i decided i wanted to get pregnant and convinced my husband this would be a good idea. i suppose we always were on the same "time table"...we'd wait a year after we got married, disregard traditional birth control methods and see what happens. well, about the middle of july when i was finished with graduate school, the house had been bought, we'd been married for six months and i was confident in job as an english teacher i began to feel strange...like something, someone was missing from our family. i told my husband how i felt. his response, "in january." six months, not so long to wait. right?
well, i think i whined enough that he finally gave into giving up the birth control in October--almost three months earlier than we originally planned. i was sure i was going to get pregnant. not the first month. not the second month. by christmas, i was starting feel something different--like maybe i wanted to try a new career, work full time on my writing and/or take the financial hit and teach college. i wanted to travel and began to long for my back pack and passport...we could wait another year to have a baby...why rush?
then, a few days after the new year, i woke up and felt terrible. my boobs literally doubled over night and i felt like i had been in the worse bar fight. i laid on the sofa for a day or two, convinced i was hungover from the holidays and just needed to rest up before school started back. then it hit me--i might be pregnant. anxiety swept over me and i convinced my husband to take me to the store for a pregnancy test. he swore i wasn't knocked up. there was only one way to find out. i pulled the plastic cap off the stick, stuck in in the urine stream, and waited.
the box said three minutes. thirty seconds later, a very pink line appeared in the window, fifteen more seconds and the second one appeared. two lines equals preggers. i took the stick downstairs to my husband where he sat, feet propped up on the coffee table, playing Tiger Woods on the Wii. I looked at him and said, "I'm pregnant." I don't remember being happy or sad...no real emotion coming from my face, merely fact. I showed him the test. "Take another," he said...pure panic in his voice. I could barely squeeze anything else out of me but the few drops i was able to conjure up made it very clear--i was most definitely knocked up. My husband's response to the second positive:
"Call your mother, we need adult supervision."
as the next few months progressed and i spent more time on the sofa in front of the TV than anything else, i felt like my husband was more excited than i was about the baby. he wanted to tell the whole world and i just wanted to lay down. he bought the baby presents and i had to eat. he wanted to talk about cribs and i just wanted silence. it wasn't that i resented the little human growing inside of my i just didn't feel at all. and that scared me. was i normal?
and then the weirdest thing happened...sometime between hearing the heartbeat (it wasn't until 12 weeks that i actually heard it) and feeling it move inside of me, i realized something new about myself. i am a mother. i am a mother to this little person living inside of me and all of those things i thought i wanted somehow don't seem quite as important. at least, not for me to do alone.
don't get me wrong, i think these people that are like, "I loved being pregnant" are crazy. yes, i said it, certifiable. i haven't had a difficult or rough pregnancy (but i'm only 5 and a 1/2 months along and i still have the heat of the summer to endure so i'm not counting my chickens before they hatch) but i am know that i don't want to be pregnant a lot. i mean, i'd like to have more than one child. of course. but for now, i just can't wait to meet this one...i already worry about who he/she will become, what he/she will like, if they'll love me.
and that, i think, was my biggest problem.
for the first four months of this, i was so afraid that this little person wouldn't love me. i realize now, it's okay. i love him/her enough for the both of us.
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