. I’ve had people tell me that I travel too much to be pregnant, and that I’m not home enough to be impregnated. My grampie told me to stop running because my uterus would fall out (something that people in his generation used to actually think!).

I started telling people close to me that I was in fertility treatment a couple months ago, because I was worried that I’d have a crazy emotional breakdown in front of them and they wouldn’t know what was going on. As a result, less people are telling me that my clock is ticking, because they know that I am oh-so aware. My close friends and family know what’s going on, and they’re really sweet about it. As I keep struggling through this, month after month, people are trying to be supportive- but I often feel alone. I wonder if I have friends out there who feel the same way I do. I wanted them to know that they’re not the only ones- I want to help support them. Life is just too short to be sad, or timid, or angry, or resentful.

Thus, I’m baring my soul to all of you.

And now, I’m telling you all that I’m taking a break from treatment. I’ll re-enter it in a few months, once my body has gotten back to normal for a while. I’m choosing to go back to spreading joy and making beautiful things. I want to be positive again, I want to have hope for the future. I’m working on relaxing more and learning new techniques for stress management. I signed up for a race. I lost a little weight. I’m playing outside, paddleboarding and fishing, hanging out with Mr. Mustache, and enjoying my life, even though it’s different than what I’d imagined.

I think it’s going to happen for me, I really do. I have faith that something beautiful will come out of all of this. I don’t want you all to tiptoe around me or around the subject- I’ve come to terms with this situation, and I’m just trying to enjoy the life that I’ve been given, whatever it entails.

I was waiting and waiting to write this blog post- I thought the ending of it would result in some adorable pregnancy announcement where I could announce to the world that it was all worth it. I wanted to have a good way to tell everyone about what is going on, and have a positive ending. I worry that by telling our story as it stands now, people will be afraid to share their joys of pregnancy and babies and kids with me, because they don’t want to hurt my feelings. I don’t want that- I want people to share their excitement! Someday, I’ll be sharing my good news, and I’ll want everyone to be over the moon excited for us, too.

Brian has been absolutely amazing throughout this whole process. If you see him around, please give him a good handshake- I wouldn’t be able to get through this without him.

So… this is what infertility feels like. I hope that the next time I write about this journey, I’m closing out the post with a baby bump picture.