I Haven't Been Eating All the Cookies

Or that's what I've wanted to tell everyone over the last couple of months. I don't know when the perfect moment is to talk about this. I'm up early, couldn't really sleep last night, and I've always liked early mornings for talking about things close to the soul.

I'm having a baby.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know it's been a very very very long time since I talked much about the baby-making process and health stuff going on with that, and feelings going on with that, so maybe you guessed. Or thought I'd given up. Or figured I didn't want to talk about it anymore. Not at all. Sky and I found out in the middle of November; I'm now 16 weeks, and I've been waiting to tell you til 1) we were out of the first trimester and 2) I'd gotten a chance to tell my closest friends. I wanted to tell them before they read it on the internet.

So yeah. Amazing. Not sure what to say now:)

I'll say I had a gnarly first trimester with moderately-intense nausea from about 10am-9pm Monday-Sunday for about 5 weeks. I'm feeling great for the most part now---having some of those second trimester growing pains in my abdomen and back which can get intense now and then, and some serious bouts of hormones which out of nowhere can trigger urges to sit on the living room floor and sob for a few minutes. But they are few and far between, pass quickly, and make me laugh after the fact. And I can fit exactly two pairs of my pre-pregnancy pants, and they're tight, which is why I've wanted to send out the cookie alert. There's not much of a belly there, so guess where the baby weight so far has gathered!

The hummingbird (my nickname for my baby) is due July 24th. My birthday is July 23, so it's possible we'll share that. I joke with the baby that it better know its mama well enough to know that she does not like sharing birthdays, but baby might have a wicked sense of humor and go for that very thing. I don't know if it's a boy or a girl, and I won't know til I meet the little one.

The day we found out was a Saturday morning. I'd suspected that maybe it had happened, but I'd suspected that a few weeks prior and had been wrong and so sad. I'd taken 2 home tests already, and they'd both come back negative, and I was baffled and not convinced and scared they were right all at the same time. I waited a few more days, thinking maybe we'd tested too early, and after peeing on the stick I waited the 2 minutes or whatever it was, went back in, checked the stick out, and said to Sky who was in the other room, "It says No."

I felt hopeless in that moment. What the F was going on with my body then?

I peered a little closer and there, in the faintest shade of pink perceivable to the human eye, was a second line. "Hold on a minute. I think it says Yes." I ran into the bedroom. "Is that a second line?"

And the rest leads us to where we are now.

For whatever reason, I did have the faintest, hardest-to-detect line ever, but it was a line nonetheless. That day I went around in a bit of a haze. I wanted it to be true and I was scared that somehow it still wasn't true. I didn't even really want to talk about it. I'd waited for a long time and there were several people who didn't think this could happen for me without the drugs they wanted me to take. Maybe my home test was wrong.

I went to the doctor---the same doctor I'd been to in March, found out my PCOS was worse and sat weeping in the car for an hour after---and got a test there. Positive. I went back a week later to test that my hormone levels were rising properly. They were perfect. And then it started to be real.

We told our immediate families over Thanksgiving, and started telling close friends before 3 months. It was true for me that should anything go wrong, I'd want my friends' support, so telling them felt right.

It's this extraordinary surreality where I know there's someone in there, but I don't feel that being moving yet, so sometimes I've had to remind myself that Yes, You're Pregs. But I started writing to the baby even before it was born in a journal I have just for that, and have done that since we found out. I'm keeping a list of who thinks it's a boy, who thinks it's a girl. I did a happy dance when I no longer fit my old bras (I've waited for cleavage my whole life). I wake up a lot with my hand on my belly and in our ultrasound a couple of weeks ago it looks like the baby has my shape face. Hearing the heartbeat....that was magic.

That second bedroom in the new house is, in fact, the baby room. That Lululemon top from Monday that I thought would be great for those mommies-to-be---I speak from experience. And if anyone does think I've just been eating a lot of cookies, they can think away. My body is not my business and it gets to do whatever it needs to do to support the beautiful little life I'm carrying around with me.

My friends, miracles happen. We just can't give up before they do.