The First Ultrasound

November 26, 2025Leave a comment

There is a certain type of anxiety that accompanies the first ultrasound in a pregnancy. Feelings of excitement, yet hesitation. Eagerness, yet apprehension. Hope, but also uneasiness. IYKYK. Due to a miscarriage just two months prior, all these feelings were elevated. So when we went in for Emerson’s first ultrasound, I honestly didn’t know what to think. I hoped for a heartbeat, but couldn’t be sure.

As we were taken back to the patient room and sat waiting for the doctor, my husband and I prayed. For a healthy baby, for a heartbeat, for a full term pregnancy. And also for God to give this child everything he/she would need to grow healthy, strong, and fully developed. This was a daily prayer I prayed in each and every pregnancy, and will continue to do so.

When the doctor walked in, she casually asked a few questions about how I was feeling, when my last menstrual cycle was, etc. The intent of the first ultrasound is to identify a heartbeat, collect measurements, and determine an expected due date. I had done the math prior and predicted my due date to be November 2, 2025.

As the ultrasound started, the monitor screen was facing away from me. My husband was obnoxiously hovering over the doctors shoulder, in hope to be the first to spot the heartbeat. For a solid 45 seconds, I sat there staring at everyone’s faces in the room, trying to read whether I should expect good news or bad. It was all I could do since I couldn’t see the screen. Every second felt like it lasted a decade. Finally, I said “So, is there a heartbeat!?” And the doctor turned the screen around to point at a baby whose little heart was bumping as healthy as ever. “You’re measuring to be due on November 2, 2025” she said.

Relief washed over me like a cool shower on a hot day. I stared at the screen for what seemed like forever. We took pictures and a video so we could show everyone in our family later. My husband and I smiled at each other with a kid-like excitement. The first step to a healthy pregnancy had been confirmed.

It’s hard for me to comprehend how people can argue that life does not begin at conception. Maybe they have never seen a baby’s heartbeat during the first ultrasound. Maybe they’ve never seen the growth of a baby in the womb over the course of nine months. Maybe they’ve never held a newborn. In my mind, there is no arguing that life begins at conception. Period, end of story. And that life continues to blossom, flourish, grow and expand until God takes it away, inside or outside of the womb.

I can’t recall what happened during the rest of the appointment. I know I was scheduled for another ultrasound around 12 weeks, which is typical. And though we had confirmed that there was in fact a heartbeat, I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Women are at their highest chance of miscarriage for the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, with each week’s chances decreasing as time goes on. So though I had some relief, I wasn’t able to fully relax and enjoy the eager expectation of a new baby coming that year. The way I saw it, I couldn’t get excited until the next ultrasound at twelve weeks, which would surely confirm that I would continue on to a full term and healthy birth.

Or so I thought.

To be continued…

Emerson

November 20, 2025Leave a comment

I found out I was pregnant with Emerson on February 21, 2025.

My husband and I had been tracking my ovulation because we wanted to try for a second child. He was scheduled to have hip surgery February 10, so I knew if I didn’t ovulate before then, we likely couldn’t try again for another few months due to his recovery period. I prayed and prayed I would ovulate and God provided. The day after my peak, I came down with norovirus, an extremely contagious stomach virus. If you have ever had norovirus, you would agree it is the single worst stomach bug to ever exist on the planet. I was so sick all night, and incredibly dehydrated the next day. Luckily, a few days and ten pounds later, I was good as new.

Two weeks after, I took a pregnancy test that showed two faint lines meaning I was pregnant. It is one of the most exciting things in life to see a positive pregnancy test. We were ecstatic. Due to a miscarriage we had two months before, we wanted to share the news with close friends and family so that they could start praying immediately. I remember calling my mom on Facetime and showing her the test. She was so confused because, on the video call, it looked like the pregnancy test was negative since the lines were so faint! Never the less, the journey of pregnancy number three began.

From the start I was exhausted and nauseous. Not all the time, but I vividly remember sitting on the couch at 6am, attempting to drink my coffee but unable to do so because everything made me gag. Luckily, these bouts of sickness would last an hour or two and go away. The exhaustion, however, hit everyday around 3-4pm and stuck until I put my firstborn down for bed around 7pm.

Let me pause here. It was in these early weeks that I learned real quick how good I had it with my first pregnancy. You see, with my first pregnancy, I didn’t have a ten month old crawling/attempting to walk all over the house, getting in drawers, climbing up stairs, or eating dog hair every other minute. Oh no, the first pregnancy was absolute bliss. I could come home from work, eat whatever McDonald’s crap I wanted, fall asleep at 6pm and have no cares in the world. But this time around, I had to come home from work, cook dinner, eat vegetables to set a good example, play with our girl, give her a bath, and then finally go to bed before accidently falling asleep in her play tent. While I loved every minute of it, I have to confess that it was very exhausting.

Generally, when you get pregnant, the first ultrasound appointment is around 8-10 weeks. Because my pregnancy with our firstborn was routine with no complications, I had my first ultrasound appointment at 8 weeks, which fell on March 28, 2025.

To be continued…

Here We Go…

November 12, 2025Leave a comment

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be walking through my journey of pregnancy and loss with my second daughter, Emerson. Talking about loved ones who have passed is a way to keep them alive and I feel like this is my way of keeping her alive within me.

Before I start, I’d like to discuss why I started this blog and named it Truth WSYF. If any of you have been with me from the beginning, you’ll know that this blog actually started when I was selling real estate in Dallas, TX. I thought it was a good way to reach people and discuss the various topics of home ownership, purchasing, investing, etc. I stopped selling real estate in 2018 and joined the Marine Corps instead (a story for another time), so my blog posts stopped. They picked back up in 2023 after I lost my dad to liver cancer and was walking through infertility, but fell off once again. My hope is this time I am able to be more accountable to myself and to my readers, which leads me into why I named this blog the way I did.

Truth WSYF stands for ‘”Truth Will Set You Free”. I’ve walked some hard roads in life. Some by choice, some not. On the outside, it often has, and still does, appear that I have it all together. But behind the scenes show many seasons of heartache, pain, desperation, and brokenness. When I accepted Christ into my life in 2013, my life slowly began to unfold. My deepest, darkest secrets began to come to light and I was fully exposed.

Humiliated.

Humbled.

Brokenhearted.

Yet free. Free from the lies I had been holding onto for so long. Free from the sin that held me captive for so many years. For the first time in my life I experienced the freedom God promises in in His Word. And to this day I continue to experience that freedom each time I expose the darkest parts of my heart.

Truth WSYF comes from John 8:31-32 which says “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (ESV). My hope for this blog is for people to find a place where they can speak their truth and find freedom. A place where people can come in the hardest of seasons of life for community and support. A place to come and celebrate God’s blessings with other believers.

I’ve felt God calling me to do this for a long time. To create this type of environment for folks. And to do it by leading first. By being vulnerable and transparent, while also working on my already wonderful writing skills (joking). So here we go people. Engage. Ask questions. Laugh. And enjoy this crazy ride.