Is Joy the Baker Pregnant? Yes, you guys! Here’s the story behind the bump.

Hello, friend! I’ve been sitting on this piece of writing for a few months now. I’m going to talk about infertility and pregnancy – both of which can feel tender and complicated for some of us. If that feels like more than you want to take on today, I completely understand, and I’ll see you soon with a recipe. If you’d like to stick around and feel this one through with me, I’m really grateful you’re here.

xo Joy

I’m finally pregnant enough to be included in a whole new category of small talk with strangers.

Yesterday at the grocery store, while standing in front of the jam section debating whether I am a strawberry person or an apricot person this month, an older gentleman wandered up beside me. He pointed at my belly (the belly I thought I had hidden under a jean jacket) and said, “Well, how’d that happen?”

He chuckled; entirely pleased with himself. Good-natured, really. Honestly, he’s a necessary and well-loved character in a small town like Bellville.

I stared back at him, genuinely curious as to what exactly he was delighted by. Was he asking me about sex? Was this a joke about timing? Was there another intention I was missing?  In the time it took my brain to catch up, my mind flashed through the last five years. Hospital gowns that Will held closed in the back as I shuffled in fuzzy socks through the fertility clinic, totally normal. My mom’s alarm going off in the middle of the night so she could get up and sweetly get me more pain medication a night after surgery. Those blue paper surgical bonnets there’s scientifically NO way to look cute in. Dozens and dozens of blood draws. Dozens more doctors’ appointments.  Disappointing news followed by the tears I cried alone in the car before driving home. The needles I filled and the way I learned to twist my torso just so to inject myself in the butt for weeks on end. Sonograms I held my breath through. Years of doing and healing and hoping and praying.

That’s how it happened, sir.

Instead, I smiled, grabbed the apricot jam (the obvious choice), and said “Gosh, I don’t know. You’ll have to let me know if you figure it out,” before I walked away towards the yogurt aisle.

For a long time, starting a family didn’t feel urgent to me. Will and I built a very adventurous and loving life together that felt full in a way that didn’t require expansion.

And then, quietly, almost inconveniently, something shifted.  One day having a family was abstract, and the next day it was the only thing I could see ahead of us. Not essential until it was everything.

Nearly five years ago, at forty, I froze my eggs. A practical decision wrapped in a Hail Mary pass. It felt like putting a bookmark in my own life, maybe a little too late, but still. Then came the surgeries for endometriosis, and fibroids, and peeks into my uterus and ovaries that sound casual, but of course, were not. We talked about good bacteria and bad bacteria. Follicles and timing. Windows and chances and odds.

Eventually, we did IVF. I say that plainly now, even though people hear it differently depending on what they’re listening for. I can tell when someone asks because they want to understand, to say me too or my sister or I’m scared, did you do the shots yourself? And I can tell when someone asks so they can package my answer and pass it along wrapped as gossip. The difference is clear as day to me.

I was pregnant long before the internet noticed. But eventually, the internet always notices.

For me, it was around four months in. Long enough for a small bump to show beneath my apron. Long enough for Instagram comments to start appearing, excitedly asking: Are you pregnant? Then came the follow-up comments reminding everyone that we don’t comment on women’s bodies – which, yes I agree – but I understood it was all mostly coming from a place of kindness. The speculation, both its kind and nasty forms, is just a natural byproduct of existing online for too long.

Now when I post videos, people see my obvious pregnancy and assume they’ve missed some sort of grand announcement. I appreciate that take, actually; it’s generous. There has been no early announcement because in all my years on the internet, I’ve absorbed dozens and dozens of surprise pregnancy announcements while navigating infertility myself. Even when the news is wonderful (and it is!) when you’re in the middle of longing, that joy can hit sideways.

Being pregnant on the internet is a strange middle space. Your body becomes public before your story does. People fill in the blanks, sometimes unkindly, if you don’t. They always have. I know this terrain well enough not to fight it. I also know myself well enough to choose what I carry alone.

I’ve held this hope very close to my chest for months now. Protective of it, and protective of myself. This pregnancy has been so hard fought and yet, somehow, it’s felt equally unlikely every single day of the last seven months. As the world (and the internet) frenzied around all of us, I’ve kept this one small, growing miracle tucked in tight – as sacred and mine.

But we’ve been in this together for so long, haven’t we? And maybe now it’s time to let you help me hold the hope with, if you’re feeling up for it.  I know so many of you have been in this very same boat.

With just weeks that feel both impossibly long and astonishingly short before this baby arrives, I know enough to know that I don’t know exactly how this story ends. I can’t script it, but I wake up every day thankful for the biggest blessing of my life so far, and thankful I get to share it with you.

(Also, you guys, I’M SO ROUND THIS IS INSANE.)

xo
Joy

(Photos with friend and super talented Austin photographer Amanda Pomilla.)