Finding out, again.

written 11.4.12

This morning, I woke up, peed and took a pregnancy test. I was waiting the obligatory three minutes but had pretty much already dismissed it as negative when I picked it up, squinted and realized there WAS a faint line there. Holy crap. It was positive.

This wasn't really a shock, but yet it was. We've been trying to get pregnant for the last few months, and (TMI alert), I had a really good feeling about our timing this month, which was confirmed by some spotting earlier this week (hello, implantation!). So I tested, knowing it was still going to be super early and a negative result didn't necessarily mean that we weren't pregnant, but I also knew I was pulling out the big guns (aka the "guaranteed to show results five days before the other tests") and not my typical dollar store pregnancy test, so my hopes were up a bit.

I looked at the faint positive about twelve times, comparing it to the diagrams on the box. Then I headed out for a run/walk in some pretty intense fog. I had my iPod on, but I hardly remember the music that played - my head was in the clouds as I went over things in the last few days that might have been an early sign of pregnancy or things that I might have ate or drank that were no-nos. Nothing huge came up, although I've been super tired and emotional lately, and I vowed to cut back on my caffeine ASAP. Throughout the day, little reminders of pregnancy #1 came back to me, as I thought about how I'll have to fend off the cold Elle is bound to pass along to me without cold meds. I thought about how I'll miss wine.

I thought about the excess saliva, frequent urination, exhaustion, aversions, cravings and nausea that await. I am terrified of these things, especially in my current (suddenly much more stressful) job and with an active and opinionated toddler underfoot. These are symptoms that are reassuring to me, but they make me feel so unlike myself. I know there are so many dramatic changes going on in my body, and it should be no surprise if the smell of food makes me want to hurl for the next two months or the thought of baking a loaf of banana bread seems like the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest.

I figure that I am probably around 3.5 weeks pregnant and calculated that our road trip to Ohio will be right around the gestation that I started to feel really lousy during my pregnancy with Elle. I wondered if my tiredness this weekend is because I'm growing a human or just because work was draining this week and I didn't sleep as much as I should have. Every time I drank water today, I wondered if my water aversion that I experienced with Elle would come back and I'd worry about dehydrating the little one. I thought about how long we can feasibly, semi-comfortably stay in our condo as a family of four. I thought about daycare, money, etc. All things I had thought about before, but now, with the faintest of positive pregnancy tests, these concerns and thoughts are all suddenly much more relevant.

But I also thought about how long we've waited for this, about how many months the negative pregnancy test disappointed me more than I wanted to admit. Trying to conceive again wasn't something we shouted from the rooftops, so it was kind of isolating as we waited for news to share but didn't share the fact that we hoped there would be news soon. We were approaching things with the attitude of "when it happens, it happens" and I figured that God's plan wasn't for us to get pregnant right now. (I tried to remind myself of this often.) I had dreams of having a spring baby ... but then I quickly dismissed those and just wished for a baby due in any season. I tried to smile convincingly and not flinch when people asked if we'd "thought about number two" yet or when people referenced making Elle a big sister. I wanted to say "Hey, we're trying!" or confess that with each passing month I worried about it a bit more, wanted it a bit more and tried harder to find more positives in the fact that it hadn't happened yet and to remind myself that surely, there was a reason. My cycles have been ridiculously irregular, and it was hard to try to "casually time" things for a positive pregnancy test result and still try to maintain a laid back attitude about things.

So yes, now it has happened, and I'm so thankful and happy. I'm still a little stunned and terrified, but I'm excited. Maybe not as excited as I was when we got pregnant with Elle, because this time I know what to expect, and maybe a little hesitant to let the joy go too far, because it's VERY early and I know that anything could happen. But I feel like I have a little secret, and I'm carrying it around with a little smile and a full heart.