I was 14 years old when I found out my 16-year-old sister was pregnant. I was forced to witness the realities of the stress a pregnancy could do for a young teenager. I made my mind up at 14 that I was not going to be a teen and pregnant because it looked hard, even with a family filled with love and support.
When I finally made the decision to become pregnant it was hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept. I had spent my entire adult sexual life trying not to get pregnant, and now I was supposed to be ok with getting pregnant. Once I got pregnant, I would have to announce it, and then everyone would know my husband and I had sex! I know this sounds odd, but that was thought that ran through my head. Of course, everyone knows most newlyweds have sex, but to basically announce it was weird for me. I was nervous and naive about how long the process was going to take. My husband and I had made an agreement, once we got married we would start trying to have a baby. I had been on birth control consistently since I was 15 years old. I was not sexually active at 15, but I had bad acne and it was the only thing the doctors could find that helped. Since I had been on birth control for so long, I thought I would have a good several months of trying to make a baby with my husband.
We got married on September 25th and were pregnant about 10 days later. I was 32 years old. I missed my period in October and my sense of smell was out of control. I would walk into work and would walk through the kitchen holding my breath praying I would not throw up on the way to my office! In early November, I decided to take a home pregnancy test. I was told that you cannot have a false positive but you can have a false negative. No need to retest, it was positive. I was so worried about my drinking in the first few weeks. It wasn’t excess but I had been on my honeymoon and then celebrated Halloween at a brewery. I stopped drinking the moment I thought I was pregnant.
When I decided to call the doctor’s office, I was shocked to know that most doctor’s offices will not see a pregnant woman until they are 8 weeks along. I guess they want you to wait in case you have a miscarriage and your body gets rid of the fetus before you are able to get the official word you are pregnant and hear the heartbeat.
Once the idea of being pregnant was accepted as a positive thing, which took a few hours of telling myself I was a capable adult with a husband that had always wanted a baby, I finally came to terms with that, and I was thrilled. My first doctor's visit went well. My doctor convinced me that the few nights I had a couple drinks was not going to give my baby FAS. My husband and I heard the baby’s heartbeat, and we knew we were already in love. My husband had so many emotions around being a new father, and he was convinced he was going to have a bouncing baby boy. His ideal dream, a boy first, a girl second and a few more afterward. After deciding we didn’t care what gender we had, all we wanted was a healthy baby, we had a girl!
In the picture above my feet were so swollen! The shirt I was wearing was my husband's so it fit better. It brushed up against me just right it made me lactate and we had to wait to take the picture for the shirt to dry. Such fun things when we are pregnant.
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