Planting Seeds
Today I am 5 weeks pregnant, and am now ready to start sharing my thoughts and emotions as a first-time mom.
This pregnancy will not turn heads, it will not surprise anyone and it will be one small moment amongst billions of other women who have conceived and given birth.
This pregnancy will, however, be one of the most meaningful and significant parts of my story.
My story is one that started out against all odds. In 1986, I somehow managed to slip past two different forms of contraception. (Surprise!) My mother spent 90% of her pregnancy on the bathroom floor and 15 days before I was born my parents were quietly married. I decided to make a very breech entrance during a record hot summer on July 30th, 1987.
I grew up thinking all babies were big surprises. So it was a refreshing experience to sit down and talk with my husband about how we wanted to plan for a family. I started nesting in my mind long before I grabbed a yellow paintbrush for our loft nursery.
I also had spent my entire adult life up until now avoiding pregnancy. It amazed me how little I knew about my own reproductive system, not to mention my partner's. The little fertility app on my phone would notify me a couple days before I got my period, and I never had to think twice about what was happening the other days of my cycle. My husband and I often joked together that they don't teach you how to get pregnant in school.
If you've never Googled how to get pregnant, I can sum it up for you with a sense of fear and unknowing that only the internet could provide: it is a miracle that anyone gets pregnant.
Before we had even decided on good timing I started questioning my own body's capability of doing something that humans have been doing for centuries. The self-pep talks started alarmingly early: "If women who didn't give up their red wine and men who kept wearing super tight underwear have been getting pregnant all this time...then we're probably fine, right?" I'll always remember my husband showing me a YouTube video of the brave little egg that traveled so far and could only survive 12-24 hours.
We were blessed to have our baby's story begin with full intention and love.
………..
Once the time came for me to take the pregnancy test, it wasn't something glamorous you'd see in movies or television. It was just me, getting up at 5am on a Thursday in the dark, waiting for 3 minutes while I brushed my teeth and let my eyes adjust to the light and immediately giggling and saying holy sh** to myself a few times before I woke Tony up. I let him read the results himself, we sleepily embraced and then tried to go about our day with this little giddy secret.
I alerted my fertility app of the positive test and was immediately redirected to a pregnancy app to track the baby's development. It estimated me at 4 weeks pregnant and we got our first glimpse into parenthood:
"Your baby is as big as a tomato seed."
This pregnancy will not turn heads, it will not surprise anyone and it will be one small moment amongst billions of other women who have conceived and given birth.
This pregnancy will, however, be one of the most meaningful and significant parts of my story.
My story is one that started out against all odds. In 1986, I somehow managed to slip past two different forms of contraception. (Surprise!) My mother spent 90% of her pregnancy on the bathroom floor and 15 days before I was born my parents were quietly married. I decided to make a very breech entrance during a record hot summer on July 30th, 1987.
I grew up thinking all babies were big surprises. So it was a refreshing experience to sit down and talk with my husband about how we wanted to plan for a family. I started nesting in my mind long before I grabbed a yellow paintbrush for our loft nursery.
I also had spent my entire adult life up until now avoiding pregnancy. It amazed me how little I knew about my own reproductive system, not to mention my partner's. The little fertility app on my phone would notify me a couple days before I got my period, and I never had to think twice about what was happening the other days of my cycle. My husband and I often joked together that they don't teach you how to get pregnant in school.
If you've never Googled how to get pregnant, I can sum it up for you with a sense of fear and unknowing that only the internet could provide: it is a miracle that anyone gets pregnant.
Before we had even decided on good timing I started questioning my own body's capability of doing something that humans have been doing for centuries. The self-pep talks started alarmingly early: "If women who didn't give up their red wine and men who kept wearing super tight underwear have been getting pregnant all this time...then we're probably fine, right?" I'll always remember my husband showing me a YouTube video of the brave little egg that traveled so far and could only survive 12-24 hours.
We were blessed to have our baby's story begin with full intention and love.
………..
Once the time came for me to take the pregnancy test, it wasn't something glamorous you'd see in movies or television. It was just me, getting up at 5am on a Thursday in the dark, waiting for 3 minutes while I brushed my teeth and let my eyes adjust to the light and immediately giggling and saying holy sh** to myself a few times before I woke Tony up. I let him read the results himself, we sleepily embraced and then tried to go about our day with this little giddy secret.
I alerted my fertility app of the positive test and was immediately redirected to a pregnancy app to track the baby's development. It estimated me at 4 weeks pregnant and we got our first glimpse into parenthood:
"Your baby is as big as a tomato seed."
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