It was one year ago today that I woke up at 6am and decided to take a pregnancy test. I was about to join a boot camp fitness team with three other grad students. I hadn’t been feeling quite right and my period was late (although with PCOS, the latter part was not abnormal), so I thought I would make sure that I wasn’t pregnant before I spent $75 on boot camp.
Our Family of Three
Taking the test was more of a formality for me. I really didn’t expect to be pregnant. A month before, I had been diagnosed with PCOS and was told that it would be difficult for me to conceive.
I remember getting impatient waiting for the results. It was pretty early and I really wanted to go back to bed. Then that second pink line started to appear. Uh-oh. It was very faint. What does this mean?! I frantically looked at the instructions, only to find what I already suspected. ANY second line, faint or not, means you’re pregnant, honey. OH. MY. DEAR. LORD.
I bounded out of the bathroom yelling Hubster’s name. He was still asleep, so my frantic yells for him were a bit startling. ”WHAT?!”
“Look at this. There’s two lines. I just took the pregnancy test and there’s two lines. What does that mean?!”
Hubster walked into the bathroom to look at the test. ”Well, it says here that if there’s two lines then you’re pregnant.” I met his words with a look of shock and horror. Much to my dismay, Hubster walked back to bed and was about to go back to sleep.
Me: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
Hubster: “Well, you’re pregnant. I might as well get some sleep.”
Me: “WHAT??!?!” Seeing that he really intended to go back to sleep even though I just discovered that I was PREGNANT, I got a bit upset. ”We’re not going to talk about this?”
Hubster: “What’s there to talk about? You’re pregnant.”
Me: “Ummm…YEAH??!”
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Even though Hubster was very nonchalant at first, we both had to make huge emotional adjustments over the next few months as we came to terms with how our lives were about to change in a way that we didn’t anticipate happening for several years. We were both 23 and had just moved to a new state, where Hubster was starting a live-in graduate assistantship. We had both just finished our first week of graduate school, where we were in the same program and classes. I wasn’t thrilled about my graduate assistantship and was hesitant about starting graduate school, but I was super excited about us graduating with our Master’s degrees together. It was such a fun thought that filled me with pride and excitement. We were planning on starting a family after we both worked in our professional positions for a couple of years. This was not at all in the plan.
I would venture to say that I had a much more difficult adjustment than Hubster did. Between weeks 5-14, I had the most terrible morning sickness that ended up being diagnosed as hyperemesis. I only vomited once, but I dry heaved so much that I spent the majority of my day hovering over the toilet or a bucket. It was nearly impossible to eat or drink anything. I was forced to drop a class that was heavily attendance-based. Unable to pick up another class, I had to withdraw from school. That also ended my graduate assistantship. Within six weeks, I went from starting a new job and grad school to being constantly ill and not having any school or work. That was really rough. It wasn’t until week 14 of my pregnancy that the doctor found something to help me, Zofran. I really wish I had found it sooner!
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Regardless of how difficult our journey has been this past year, I am now blessed with this beautiful, complex, wonderful child that fills me with joy (and despair at times!). I’m a stay-at-home mom a few years earlier than I thought I would be. But C is here now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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This journey started with two lines:
And now I get to look at this sweet little face every day:
