I cannot believe that I am into the third trimester already. This pregnancy has just flown by. Can I hope that this last few months will go by just as quickly?
I was thinking today about the day I found out I was pregnant this time. With Emily, I didn't test until I had known for a long time that I was pregnant. I was almost nine weeks along, so the positive result didn't surprise me one bit. I only actually took the test so Chris would stop saying, "If you're pregnant..." Maddie's HPT came up negative. That one was disappointing, but not surprising. The blood test on the other hand, was quite shocking. But the point is, I was never really surprised by the results of an HPT before.
This time, I hadn't been charting as well as I should have. I came home from a trip to California for my sisters graduation, and restarted my temping. I knew the temps I was getting were post-ovulatory, but I didn't know how long they had been that way. There had been only one chance for us to get pregnant, so I figured the odds were in our favor and didn't worry about it. We were having a difficult time and my mind was on other things. A week or so after my trip, I got a nasty stomach bug, very unpleasant. But under that sickness, I thought I noticed a note of a very familiar, very particular type of nausea. I had been having some slight adhesion pains for a few days as well, but had written them off as nothing. Once the pains were paired with the nausea, the possibility of pregnancy was in my mind like a fish hook. It wouldn't let go. I wanted to wait it out, wait until the 18 days of high temps had gone by, letting me know I was definitely pregnant, but I was going crazy. This was not a good time for us to be pregnant, either financially or relationship-wise, and Emily was only a little over a year old. I decided that if my options were to test or drive myself crazy for another week, I should just test. When Chris went to work the day before Father's Day, I went out and bought a test. I used a self-checkout at the grocery store because I was so afraid of the comments that I thought I'd get towing a four year old and a one year old and buying nothing but a pregnancy test.
I considered waiting and using first morning urine, then decided it was now or never; I might lose my nerve. I took the test, left it sitting on the counter for three minutes while I pretended to be interested in a TV show. I couldn't bear to watch. I thought I was prepared either way, but I fully expected to get a negative and spend the rest of the evening laughing at myself, relieved, for being so silly. I walked into the bathroom and saw the biggest plus sign I'd ever seen. And the test line was so much darker than the control line that there was no way it was a mistake. I felt like I'd been kicked in the chest. I walked out of the bathroom and sort of paced around the house for awhile, trying to catch my breath and wrap my mind around the idea that I was having another baby. It just couldn't be true. People with our history don't get pregnant without trying. They just don't. Except apparently they do.
Right before Chris came home, I wrapped the test up in a box and put it on his computer. When he came home I told him it was an early Father's Day present. He opened the box, looked at it for a long time, then turned to me and said, "Okay, so you aren't pregnant." I was a little stunned for a second, then said something like, "A plus means I AM pregnant..." Then it was his turn to be stunned for awhile. I tried to let him have his space to digest the news. I hadn't mentioned anything specifically about thinking it was possible that I was pregnant, but he usually knows what's going on. He told me later he knew I had gotten a pregnancy test that day. Just suddenly knew it. A feeling.
Obviously, we've both come around since then. We are very happy to be welcoming this third baby into our lives. Maddie is thrilled to be having another baby. She says it's a little brother and has named him God, for reasons only she knows. Emily didn't seem to be aware of anything for a long time, but they pick up more than we know. A few weeks ago, she was cuddled up against my tummy when she got a hard kick. She looked up at me and said, "Oh, baby in 'ere," and gave my tummy a kiss. Now she says it all the time. She's getting so big. They both are.
It seems so strange to be thinking of starting again with another tiny newborn... little onesies...nursing round the clock. But I know that this baby was meant to be a part of our family, right now. I can't wait to meet him or her.
