Holiday Photoshoot & a BIG Announcement!

Ok, let’s be real – who really cares about the photoshoot? You came here for the big announcement didn’t you?! Well it’s a doozy. You ready?

I am so excited to finally announce that Casey and I are PREGNANT! That’s right we’ve got a Dunn in the oven! I’ve been waiting weeks to type those words to share with you! We are absolutely thrilled!! It’s hard to believe, but we are almost halfway there already. My bump is growing by the day and I just can’t hide it anymore – and frankly, it’s time for the world to know anyway! We got the positive result at the end of July which makes me 18 weeks along at time of publishing.

How We Found Out

Since this is my first pregnancy, I wasn’t exactly sure how I would feel or if I would know right away that I was pregnant – other than the obvious one, missing a period. They say some women experience implantation cramping – so over the course of the couple weeks following the “trying window” if you know what I’m sayin’ – HA – I was hyper-aware of my body. Trying to hone in on any feeling, ache, pain, cramp, you name it and I was questioning – is that it? Basically, I did have some mild cramping, but I have absolutely no idea if that was related to implantation or not.

So over the course of the next couple weeks, we went about our lives as usual. Dinners with friends, a wine tasting event in our town, etc. Then on a Friday afternoon, about 6 days before my missed period, as Casey and I were making the 2 hour drive to our family beach house, I started to feel carsick. It was about 4:00 in the afternoon and I had been scrolling through INSTAGRAM. My only thought at that time, was “ugh, I do not feel so good. I need to put the phone down.” It didn’t take long for that feeling to pass and I forgot all about it…

…Until the next afternoon, right about the same time. We had spent the day with close friends at their vacation rental near the cabin. We’d been out on the dock all day in the sun and I started to feel that same motion sickness feeling – the only thing I could think of this time was, “maybe it’s because we’ve been on dock all day.” Mind you, it was NOT a floating dock, so I’d have no reason to feel seasick, but clearly I wasn’t getting the memo that my body was telling me something.

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon after spending the day on my parents’ boat. We’re now 4 days before a missed period. When we got back to the house around that same 4:00pm window, I had the same feeling of motion sickness which is very out of character for me – except for these last couple days. At this point I did begin to suspect that something was definitely up. I talked to Casey about it and he agreed that was definitely odd for me, but we didn’t want to get our hopes up just yet. As we were going to bed that night, I told him – “I’m taking a pregnancy test as soon as we get home tomorrow morning!”

The Good News

So we made the 2 hour drive back home bright and early in the morning and the first thing I did was rush to the bathroom to take the test. I did my business (sorry if that’s TMI), and there I sat, waiting patiently for the 5 minutes the directions said I needed to wait before reading the results. As the minutes ticked on – sure enough, a VERY faint second line started to form indicating a positive result. And I mean that line was FAINT. Immediately, tears started welling up and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! It worked!! It actually worked! A million thoughts rush through your head all at once. Its an inexplicable feeling.

I’d been using ovulation strips for tracking and it came with dozens of “cheapo” pregnancy tests, so we had to get a couple more from the store. You know – just to be sure! Well, one positive First Response and one positive Clear Blue test later, and we are on the road to parenthood!!

Family Photoshoot

Now fast forward to this past weekend when we decided to take some announcement pictures during our holiday photoshoot! We are beyond thrilled and are so excited to meet our baby boy or girl. We will be finding out the gender at the anatomy scan in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned!!

Xo,