I'll take a Small Fry with That

The Big Announcement!

Well, we’re officially 14 weeks and 2 days pregnant!  We wanted to wait to publicly announce, and here we are.  But this post is about going back to the beginning to retell the weekend we found out about our little Iggy (yes, that is the baby’s current gender neutral name)! 

June 8^th

I started to wonder a little. Perhaps TMI, but I was a few days later than usual.  On top of this my body temperature had remained elevated, which in NFP is a sign of pregnancy.  Nothing major as I had been taking vitamins to extend my cycle, so part of me thought maybe these were working.  I was feeling great, and didn’t have any of the other early pregnancy signs.  In fact I did one of the most intense workouts I had done in a while that day.  After dinner that night, I let Jason know the situation just to keep him in the loop. 

June 9^th

We had a pretty normal day.  We went to the gym and played some basketball, walked the dog, and I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things…pregnancy tests included.  When I got home Jason was pretty anxious for me to take the test but I wasn’t quite ready.  I knew that taking the test in the afternoon wasn’t the best time to get the most accurate result, but I also knew Jason was not going to wait until morning.  So I took the test.  The result was, well, confusing.  It definitely didn’t look clearly positive, not even faintly positive; but part of me could see the lightest of lines.  Jason was convinced it was negative, but something inside of me (the baby perhaps?) was telling me it was positive.  We agreed to take another test in the morning.  We went to dinner with Sister and BIL and I did my best to avoid drinking the wine that they had brought.     

June 10^th (Kimberly’s Birthday!)

My alarm went off at 6:30am sharp.  I took my temperature; still elevated.  At this point I pretty much knew I was pregnant but wanted to take the test to confirm.  Sure enough, there was the plus sign! Insert moment of freaking out.  I will say my first reaction was a huge smile.  

At this point, there weren’t any tears; just lots and lots of antsy-ness.  I wanted to go tell Jason, but he was asleep and didn’t need to be up for another couple of hours.  What was I going to do…”good morning hunny, oh I’m pregnant.”  So, I tried to lay back down and go to sleep.  Hah!  Instead I tossed around for a little over an hour. 

Finally I could wait no longer, and knew Jason would need some processing time before we went to brunch with my family that morning.  At about 7:45am I went over and sat next to Jason and rubbed his arm.  He groaned a little and scrunched up his face and said “5 more mintues.”  I wanted to burst out laughing.  This is what he says when I’m trying to wake him up and he’s not ready to get out of bed.  This time it felt so appropriate.  “Yes dear, 5 more minutes of freedom, I’ll give you that.”  I stayed sitting next to him and I think it finally hit him.

“It’s morning!  Did you take the second test?!”

I let my head fall onto his chest and started to cry and laugh.

“Was it clear?”

I thought he was asking if the test was negative, like “clear of lines” so I said no, it was quite positive.  Apparently he was asking if it was a clear positive so I showed him the picture.  He had a look of total and complete disbelief.  But, he was smiling, which was good.  I was still crying/laughing.  I can’t even name what emotion I was feeling.  Elated, excited, and terrified.  He kept asking me if I was okay and happy and all I could say was “Yes!  But I’m so scared.”  We sat and talked for a while and then pulled ourselves together.  We had a family brunch to get to!  But first Jason asked if he could text his best friend about the news.

I was initially hesitant.  I didn’t want to tell anyone for awhile, at least until we took a confirmation test.  But, I could tell by looking at Jason’s face that he needed this.  So I agreed and Paul became the very first person to know about our little Iggy.  And then we took this picture:

Jason hopped in the shower, and while he did that I searched through my Lucy collection and found the episode where Lucy tells Ricky she's pregnant.  I skipped to the scene where Ricky sings to Lucy and when Jason got out of the shower I started playing it.  We just held onto each other, shed a happy tear or two, and held onto this moment.  We were going to be parents!  Our love had truly brought forth new life!

At last we were off to brunch with the family.  Our heads were still spinning with disbelief and I ended up forgetting my sister’s birthday card and gift.  We stopped by a Walgreens to pick one up and Jason bought a digital pregnancy test for me to take the next morning.  Brunch was wonderful but it was so hard to stay present in the conversation, and not cry with excitement when we saw Brooklyn. 

The rest of the day seemed to drag on.  Longest. Day. Ever.  I had made plans earlier that week to meet with my dear friend Stephanie.  I’m not one to break plans so I headed to Dallas to meet her for some coffee…don’t worry I didn’t drink any.  I hadn’t totally decided if I was going to tell her, but then she started talking about Jason and I having babies one day and oh man I just lost it.  So she took me to the lake and we sat on a towel and just talked it out.  I felt so calm and at peace by the end of this.  We then headed to Whole Foods and I bought my first bottle of prenatal vitamins.  It was real, and I was feeling so blessed to have such a wonderful and supportive friend there with me.

When I got home, Jason and I got ready for Mass and headed to St. Catherine of Sienna.  It was the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, which for some reason felt so right.  I guess because marriage and bringing forth children is a reflection of the intimacy with Christ we experience in the Eucharist.  I started crying after taking the Eucharist.  I remember long ago in the early stages of Jason and my relationship, I told him how I was excited to one day get pregnant and take the Eucharist.  I could imagine the body and blood of Christ washing over my unborn child.  And there I was, experiencing that very thing.  I am the vessel for our child’s very first earthly, intimate encounter with Christ!  In one of Christopher West’s talks he speaks on the glory of women.  One of the things he says has always touched me: each human spent their first 9 months under the beating heart of a woman.  I am that beating heart now.  It’s such an incredible feeling. 

After Mass we headed out to eat.  A little mini celebration.  While eating we started talking about names and what we thought the baby might be.  We both decided we would like to have a boy first.  So we started going through boy names we liked.  Long story short, I told Jason I wanted to name him Ignatius and call him "Iggy" for short.  He thought this was not a good idea if we wanted to help our future child not get beat up.  After not being able to agree on a name we switched out attention to what we wanted to call "it" for the next few weeks before there was a gender.  Of course we knew everyone would want to use "Small Fry" but we weren't down for this.  I think at the end of the night the front runner was "hush-puppy." Skip ahead to an email I sent Jason the next day and signed it "love, Me and Iggy."  And ever since then our gender neutral name for the baby has been "Iggy."  Now you won't be confused whenever you see that name.  Also, if you feel so inclined feel free to ask for some intercessions from St. Ignatius, the namesake, as the baby grows and develops over the next nine months.  

June 11^th

I woke up to take the digital test in order to confirm.  By this point, I have to say I would have been disappointed if it had been negative.  But it was not!  I was 100% pregnant!  I called to make the first doctor appointment and was told I would have to wait until July 3^rd!  It felt so so so far away, but understood the rationale for waiting. 

I will spare you every detail of the day, but just hit the highlights of how Jason made me feel like the luckiest woman ever. 

1)      That morning he told me he needed to start doing more around the house, because he read it would make the transition easier for him as I progressed in pregnancy and became less able to keep up with things.

2)      Throughout the day I got a number of emails.  The first was regarding insurance and all the benefits we get related to prenatal care.  The second was information about buying a house for our new family.

3)      I got a really big headache that evening while in class and I texted Jason, just saying it was hurting.  He assured me he would buy me some Tylenol on his way home.  Well, then throughout class I kept getting texts about what foods I like and don’t like and what I wanted him to cook for dinner….

4)      When I got home from class I found our counters overflowing with groceries.  Jason had looked up the top 10 foods to eat while pregnant and had bought an abundance of all of them!  He also bought me an issue of “Fit Pregnancy.”  I started crying.  I don’t know if it was hormones or just the outpouring of love he was already showing our little Iggy.  It was incredible! 

And there you have it, the first few days of pregnant life.  I hadn’t started feeling any of the typical early pregnancy signs; other than the one terrible headache.  We had the love and support of two of our closest friends behind us.  And I had the love of the most amazing husband and father to be!     

Over the next few days I'll be uploading the pregnancy journal I started at week 5.  Each entry will include two weeks of my experiences as a pregnant lady.  Eventually I'll try to catch up with real time.

That's all for now
The VrlyFries