First of all, THANK YOU for your warm wishes and congratulations on yesterday’s post.
I have felt overwhelmed with love the past 24 hours, and I appreciate all your kind comments!
When I first found out I was pregnant, I was dying to talk about it all the time,
(I am almost 13 weeks as of this posting, and I wrote down these thoughts about 5 weeks ago.)
As I write this, I am currently two days away from being 8 weeks pregnant, and we haven’t told a single person yet. I’m dying to tell people, of course, but I want to wait until we have our first ultrasound and appointment with the doctor before blabbing our big news (even to our families). It’s hard keeping it in though, especially since I’ve been hit with almost every pregnancy symptom in the book and have already gained quite a bit of weight, which has totally thrown me for a loop. But let me start at the beginning.
Matt and I aren’t like a lot of other newlywed couples in this particular area of the world when it comes to expanding our family—we knew we’d be waiting awhile to have kids, and so we sailed by our first three years of marriage perfectly content with just the two of us (despite the questions from well-meaning friends, family, and even strangers about when we were going to have kids already). In fact, as I’ve mentioned in a post before, I’ve NEVER been baby hungry; I just always hoped that at some illusive point, I’d just magically know when it was time to get pregnant and be fine enough with the whole idea of it.
I know that backstory isn’t exactly romantic or exciting–but what can I say? I didn’t have any desire to get married until right before we got engaged, and so I wasn’t exactly surprised when the baby syndrome played out similarly. Basically, Matt and I had always had it decided that as soon as Matt graduated with his bachelor’s degree, we would start trying (mostly due to my age, not because we’d be in any kind of good financial situation to do so). We also knew that the insurance would likely be coming through my teaching job, so there was the issue of timing within the framework of a school year to think about too, which meant we were basically hoping to plan to have the baby in the summer, if at all possible.
I had my IUD removed at the end of May, and we found out we were pregnant at the beginning of August. Although a part of my brain panicked (because our timing was a little early–we had only started trying as early as we did just in case we ran into problems), I overall felt a sense of calm and excitement about the whole thing. I always thought I’d be totally panicked when I got pregnant (just because I’ve heard so many horror stories about pregnancy and labor and delivery), but both Matt and I were surprisingly calm after I got that first positive plus sign. In fact, for several weeks at the beginning, it’s almost like life just went on as usual, and I wondered if I’d just imagined the whole thing (despite the two positive pregnancy tests I’d taken).
Then, in my sixth week, my body started reacting so strongly to the pregnancy that there was no question in my mind what was really going on. I started to get the most intense nausea (right before the school year started, so convenient!), and I couldn’t find the motivation to do anything–not housework, not running errands, not even standing up more than normal. The cravings started innocently enough (I’ve always been one to crave certain foods though), but it soon got to the point that the only thing my body decided it could stomach was whatever I happened to be craving at that moment. Everything else made me feel devastatingly sick, especially if I happened to get a whiff of it. By week 7, my morning sickness was so bad that it was waking me up at night and doubling me over during the day (although as of this writing, I still haven’t actually thrown up yet).
And now, as I near the 8-week mark, I wonder if every single one of my coworkers has guessed what’s happening—I mean, when you feel as sick I have and need to be eating every two seconds (and because I’ve gained about 10 pounds since May), it’s hard to work full-time and keep it a secret from those around you (especially since I’ve been wearing Sea Bands 24/7 to try and stay atop of the nausea). Sometimes I want to tell just one more person so my poor husband isn’t having to constantly listening to me moan about how awful I feel, but I really want to have the ultrasound first.
Just two and a half more weeks to go.
Update: I didn’t actually make it two and a half weeks before telling people. I needed someone to commiserate with, so Matt and I ended up spilling the beans to our families at 9 weeks. Oops!
