I’m Pregnant - Now What?!
There it is right in front of you - you are holding this little stick and it says “Pregnant” (or at least that’s the kind of test I took). There’s no more hiding from it. I think I knew before I even missed my period that I was pregnant. Then I was a few days late. Not completely uncommon, but my typical cycle was around 25 days. I think the small panic set in for me around 29 days. You see, my partner and I were not actively trying to get pregnant. We had been family planning for the past year and a half, and our calculations had been working for us based on my trusty little app for tracking my cycle and fertile window.
On the morning of January 3rd, 2019, I was really starting to freak out. By then, I was on day 31 of my cycle. So after breakfast, my partner headed out to the store to pick up the pregnancy test for me, because I’m pretty sure my head was starting to spin out of control. I took the test and there it was, “Pregnant”. I’ll never forget that moment. I walked out of the bathroom and he looked at me, and I looked at him, nodded my head, and shakily said, “Everything’s going to be okay, right?”. His eyes filled with tears of joy, he wrapped his arms around me, and said, “Yes it will.”
We knew we wanted to be parents, we just weren’t planning on it happening quite yet. I had just finished my yoga teacher training certification in December, and was refocusing my business on working with prenatal and postpartum moms. I was planning on spending the rest of the year bringing in new business based on this focus, not planning for my own pregnancy! But the universe had other ideas for me, and this baby’s plan meant some big changes in our very near future.
The next couple of days were a bit of a blur for me. The realization of being pregnant takes some time to set in - I expected that to be the case, and it hit me hard. I’ve always believed bringing a child into the world changes your life, forever. But when it’s actually happening to you? Talk about a BIG dose of reality. So what did I do after I got over that initial shock? I started making my lists of course! Researching different care options, what’s the best prenatal vitamin to take, what books do I need to start reading, how much are birthing classes, what doula would I work with, etc. I also opted to wait until I was around 10 weeks before I had my first ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy.
I told two of my close friends almost immediately after I found out. My partner and I decided to wait to tell the soon to be grandparents until after the first ultrasound, when we knew things were “really” real - even though we knew they were. That was the hardest part for me, especially when it came to my mom. My mom and I talk every day, sometimes multiple times. We are incredibly close, and not telling her was weighing on me. But at the time, my parents were in the process of caring for my 100 year old grandmother, and her health had taken a rough turn at the beginning of the year. I didn’t want to create any additional stress in their world, and that played a roll in me wanting to make sure everything was okay with my growing peanut before sharing the news with them.
In the coming blogs, I’ll be sharing more of my story: our family and friend’s reactions, why we waited until 25 weeks to share the big news on social media, and my experiences so far in each of the trimesters. Stay tuned!