Sunday, December 28, 2014

Oi! Intriguing!

Back in November I took a pregnancy test.  It was a Friday, and too early to have anything to worry about, but I took one because I wanted to lay to rest this building but irrational thought that I was pregnant.  I’d had some pretty impressive heartburn on Halloween, which is something my non-pregnant self never experiences.  Also, I kept falling asleep by 9:00 pm.

It wasn’t even the type of sleepy that begins around 7:00 pm after an exhausting day and slowly culminates.  It was more the kind where Chris would ask, “Hey, do you want to watch a movie?
“Sure, that sounds good.” [Roll opening credits]
“Zzzzzzzzzz”

And laying my irrational thoughts to rest with an early pregnancy test totally worked.  Until that second faint line appeared.

I stared blankly at it for a good 30 seconds, but it didn’t go away.  I blinked a couple of times.  The lines were still there.  I shook the test gently.  Still two.  Then, having exhausted all of my voodoo skills, I said a few things under my breath that did not become a mommy-to-be.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t upset at the thought of a new baby.  In fact, Chris and I had pretty much convinced ourselves we wanted a third.  We had just thought we’d wait a year before trying.  Only two weeks earlier Chris had mentioned that he definitely didn't want a baby until he finished his masters program.  Even so, I was cautiously ecstatic.  I wondered how Chris would take it.

I waited out the hours before Chris got home from work with extreme impatience.  I know some moms-to-be think up cute or clever ways to tell their significant others about an impending bundle of joy, but I have never been one of them.  Historically, I’ve just blurted out the news before Chris had a chance to take his coat off, and it didn’t seem like now was a good time to change.

So the moment Chris walked in the door, I said something like, “Hi, honey, how was your day?  We need to talk,” in one big breath.

Those four little words, “We need to talk,” can strike fear into the bravest of men.  “What?” Chris said, “What’s going on?”

Suddenly I decided to play it coy.  Or maybe I’d just been rendered speechless.  I pulled up a picture of the test on my iPhone 4, which took quite a while because the 4 is archaic.

When the picture finally appeared, I handed the phone to Chris.  He glanced at it and said, “Ooohhhh.”

It wasn’t an “Ewwwww,” as in, “Why would you show me a picture of a stick that you peed on?”

And it wasn’t an “Ooooohh,” as in, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

It was just, “Ooohhh,” as in “Oi!  Intriguing!”

I stared at Chris for a moment, and he looked back at me.  I spoke slowly in case he was in shock: “Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, I know what that means.  Of course!”

“And….”

“And what?”

“Well, are you…happy?”

“Yeah, it will be good.  How often are those tests wrong?”

"Not often.  Should I take another test?"

"No, I don't think so.  Let's just wait and see."

"Umm, okay."
  
[The next day I bought a two pack of tests at Target.  Both times I watched the plus sign appear before my very eyes.  One test is not often wrong.  Three tests are almost never wrong.  If I weren't a mathematician, I'd leave off the 'almost'.]

Anyway, we spent a few more minutes talking about due dates/whose fault it was (July 18th/His), and we both agreed it was pretty exciting, timing be darned.  Then the heathens came into the kitchen and all of the usual chaos ensued until bedtime.

Upstairs, there was another brief round of, “Hey, you want to watch a movie?” [him] followed by, “Zzzz” [me].  And then I woke up at four in the morning able to think of nothing but this possible baby.

I thought about how Allison and Nicole would love having a baby in the house, and what room we could use for a nursery.  I thought about adding another hook in the girls’ bathroom for the new baby’s towel and how I would need to switch some pictures out of frames to include the newbie.  I wondered where we’d put guests once the guest room was a nursery and whether we’d need a bigger kitchen table.  I worried about my job and childcare and needing a mini-van and the alarming possibility that this baby could be a boy.  I pictured us holding a footie-pajama-ed bundle of cuddliness, family pictures of five, and Thanksgivings thirty years from now with a house full of people and our three beautiful children rolling their eyes and smiling about their neurotic mother.

I couldn’t go back to sleep, and I spent the following day thinking, “I can’t believe I’m pregnant,” forty gazillion times.

Chris woke up just before eight o’clock, stretched, and put on some work clothes.  “I’m going to go work on the neighbors' deck.”

Mars.  Venus.

3 comments:

  1. I read this to Carol aloud with our morning coffee at Mumsy's breafast table. We started our day just as expected -- happy with laughter, but on two different planets :D

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  2. Congratulations!!! :-)
    "We need to talk" strikes fear into my heart too. It's never been accompanied by anything good in my history. Quite the opposite.

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