First friend disclosure continued

Here is what I wrote in an email to my friend today, in response to her question about how I'd been feeling so far.

"...So other than being tired at the moment, I feel eerily normal. I never got sick with #1, but I certainly felt queasy by this point, had to pee a million times a night, etc. I'm feeling a bit in disbelief, still taking my temp every morning, have taken 4 tests (well, two were old/expired in 2006, but I did them anyway. No, wait, that would make it 6 tests in two weeks. Can that be right? What a kook!) I'm feeling really cautious about believing...

So... physically I'm fine, emotionally, it's surreal. I have one friend who has now an 18-lb, 3- month old son but I watched her go through 3 losses in the past year & a half. I have another friend who is 17 weeks along after two miscarriages (and had started but didn't need to go through with fertility treatments). My one sister had one miscarriage between kids #2 and #2, and my other sister had several after having three kids. I've been in writing groups and workshopped/given feedback on at least 5 or 6 pieces on miscarriage in the past few years. And as I think I told you I didn't even get my period back after #1 until almost 2.5 yrs. So I am one skeptical little bunny!"

Reflections on not yet knowing

So I knew it was a possibility. Of course I did. I was clear about being fertile when I said, after my mother-in-law left from her weekend visit, "I'm not convinced about this or about our relationship, but if we're going to try, this is the time." So we did. Three times that week (and none since?).

I'd started to feel like someday I would look back at me being grumpy - complaining about the stress of moving, of my volunteer work, of trying to work for pay - and look back and say, "But you were together and relatively mostly happy, and you wanted a sibling for your son. Why didn't you just try before your ovaries got crusty?"

I disagree with my sister-in-law, who once said, "But don't you think there's never a good time to have a baby? Do you seriously think you would have had a kid if you knew then what you know now?" Of course I would. I don't think life sucks that bad. I knew parenthood was a challenge. I've watched my sisters have and start raising six kids. This is not a complete surprise.

I just didn't want to do it depleted of energy, tired, stressed out and seriously questioning my marriage. But I think seriously questioning my marriage was in fact a way to push off this thing I worried I'd fail at -- conceiving, growing a healthy baby, and, dun-dun-duhn... being able to have a VBAC (preferably at home - an HBAC).

So I figured we should give it a shot. Maybe it will take a long time. We'd waited until we were past a busy October, which meant not having an on-time baby in the middle of the summer (something I kind of wanted to avoid - push it closer to fall so we can still go on trips). I'd done a decent bit of detox. I was eating pretty healthy and not facing a major big deadline of any kind. My son was in school three days a week -- still not enough time, but not bad.

It did occur to me that we'd given in a good shot. And when I got an email noting that BlogHer was in early August, I gasped. "What a bummer to miss that by a few weeks," I worried if by some chance we'd gotten pregnant.

Of course I hadn't yet done the math and thought the conference would be after my due date. "Maybe I could go up there and if I went into labor, drive the hour to my sister's house and deliver there like I saw her do 12 years ago. Maybe I'd have a better chance of getting my own head out of the way if I stayed busy until the very end," I thought.

I told my husband last night about the BlogHer date, and he gave a sympathetic, "Aww..." like he actually got why I wanted to go to this thing and how crazy it would be if we'd actually gotten me seriously knocked up for the long haul such that I couldn't go). That reaction is the best thing to come of this yet!

It also did occur to me about 7-9 days after ovulation when someone at a meeting I was leading told me I looked great, that I was glowing. I kinda thought so, to tell the truth. For one thing, I felt warm. But I also felt good about what I was doing. I'd had another event the previous night at my house that was great, too. I felt pretty in the zone, working toward establishing a career & niche I felt proud of.

The next Monday I got surprisingly busy with a writing project and ate chocolate and drank decaf. I'm normally a pretty healthy mama, but I do make my exceptions when the cortisol is already flying.

I still managed to eat a full healthy lunch, but it was hurried and while on the phone. It was a nutty day, and I was almost 10 minutes late to pick up my son at school.

That night, I had monkey mind, but I wanted to sleep. So I imagined tucking in all my thoughts -- emails to reply to, work to edit, work to write, cleaning to do for Thanksgiving guests, food to purchase. They each got a pillow and blanket, and I told them to take a rest.

And then we all did.

Until the next morning, when I ushered my manic son out of the bedroom so my husband could sleep a while longer and I could pee on a stick without an adult audience.

And the rest is history.