Pregnant!!??!!

October 9, 2007
It's a Thursday morning. My period is exactly 2 days late. I run to the bathroom to take a pregnancy test and then hold my breath through the painstaking 2 minutes it tells me it will take to reveal my "results". 2 minutes??!! Are these people crazy? I can barely wait 2 seconds for this! (Over the next nine months, I will slowly learn that waiting two minutes is NOTHING in comparison to all of the other waiting you do as a pregnant woman).

Results: Pregnant.

I casually saunter back into my bedroom where my husband is blissfully sleeping, completely unaware of what his crazy wife is up to. I grab my cell phone, take a picture of the test, and send off a rapid message to my best friend. Jumping upon the bed, I begin to wave the test in my husband's face (yes, a stick that I had just peed on), shrieking that I'm going to have a baby.

After suffering through a miscarriage only two months earlier, we decide not to talk about this until everything has been confirmed by my doctor (and my OB, and an ultrasound, and hearing the heartbeat). I call my primary care physician and they book me for an appointment the next day.

After MULTIPLE tests and two days of blood work, it is Tuesday, October 14th. I am in the middle of Parent-Teacher conferences when the phone call comes from my doctor's office-I am definitely, really and truly, 100% pregnant.

Now, if it isn't clear to you by this point that I was a)not only anticipating a missed period and b) hoping like heck to be pregnant, it should be. In the weeks leading up to that missed period I had begun to research OB's like I researched my master's thesis. I picked mine based on her picture-she looked nice, she was young, and I liked the sound of her name. It helped that she was accepting new patients, too.

I immediately called her office and booked an appointment-for two weeks later. Doctors have this awesome policy about not seeing pregnant women until they are somewhere around 6+ weeks pregnant. I have a policy in my brain that tells me this policy is idiocy.

The first appointment is a private chat with one of my practice's MANY nurses. She gives me a folder filled with literature including all the do's and don'ts and a "what to expect" guide. I meet my doctor next, who, I am immediately in love with. Her hair has grown longer, but despite this, she looks exactly like her photo and I have to fight back the urge to tell her that I picked her based on that. Clearly sensing my fear of another miscarriage, she kindly schedules me for an u/s the following week.

I wait for this moment in a haze of fear, excitement, and apprehension. What if there's nothing there? What if something is wrong? Oh God, what if there IS something there? How will we provide for this baby? How am I going to tell my parents and my friends?

November 7th, 2007:
Quite possibly the best day in my life (aside from my wedding) until this point. There's a blob and a flicker-a crazy, whip fast little flicker. It's my baby.