Needless to say there’s been a lot going on in the month-and-a-bit since I last posted. I’ve been considering making this post, and then putting it off. I’m not sure whether I’m looking for the right words, or whether I worry that writing about this will change it (though for the better or the worse, I don’t know). I think I’m making this sound a lot more dire than it is - it’s good news. I am just … as usual … anxious. It started like this:

In Hawaii, on our honeymoon, I started feeling weird. Slightly off in the stomach, though not enough to ruin the vacation. Food tasted strange to me, but Tom didn’t notice. We went out to dinner one night and I could barely eat any of the Thai food we’d ordered because it tasted so weird. One afternoon at lunch ketchup tasted bizarre, and I wanted mustard instead. I am not usually a mustard person. I noticed, but didn’t pay too careful attention. Then I started getting sleepy early in the evening. One night I crashed at 9pm. I blamed it on the time change, but Tom didn’t seem to have jet-lag - and we’d already been there for a few days. I started wondering. What if?

On the last night of the vacation, we needed to stop at Wal-Mart (yes, I know - the horror) and I decided to pick up a test. Tom had found out that he needed to leave for China directly from the airport when we returned to San Francisco, and I didn’t want to wait until he got back since we weren’t sure how long he’d need to be gone. I’m horrible at waiting. So the morning before we were supposed to leave I woke up at 6am, as I’d been doing all week, and went into the bathroom. I’d been tossing and turning since about 4:30, but I was far too lazy to get up that early.

I read the instructions, just in case I’d forgotten how to pee on a stick in the couple of months since I last took a test. And then I waited. I forced myself not to stare at either the test or my watch for the intervening three minutes. I even managed to give it an extra 45 seconds or so just to be sure the test was done. By the time I could look, I’d almost convinsed myself that this was going to be yet another false alarm. I hadn’t even missed my period yet, though it probably was supposed to start that day. (Give or take; I’d yet to have a ‘regular cycle’.) Finally the time was up. We’d splurged on one of those digital models, where you didn’t even have to be bright enough to get the plus or minus sign, or the one line vs. two. All I had to do was read ‘pregnant’ or ‘not pregnant’. I looked down.

Holy shit. “Pregnant”. I stared down at the stick for a few minutes, but no matter how hard I stared, the missing “not” didn’t appear. And then I started grinning and didn’t stop. At first I thought I’d wait a bit to tell Tom, not wake him up so early in the morning. But I couldn’t wait. About five minutes later I poked him gently in the arm. He woke up instantly - and I said (so originally) “Guess what - I’m pregnant.”

The groggy expression on his face disappeared instantly and he *really* woke up. “You are?”

And then there was the manditory hugging and squeeing and ‘oh my god, I can’t believe it’-ing. After our own rejoicing, I called Mom (again, of course). At first we weren’t going to tell many people, since it was so early. But that didn’t last long - I’m not so great at keeping my mouth shut about really big news - at least not news of my own. So far, everyone has been at least as thrilled as we are.

In the intervening weeks the queasiness has increased exponentially, as has the ‘holy shit, what have we done’ feeling. I’m still really early in the pregnancy… just over 7 weeks, counting from the first day of my last cycle. But it’s finally happened. We’re going to be parents. (Oh my god…)

Posted on June 15th, 2007 by Kat
Filed under: pregnancy, General