1.16.17
“Three words to describe my thoughts, emotions and body in the past 24 hours… positive pregnancy test.”
It was January 16. Kevin and I had entertained the idea of starting a family, and on this day, it felt like we only blinked before that journey began.
I sat at my desk at work, feeling “off”, three days late and certain the pregnancy test I’d bought months ago in preparation for this day that I would take when I got home would be positive. Getting antsy, and needing to confirm my suspicion, I left 20 minutes early and drove home in silence on a rainy, January day. My mind raced and I tried to convince myself my gut could be wrong.
I got home and quickly took the test and watched the two pink lines appear immediately. The instructions say to wait three minutes, so I forced myself to leave the room as if the lines might disappear before I came back. I returned to the same two pink lines and fell into a pattern of heavy breaths and tears.
Filled with emotion, I quickly conjured up what it would take to take a second test, as if the first positive wasn’t confirmation enough. With the second positive, I launched into preparation mode for telling Kevin when he got home. Inside the pregnancy-test-sized-gift box I’d also bought months ago, I placed one of the positive tests and wrote, “You’re going to be a dad!” I set up a camera and paced the kitchen for what seemed like hours, but was realistically minutes.
When Kevin got home, I shared the news, and we entered into the first leg of our journey – the secret keeping stage. We celebrate any milestone with dinner at a restaurant around the corner from our house, so this stage began with that celebratory dinner, while we talked about how much we didn’t know. How do we pick a doctor? At what point do we tell people? How will we tell people? Who will we tell first?
We knew little about having a baby, but we knew less about what this journey was going to look like for us.
In the stats:
Gestational Age: 4 weeks, 2 days
P.S. Spoiler alert – our story ends with, all things considered, a healthy baby. As it progresses, however, things get wonky. Much of our story will not be for faint of heart, and by faint of heart, I mostly mean men. Follow at your own risk, as there’s no way of fully telling our story without sharing the literal ins and outs of this pregnant woman’s body.