for shiz up the spout

Well, it's happened. I'm pregnant, knocked up, prego, with child, expecting. Would you like to hear how it happened? (No, not how IT happened, but how we found out?)

We started "trying" in November (by the way, people asking me how long we had been trying or if anyone knew we were trying makes for uncomfortable conversation in my opinion. No way around it, we're talking about having unprotected sex. So no, we didn't tell our parents or random people that we were trying). Due to my obsessive nature regarding success in the trying-to-conceive game, I researched and read books for months leading up to November. The most helpful was Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Up until I read that, I was sadly ignorant about my own body and what it takes to get pregnant.

I also joined a message board, full of other obsessed women trying to get pregnant. Let me tell you, a message board can be an informative, albeit scary place to visit. There are so many people out there struggling to get pregnant and it's taken them YEARS. It's easy to get discouraged and I was sure it would take us several months to get pregnant, which is why I convinced Nick to start trying earlier than we planned because no one gets pregnant in the first month. (Snicker)

So, November came to an end and then all you can do is wait. The problem with being well-informed is you know that it takes at least 14 days after you ovulate to detect pregnancy with a home pregnancy test. Fourteen days is a long time, y'all. Two full weeks. And all that's running through my head is, "What would be scarier? If the test was negative or positive?" Sure, you want it to be positive, but if it is, then that means, holy shit I'm going to be a mother! If it's not, then you have to go through all of this next month, and maybe the month after that. The waiting is enough to make you go mad.

I could only stand to wait ten out of the fourteen days before I decided to test. Which is dumb, because that early the chances of a positive test are like thirty percent. But I bought a pack of 10 cheapo pregnancy tests online (another trick I learned from the message board). Shelling out for those digital tests is totally against my tight wad nature.

Day ten out of fourteen = negative. Damn.
Day eleven out of fourteen = negative. This time I expected it, but still. Damn.
Day twelve out of fourteen = negative. Expecting my period any day now. Depressed.
Day thirteen out of fourteen = uh. Is that a faint, FAINT line? I'm talking so faint, you might be imagining it out of desperation? I abandoned all cute ways to reveal to Nick I might be pregnant and shoved the test in his face at 6am that morning. He concluded it was a "maybe". Later, he told me he couldn't see anything, but didn't want to disappoint me. That day I bought a digital pregnancy test and an early response test to use the next day.
Day fourteen of fourteen = a big, fat, positive test! It's hard to argue with the word PREGNANT showing up on the stick covered in your urine.

Nick had me wait until he got home from work that morning to test so I peed in a cup and got in the shower. We dipped the early response test first and it was a very clear plus sign. But Nick wanted confirmation from the digital. So we dipped that one too and waited forever. There's a little hourglass on the display screen that's there for about, oh, eight hours. It was infuriating. We couldn't sit there and watch it so we held hands and talked about Nick's day (night) at work. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, I see it change and lo and behold...PREGNANT.

Disbelief, tears, joy.

We took dozens of pictures of the thing, included the one above which we framed several copies of and gave to his family for the big reveal on Christmas Eve.

The waiting to tell people was the hardest part. I'm learning that pregnancy in general is a big waiting game and I suppose it's teaching me patience for when I have an infant, then toddler, then school aged, then adolescent - Lord help me.

For right now, I feel mostly fine, but just...different. My body sends me clues that something is changing. It's pretty amazing. I've been sick a few times. I realize I have to eat a little something every few hours or the full-on nausea hits hard. I know pack a lunch AND a dinner for my long days at work. So far, though everything has been manageable.

I think it's a boy.