BIG NEWS!

We have been waiting so long to announce . . .

WE ARE EXPECTING A BABY BOY AROUND DECEMBER 18TH!

His name will be John Blaine Dickson, named after both his grandpa's. We will call him Jack since it's confusing with John's name.

Many of you already know but we wanted to make it official on our blog. So here's the whole story.

As most of you know, especially since I blogged a little about it, we struggled with fertility problems for about 2 1/2 years. It kind of starts when our regular ob started me on Clomid, but it wasn't working. Then I went alone to a recommended fertility specialist (John had work) that turned out to be a horrible experience. He treated me like I wasn't a person, just business as usual. I left crying. Anyone who's been through this would understand that the fact I am even having to face this problem of "fertility" was scary and awful enough but then to not have a good experience was really hard. So we found a great doctor, Dr. Hammoud at the U of U and he was great, and the nurses are way nice. He taught us what might be going on and we started back on Clomid and plus another med that I can't remember but was supposed to help. Basically, ever since I did this stupid birth control we tried at the beginning of marriage, I never ovulated again. So the Clomid helped my body remember it is a GIRL we were able to get pregnant!

I received so much support and words of comfort from so many that had gone through something similar and I am so thankful for that. I never realized how common something like this is and I hope my experience will help others.

Last March I didn't start my cycle and I was scared that the medicine wasn't working and I would have to go on more medicine just to ovulate. I decided it was time to do a pregnancy test and then to probably start on the meds again. So after taking pregnancy test after pregnancy test and not to mention the ovulation tests in the past, I would not get my hopes up because it's just too painful to keep going through that. So it was just our second cycle of Clomid and time for the test. It immediately shows the very familiar one pink line which means not pregnant, John went back to the T.V. and I finished up. Then I picked it up to throw it away and I looked closer. TWO LINES! Crazy. I was scared to get happy. Being the silly person I am, I called for Charlie and told her to look at it, which she did and I asked her what it meant. Then we decided we should show it to Daddy. So I go over and just hand it to him. He kept asking "what's this mean?" "are you pregnant?" over and over and I know he was scared to get excited too. We started to believe our eyes and of course hugged and cried, a very special moment.

The first thing Dr. Hammoud told us at our 6 week ultra sound was "There's just one!" which is a small sigh of relief when he had told us there were about 3 or 4 mature eggs ready from seeing another ultra sound (isn't technology amazing!) So I am now 5 months pregnant and going back to work at school in about 2 weeks. Luckily I will have the Christmas Break to add on the maternity leave. Then it's about two months or so of school left for the year. I imagine those 2 months being very hard. Please pray for us!

Sorry no pictures yet, my computer doesn't have room! We've had 3 ultra sounds and everything is perfect. I even think I felt the baby for the first time today! Such an amazing thing! We couldn't be happier! Heavenly Father seems to make me wait longer than usual for everything I really want, but He also knows how much more grateful I am because of it.