As We Move Forward...A Look Back

I woke up content this morning. After six hours of being on my feet yesterday in an attempt to "walk the baby out" and a refusal to nap, I managed to get five straight hours of sleep last night...no small feat for someone who usually visits the bathroom every half hour. And while five hours doesn't seem like much, the fact that it all came at once was a welcome treat.

I laid in bed, listening to the birds sing outside the window and feeling the baby bounce around in my tummy. Not long now...

It made me think about the start of this adventure. Back in November, I was tired. Looking back, I really should have seen it coming. But I had just lost my job suddenly, making me rethink my career choice and life path, and I was a little blue. So I didn't think anything of it when I could hardly hold my eyes open at my niece's second birthday party, and had to have Husband retrieve a caffieinated drink for me during brunch. I didn't think anything of it a few days later, when I had errands to run and just couldn't drag myself out of bed. I cut my shopping list down to the bare minimum and headed out into the drizzly, chilly weather to CVS where I bought 3 cases of pepsi (they were on sale!), a box of cheese nips, laundry detergent and a pregnancy test.

We had been trying to start a family for awhile. We weren't being too particular about it--I was trying not to obsessively count cycle days and things like that--but I usually kept a home test on hand just in case. And they were on sale too--a three pack, which meant I wouldn't have to buy them for awhile. And, even though it was still early, I was pretty positive I would need them in the following months. I already felt crampy and cranky as I drove home.

So imagine my surprise several hours later when the little digital screen on the test lit up with the word "pregnant". I stared at it. I was so used to seeing "not pregnant" that for a minute my brain couldn't comprehend it. I had always had all of these grand ideas about how I was going to tell Husband we were expecting, but they all flew out of my head as I walked into the living room and said to him, "when you have a minute, I need to show you something."

Maybe it was my tone, or the look on my face, but he immediately stopped what he was doing. I held up the test. "It's positive," I said, and promptly burst into tears.

We didn't throw a party quite yet--about a year before I'd had a miscarriage and we were hesitant to get too excited too soon. So very calmly, I called my doctor and scheduled blood tests to make sure the correct hormone levels were going up. Four days later, after two pokes of a needle, a nurse called me.

"Your levels look great," she said. "They're going up just like they should."

And then, we were excited. The fact that I'd taken the test in the middle of the afternoon (not in the morning, as is suggested) and far before it should have been positive didn't mean there was something wrong. It meant there was something right.

Stay tuned for the second half of "A Look Back: Baby Tell Tour 2009".