The date is 5 January 2013. It’s with a sense of anticipation that we arrive at our accommodation for the week. We open the door to our suite and marvel at how nice it is. We drop our bags to the floor. With a sense of excitement, we open the box that houses the bottle of Dom Pérignon we bought for this special occasion.

As we raise our glasses for a cheers and drink the first mouthful of champagne, we look at each other and smile. Today, we celebrate the start of our journey of trying to conceive.

The long road ahead

Who would have thought that trying to conceive was so tough? We were under no illusions about how the adventure which lay in front of us looked… But we were certainly unprepared for how long it would eventually take us to conceive.

We thought we had prepared well… we had talked in length about when was a good time for us to start trying. We don’t smoke. We weren’t excessive drinkers. We were healthy and relatively fit. We had pulled the goalie. All that was left to do was to … well, you know … fall pregnant.

But what started as trying for a month, quickly became trying for two months, four months, 6 months and eventually 12 months.

It was at the 12 month mark that doubt starts to creep in and you start asking yourself questions. Is this ever going to happen for us? Why can’t we seem to fall pregnant? Is there something wrong with my… ahem… swimmers? Do we give up?

Having a break

It was around March or April in 2014 that after yet another unsuccessful month of trying to conceive, we decided to have a break from ‘trying’. We had recently booked and paid for a month’s holiday in Europe for our 30^th Birthdays. And we both wanted to be able to enjoy the full experience countries like Italy and France had to offer (we ate and drank like kings and queens).

So it was agreed. We would stop actively trying to fall pregnant for a short while. That way, we could be sure there wouldn’t be any surprise attacks of morning sickness as we were driving between countries on a tour bus with 30+ other people.

We arrived back home feeling relaxed and rejuvenated. It felt like this was just what we needed. It was the perfect distraction from the frustration of having tried and tried and tried again to fall pregnant, but failed.

We felt like we could go back into trying to conceive with a new attitude and renewed focus…

Are you late?

It wasn’t long before we started feeling frustrated again. The same questions again circling round putting doubt in my head.

What do we have to do to conceive?

It was coming up to September 2014 and we were still yet to receive any positive news on our commitment to try and fall pregnant. Our journey made even more frustrating with a couple of glimmers of hope that ended in negative tests.

Around this time, as we sit and talk to each other about our adventure to date, Renee says, “Let’s give it our all this month. Let’s call this month ‘Sextember’.”

Let me think about that… Count me in!

‘Sextember’ was a blur.

It wasn’t until late September that I realised we hadn’t had the conversation we’d had so many times before throughout our quest to fall pregnant.

“Are you late?”

Then came her reply… “Yes.”

We’re pregnant!

What a rush. What a thrill. What excitement. Those two little lines on that pregnancy stick was like opening the first gift on Christmas day as a child.

Oh … my … god … I’m going to be a dad!

I need to do something. I need to walk around because I am excited and nervous and overjoyed and happy and so many emotions all at once that I just need to keep moving.

I think there’s champagne in the fridge… Let’s have champagne to celebrate! Oh that’s right, you’re pregnant. Ok, no champagne for you. I’ll just drink it out the bottle. What do I do now? I don’t know what to do now? Hang on, I’ll drink more champagne.

The moment we had been waiting 20 months for has just happened and we both are over the moon with excitement.

A new adventure starts

30 September 2014 marked the day that one journey ended and a new adventure began. The adventure that is pregnancy.

Our pregnancy hasn’t been without its complications (which you can read about in Renee’s post), but it’s our journey and one that I don’t think I’d change.

As we inch closer and closer to the due date, I look back on our time trying to conceive and our time through the pregnancy and realise that despite the complications… despite the frustrations and how long the journey has lasted… it had made us appreciate this miracle even more.

And as we inch closer to the birth of our first child, all I can think about is how excited I am to meet the little person that will be born at the end of it all.

Baby Barton, I’ll be seeing you soon!