Trip to Walgreens That Changed it All

Julie had told us that the next time she's in town we better be pregnant because she wants to find out while she's here and she won't be back until the spring. So she came back into town and we met for dinner. Of course, one of her first questions is if we're pregnant. The smallest hesitation in my answer made her eyes go wide and she excitedly asked me what my symptoms were. Thinking the typical denial phrases like "nah, there's no way" we agreed to go get a pregnancy test.

So into Walgreens Nate and I went... in chinatown in DC... at 10pm. There we were standing in the long line with our Clearblue test among all the other 20 somethings picking up snacks and alcohol for their about to be wild Saturday night. Awesome.

I didn't want to look at the results. Not entirely sure why, but am guessing out of pure horror for what it could mean. Of course I would be excited, but I will never deny how petrified the thought of being pregnant makes me. So Julie looked. When she shrieked I demanded to see it - you could barely see the second line. But she insisted it existed and when we went into better lighting I could see it. It was faint, but it was there.

Speaking of faint, that's what I thought Nate was going to do. He literally looked like he had been electrocuted. He couldn't talk, he barely moved and he couldn't really smile although he did try really hard. After looking at the stick for himself he patted me on the back like I was his pal and then kept his distance. I giggled and told him the damage was already done which broke the ice a little and he finally eased up a bit and gave me a hug. We had a moment of yay, crap, what the heck do we do now?!

I think to a certain extent we were both holding back a lot of our excitement until we saw a doctor. While waiting for our appointment, I decided to take the second test, since we had it and all. Plus I wanted to see if there was a difference within a week. There definitely was...

Going in to the first doctor's appointment we thought we were about 8 weeks along. But during the appointment it seemed like we were maybe closer to 5 weeks along so they sent us in to a different office a few weeks later for a detailed sonogram to find out for sure. How the confusion happened? A weird series of events with my last menstrual cycle - I kind of had two within 30 days which was odd. So we weren't sure if we were pregnant from the first or second cycle.

That was two weeks ago. This morning we went in for the detailed sonogram. The doctor there asked if I was in any pain and I said no. She frowned. She asked if I had severe cramping. I said no. She then asked if I had previous complications or miscarriages and I said no. I couldn't figure out what she was confused and why she was asking those questions. She then finally said that we were sent there with notes of a possible ectopic pregnancy - meaning a pregnancy outside of the uterus which obviously is not good at all.

Immediate panic. Confusion. And for lack of a better way of describing it, I was royally pissed off that my doctor hadn't shared this with us at all during our first visit. I explained to her the confusion with my last cycle and that we were told we were coming to her for a more detailed sonogram than what they could do. She said ok, let's get started.

When we did I was cranning my neck at the screen. Please God let there be a baby (in the uterus). I was in a total panic that we might have a problem and felt like my heart was going to break. But within moments a little blob showed up on the screen and the doctor said the sweetest words, "congratulations, you're going to be parents." Of course, I cried. I could hear Nate's nervous little laugh behind me and she continued to take us through our baby's measurements and stats.

The little flicker of the heartbeat was incredible to see. Then she said "now let's hear it". Ok, this won't be my only completely ignorant time during pregnancy I'm sure, but I had no idea you could do that. It was super fast and super loud. Not knowing if that was good I looked at her and she said "great, perfect heartbeat". I could finally breathe. Then I cried some more. The doctor stopped and turned to Nate and said, "I'm going to give you some advice - she's going to cry like that all the time. For no reason. She'll REALLY cry when she has a reason, but for the most part she's going to cry at anything at any moment from now on. You just tell her you love her and that she's beautiful and you'll do great". Haha, best advice ever!

I didn't realize how much I was fearing that there was going to be a problem, that there wouldn't be a heartbeat, or something awful. I didn't realize it until we walked our with a little picture of our 7 week growing baby, knowing there was a heartbeat and that right now everything was good. Of course I still have fears and know that I always will, but this was a huge relief and I couldn't be happier! We are so excited and cannot believe we're on our way to parenthood - so fun and frightening all at the same time!

I haven't been keeping up the blog, but decided with the pregnancy it will be good to document and share all that's about to happen. Now on to handle the journey we're on... oh boy (or girl)!