The Day That Changed Everything.

It has come to my attention this week that I am rapidly encroaching on the third trimester. That we are down to a double-digit countdown. That this baby girl is going to be here in a blink. The weeks are flying by now and I barely have time to read about what she is doing at week 25 before my phone is buzzing with a reminder that we are now at week 26.  

Since Hugh and I started this (much longer than we ever anticipated) process in March 2010, I have been keeping a little journal. Rereading it now, as we are busy doing things like staying up late to frame prints for her nursery, I am struck by the true roller coaster of emotions we went through - the hope and excitement in the first few months, the humor from the months I was on Clomid (not that having to take it was funny, at all, but those pills made me act so crazy that really all we could do was laugh), the disappointment when it didn't work and we changed tactics and the months dragged on and on, and, in the final few months before we finally got here, the grief. Those entries are still hard for me to read and I cry every single time. Even now, with this belly full of baby kicking me every hour, I cry for how truly hard those days were, how sad and confused and alone we felt.  

But, like Hugh promised me would, we got there. And after the dark days of July, August 15th came like a giant explosion of joy and light and everything that was wonderful: 

I hesitated to share this because, well, it wasn't written for the world wide internet. It was written just for me, to remember how it felt to have known for twenty-four hours we were having a baby. It feels a bit like putting a love letter to Hugh on the blog (which, for the record, he would never let me do; private, that one). But since I started writing about being pregnant and sharing snippets of our infertility, I have gotten more emails and messages and comments of support and gratitude and comradery than this blog has ever received. It has made me wish I started sharing long before I did, if only because infertility can be an isolating path to travel and it would have been nice to feel a little less alone. So, here we go, the happiest part of the infertility journey to date... 


August 16, 2011 

I cannot believe I am actually writing this post. I feel hesitant to be putting the words on this page, feeling like every time I hit a key I am tempting fate to take this away from me. 

I am pregnant.

Three weeks and four days pregnant to be exact.

I feel literally over the moon with joy. I want to shout if from the rooftops. I cannot stop smiling. I have thought of nothing else for the last twenty-eight hours. I have no idea how a person waits until the end of the first trimester to share this news. I feel that people can just look at me right now and know.

Also, I am in shock. Not because this was unplanned. Actually, because it was the opposite. I am in shock because Hugh and I have been dealing with infertility since March 2010. Seventeen long months of waiting and worrying and blood work and tests and monitoring and temperature-taking. But mainly, it was the waiting. Waiting for that test to finally have two pink lines.

I don't know why I took a test yesterday morning. I wasn’t supposed to test, per my doctor, until Friday when I will be four weeks. I have gotten out of the habit of testing over and over again during the waiting period. But yesterday I woke up and thought, clear as day, I am going to take a test. After the five minute wait was up, when I went in to look at it, I almost threw the test away after seeing the faint second line, because I am so used to taking ovulation tests at this point (where one dark line and one faint line means you have, again, failed to ovulate). Also, it was 7:25am and I had been awake for approximately 6 minutes.

My hand was hovering above the trash can when the old synapses started firing and it clicked - more than one line on a pregnancy test, no matter how faint the second may be, means it's positive.

And if it is positive, that means you are pregnant.

Pregnant.

I am pregnant.

I started shaking so hard I had to sit down. Then I immediately jumped up and ran to the hall to grab a box of digital tests (motto of the infertile: always prepared with testing arsenal, just in case). I dipped the test and sat there, staring at it, thinking it was way too early for it to be positive. Thinking the other test had to have been wrong.

Sixty seconds later, those digital letters were looking up at me: PREGNANT.

I have spent so long wondering how that moment would feel, how I would react, and now it was here. And now I can tell you how I felt: I was laughing and crying and shaking and saying aloud over and over "I'm pregnant." Fletcher was sitting in the doorway of the bathroom, looking at me with his head cocked to the side like I had lost my mind.

My whole life changed in that minute.

And then it was time to wait for Hugh to get home. Also known as the longest ten hours of my life. I am certain there were points in the day during which the clock started moving backwards.

Hugh finally called me at 5:32pm to tell me he was on the way home. I, somehow, managed to make totally normal and calm conversation with him during his drive. But all I kept thinking was I was about to change his whole life. This was the last time I would ever talk to him when it would just be us to think about. After he walked in that door, he would be a father-to-be. And everything would be different - perfectly excitingly wonderfully different. I was so excited my hands were trembling when he pulled in the driveway.

He came inside and Fletcher was losing his mind, as usual (see: we all love Hugh). I had the test in the pocket of my dress and my hands on my hips as we chatted so Hugh wouldn't see them shaking while he petted Fletcher.

For all the hours and hours I have spent fantasizing about finally getting to give Hugh this news, I didn't really know what I was going to say. I thought about getting a little baby thing to wrap up - a onesie or a rattle - but everything seemed so insignificant and trivial compared to the hugeness of this news. Writing it across the sky didn't feel big enough. So, in the end, I decided to just tell him.

I said I'd gotten him a present. That guy of mine loves presents and immediately looked excited. I told him to close his eyes and hold out his hands and he obliged. I, with still shaking hands, set the test right side up across his palms and said, okay, open your eyes.

He looked at it for a second, apparently thought it was a new digital thermometer, and said "Oh hey, look at that," in the most half-excited way ever. 

Then he saw the digital window. His eyes got huge. He looked up at me with complete shock, mouth literally hanging open, no sound coming out. I started laughing and crying at the same time and said, "I'm pregnant. We're having a baby." 

And then there was what I'd known would come; the moment that got me through every single one of those failed months - we were hugging and crying and laughing and kissing and stepping back to look at each other before we started hugging and crying and laughing again. I have never in my life wanted something more than I wanted to be able to finally be able to tell Hugh we were having a baby.

Finally, we got there. 

Can you believe it?

I hardly can.