Holy Cow! I'm Pregnant

I headed off to work, where I think I got absolutely nothing done all day. I re-ran through our conversation, through the last week, when I had been expecting a period that wasn’t coming. And then, a couple of things started to hit me. The 10th anniversary of 911 had been the weekend before. We watched a bunch of stories about the survivors, the victims on the planes, the rescue workers, the building of the memorial. We watched the plane collide with the building over and over, the towers burning, one by one the towers falling. We watched the surveillance footage of the plane hitting the pentagon, the footage of the huge burn spot outside Shanksville, PA. We watched hours of footage where thousands of people died. Where children talked about losing their fathers and it was all heart-wrenching. I was moved to the point of tears, but never cried. UNTIL: A freaking Budweiser commercial of all things. They showed a commercial where the Budweiser Clydesdale team is harnessed up. The team is trotting across green grass. Then you see the New York skyline behind them and they stop. There is the gaping hole where the towers once stood. The horses all lean their heads down and bow. And I balled. I cried and cried. Glenn looked at me like I was crazy. But darn it, it just made me so sad. And frequently in my life, animals have been able to move me in a way that humans just can’t. But looking back, I think I can honestly say, that was the first in many silly, hormonal reactions to things. It should have been my first sign.


Well, that and waking up in the middle of the night to eat. I have never done this. Perhaps half a dozen times in my whole life have I woken in the night to get up and eat. I remember doing it as a child occasionally, when I was going through a growth spurt. But as an adult, almost never. All of the sudden, I would wake up and my stomach would hurt I was so hungry. After I realized I was pregnant, I would follow my stomach’s lead more readily. And in that first trimester, I rarely missed a night of midnight snacking, to the utter delight of my two dogs.

All that day, I kept thinking it must be a mistake. Could it be true? I remember sitting quietly in my own world at lunch while my friends talked and talked. I tried to keep up with the conversation, but my mind wandered. I kept my mouth shut. I had a wonderful secret that made me excited, and scared and feeling so many emotions at once. Was this going to work out? What would people say when we did tell them? What would my life be like with a brand new, tiny baby? I knew when Glenn came to grips with it, he would make a wonderful father. I was really excited to see that. But it was overwhelming thinking of all the things that were going to have to change in my life.

I called my doctor’s office, excited to have my news either confirmed or disproven. I was rather taken aback when the nurse told me that they didn’t do a first appointment until 7 weeks. That was 2.5 weeks away. How on earth was I going to stand the suspense? I made the appointment and wondered what would happen at that appointment. Would we get a dating ultrasound? Or just a pregnancy test? I looked online to see that the answer varied widely from one OB to another. But, it sounded like the symptoms I was experiencing were about what one would expect and what others in my boat were experiencing, so I tried not to worry. I did use an online calculator to figure my due date: May, 21, 2012. WHOA!

That night, I went to the grocery store and purchased two digital pregnancy tests along with my normal groceries. I wandered through the baby section and wondered at all the tiny things. Could there really be one growing inside me right now? Surely not! Then as I headed out of the baby section, I saw an end-cap with a three-pack of white onsies with a UT Longhorn on them.

On impulse, I bought them. That night, I laid them on Glenn’s pillow before he got home. When he came home, I greeted him and kissed him and he was very quiet. He walked into the bedroom, picked up the onesies pack, carried it into the closet and hung it up next to his shirts and proceeded to change clothes. Then he laid down on the bed and was very quiet. I tried to talk to him, but he seemed very distant, so I tried not to be hurt and went about my business. I know that he deals with things differently than I do. I want to talk through something and he mulls on it for hours, sometimes days. Frequently he has thought something through much more thoroughly than I have, so this seemed like his way of dealing with life-altering news and I tried not to get too bothered by it.