It is finally here. The long awaited blog post of our pregnancy journey and birth of our amazing daughter Autumn Anne. I have waited so long to write about this and it wasn't a quick journey for us. It took a lot of time, patience, and waiting until we finally saw those two little pink lines on a pregnancy test. Our journey started right after we finished backpacking the John Muir Trail in 2016.
We made the decision that after we completed this amazing accomplishment/journey, we would start working on expanding our family. We both wanted kids but wanted to make sure we were ready and have completed a significant amount of things on our "Bucket List" before we made this decision. The JMT was that final check mark. Everyone thought it wouldn't take long for us to get pregnant, but something in the back of my head was telling me this wouldn't go as planned. It took us a total of two years before we finally conceived a baby. It had taken long enough that we finally made the decision to seek fertility help and even went through a consultation appointment with a fertility clinic. We ended up getting pregnant the following week after our appointment! It was meant to be.
For my 31st birthday we took a trip to Salt Lake City Utah with my brother and sister-in-law for some snowboarding and fishing. It was an amazing trip (blog post coming soon) filled with epic snow fall, powder runs, and epic fishing. A couple days prior to my birthday I woke up at 5am and needed to pee. We had packed a couple pregnancy tests just incase and even though I was a few days away from missing my time of the month, I had a feeling that I should test. So I did... and there they were... two pink lines... I was shocked. I became so use to seeing one line and feeling complete and totally disappointment every month for two years that when I finally got those two lines I almost didn't know how to react. For a good ten minutes I just sat there with tears in my eyes. Completely overwhelmed with emotion. Our dream of starting a family had finally come true. I just couldn't wait and had to wake up Luke. We both were so happy! It was a perfect addition to a perfect birthday trip.
Our first appointment with our OB doctor was at 9weeks. We were filled with so many mixed emotions. Excited to hear the heart beat and nervous hoping that everything would be okay. When we finally heard her strong heartbeat our emotions boiled over. We were already in love with our little jelly bean. The next step was telling our family.
We wanted to make our announcement special. For our parents we got them custom picture frames that read "Our Greatest Adventure Coming December 2019" with a picture of the ultrasound. For our siblings we got them either a bottle of our favorite wine (Singer Cellars) or a bottle of our favorite beer (Russian River's Pliny) and added our own custom label that read "And So The Adventure Begins, A little Baby Cub is on the way! Baby McKibbey Dec 2019". Each one of their reactions was amazing! It felt as though they had been waiting for this as much as we have and it felt like we were all going through this together.
Our gender reveal came around 15weeks since we did the blood test to find out what we were having. Of course I couldn't wait and convinced Luke to look at the results early. It felt special finding out just the two of us and being able to tell our family in a special way. Our gender reveal was more for our family then us and we wouldn't have had it any other way. We decided to make it simple and ordered the confetti bombs. Everyone was excited to see that we were having a baby girl! We instantly dived into baby girl names to find the perfect one.
A year before, my younger brother and his wife were pregnant and the two names they were deciding between was Autumn or Karlie. I had never known anyone with the name Autumn and didn't know people actually had that as a first name. I instantly fell in love with it. Thankfully, they decided on Karlie which left Autumn free to use. The middle name Anne has a special meaning in my family. Every first born daughter gets the middle name Anne. My mom, older sister Nicole, my sister's daughter Audrey, and brother's daughter Karlie all have the middle name Anne. We kept the tradition going and named our daughter Autumn Anne.
Our baby shower was absolutely perfect! It was Fall themed and I loved it. My sister went all out. Every little detail had us written all over it (including the food). She put together a bow tying station (which Autumn ended up wearing a lot of the bows that were made), A couple tables of baby themed games, and the cake looked like a birch tree (which is my favorite tree). It felt amazing being surrounded by family and friends celebrating our daughter. She wasn't even here yet and she was already surrounded by so much love.
Our baby moon was simple. All we wanted was to be out in nature and go to our favorite place; Mammoth. We ended up combining our Baby Moon with our Anniversary. It would be the last Mammoth trip of just the two of us. It was weird to think that. We have spent the last 7 years traveling just us two (and maybe a few family members, but no kids). We really soaked it all in. Ate at our favorite places, hit up our favorite coffee shop, did some fishing at our favorite lakes, did a little bit of off roading around the June Lake area, went searching for fall colors and found it in a new spot. It truly was an amazing trip, just the two of us.
Then comes baby... I started feeling contraction on Thursday night (December 19th) but didn't think much of it because they weren't intense and honestly, I didn't know how they should feel since Ive never been pregnant before. We spent all of Friday (December 20th) going on multiple walks, playing ping pong, and monitoring the contractions. They were never consistent enough to make us think I needed to go to the hospital and I did not want to show up and be sent home. Then around 11pm, we were laying in bed watching the movie "The Family Stone" when a BIG contraction hit and I jumped out of bed. Soon after that my water broke and we were heading to the hospital. The whole way there the contraction got more painful. After checking in at the hospital and getting checked by the L&D nurse, we found out that baby girl was breeched and I was dilating fast. They decided a C Section was necessary and I was in OR within 15 minutes. We didn't even have time to process what was going on. A C Section never crossed our minds as a possibility but what mattered most to us was that baby girl was born healthy and safe, no matter what. The
actual C section was weird. I have had a couple of surgeries in the past but I was put out for both of those whereas for this I was going to be completely awake. If it wasn't for the excitement of finally seeing our daughter and Luke being by my side, I probably would have been more freaked out. I am not an emotional person but when I heard/saw her for the first time I began to cry. She was finally here! We were finally parents! The emotions were so overwhelming, it was hard to deal with. We were already so in love with her. Autumn Anne McKibbey born December 21st 2019.
The first couple of days were a blur of emotions. Overwhelmed with joy, love, tiredness, and excitement to finally be holding our daughter after our long journey of trying for a family. We felt complete. We finally have our family and we couldn't wait to experience all the firsts that come with that. Our first hike together, our first trip, our first backpacking trip, her first steps, her first words. We are more then ready for it all and couldn't wait.
We love you so much Autumn! You have completed our family and we can't wait to see the person that you will grow into.