I quietly snuck out of bed, grabbed the lone leftover test from last month’s pee-on-a-stick-a-thon and discovered minutes later my urine produced 2 pink lines. The second wasn’t very dark, but definitely noticeable and not much lighter than the first one I got with Kendall. I hopped back in bed, abruptly woke Scott by shoving the stick in his face while saying, “Turn on the light. Are there TWO lines?” I’ve never been able to pull off the well executed reveal,  complete with pink and blue balloon release and encrypted map that leads to a bun in the oven.

We squealed in bed together, but it was obvious we both kept our level of excitement at bay… guarded a bit. It was really early. I promised myself I wouldn’t think too much about it until the end of the week, but quickly broke that promise by downloading various Iphone apps that tracked out each milestone for me and revealed the due date would be the week before Thanksgiving. I mean, could we have planned it any better?

Scott left for a week long business trip Monday morning. On Tuesday morning I started spotting.  Surprisingly, I wasn’t that alarmed by it. I spotted so much with Kendall in the 1st trimester I figured maybe that’s just my body’s way of dealing with pregnancy. By Wednesday morning it was much worse than I ever experienced with Kendall and I began to come to terms with this pregnancy not ending well. Really, I wasn’t that upset. I mean, I wasn’t happy. I was incredibly irritated and hormonal, but you know, now is SO much better than later.

Never having been through this before, I called the OB/MW office. They insisted I come in. That was at 11:30 on our way home from the bounce house for lunch. They wanted me in at 1:30. It’s a 30 minute drive from  here. It had already been a morning that tested my patience. Kendall, as of late, thinks it’s totally acceptable to hit random kids at the bounce house, which was all SORTS of fun. He was pissy, I was hormonal. I barely had time to make him something to eat while I frantically tried to fill out my insurance information online. Lo and behold, my insurance card was lost. Oh, it was one giant clusterfuck just trying to get out of the house. Then we drove 30 minutes only to end up at the building the office used to be in 4 years ago, thank you very much you DUMBASS GOOGLE. Then it took me another 20 minutes to find the correct location.

We arrived at the (seriously gorgeous) office nearly an hour late at 2:20. Did I mention Kendall normally naps from 1 to 4? And something odd happens to my kid when he skips a nap. He doesn’t become sleepy. He’s never been one to just fall asleep wherever he’s at. No, he becomes some sort of psycho, cracked out, hyperactive animal. This office looked like it could have been a spa, and here’s my kid, tearing the place apart. I was dizzy just trying to keep him from scaling the ornate tables to get to the intricate “wower” arrangements. Did I mention I didn’t have time to eat anything? Did I mention the whole nausea thing was still going strong? Since I was an hour late, they, understandably, had to make me wait so they could work me back into the schedule. It felt like an f-ing eternity. I know I got all kinds of “my kid will NEVER” looks from all the newly pregnant women. 

I had to give a urine sample,which was a whole new level of awkward and challenging with a toddler in the bathroom. I was literally holding the cup of pee over my head while my son pointed and shouted, “Juice!” He was trying to climb on my lap to reach the cup, I was trying to get my underwear back up without getting any bodily fluids on him or me. He played with the stack of clean cups, then reached for the Sharpie just as I was buttoning my pants.

We burst out of the bathroom, visibly unsettled, and the nurse called us back to the room. She went over my history with me, asked some questions, and pretty much told me what I already knew – that this was most likely not a viable pregnancy. Then she left me alone in the room with the table and the stirrups and lots of drawers full of off limits things and a toddler for what seemed like another f-ing eternity. When the nurse practitioner finally made it in, Kendall was playing with/chewing on two giant q-tips they use to swab vaginas. Clean, I promise. She told me she wanted to do an exam. I raised my eyebrows and looked over at Kendall as he chewed on the blown up glove she just handed him while running circles around the table.

“Do you think we could give him a lollipop?” she asked.

“I don’t care if you give him a bowl of sugar. Whatever you’ve got to keep him occupied for a minute. That would be great,” I replied.

Apparently, she took me seriously and came back to the room with two giant frosted sugar cookies.  Luckily, she also brought another nurse to use as a babysitter. At one point soon after, I’m laying there with my feet up in the stirrups, surely bleeding all over the place, and the NP asks the babysitternurse to hand her some stuff. Kendall takes the opportunity to walk over to the side of the table, look up at me, face covered in frosting, smile and say “Momma! Owie? Momma! Cookie?”

Wow… this is so not what I ever, ever thought would ever be a scene from my life.

“At least he has no idea what’s going on,” the nurse said. Yeah, at least. This was totally one of those moments in life that you have to laugh at, or else you’ll just fall apart and go crazy.

We left the room a complete and utter mess. I’m fairly certain they’re going to have to send the plush chair covers off to be dry cleaned to get all the green frosting off of them.

OH, and then I had to get blood drawn… with Kendall… in my lap. Luckily the tech was swift with the needle and he didn’t have any sudden movements at that very moment.

I’m going back in for a second blood draw tomorrow, and am so happy that a friend will be able to watch Kendall for me this time around. I guess we’ll just see where to go from here. Really, I wouldn’t know this to be any different from a late period if I hadn’t known to test as early as I did (just a little past 4 weeks, I think). So it’s not devastating or anything, just a bit annoying, I guess. But, 2 good things came from it. 1. I got to know my new OB/MW office very well, and am SUPER happy with them. They were so amazing with me and with Kendall. and 2. I got a tiny taste of pregnancy boobs for a few days, and momma liked it. Bring back the boobies!

Kendall is 22.5 months old

The hardest part about all of this was  not being able to blog about it! Things are so different this time around with TTC. This blog is no longer the anonymous sanctuary it once was, which leaves me trying to strike a balance between using this as the outlet I intended it for and keeping stuff private long enough for those close to me to find out from me and not my blog. To my friends and family that read this and may not know what happened, please understand. It’s not something I probably would have brought up with you right away anyway, but it does make a hilarious story now, and I’m sure I’d share it with you at some point over a glass of wine.

So yeah, yeah, I know. DON’T PUSH IT. I hear you. I’m not trying to traumatize the kid through acts of desperation, though I’ve tried bribing SEVERAL times with no luck. Thing is, if I can get him to go on the potty just once, then I can give him something so magical and off limits any other time, like a big bowl of ice cream… or a lighter, and then he’d understand the power he can wield by going potty. Until then, though, he just doesn’t get it. I can’t give him these magical things *before* he goes potty. This isn’t like a promissory note situation. No. I need actual results to reward first. I feel like this is a very “chicken or the egg” scenario. /excuses

But the kid still doesn’t like poop on his butt. He still likes to undo his diaper whenever he poops instead of doing the logical thing, which would be to use his super secret language that he KNOWS I understand to tell me to change his diaper.

Tonight I chased him around the living room and saw him stop to pick something up. I caught his hand halfway to his mouth and intercepted what I THOUGHT was a pretty big yogurt covered raisin that had the yogurt sucked off of it.

“What is that?” I said as I held it in a pincer grasp and brought it closer to my eyes. As it came in to focus I noticed the texture and color wasn’t so much like that of a raisin but like that of a ball of SHIT.

I shrieked as I threw it down and simultaneously swept Kendall away from it. “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, EWWWWWWW! SCOTT!”

The kid almost ate his own poop tonight. Okay, to be honest I’m not entirely sure that he didn’t. He could have got to another turdlet without me knowing it, although I’m hopeful the dogs took care of the situation before he could, considering they both lunged at the one I threw back on the ground and Scott had to fight them off of it.

So then I change his diaper, and he mangaes to get away from me before I could put his pants on. Oh well, I figured I’d let him run around for a little bit with just a diaper. I was too tired to fight it. Minutes later I hear “Uh oh,” which almost never means something accidental and almost always means he did something he shouldn’t have on purpose.

He’s taken his diaper off and is running around the house naked, with the exception of the diaper liner stuck between his crack, which he eventually catches a glimpse of out the corner of his eye, reaches around and yanks it out, leaving it on the kitchen floor. He proceeds to runs around the house, poop falling out of him at every turn. By the time we navigate our way through the minefield that is our living room to catch him and get him seated on the big boy potty, he’s completely emptied his system, and laughing like a mad man.

So I spend the evening picking up poop, chasing a naked toddler, talking about Elmo and potties, and I wonder just how the hell we will ever even get around to getting pregnant again because NONE OF THIS is 1. putting me in “the mood” or 2. making me think how fun it will be to do this all over again.

Kendall is 5 days shy of 21 months old, and I think this is his genius plot to make sure he’s an only child

Then I said I wanted my breasts back to myself for a little bit. I didn’t want to share them with any babies, and I didn’t want them blowing up again for a while. They’ve been all mine for over three months.

Then I said that I wanted to train for and run another marathon first. The race is November 15th.

I also told Scott that I absolutely could not consider getting pregnant again with the closest Chick-fil-A being so far away. “You know I NEED Chick-fil-A to grow a baby!” I just drove past an almost finished building less than 5 miles from our house with a “Coming Soon” sign posted next to Chick-fil-A sign.

Shit.

Kendall is 3 days shy of 17 months old.

Despite doing our best to hide that fact that we are TTC, I think it’s starting to show to those who know us well. In fact, I’m pretty sure my husband’s closest brother and his wife are on to us. We were always the blissfully unaware aunt and uncle that came into town, spent a brief amount of time with their young children, then complained to them about what hard work it was and how we just had no idea how they did this every-single-fucking-day of their lives. Well, the last time we were down, about a month ago, we replaced those complaints with questions….honest to goodness questions like how long do they sleep through the night at this age, what type of stroller do you have, and they’re not so bad, right? I thought we were being uber sneaky, but out of nowhere his brother turns to us and says, almost accusingly, “Whoa!! You guys aren’t thinking of having a kid are you? Man…seriously??? Don’t do it!” Of course, we looked at them like they were speaking Japanese and did our best to brush it off like he’s had too many of the baby’s Fruit Loops. We’re going to need to avoid them like the plague for a while.

See, number one, I’m just not comfortable with telling people we are TTC. I think it paints unnecessary visuals in their heads, and I certainly don’t want it to be brought up as the topic of conversation at other people’s dinner tables. I have never understood people who make announcements that they are ready to TTC. Ewww, thank you very much for that. Now every time I call and you don’t pick up the phone I’m going to assume you’re stirring the baby batter.

Mainly, I don’t want to tell anyone because it is going to shock the hell out of them when we do get pregnant (assuming that actually happens sometime soon), and I personally can’t WAIT to see their faces and hear their reactions – a hundred bucks everyone is going to assume it was an accident! Then I’m going to send them all here, proof that I have actually been infected for months and have blended into the rabies free society like a zombie. It will be earth shattering for some.

Until then, we must keep up this charade. I imagine it will get much harder once I actually am pregnant. We say we won’t want to tell anyone for a couple months, but who knows how hard it’s going to be to stay quiet at that point. I’m going to need lots of suggestions on how to look like I’m getting wasted on wine – per my usual self – when I’m not supposed to be drinking alcohol.

Well, flash forward to a few days before the ideal window for peeing on a stick – I began doing just what I promised myself I wouldn’t. I was over-analyzing every little twinge and pain, and broke down and took a test every day for 6 days until I finally started my period again. I wasn’t terribly upset. I mean, it WAS our first month, and I had spent so much time convincing myself that it wasn’t going to happen. However, my Type A, slightly…well,very competitive and goal driven personality started to get a little irked. We definitely had the timing right….for about 14 days in a row. So just what exactly went wrong? I felt like Aunt Flo had challenged me to a duel…and I was going to KICK HER ASS the next time around!

I knew I couldn’t do it by just having fun though. No, I needed a strategy. I needed to be smarter than AF. After listening to the advice of many pregnant and pregnant to be Nesties (www.thenest.com), I charged into the Women’s Health section of Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of Taking Charge of Your Fertility. I immediately went home and read up on all sorts of things I never even had a desire to know about my body. I can tell you that the word “mucus” now has a whole new meaning beyond a runny nose and chest congestion. My next stop in my assault on AF was the pharmacy where I bought a special Basal Body Temperature thermometer. I was prepared for battle, and began charting the next morning. There are several other…um…techniques that I’ve embraced in this war, but I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say, I’ve resorted to drastic measures, and it’s only the second cycle. I’ve become the fertility sniper! That AF bitch is never going to know what hit her.

So here I am…in my second official Two Week Wait, which, for those of you not up on the trying to conceive lingo, is the two weeks in between ovulation and your next expected period or the first day you can test. Of course, I’m trying to convince myself that I won’t go down the slippery slope of peeing on too many sticks too early like last month, but I can’t make any promises. As much as I am Type A and competitive, I am even more impatient!

Hopefully I can keep myself busy the next couple weeks by ogling all the ridiculously expensive baby strollers and diaper bags that are all the rage right now. If I get started now, I may be able to come up with enough reasons to justify purchasing the funky, futuristic Quinny Buzz…my new obsession.

Yes, up until a few months ago, I was a baby-phobe. Of course, I loved other people’s babies, relished in spoiling our nieces and nephews, oohed and aahed during trips through Baby GAP, and got the occaisional bout of baby fever, but that was always quickly remedied with a brief evening of babysitting. The poopy diapers, projectile milk pukes, and graham cracker encrusted slimy little hands constantly grabbing for any piece of jewelry I had on was enough birth control to get me through a few months, at least.

All that changed in April when a rocking good time at a wine festival lead to a little “oops” moment. I woke up the next morning in my wine hangover haze and it hit me….”Shit! I bet I’m pregnant!” The stages I went through were very similar to the stages of grief. First there was denial, I refused to believe it could happen. Then there was anger that we weren’t as careful as we should be. Then the bargaining began. “Please God, just let me get my period. I promise we won’t be stupid next time!” I will say there was no real period of depression. I just headed straight into acceptance, and a step you will not find in the grieving process (for most, at least) – EXCITEMENT!

One week before my period was due for her appearance I found myself browsing Gymboree and buying baby clothes. I called one of my best friends in a panic after my purchase. “What the HELL am I doing? I don’t even know if I am pregnant!” I shreeked into the phone. She was beyond supportive and very excited at the prospect of my possible pregnancy. “Maybe you’re just excited,” she said. “Maybe you ARE ready.”

I have to say that this whole time that I was worrying about whether or not I was with child, I had yet to say anything to my husband. I didn’t want to get his hopes up. I knew he was as ready as any man could ever be. It wasn’t until after I peed on three sticks that said I was indeed not pregnant that I told him about the close call. I heard the disappointment in his voice, and it all of the sudden hit me how sad I was that I didn’t see two blue lines on those tests.

So, here I am, three months later, and my occaisional case of baby fever has turned into full blown BABY RABIES!! I’m afraid the only way to cure it is to have a baby of our own.

I decided to start this blog as a way to document my sure to be ridiculous, hilarious, at times disgusting, and at times painful journey through my first time around at trying to concieve, pregnancy, birth, and whatever I have time to write about after that. I anticipate that I may share “too much information” at times on here, but that’s the whole reason I started this. I need a place to let it all out. I don’t intend to censor myself too much. So if you are squemish about the whole pregnancy thing, or don’t like my views…read no further. However, if you want a window into my world, complete with first time ignorance and brutal honesty about what is about to happen to my body, stay tuned!