How This Happened…

**Actually written on 4/25/11

I’m actually writing this post early, but saving it as a draft and will post it after we’ve gone public with the pregnancy.  Also, it’s kind of long.  I’m actually not documenting this for the purpose of my readers, but more for my own purposes.  I want to remember this process later in life and want our future baby to know how it happened, because it really is one of the moments in life where God truly intervenes.

By now, you guys know that I am a living incubator for a fetus.  A lot of people didn’t see this coming, except for our close friends and a few family members who knew we were going to start trying.  People assume that as much as Justin and I travel, that we wouldn’t have children for a while.  Neither of us wanted children for a while when we got married, but the idea grew on us.  For about a year now, I’ve had the constant thought in my mind of what it would be like to have a child.  It was literally like the desire came out of nowhere.  And then I realized that God gave me that desire.  He planned for me to be a mother and for Justin to be a father and he adjusted our wishes and plans for His will for our lives.  It was a great blessing for God to slowly over time tell me what he wanted from me and I’m so glad that I listened and opened up to the idea. 

We started discussing having children at the beginning of 2010 and decided that we would take our trip to Africa in December 2010 and then start trying when we got back, which is what we did.  We were lucky enough to have it happen very soon, within the first 2 months!  There was a constant fear in my mind that it would take us forever.  I’ve read too many blogs and looked at the stories on babycenter’s website too many times to think it would happen soon, but God has blessed us for sure! 

Justin and I decided that we would try in January and February, but that we would not try in March because if we got pregnant in March, we’d have a December baby and neither of us really wanted a December baby because it’s just too close to Christmas and we were afraid that the baby would get screwed out of presents the rest of his/her life, not to mention he/she would never be able to have a pool party and it would be hard to get people to come to birthday parties with all the Christmas parties going on (all things we’re working through now though).  Although, we didn’t realize that the drug we were taking for Malaria while we were in Africa affects folic acid in pre-natal vitamins, so we actually couldn’t try in January because we had to get the malarone out of my system first.  So we started actually trying in February, but didn’t get pregnant then.  I can’t even stress enough that  we really weren’t trying in March.  But we got pregnant anyway.  I quickly realized that this was God’s way of saying to me “Don’t tell me when you will and won’t have a kid.  You know who I am right?”.  God 1, Morris’ 0.  Of course that’s so bad to say Morris’ 0.  We are totally gaining something from this….a cute little baby that will forever change our lives.

So how did I find out?  Okay here’s that story.  On the morning of April 16, 2011, I woke up at 5am.  I have no idea why I woke up that early, I just couldn’t go back to sleep.  I wasn’t “late” yet.  Aunt Flow was due the next day, however, my temperatures led me to take a pregnancy test that morning.  Let me explain the temperatures thing.  While we were trying, I was charting my temperatures by suggestion of my doctor because he knew I was irregular and after being on the pill for 10+ years, he figured it would take my body a while to become normal again and he said taking temperatures in the mornings would help me tell when I ovulated each month.  Here’s the key thing about temperatures….when you ovulate, your temp drops just a little.  After ovulation, it jumps a lot and stays high until AF comes and then it will go back down again.  If you’re pregnant, your temps will stay up.  In January and February, my temps had a tendency to go back down about 10 days after ovulation.  April 16th was day 11 and not only did it not go down, it took another jump.  So I figured I would take a test that morning.

At 5am I peed on a stick and waited to see if there were two pink lines.  After waiting for about 2 or 3 minutes, I didn’t see a second line, so I trashed the test.  Now, as you know, Justin and I are selling our house and we had planned to do a massive cleaning raid that weekend.  Since I couldn’t go back to sleep, I started going through my closet and separating things I wanted to keep and things to give to goodwill.  When I threw away some old  jewelry, I pulled the test out of the trash to get a second glance.  No idea why I did that by the way, just figured I’d get a second look with fresh eyes I guess.  I saw a second line.  It was faint, but it was a second line.  I was FREAKING.OUT.  It’s still about 5:30-5:45am at this point.  I run to our bedroom and say to Justin “ummmmm….babe…..I don’t know how to tell you this”.  Justin was so delirious and didn’t know what was going on because I woke him out of a deep sleep.  He says that his first thought was that I was about to tell him that his jeep was stolen.  HA!   So I told him that I thought I might be pregnant and he turned on the lamp and asked me to bring him the test.  I showed it to him and he said he saw the faint line too and for me to pee on the digital test to be sure. 

I went back to my bathroom and was literally only able to get out a few drops (TMI…sorry).  But off of only a few drops I saw the word “PREGNANT”.  I brought it to Justin and said “yep I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant”.  At this point, Justin is making so much fun of me because I’m flailing my arms up and down, not so much in a good way, but in a “holy crap how did this happen and what does this mean” way.  It was a Saturday so I couldn’t call my doctor’s office to make an appointment and we still had cleaning to do, so we had to go about our day as normal.  I have no idea how I made it through that day.  Not only was April 16th a huge day because we found out we reproduced, but also because we went to James Hill that morning and purchased our lot and started planning our meetings with the builders to build our house.  So much to happen in one day!!! 

Part of me still didn’t believe that this could have happened, especially given the odds of getting pregnant in March, a month where we weren’t trying.  I kept taking tests and was waiting for one to come back negative.  This is what happens when you continue to pee on sticks waiting on them to prove you wrong:

 

Yeah.   That happened.  Seriously.  And no, I didn’t spend a fortune on tests.  I bought the digital one when we started trying as well as all those strips.  On Amazon, you can get these little strips for $3.  A pack of 25 of them for $3!!  I figured that was a deal so I bought them.  So don’t make fun of me for taking so many, I had 20 or more left that hadn’t been used by April and they would have gone to waste if I hadn’t peed on them.  BTW, pregnancy tests on Amazon are WAY cheaper than they are at CVS. 

That was the longest post ever.  So sorry readers!  Just wanted to document so I could remember the little details.  I also pre-wrote my weekly posts on how I’m feeling and what’s going on between now (week 5) and week 9, which is when I’m assuming it will become public, so I’ll be posting those shortly.  If you actually read this whole thing….props.  You get the friend of the day award.