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Our wonderful surprise

Truly a surprise

Our baby @12 weeks

Bob and I had talked about wanting kids since we first met.  Having kids was something we both wanted very much.  After we got married we talked about trying to have a baby right away but decided we were not ready.  The topic of conversation came up many times after but we always decided that it was not the time to start a family.  Finally the time came when we were both in agreement that we should at the very least talk to the doctor to see if we could even have kids.  I had had some issues prior that worried me in regards to being able to conceive.  I thought maybe I had waited too long and that biological kids might not be an option for us.  Bob tried to reassured me and said "if we can't have kids we still have each other... AND we can have a lot of cool toys!"  It made me feel better but I was still not completely sure about the situation.

   During my visit I learned that it was definitely possible to have kids and not to start worrying about it until there were signs that there was something to worry about.  My condition did not secure my place in a childless future! After meeting with the doctor I decided to take it slow and just "not try to NOT get pregnant" and that if it happened, it happened. I wanted this experience to be carefree and positive so I decided to go along with Bob and try the laid back approach.

   Work had steadily gotten more hectic and stressful and having a baby was not even on my mind after a while.  Now, don't get me wrong, the first couple of months I went out and got a pregnancy test each month and cried every time it was negative, but after a while you just have to stop obsessing or else you'll never get pregnant!  ...And then one day it just hit me. It was a normal, stressful, Friday afternoon; I was driving home and decided to stop at the store for some mudslide mix and vodka to make drink for Jared and I later that night.  I was on the phone with my Mom complaining to her about all my aches and pains and how I wished that I knew how long it was going to take to get pregnant so I could know if these aches and pains were the still the stress of the job or something more to think about.  She said to me, "Jill when you're pregnant you'll know."  It was at that moment that I started to calculate my symptoms and how they had been different lately than before.  I thought to myself, "I should probably take a pregnancy test before I drink this weekend, just in case..."  I stopped again at the local CVS drug store and bought a two pack pregnancy test and then continued home.

   When I got home Bob and Jared were there hanging out watching television.  I set the liquor on the counter, said hello to the guys and told Jared what I had brought home.  He was excited that we were having drinks that night.  I went up stairs to change clothes and take the test.  While I waited for the results to manifest on the little white stick I went and changed my clothes.  About 10 minutes went by and I had forgotten all about the test I had taken until I went back into the bathroom to brush my hair. I looked down and there,very faintly, was a tiny, light pink line... the most significant pink line I would ever encounter.  The pink line that changed everything.

   

   After I got over the initial shock of what I saw I grabbed the Clear Blue pregnancy box to see if the "faint pink line was actually an erroneous test" as the box stated was a common question.  It wasn't.  Any line at all was an indicator of pregnancy.  I was "99% positive" I was pregnant!  Now, how to tell Bob?  I contemplated waiting to tell him and presenting him with a gift that would surprise him with the news.  If you know me, I hate surprises and really hate waiting. So, how could I WAIT and SURPRISE Bob with the BIGGEST NEWS OF OUR LIVES???? Nope, I called down to Bob asking him to come up stairs for a minute.  I held the test in my hand and when he came up I handed it to him with the question, "So, does this mean we are NOT pregnant? I am not sure what these results mean."  He looked at it and said, "Yah, I guess not."  I replied back, "really, is that right?"  He looked again and quickly looked up at me, "No way!  Holy Sh*t, Holy Sh*t! ...WE ARE PREGNANT???!!!" We both smiled and started to laugh with tear filled eyes.  It was, up until the baby's birth, the best day of our lives.

I was pregnant...

He is his mother's son and nap time is the devil!

This week I have been desperately trying to get LB into an afternoon nap routine.  He is fighting me every inch of the way.  Today I thought we would have success because as I fed him his bottle his eyeballs began rolling back into his head- a sure sign he is ready for sleepy time.  I whisked him away to his dark, shaded bedroom, put on his lullaby CD and fed him the rest of his bottle.  Upon completion I gave him his pacifier and rocked him for a few minutes before placing him in his crib.  After I put him down he stirred a little but pretty much stayed asleep. "YAY! It worked" I thought.  Nope, our wonderfully protective dog decides to bark at a random passing car and immediately shakes the baby awake causing him to spit out his pacifier and to start screaming at the top of his lungs. I wouldn't be surprised if the neighbors could hear him next door.  I replaced the pacifier to his open, howling mouth and entered into a game of "mommy gives baby the pacifier, baby uses his uncoordinated hands to keep knocking out his pacifier."  It was like his hands had a mind of their own and not controlled by his brain at all. Kind of like how a cat and its tail move independent of each other. I decided to trick LB's hands into thinking they were removing the pacifier from his mouth by giving his hand another pacifier.  HA HA!  Success! He laid there clutching one pacifier and sucking on another. Yah, successful until I tried to quietly tiptoe out of the room and ended up tripping over one of his noisy toys.  Ugh!  And the dance begins again.  

This comedy of errors continues on another forty minutes until I finally get him to take his pacifier and get out of his room before he loses it again.  Not five minutes pass before he is ululating again!  I go back and try to rock him to sleep for the 2nd time. While in the rocking chair I am having a flash back to my younger years when, as a child, my parents tried to enforce nap time on me.  I was and still am not one for doing something I am not fond of.  I hated taking naps and would throw the world's largest temper tantrums.  Unfortunately for my parents, I think that was a regular occurrence.  I place LB in the crib and snuck out again.

As I sit in the living room with the baby monitor by my side hoping for LB to stay asleep I text my husband to stay away from the house during lunch time at all costs in hopes that I can keep this baby asleep for even thirty minutes.  Before I could hit send LB was stirring again.  This time he pulls out all the stops, wailing at the top of his lungs. It breaks my heart to hear my baby cry but I wanted to practice the Ferber Method (letting the child cry it out) at this point so I sat there for only about five minutes and listened to him cry all the time thinking about the old adage that, "if you were a difficult child then you will get it back two fold with your little one."  Now, I have the world's sweetest baby ninety percent of the time (of course I think that, he's mine! LOL!) but when he is hungry or it's nap time, watch out!  The other ten percent he is his mother's son all the way.  So for the last and final try I walk in to LB's room to find my child clinging on to the side of his crib with all his might and his toothless mouth gumming one of the wooden slats!  He looked so sad... but funny.  At the time I had a hard time seeing the humor in it all as I was SO frustrated but now looking back on the image of my 4 1/2 month old trying to "chew" (for lack of a better term) his way out of nap time is all too funny.

Needless to say, he won the battle today but I intend to win this war!