Big. Fat. Positive.

(Written August 8th, 2012)

This is an overdue post that won't be posted for another week or so once I get the chance to tell everyone that reads this blog about my news! I'm currently in my 6th week of pregnancy and found out I was pregnant almost 3 weeks ago. Oddly enough, as much as I carefully planned out how the news of a big fat positive (BFP) would unravel--from how I would react to it to how I would share the news with family it has been anything but. My emotions, attitude and confidence have been in waves ridden with elation, doubt, confusion and reserved joy.

It all started three weeks ago when Jon and I drove the 6 hour drive to Bismarck to visit with his family for the weekend and garage sale. At the time that I had ovulated Jon had been on Anastrozole for nearly 7 weeks which was only the beginning of that point the urologist said we'd expect to see improved sperm if the medication was indeed working. I wasn't holding my breath that we'd be that lucky as we hadn't quite hit the 2 month mark and even if Jon's sperm had been improving, by nature it could still take a few more months to get pregnant. I was expecting the spotting to start over that weekend in Bismarck and could only smile at the irony of seeing the pregnancy tests mingled with the panty liners tucked into my suitcase. It was still a defeating reminder of the struggles that persisted as we sat in limbo wondering when our time will come.

I expected to start spotting like I do every cycle on that Friday or Saturday. Sure enough I spotted (no pun intended) the smallest amount of evidence that it was on its way by late Saturday afternoon. Having never been pregnant before I wasn't sure if when I did become pregnant if I would still spot or not so I automatically assumed this was yet again another failed cycle on the 15th month of TTC. I remember venting my frustration to my husband about how unfair this was and why does everyone else get to be pregnant except us, and even started straying the topic towards adoption (out of self-pity). This is my usual rant which lasts for about 5 minutes and then I move on thinking about the next cycle.

We packed up the car on Sunday morning for our drive back to Minneapolis. I wish I could say I had some epiphany on the car ride home that something was "off", but unfortunately, pregnancy symptoms in the early stages match those of your pre-period symptoms. We stopped for lunch and a bathroom break in Fargo, ND. Since Jon napped the whole way from Fargo to Minneapolis I decided not to stop for another bathroom break so I had held my bladder for 4 hours before we got home. Somewhere in our arrival across Hennepin county border lines I decided that since I had held my bladder for that long I might as well just test "one last time" when we got home since I had run out of tests after Saturday morning in Bismarck. I wish I could say that after arriving home, and peeing on the stick and seeing the faintest of faintest of faintest lines had me leaping with joy, but it didn't...at all. I thought I was just seeing things and was left in a perplexing stare as I examined that line from every which angle. I showed it to Jon and he agreed that he saw a line, but we both didn't know what to make of it. We went to the grocery store once we got home and I bought a test that claimed that it was an "early detection" test. I held my bladder again for 4 hours and tested around 9pm on Sunday night. You think that the 2nd test with an extremely faint line showing up would finally confirm that I was indeed pregnant, but nope. I still wasn't buying it. There was just no way because stuff like this just didn't happen to us.

I went to bed that night curious about what tomorrow morning's test result would bring, but I was certainly not holding out hope that it would be positive. The first thing that triggered me that morning was that my basal body temperature was extremely high given that it usually plummets on the day my period comes. My heart started rapidly beating as I began to wonder if I was actually enduring the fantasy I played out in my head so many times before since we first started TTC. As I waited the results to show up in the 3 minute time window the test indicated it would take I could feel my heart pounding in my chest while sweating profusely from the nerves. I tried to distract myself by doing other things such as brushing my teeth while my eyes darted at the test to see if a pink line had shown up. It was perhaps the slowest 3 minutes of my life. Around the 2 minute mark I started seeing the slightest inclination that a pink line was starting to form. As if right on cue I felt a wave of nausea reach my stomach for a minute or two as I tried to absorb what was happening. There was simply no way something like this was happening. NO. WAY.

I showed the test to Jon as he crawled out of bed and he stared at me perplexed and asked point blankly, "what does this mean?". I probably should've jumped up and down and screamed, "I'm pregnant!", but instead I shrugged my shoulders and said the spotting probably meant I was miscarrying. As we gathered our stuff together in the kitchen getting ready for work Jon started silently chanting, "Kate can't eat Sushi! Kate can't eat Sushi!". Oddly enough, nothing about what had just happened was crossing into my brain because I was in such disbelief that I couldn't even fathom that Sushi was off limits for the next 9 months.

Needless to say, I was horribly distracted at work. Around lunch time I decided to hold my bladder again starting at 2 pm so that I could test again with multiple tests at 6pm just to "be sure" this was real. Jon and I ran to Walgreens after work and I picked up a digital pregnancy test which reveals "Not Pregnant" and "Pregnant" results in the little window so you don't have to do any sort of pink line analysis. As we drove home my mind was racing a mile a minute as I wondered if everything else that had happened in the past 24 hours was just a big joke my body played on me. I couldn't think about anything else except what these tests were going to show. When we got home I raced up to the bathroom and peed on 3 different brand pregnancy tests. The first two were non-digital thus a line would show up and the 3rd was the digital test which would take approximately 3 minutes for a "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant" result to show up. All I remember was that the upstairs was horribly hot and I was sweating, dizzy, and heart racing rapidly feeling as though I was in a complete daze or dream. Nothing about what I was seeing was real. The first two tests had a line forming within a few minutes, but I cared more about what the digital was going to do. I stared and waited, darting my eyes at the clock to see if the 3 minutes was approaching. Finally, the word "Pregnant" flashed in the window. This moment was perhaps one of the best ones I've ever felt in my life as I screamed, "Oh my GOSH!". I darted out of the bathroom and barely had a chance to show Jon before I started crying with tears of extreme happiness. I gave him a hug as we started to process what had just happened.

I was in absolute disbelief. Baby Eckroth is due March 27th, 2013!