I closed the bedroom door behind me, crossed the hall, and located the orange box with the word "ANSWER" on the front, "EARLY RESULT." Hands shaking, I followed the instructions to the letter, and then I sat and stared at the clock. One minute... 'What am I doing? There's no way this is going to be positive...' Two minutes... 'What if it's negative? Dear God, please let it be positive...' Three minutes... 'I don't want to look. I have to look...'
There they were. Two pink lines, a positive result, the answer was yes. I took a big breath, closed my eyes, and started to cry. I started to pray, and I thanked God a million times, over and over. I sat there for at least twenty minutes, periodically checking to see if there were still two pink lines. And then I went back to bed, trying to hide the fact that I was still shaking and crying.
I wasn't going to tell Joe until later that day, but he was awake, and the news came spilling out. I don't think either one of us could really believe it. We were overcome with joy. We laughed as we told our chocolate lab Macy that she was going to be a big sister.
Later that morning, we went to church, and it was so fun to have the secret between us. During a song or a prayer, we would intertwine our pinkies and wink at each other, and no one knew what was going on but the two (actually three) of us. Later that day, we went to the bookstore to buy a few pregnancy books, the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy and The Belly Book, a nine-month journal for expectant moms, and then we hit up eCreamery for ice cream. When we got home, I begged Joe to take a picture of my newly pregnant tummy for the book even though, at that point, any changes in my "belly" were more likely to be from the ice cream than from our tiny little baby.
Over the next two weeks, we reveled in our secret. We didn't tell anyone in our family, not even when we went bowling for our nephew's birthday party. When we went out for dinner with my parents, we held hands under the table and periodically squeezed, which was mostly for me--I was the one struggling not to tell. At school, I had caved and told a few people. One of the people I told was an attending on my OB/GYN rotation. When I told her the news, she laughed at me and said, "Oh, so you have a gummi bear" (she thought that babies looked like little gummi bears at 5-6 weeks). "This must be a scary time for you to be pregnant" (meaning during my OB/GYN rotation).
Actually, fear was not really on my radar during these first few weeks of knowing about the pregnancy. I was learning about all of the different ways that miscarriages could happen, but my classmate on the Gyn-Surg service had promised me that he would scrub in for the D&C (dilation and curettage) cases if they presented in the ER (fortunately, none did). Besides, I was fairly convinced that the 'm' word wouldn't happen to me. It couldn't.
On the last day of my six week OB/GYN rotation, after the shelf exam, I went in for my "confirmation of pregnancy" appointment. I had picked an OB whom I had met during L&D. She came into the exam room and congratulated me--their test also showed that I was pregnant. We talked for a while, and then she told me that she wanted to do some additional blood tests. We would schedule my next appointment pending those results. Sounded good to me.
(What I'm listening to right now...)
Various Artists Juno - Music from the Motion Picture
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