The Baby I Was Terrified I'd Never Have (How We Got Luke)

Okay so… pull up a chair, grab your iced coffee (or a giant white chocolate latte, if you’re like me), and let’s have a real, deeply unfiltered talk.

If you look at my everyday life here in Colorado right now, it is a beautifully loud, wonderfully chaotic circus. I am the mom of a wild, four-year-old, camo-wearing tornado named Luke. Our house is completely taken over by tiny mud-stained hiking boots, miniature fishing rods propped up by the back porch, backpacks stacked near the front door, and a total sensory overload of endless little-boy chatter. I’m a lover of good organizational systems, an outdoorsy girl who loves a mountain day with Hubs, and someone who thrives in the middle of raising an active little boy.

But before all of this—before the sticky handprints on my kitchen island and the constant hunt for missing toddler socks—there was a very long stretch of time where I carried a quiet, persistent worry in the back of my heart.

It wasn’t a formal medical diagnosis, and it wasn’t a certainty. It was just a soft, heavy fear that lived deep down in my mind. The kind of fear that whispers to you when you’re lying in bed at night, staring up at the ceiling while your partner sleeps soundly beside you. The kind of worry where you tell yourself everything is fine, but every time another month passes, you wonder quietly: What if it’s going to be really hard for us when the time finally comes?

Let me take you back to how it all actually unfolded. Because if you’re sitting there right now reading this while carrying your own quiet worries about the future, I really want you to hear this story.

The years of “not preventing, but not actively trying”

To understand where my head was at, you have to know how we got started. Here is the absolute truth, plain and simple: I had not used a single form of birth control since 2015.

No pill, no IUD, no hormonal contraception—nothing at all. For years.

However, we were not actively trying to conceive during those early years either. We were young, building our lives, enjoying our marriage, and pursuing our goals. The timing just wasn’t quite right for us yet to officially jump into parenthood. But at the same time, we weren’t taking any steps to prevent a baby. If a pregnancy had happened back in 2016 or 2017 or 2018, it would have been extraordinarily welcome! We would have celebrated with open arms. We were simply living in that middle space where we thought, “If it happens right now, amazing! If not, we’ll officially try when the timing feels right.”

So, it was just me, Hubs, and a standard period-tracking app on my phone. Every month, the little app would quietly display a bright green window showing my theoretical fertile days. We didn’t do high-stress ovulation test strips, temperature charting, or rigid schedules. We just went about our lives, went camping when we could, worked hard, and let nature take its course without any barrier.

And… month after month, year after year, absolutely nothing happened.

2016 came and went. Nothing. 2017 rolled right on past. Zero. 2018, 2019, 2020… total, uninterrupted radio silence.

The quiet, deep-down fear that sneaks in

When you go through five straight calendar years without any contraception and no pregnancy ever occurs—even while you aren’t actively, intensely tracking every single detail—your brain starts to whisper questions.

I wasn’t diagnosed with anything. I didn’t have medical data saying I couldn’t get pregnant. But deep down, a private worry began to settle into my chest. I started wondering if maybe my body had a silent glitch. I worried that perhaps I was infertile, or that when Hubs and I finally decided the timing was right to officially start trying, we would be met with an uphill battle, fertility clinics, and endless tears.

It wasn’t a dramatic, screaming panic. It was a gentle, aching anxiety. It was the feeling of seeing sweet pregnancy announcements on social media and thinking, “I am so happy for them, but what if that never happens for me? What if my body struggles?”

I didn’t share that fear with many people. Instead, I tucked it away. I focused on my projects, bought fun gadgets, planned outdoor trips with Hubs, and threw myself into our life together. But every time my period app sent its routine monthly notification, that little knot of anxiety in my stomach would tighten just a bit more.

Living in that gray zone between “we aren’t preventing” and “we aren’t actively trying yet” is a very specific emotional place:

• The Casual Beginning: You start off thinking, “If it happens organically, what a fun surprise!” You assume that without birth control, nature will naturally take over whenever it feels like it.
• The Gentle Confusion: After three or four years go by, you look at your calendar and think, “Huh… we’ve spent years without protection, and still, not even a faint hint of a line.”
• The Private Worry: This is where the quiet fear takes root. You begin to worry that your body might have a hard time down the road. You start mentally preparing yourself for a difficult journey, just in case.
• The Self-Protection Shield: You guard your heart. You tell people, “Oh, we’re just enjoying our freedom and hiking right now!” while secretly praying that when you finally do try, your body will actually cooperate.

I stayed in that subtle holding pattern until the very end of 2020.

New Year 2021: “This is the year”

Then came the turn of the calendar—New Year 2021.

Hubs and I were sitting together, talking about our future, looking at the clean slate of the upcoming year. Something shifted in both of us. The timing finally felt right. We looked at each other and said: “Okay. This is it. This is the year. Let’s officially, intentionally try to have a baby.”

No more floating in the passive middle ground. No more hiding behind our quiet fears. We were ready to intentionally step forward, track closely, and actively go for it.

And right on cue, the universe looked at our big, beautiful, deliberate decision and gave us a hilarious plot twist.

Because that very same January, right in the exact middle of my peak fertile window, Hubs threw his back out.

I am not talking about a minor muscle twitch here. I am talking full-blown, helpless, locked-up back spasms. He was laid out completely flat on the couch, unable to move without groaning like an old cabin door in a winter storm, wrapped in heating pads and clutching ice packs. Walking to the kitchen was a major trek for him.

It was the least romantic environment in human history. 😅

There I was, holding my phone with my period-tracking app glowing “PEAK FERTILITY TODAY!”, while Hubs was completely sidelined by acute lumbar distress. We managed to pull off exactly ONE well-timed, extraordinarily unromantic, highly calculated day. ONE day for the entire month.

Afterward, I remember looking at him propped up on his pillows with his heating pad and laughing out loud at the sheer comedy of it all. I thought to myself, “Well, that’s a complete wrap on January! That month was a total bust. There is zero chance that worked.”

I completely wrote January off in my mind. In my type-A head, I was already penciling in February and March, bracing myself for the long process I had worried about for years.

February 5, 2021: The dream, the dad, and two red lines

What happened next is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Fast forward to the morning my period was officially scheduled to arrive: February 5, 2021.

That morning, I woke up suddenly from the most vivid, emotionally intense dream I have ever experienced. In the dream, my dad appeared to me and very calmly, clearly told me that I was pregnant.

I sat bolt upright in bed. My heart was pounding in my chest. The dream felt so immediate, so tangible, and so deep that I couldn’t just roll over and go back to sleep.

Now, if you know anything about me, you know I am a data-driven, type-A person who loves systems and concrete proof. So naturally, before making a cup of coffee, before brushing my teeth, and before even waking Hubs up from his back-pain recovery sleep, I walked down the quiet, cold hallway into the bathroom.

I opened the cabinet, pulled out a standard pregnancy test, took it, placed it flat on the counter, and braced myself to see the same single negative line I had envisioned for years.

I leaned over and looked down.

There weren’t one line. There were TWO distinct red lines. I couldn’t believe it — I genuinely could not believe my own eyes, so right then and there I did two more of those exact same tests, just to make sure the thing wasn’t broken.

I froze. I literally sank down onto the cold bathroom floor tile, holding my breath, staring at those two miracle red lines. My mind, which usually runs a hundred miles an hour analyzing everything, went completely quiet. After five-plus years of wondering if my body could even do this, after worrying deep down that I might be infertile, after writing off the entire month because of one unromantic back-injury day… there they were. Two red lines.

Of course, because my type-A brain refuses to take a single test as absolute fact without secondary verification, one test was nowhere near enough for me. I immediately grabbed my stash of backup HCG test strips and started testing like a scientist running a lab experiment at 6:30 in the morning. OBVIOUSLY.

And the name-brand Clearblue tests? Those ones were all Hubs. He couldn’t believe it either — in fact, he was convinced my cheap little paper strips had to be wrong, so he went out and bought the fancy boxed ones just to prove it to himself. Honestly, I think he was even more stunned than I was… and maybe a little scared, too, that after all those years of waiting, everything had suddenly happened so fast for us.

Test after test. Strip after strip. Every single one of them saying the same impossible thing.

That was Luke.

The baby boy I had spent years quietly worrying I might never get to hold was created from one single, inconveniently timed day in the middle of a back-pain crisis, announced to me by my dad in a vivid morning dream.

What I want you to know today

Today, Luke is four years old. He is a loud, hilariously opinionated, outdoorsy boy who loves stomping through Colorado dirt, collecting small rocks, insisting on carrying his dad’s real fishing rod down by the water, and running wild through mountain trails. Every time I watch him zip across our living room in his camo gear, I am hit with a fresh wave of quiet awe.

I look at him and I remember the woman who sat on her couch in 2018, quietly wondering if her body had a secret flaw. I remember the woman in 2020 who looked at family photos and worried deep down that a baby might be a painful struggle for us.

I am not here to offer you fluffy, toxic positivity. I won’t sit here over iced coffee and give you cliché phrases like “it happens when you stop trying!” or “just relax!” because I know how frustrating and invalidating those statements feel when you’re carrying a heavy heart. Nobody can promise you a specific day, month, or outcome, and I respect your journey far too much to pretend otherwise.

But if you are carrying that quiet, private worry right now, please let me share these truths with you:

• A quiet fear is NOT a factual diagnosis. Just because time has passed without a pregnancy happening doesn’t automatically mean your body is broken. For years I let the passage of time build up a quiet worry in my mind, but my body was simply waiting for its moment.
• The path doesn’t have to look perfect to work. Our successful month came down to a single day, wrapped in heating pads, back spasms, and zero romance, following years of nothing. Life has a funny way of completely surprising us when we least expect the conditions to be right.
• It is okay to hold onto hope, even when you’re scared. Worrying about the future feels like a shield to protect your heart from potential disappointment, but carrying that heavy fear every day is exhausting. Giving yourself permission to hope—even just a tiny bit—is a brave thing to do.

Sometimes our stories take winding, unexpected roads. Sometimes it takes years of waiting, a sudden back injury, a dream from your dad, and a counter covered in backup test strips to bring you the exact little boy who was meant to fill your home with mud-stained boots and endless laughter.

If you are waiting or worrying today: I see you, you are not alone, and I am sending you so much love from Colorado. 💛

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Frequently asked questions

How did you handle the quiet worry during those years without using birth control?

Honestly, I mostly kept it to myself, which I don’t necessarily recommend! Because we weren’t actively tracking high-stress fertility metrics yet, I tried to focus my energy on my career, our home, and spending quality time outdoors with Hubs. But whenever that quiet worry flared up, I tried to remind myself that until a doctor told me otherwise, my fears were just thoughts, not proven medical facts.

Why did you write January 2021 off completely before taking the test?

Because Hubs threw his back out right during my peak fertile days, we literally only had one single day where trying was even physically possible for him! Given that we had spent over five years without birth control and nothing had ever happened, my logical brain assumed that a single day during a month filled with back pain and stress had a virtually zero percent chance of working out.

What did Hubs say when you showed him all those tests?

After sitting on the bathroom floor taking backup test after backup test, I walked into the bedroom with a handful of tests and woke him up. He was still groggy and sore from his back injury, so seeing a handful of positive strips took a minute to register! Once it hit him that our hilarious, one-try back-pain month actually worked, he completely forgot about his back for a good while. It was the best shock of our lives.