May 30, 2014
It’s been 24 hours and my body can still not settle on how I am feeling. I have been floating from excited to scared to amazed to freaked out and back again about every fifteen minutes. Granted, this roller coaster of emotions has been going on for about a week now. I’ve had that gut feeling for a few days but was way to scared to take a test to confirm my suspicions. Honestly, I don’t know if I was more scared to find out if I was or that I wasn’t.
I’m almost thirty and starting a family has been on my mind longer than I’d care to admit. I’ve walked by our itty-bitty spare bedroom and thought what a great nursery it would make. I’ve made a secret Pinterest board about baby stuff. I’ve listened to friends talk about their children for years. I’ve let people ask me many times over if we want kids. I have listened to my parents and in-laws call themselves by their future grandparent names that they’ve already chosen (despite none of them have grandchildren). I have watched friends my age have their first child and then their second and then some even their third. But with each new baby I’ve held, I never went home wishing for one of my own. Yes, I had that “Ooh, babies are so cute…” but trailing that thought was always “…but they are a lot of work.”
I hate to admit how selfish Matt and I have been for the first five years of our marriage. Then again, these five years have been wonderful. We have gotten to know each other in ways I worry some couples who have kids early on do not have the chance to do. I look back at things that used to bother me about Matt when we first got married. But over time, I have learned what makes him tick and why he acts the way he does. Things that used to drive me crazy no longer do (as much!). I wonder if I would have learned these things as quickly (is years really quick?) if we had had a baby in toe. And, more times than not I have come home after a long day of working with 20 kids and been thankful that I can just lay on the couch and do nothing for the next 4 hours until I go to bed.
We have also always been rational people. For the first two and a half years of our marriage we saved money to buy a house as well as enjoy some fun vacations together. I have always been a money manager and I have often wonder how some people could possibly afford a baby. I’ve heard more than enough times that you’ll never save enough to raise a baby but I still couldn’t help to ask myself how we would ever afford daycare (and I honestly still wonder) yet alone everything else a baby needs.
Even still, we have both enjoyed our us time and decided we were ready to start a family. It sounds all nice and great when it’s words but when it’s in the shape of a + sign things are a bit more real.
For days I drove home from work trying to talk myself into going to a store and getting a pregnancy test. ‘There’s Rite Aid. Pull in.’ I’d tell myself and then I’d drive right on by. I’d try to convince myself that I was late because of the medicine I’d been taking for poison ivy. For days, I had a conversation with myself and God. I went from being excited to find out to being scared out of my mind and my heart racing. For three days I did this routine. Finally, on Wednesday I convinced myself to go to Walmart and by a test. But, again, I couldn’t find the courage to take it. So, on Thursday I had a chat with God and came straight home and took the test completely calm. No nerves at all. Waiting the proper 3 minutes (and then some) I casually turned the test over to see the big + sign staring me in the face. And then the heart racing started.
I told Matt that evening and he just smiled big. He claims his heart wasn’t beating fast but I can’t see how that is possible. I’d just changed his world. One minute he was watching a documentary on Afghanistan (that’s right) and then next I’m showing him that giant +. Maybe he was just trying to be calm for me because I know he saw the freaked out expression on my face.
One thing you must know about me is I am a bit claustrophobic. I don’t know why this all began but I’m sure it’s a bit because of Mom (you know it’s true, Mom). I can’t stand old elevators, elevators you can’t see out, slow elevators or really tiny elevators. I can’t stand when Matt holds my arms down so I can’t get up or hugs me so tight that I can’t move. I don’t like spaces where there are a lot of people. I don’t like being in traffic jams. I have long feared being pregnant for the simple fact that I am so scared I will feel trapped in my body. I do not like getting into situations where there is no way out….and there is no way out of a pregnant body. I lose my breath just thinking about it. Yes, I know it will change gradually but that doesn’t change the fact that I will eventually be so big I can’t see my feet or that I can’t sleep with my knee touching my chest like I do every night. I fear feeling trapped in my own body.
And I don’t think I need to let you in on my fear of actually giving birth. I HATE hospitals. I am a very healthy person. Other than going to the doctor for poison ivy the other week I don’t think I have been to the doctor since before college. (I should probably go knock on some wood.) My motto for the next nine months will be “If just about every woman in the world can do this (and many several times over) then so can you.” But that only lessens the anxiety a bit.
I do look forward to telling our parents the news, though. I have a memory of my dad playing with my cousin’s son at our old house. Dad looked at me as he threw Mason in the air and said “I’d make a good grandpa.” And he will. He will make an AMAZING PaPe (or PaPa or whatever name goes with GiGi as my mom has already deemed herself). Mom will make a wonderful GiGi and Darnell and Jerry are going to make a great Nani and Grandfather Gerard (as he’s so lovingly called now).
I am not good with change and I struggle to wrap my head around the next….forever. Life is about change and I’m ready to embrace it. I am excited for the future….but that doesn’t mean that I’m not baffled that their is a small being sitting here with me now.