There's a back story to this picture...but before I go into that, let me explain the fact that we posted twice in 2012, and that this is the first post for 2013. Life has gone on. We have gotten so used to normal life that we take all of this for granted. Ingratitude is not what I am talking about; its worry free life, full of activities, the trivial debates of marriage, teaching the boys to ride bikes, poop, ski, play baseball, poop, fish, poop, and the like. We don't think about the gloomy bridge we might have to cross, its a waste of energy and time. As we have in the past, we cross them when we get to them, and look around the rest of the time. Prepare?? You can't prepare for most of the challenges life throws at you because you never think you will have to go through what you end up going through. So enjoy where you are, and let everyone out there think your life is mediocre so you can enjoy how great it is with the ones you love.
My last post was a bit of a downer. You have to understand that for about the first year or two we have been figuring out what to get worked up about. It's different for every patient. We really haven't had complications since the surgery; a lot of things we could have been stressed or worried about have come and gone. She had a drop in lung function about 6 months post that was an indicator of chronic rejection. Since then however, Julie has been stable, which is contrary to the very definition of chronic rejection. In reality, nothing changed anecdotally when it came to how she felt. A few test results changed, but that's it. We decided to just be positive and move on. One of the reason's we can let life go on is Julie's incessant attention to her vitals. To this day she takes them morning and night with every attention to changes documented for clinic visits about once every month or two. This attention to detail is a big contributor to her success fighting CF before the transplant, and her health now. It bothers her when we are out of town and she isn't able to check her blood pressure. I am so grateful for her compliance with her drugs and attention to details, because if it were me, I'd get complacent.
The back story to the above picture, is it has been on Julie's mind since she was a little girl; to not only be a mother, but to have a baby. As she grew into her 20's and became sicker than she ever imagined but was always taught to expect, this dream of having a baby waned. In 2008 we were given the Ultimate gift by my sister Aly carrying our baby boys for 7 months before they were born prematurely. To add insult to injury for her (pun intended) Aly offered to pump for us for 6 months. To be clear...JULIE's egg, MY sperm to form an embryo to be placed in vitro into a surrogate. I can't tell you how many people out there haven't understood that concept. Utah can be a weird place, but definitely not that weird.
The first week after transplant, Julie asked Dr. Cahill when she thought she could have a baby. Without even skipping a beat Dr. Cahill said "Don't ask me that again for a year." Our one year mark came and went and Julie began to grow inpatient. We scheduled an appointment with the transplant clinic to specifically talk to them about this. Julie was hoping to talk to Dr. Cahill since she had spoken to her originally about her desires to have a child. I was grateful for what came to follow; Dr. Raman, her other physician spoke to us. It was a very candid, and blunt conversation. He spoke to us about our boys and about what a decision like this could result in, suggesting surrogacy or adoption instead. Julie left in tears of discouragement. There were a lot of "come to Jesus" talks between Julie and I and Julie and her physicians. This decision was not blind ignorance of the truth on Julie's or my part. She took the risk very seriously and considered adoption, surrogacy, or not having a child at all. I was in a position of stupor. I wasn't against having another child, but I had come so close to losing Julie before, that my normal optimism was stifled. Julie was on line reading journals and studies, and blogs (don't believe what you read in blogs;) and Mayo clinic and pub med; the list goes on and on. She was looking for any information she could find. She didn't want to be cavalier with what she has been afforded and what she felt deep down we were about to do.

The next month when it came time for her to start her cycle, she was delayed. At first she wrote it off to a late ovulation cycle. You sort of get used to not getting pregnant when you try for months and sometimes years. I was out of town again for an entire week. She was supposed to start over the weekend while I was home. I called her every night asking, hearing that well anticipated, "no, not yet." I came home on the weekend and she was something like 8 or 9 days late. She had bought a pregnancy test earlier in the week, but wanted to wait till we were there together. I got to her parents second home in midway late Friday night. She had read somewhere that the test is more accurate in the morning since there were more hormones in the urine after sleeping. She wanted to wait so that she would not get a false positive. Talk about self control right? The following morning at 5:00 am she took the picture at the top of this post. I laid in bed expecting a shout of joy or a scream, but in true Julie fashion, I had to get out of bed and walk into the bathroom. "Look" she said as she pointed to it on the counter, "Cool, huh?" "Yeah, that's pretty cool. I knew it. Your freaking at 39 days since the start of your last period!"

It has been a very normal pregnancy, with bloating, and weird pains lately on either side of her belly as her ligaments stretch. She didn't deal too much with nausea probably because she has so many measures to prevent it already. She has been tired at nights, and cleaning like a banshee. They say nesting doesn't occur till the end, but she is using that as an excuse to whip me around every weekend. I love her. I couldn't ask for a better pain in the neck to be married to. She makes me a better man and I'm lucky to have her as long as she can be here. Be it 2 years or 50, we are grateful.
