May, Mother's Day, and Montana

May brought something that I dreaded, Mother's Day.  So quickly after our loss it was hard to celebrate our eternal family and recognize that I was a mother, even if I didn't have my baby with us. So the day was hard. We took the day off of church, listening to talks on motherhood, seeing all the mothers and families would have been too much for me.  I cried in sacrament meeting looking at the babies when it wasn't Mother's Day, so we took a day to ourselves.  Mike got me a beautiful bracelet, flowers and a potted plant, which he did such a great job keeping alive!! I am TERRIBLE with plants, they die like within a week. I'm just not attentive enough to them, but Mike did a great job, we kept it alive for a long time!  We went to visit our girl, cry together, and share my flowers with her.  It is not the first mothers day I expected I would have, but it was my day with my family.

School is let out in May before Memorial Day Weekend, and boy was I ready to have a break.  It was good to be busy and back to work, but  I will always be ready for summer break!  We decided over Memorial Day weekend to go visit my dad in Montana since Mike had never been up to Great Falls before.  It was a lovely chill weekend, if you have ever been to Montana in May, you know it could be summer weather or dead of winter weather. For us it was pretty nice spring weather with some rain and sunshine.  We gave Mike the grand tour, by car, of Great Falls, in the rain one day.  We went to a movie rental store! Probably the last one in existence and rented some movies to watch in my dad's theater room.  Just relaxing and really having nothing to do and no where to be was so nice.

We went to a city about 7 miles outside of Great Falls called Ulm.  It is tiny, but my dad had heard about this restaurant that was supposedly really good.  They had a Tuesday Night special that sounded incredible so we went to check it out.  It was called Beef N Bone and IT WAS AMAZING.  The special was a filet smothered in a crab creamy delicious life changing sauce.  It was served with the most amazing loaded mashed potatoes and salad.  Like Mike and I go to Ruth's Chris for anniversaries and things and this was comparable if not better and for way less money!! 

So the whole trip I had been feeling- different.  I will spare you the details, but I was showing signs that I had noticed in my body when I was pregnant with Harper.  I hadn't missed a period.  In fact after Harper they said I would have a period with in 5-6 weeks and I had one right in that timeline and was right back to my regular 28 day cycle and had had my period earlier in the month.  So I was totally just going off of how I was feeling.  I checked my app where I track my cycle and I was supposed to start the first week of June, so I was about 5 days away from starting my cycle.  

One of the days we were there, Mike and my Dad went golfing and I just went shopping and enjoyed a day to myself.  So on this day I went to the store and looked at the pregnancy tests, mostly to see how early you can check before you have missed your period. I was not patient enough to wait until I had a missed period. I was anxious to figure out if all of these "signs" my body was giving me were accurate.  I bought a test that said "5 days before your missed period" so I thought there was a strong chance I would get a negative since it was that exact timeline to my cycle. This is what the test showed. 

The slightest line of pink.  I wasn't sure. It was so light and I was totally in denial, so I texted my friend Mandy (amazing girl with fertility struggles, loss of a child, and someone who understood my fears more than anyone else)  I knew that she would be a person I could confide in.  She wasn't sure either, but said that any sign of a second line usually was a positive.  At this point, I wasn't sure so I decided to not tell Mike about the test.  I didn't want to tell him unless I knew it was a yes, we had been through so much I didn't want a disappointment, even though we weren't expecting it, to affect him.  So we finished our trip with some Taco Johns (its really quite yummy) and some huckleberry ice cream before we headed home.  

We stopped in Malad Idaho on our way home to play some scratcher tickets, because why not? haha We won $10! 

When we returned home I was now on summer break and had my days open. On May 31st, I decided to go and get a pregnancy test that said pregnant or not pregnant, none of this line stuff that I couldn't interpret! I took the test while Mike was at work and decided if it was positive I would tell him that night. Here is the test. 

Our next adventure was just beginning....