The next day was March 1st – our anniversary. It was a Sunday morning and for some unknown reason, I woke up at 7 am and thought I needed to take a pregnancy test. Short of my crazy intuition, there was absolutely no reason for me to think I was pregnant. I mean no symptoms at all. But in this case, I followed my intuition and did it anyways. To my complete shock, the dumb test was not as clear as I had hoped. Basically, the regular, horizontal, placebo line was loud and clear, but the vertical line needed to make a plus sign was lighter than Michael Jackson (too soon for the MJ jokes???). WTF was this? Aren’t these things called Clearblue Easy for a reason? They are supposed to be easy, meaning idiot-proof! Not so much in my case. I ran in and woke JB up and his basic response was that “it kinda looks like a plus sign”. Very helpful. We are talking about a huge life moment here and all I get is a weak little inkling that my whole life may be about to change?
Thank you Proctor & Gamble or whatever megagiant corporation produces these ridiculous products. I understand if my Tide might not whiten my clothes as much as promised or if my Pantene shampoo doesn’t truly produce any extra volume as the bottle states, but dear Lord, could you at least take the time to make a pee on a stick product that doesn’t make a girl tip toe on the thin line of pregnant or not? That moment in time (after two minutes of excruciating waiting are up) is game-changer so maybe we should throw a little extra R&D money into that product instead of coming up with another way to add flavor to my toothpaste.
Desperate times call for desperate measures (and better technology). So after two not so Clearblue Easy tests with maybe or maybe not results, JB and I left for CVS. Apparently, they make digital pregnancy tests. Clearly, this is a product that should not be purchased based upon the cheapest price unless you are in the mood to go through the aforementioned, painstaking process of guessing whether or not you are pregnant. So we made our (expensive) purchase and headed back home. This time I took the test and left the room. We sat in silence in the living room waiting for the recommended two minutes. There was no plus line required, no instructions necessary – this time it was either “Pregnant” or “Not Pregnant” in digital lettering. JB didn’t make it to the two minute mark before he rushed into the bathroom to read the results. About 10 seconds later he came out and said “It’s a boy”. To this day, I have no idea why he said that. I just knew he was going to say “just kidding” at some point but those words never came out and finally I responded with “Are you sure?” He was sure and so was the test. Clear as day, it said “Pregnant”. So there we sat, stunned.
It took a few weeks (and Dr. Monti’s confirmation) to get used to the idea, but we were pregnant and it was time to prepare. Although it would likely make for an excellent blog post, I don’t have too much to say about being pregnant because I was very lucky and had it pretty easy. I never puked, never had any complications, actually lost weight for the first four months and only had one tiny scare around six months. A little back pain, a lot of heartburn and a total inability to efficiently roll over in bed after 8 months were the crux of my issues. The shopping, the excitement and the anticipation were indescribable and made up for every negative occurrence. To sum it up, I actually loved being pregnant! But then we got to the very end and things changed a little. While the anticipation was killing me, I was very set on letting her come on her own so I was not really into induction. Of course that was until 38 weeks when Dr. Monti informed me that her femur bone was off the charts in length and she guessed that she was at least 8 lbs with two weeks to go. OK, 8 lbs didn’t sound bad. I knew I could handle that and wanted to give her a chance to show up on her own schedule, but Dr. Monti wanted to go ahead and schedule the induction for a couple days after her due date just in case. I struggled with the decision on induction because I knew there were increased risks so those last couples of weeks of pregnancy were not so much fun. We tried everything to get her to make her grand entrance but nothing worked. There was a full moon the week before she was due and I even laid outside under it one night hoping direct exposure might be more effective and speed things up. A few checkups, two weeks and one due date later, still no baby.
More to come…
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