Incase you missed it, the secrets out: baby Hubbard is arriving August 2021! We are thrilled to finally share this news, and can’t wait to welcome our sweet little babe who is already so loved into our growing family.

I’ve been a little MIA on my blog and social media, so incase you were wondering why, now you know. It’s likely that I’ve been curled up in a ball on the couch, napping, snacking (carbs + comfort food are my BFF), staring at my expanding belly, and simply embracing the winter season as a natural time of rest + hibernation.

And yes, we’re having baby BOY! 💙

Before I dive in, I want to start by saying my heart goes out to ALL the women and couples out there wherever you are on your journey or path trying to conceive or create a family. I see you.

I also want to say that as grateful, excited, and blessed as I am for this baby boy — I’m going to keep it real with you all and share the ups the down and everything in between, because that is life. While my life may look curated on my blog and social media, it is nothing but. My food creations are oftentimes more put together than I am. So just remember what you see on social media is not a direct representation of anyone’s life.

So let’s dive in, shall we?

How I felt about motherhood 5-10 years ago

For a long time I could not picture my husband and I having kids. That maternal instinct that other women around me often talked about and that drive to procreate wasn’t something I could relate to for MANY years. Instead, I could envision my husband and I traveling, focused on our careers and hobbies, spending time with our dogs, being the fun aunt and uncle with maybe some vacation homes thrown in there, and more dogs, because dogs I can handle.

It seems that as soon as you get married (and you might feel this way too) or near the age of thirty there’s a societal pressure to have kids and constant reminder as a woman that the clock is ticking. This is something I will never understand, especially as someone who struggled just to get my period back and the fact that it took time for us to get pregnant. You just never know what anyone’s situation is and having a family is a very personal choice and emotional journey.

But things change. As soon as I left my corporate job and got married, I stopped taking hormonal birth control to feel more connected to my body — you can read more about that journey here. While I still wasn’t quite on board with kids yet, I was starting to open up to the possibility of it. I saw my friends having babies and started to think, ok, maybe I’m ready for this now.

Shifts I made to support hormonal health + fertility

Fast forward in time, it took about nine months to get my period back and for about another year my period was pretty abnormal ranging from 26 to 40+ days. After learning how to cycle sync and making various lifestyle change — some of which included practicing intuitive movement, time off from marathon training, stress management, meditation, giving my adrenals a break my removing coffee, transitioning to non-toxic household cleaning and beauty products, and more, my period became more regular.

I started tracking my cycle and ovulation (using the flo app), and had the mindset of this: we’re not trying, but we’re not not trying either. I stocked up on pregnancy tests just incase. Once I began to feel disappointed in a negative pregnancy tests from late periods (which wasn’t uncommon), I realized that I was more open to this possibility, but still could envision my life both with and without kids.

At this point I placed getting pregnant in the hands of the higher powers (god, universe, source or whatever you want to call it), and believed if we got pregnant, it’s meant to be. And if not, we’d figure it out from there. I was happily ready to add a female lab to our family if we were not pregnant within the next two years.

As strange as it sounds, during the pandemic I kept saying outloud and telling my friends that if I could choose when to get pregnant, I’d want to get pregnant now. After all, I’m teaching and working mainly from home and can easily hide it. The night of conception I even had my friends over for a dinner party and asked me if we were trying. I responded back, “I don’t want to say we are actively trying because I feel like that puts more pressure and stress on it. If it happens, it happens.”

Finding out we’re pregnant

It was the morning of December 6th, 2020 after a night out with another couple indulging on old fashioned’s, raw oysters, and some other items from the ‘naughty’ list and my period was another day late, 4 days late at this point. I had joked with my husband prior to this saying that we could be getting an early Christmas surprise, but never really believed that would happen. That said, I can’t really describe it, but had this instinct to take test to make sure, and so I did.

I was on the upstairs toilet peeing, scrambling through the cabinet for a test, but found nothing but an empty box. Then I remembered I stored some in the downstairs bathroom, so started chugging more water in hopes to squirt out a little more pee. Two pink lines appeared. Holy shit I thought, and every other curse you can think of came out my mouth or ran through my mind. I checked the box to make sure I was reading the results correct. Then I decided I’d take another test, this time digital incase this one was a broken giving me a false positive. PREGNANT.

Oh shit, this is actually happening. Now of course I know that having unprotected sex can get you pregnant, but after many years of having unprotected sex with and 2+ years of being off the pill, I was in shock that it actually did happen. The media and sex-ed make you believe that getting pregnant is SO easy, which I’m calling bullshit.

So I called my oldest sister who has 3 kids, and was semi-freaking out. They don’t tell you what to do when you’re pregnant, and this being my first was all new so every emotion you can think of — excited, joyful, grateful, worried, anxious, is running through you.

Then I called my husband demanding he tell me where he was (Whole Foods, of course) and asked him to come home, clearly he knew something was up from me acting strange. I was running around the house, still freaking out, trying to figure out the ‘best’ way to tell him — should I get a little creative and put it in his Christmas stocking or wrap it up? No, I just decided to show him the positive tests because that’s how we roll.

The next day I called my doctor for an appointment and was able to go right in during lunch time and get my blood drawn to once again confirm the pregnancy.

Sharing the news with immediate family + close friends

While we were both excited to begin this journey together, at the same time I will say we were fearful of getting too attached since it was still super early and the risk of miscarriage is higher at this point. So with that in mind, we felt ok with telling a few of our closest friends incase something were to happen we’d want them there for support. We held off on telling our immediate family until Christmas (right about 7.5 weeks), and then again around New Years which was after our 8-week appointment to check for a heart beat.

We then chose to wait until week 13 or so after our 12-week appointment which included genetic testing to share with closer friends and family, and then felt it was time to share publicly.

And now here we are, embarking on this next chapter of our lives :)