Thursday, January 24, 2013

A year ago today, my dream came true...


(This was written the day after one of the most exciting days of my life.  And now that it has been a year since that amazing day, I couldn't help but share it.  So let's go back to 3:00am on 01/25/2012.)

Someday I hope to publish this on my blog, but for now, into word it goes.

Yesterday was one of the most exciting days of my life, and hardly anyone knows about it.  It is right up there with the moment I got an email back from Josh when I told him I ‘liked him,’ our first date, our third date when he kissed me in the park, that lovely Halloween where he got down on one knee over pizza and wine, and the beautiful March afternoon when I became Mrs. Kinnaman.  Yes, yesterday certainly ranks with all of those days easily.  Yesterday was the day Josh and I found out that our little family of two was now a family of three.  Yep… you heard that right.  I am pregnant.

This is a moment I have dreamed about as far back as I can remember.  Of course I had every intention of creating this amazing moment when I shared the news with my husband that he would be a father.  Didn’t work out quite as well as I imagined… My adoring husband knew I had just taken the test.  There was no surprise because I am way too open about everything that goes on with my body with that man.

Many of you won’t know this, but our journey to conceive has been a frustrating eight months.  I always believed, and was taught in middle school that I would get pregnant pretty much the moment I thought about it hard enough.  Turns out there really is more of a science to it than that.  I learned that I could get to know my body so much better by tracking my basal body temperature.  Some people know about this, and others don’t, but basically, doing this allows a woman to get to know her fertile times, and be able to look at patterns of her cycle.  Josh would probably say doing this made me stressed.  I would actually go as far as to say it was the one thing that really kept me sane.

You see, I knew based on previous patterns that this time was different.  I didn’t want to admit it to myself because I have had my hopes up a few times only to have them crushed.  But I knew yesterday when I woke up that if I was pregnant or not, the test would show it for sure.  Because of this, I couldn’t bring myself to take the test.  It was finally my husband’s voice calling from the bedroom that "you may as well just take it" that brought me back to this world, and convinced me to take the test.

Immediately, I started seeing something in the area of the test line, but I had imagined I had seen things before, and I didn’t want to go through the agony of staring at a tiny stick for the next five minutes, so I checked my phone and hopped back in bed.  Josh asked, “So?”  I had to tell him I couldn’t bear just standing in the bathroom.  Little did I know these three minutes we sat chatting were our last few minutes believing that we were only man and wife.  I went back into the bathroom, looked at the home pregnancy stick, and it was obvious.  Tears in my eyes and test stick in my hand, I headed into the bedroom, and announced, “there is definitely a line.”  Josh got up and said, “Let me see that; you’ve been known to imagine things.”  But I think we both knew I was right.

We hugged, I kept crying, and it was amazing.  The remainder of the two hours we had before leaving for work consisted of me jumping and skipping around the house and Josh asking that I try to calm down.


I called my sister through gmail (because she is living in France right now) and shared the news by telling her I had inadvertently lied to her the day before when she had asked if I was pregnant.  As a smile spread across her face, the first word out of her mouth was, “Really?”

Calling one of my best friends was definitely the next step.  She and I had been going through this trying to conceive journey together, and I knew she would be glad to hear it.  She was so happy for us, and ridiculously supportive.  She also admitted that she hadn’t realized until that point how much our not being pregnant yet was weighing on her.  I think deep down she probably still felt some sadness that she has not yet conceived, but you would never know it.

When I finally headed to work, I cried in the car.  I was so excited and filled with emotion.  I knew heading to work that I would share the news with two co-workers (Andria and Lauren).  And I am so glad I did.  I needed supportive people to talk to throughout the day.  It was the most surreal feeling walking down the hallway and thinking… a child is being created inside of me right now.  Realizing that in that moment every physical feature of little baby Kinnaman had already been decided.  I still am wondering right now, are you a little boy or girl?  Will recessive traits win over, and give you blonde hair and blue eyes?  Or will you maybe just end up with one of them?  Between your daddy’s curly hair and my dead straight hair, what will yours be?  Will you be chubby when you are an infant?  Probably… Josh and I both were.

I got a text from Josh after lunch saying his dad now knew our news.  I wished I could’ve been involved, but he had his moment announcing to someone, and I was glad he was excited enough to get carried away and share our announcement after saying he was not going to tell anyone.  Now to decide how to tell my parents…

We wanted them to come to us.  We knew that much, so I had to come up with a way to get them at our house without making a big deal.  So I asked my mom over the phone if they would mind coming over some time to help us work on some training with Liesl.  I told her we had been watching too much Dog Whisperer, and that we really wanted to try a couple things with someone new coming over.  She was more than happy to oblige, and she and my dad showed up a couple hours later.

I turned on the video camera.  I had it sitting on the piano.  And Josh opened the door.  We did make Liesl sit when they arrived and did our best to keep her calm… yeah… that worked.  You see, she was wearing a shirt I bought months earlier that said, ‘Shhh… Mommy has a secret in her belly!”  It took a while for my mom and dad to read the darn thing, but they figured it out eventually and were thrilled.



So now, it is about 24 hours since I first took the home pregnancy test, and I can’t sleep.  I guess maybe I am just too excited.  I can’t help but let my mind wonder as I imagine all of the new and exciting things that lie ahead of Josh and I on this journey to no longer just be husband and wife, but to become Daddy and Mommy.