2020 Recap - What a Year! • The year of Covid • Essentially Sydney

What a year it has been! From IVF to a pandemic to pregnancy it has been a whirlwind! We stayed home more, spend more intentional time with each other and our loved ones. I would say regardless of all the struggles, 2020 was a success for the Garrisons! Let’s take a walk down memory lane!

Started the year out strong and with BIG goals! Our #1 goal? Get pregnant! We were gearing up for our first-ever round of IVF. I chopped my hair off because sometimes you just need a change! I also decided that I would give up alcohol for the whole year of 2020 (phew, did we all need alcohol this year haha!) but it just seemed smart since we were trying to conceive, well turns out this was the perfect year for me to set that goal, easy peasy to accomplish!

We survived stims, I ended up having to give myself shots all over the place, in vehicles, in the doctor’s office, my house, in bathrooms. It was an adventure! Retrievals were tough! We got great results but the recovery was a bumpy road for both of us! SO many trips to Preg for appointments during the first 5 months of this year! But we made it through and just had to wait until transfer day for the next step!

Then we got the best news that our best friends were pregnant!! Kramer was the sweetest human ever and sent me a letter telling me so I could process my feelings in private since we were balls deep in infertility treatments! I have the best friends in the world! We soon found out we had 6 beautiful embryos on ice from our procedures! The next step was to wait for 45 days! It was rough! Right around this time, the pandemic started! Of course, we didn’t know it was going to be this crazy at the time. We got a total of 2 baseball games in this season before they shut everything down.

But I found many ways to try and stay busy at home. I even got around to painting our nightstands finally! We had multiple zoom calls (a theme of 2020) with family because we were being extra careful! Then PIO shots started…..oh man.

I ran in a virtual (thanks 2020) 5k and it was so fun! And for a great cause! Then the day we had been waiting for, transfer day! We went to the clinic and had our first embryo transferred and got our first baby picture! It was such a special day! Unfortunately, then we had to wait for 2 more weeks to see if it stuck!

So we did all kinds of things to stay busy but keep in mind I was still doing PIO shots through all of this. I was VERY sore and hurting every day from these dang shots! But IT WORKED!!! That ultrasound picture was when our little babe was just 6 weeks old!

My little sister graduated college so Josh and I hopped on a plane and headed up north to celebrate her! It was very strange flying during a pandemic! No one in the airports! We had family pictures done and I got to see my sweet friends! We started planning out the nursery! It was SO fun designing the room from scratch!

A few weeks later I crashed my aunt and uncle’s beach vaca for like 48 hours! It was just what I needed! Then my girlfriends decided to take a small weekend 2020 trip just us girls before we all started having babies! Little bit kept growing and we hit the 12 weeks mark!

My parents came down for the 4th of July and we started on the nursery! They painted, put in a ceiling fan, and put together the furniture! It was a great weekend! I have managed to keep exercising through this whole pregnancy. This is a huge accomplishment considering I was taking shots in my behind for 10 weeks and growing a human the rest of the time! But I always felt better after I moved my body! I also started taking #bumpwalks almost every day too! One weekend my MIL and SIL and took a day trip up to Biltmore to getaway! It was a great day and we even got stuck in the rain at the end. We were drenched on our way home. SO funny!

I took another trip up to Indiana for Kramer’s baby shower and got to see all my girls again! We had the best chill weekend! The worst part about this pregnancy was that Josh wasn’t allowed to come to any appointments with me once we graduated from Preg. Stupid 2020 Covid! But our little one kept on growing and we hit the 20-week mark! Halfway!

Labor Day weekend was a fun one this year! My family came down to again, work on the nursery but also to attend my SC baby shower that all the wonderful women on Josh’s side threw for baby g! It was beautiful! Truly was the best day, even though I couldn’t hug everyone because Covid was still a thing. I still found ways to see friends though, this hike with Allie was one of my favorite ways!

A couple of weeks later I made my last trip up to Indiana for another baby shower! I loved seeing all of my people and had the best day! My aunts threw this shower and did a fantastic job! I then had my first set of maternity photos done before coming home! They turned out even better than I dreamed! Once we got home with all our baby stuff the nesting really set it! I started washing baby clothes and we installed the baby gate!

We finally finished the nursery and love how it turned out!! Josh’s coworkers threw him the cutest Clemson themed baby shower! He worked with the best people! We also finally got to go to a Clemson game! We gave up our tickets this year because they had to move our seats to the upper deck and made us wear masks the whole time. Then Little Bit got to vote in a presidential election with me! How cool right?! We took our first prenatal class on infant care through zoom! Very weird but we learned a lot! The holidays are extra exciting this year because we will be getting the best gift!

Christmas was strange this year because with our due date being so close we wanted to be extra careful to not get sick! So we spent a lot of time at home together. I consider us lucky, we have gotten to spend so much quality time just Josh and I before this baby arrives! What a blessing!

Farewell 2020

I hope your year was as full of blessings as mine was! Sure, it had it’s hardships but overall, I grew so much in 2020! I deepened my relationship with God and my husband, finally got to experience pregnancy and was given more time to practice self-care.