Matt and I Are Having a Baby!

I am honestly in a happy state of shock. I was on Day 39 of my cycle.* I came home from an all-day photography class and decided to finally take a pregnancy test (I was so resisting turning into a crazy-obsessive tester). Matt went into the backyard to check on the chickens, and I peed on the stick. Right away, I could see that both lines were starting to darken, so I left it there and went out to fetch Matt. I wanted us to experience it together.

On my way to the backyard, I found myself wondering why I didn't wait just one more day to take the test, so that Matt and I could have one more day before changing our lives completely.

I spent a few minutes relaxing with Matt, Hoss, and the chickens in the backyard and then asked Matt to come inside and read the results with me. The pregnancy test was a random free one that came within a box of ovulation test strips, so we didn't have any instructions for it. We stared at it for a second and realized it had a faint line intersected by a very dark line. Matt said, "That dark line must be a negative sign." I agreed but then quickly realized that the dark line was the vertical line and the light line was the horizontal control line. We were pretty sure we were pregnant, but we decided to retest after dinner.

And then we went to dinner pretty much like normal. We did talk and wonder about the baby, but it still felt like just us. It didn't feel like our lives had changed completely (yet).

I am still shocked that our conscious conception process took only one cycle. I've known all along that conception is not something we can plan. We can invite it into our lives by creating the most welcoming conditions, but that's where our control stops. And the same thing goes for pregnancy. I will now do everything in my power to create the conditions for a healthy pregnancy, but that's where my control stops. I have to recognize that and embrace it.

I'm excited about this journey!

*The timing of this blog has been a little off for various reasons. First, Matt wanted to wait until our first appointment with the midwife to confirm the pregnancy before announcing it to the world. Secondly, I've been writing posts about things happening in my life at the moment but then scheduling them to run later in the month, so I could keep a consistent posting schedule, despite my various trips. It's been driving me crazy to have such a lag between what's happening versus what you're reading, but it will normalize pretty soon!