The Test

Finding out that I was pregnant with you was such an exciting experience. When your dad and I were on our Park City honeymoon, we were talking one night in the hotel about when we wanted to begin having kids. I said I thought that I would like to start trying in a year or so and maybe even wait longer. Ben got sort of quiet and when I asked him about it, he said, "When you told me a year before, I thought that you meant we would have the baby in a year." Given our differences in ideas of timing, he was always so good to let me know that he thought that it was most important that I felt right about the timing because of the life alteration it is for the mother. So, waiting a year to start trying to get pregnant was the tentative plan. Three months later that plan went out the window when I just started feeling like I wanted to be a mom! I never really felt baby hungry, but it was more of a desire to enter into motherhood. That desire grew stronger and I shared my feelings with Ben. We decided to go off birth control and try to get pregnant. During that time I had taken one pregnancy test which was negative. I took another one, about one and a half weeks later and again it was negative. I felt sort of sad when the second one was negative, but I set it down and got into the shower (doing all of this very quietly). When I got out of the shower, there was a very faint second line (indicating positive). I felt so happy inside, but didn't want to put too much weight in that because the line was barely visible. The next morning I took another test. This time the line was still faint, but it was more bold than the initial test. That whole day teaching, I was thinking about it and wanting to know if I really was pregnant; I couldn't wait! On my way home from school, I stopped by Target to pick up two important items: a different type of pregnancy test and a cheap white shirt. The use of the latter was dependent upon the outcome of the initial item. After spending about 15 minutes in the women's clothing department and another 20 in the home pregnancy test isle, I made my purchases and was on my way...straight to the bathroom. I took the third pregnancy test in the Target bathroom because the additional 20 minute drive home was just too much. It came out a clear positive. I was thrilled. I drove home with my treasures in hand and when I got there, searched the house for a permanent marker. I wrote the word "BABY" on the shirt, with an arrow pointing to my stomach. I felt so nervous and excited to tell Ben, I was jittery and almost visibly shaking. I had put a zip up jacket over the shirt and we sat down to dinner. Once we started eating, I could feel a smile creeping onto my face that I knew I wouldn't be able to conceal for long. I told Ben that I was so hot and took of the jacket, carefully observing his face. I had a huge grin on mine and he looked at me trying to figure out what was going on. I leaned back to stretch out the shirt so that he could see it had been written on. He saw it, but didn't really get it (you can ask him about that sometime). My eyes started to well up and and got up to hug him. Then he got up too and he said, "Wait, what does it say?" I said, "I'm pregnant!" He responded with a look of shock and the words, "Are you serious?!" about three times. Then he broke into a look of joy and excitement, while I smiled through the tears spilling out of my eyes.