Bump Ahead

Like you and me, we are unique individuals. So are the paths we walk in life. At the end of December 2017, I wrote a small article on jump-starting the new year. Wanting to follow through with my own advice and ideas, I set out a plan of all my goals for this new year. If you're like me, then you know not everything you try to plan will work out like you intended. So with that in mind let me go into further details about how I hit a bump in the road pretty early on in 2018.

There I was waiting for my insurance to kick in the very first week of January, finally, I could get some health issues looked at! Winter is a horrible time to catch colds and flu, and unfortunately, everyone around me had one. Being sick all the time is the worst! My only saving grace was an anti-nausea medicine my sister gave me. Few more weeks passed and I noticed I was “late.”

January 2, my husband took me to the store to get a pregnancy test. He is so old school, he didn’t realize those things only take 2 or 3 minutes to get results. “How long we gotta wait? 20 minutes?” he asked. Laughing at how serious he sounded, I replied “surprisingly just 2 minutes! Science has come along way from when our parents took these!” So I followed instructions, and the wait began.

2 minutes doesn't sound or seem like a long time, but when you're waiting for a result like this, it's forever! Not even 2 minutes later we saw two pink lines. I immediately knew what that meant. My husband wanted to “double check” so he pulled the box out from the trash and confirmed two lines mean baby. So there we were, the second day of the new year and pregnant!

Obviously, we were not planning to get pregnant, but we are very excited! This definitely explains a lot of my symptoms and constant sickness. To date, I am 11 weeks, and not even showing. I have already made some crazy life changes. I have quit my job, as it's not ideal for pregnant women. Being a night janitor is physically strenuous. Since I am such a tiny female in general, I am already having ligament issues. Totally normal with the pregnancy they say, but usually happens in the 2nd trimester, I am in my first still. My lower back is being pushed into by the uterus growing. I am scheduled for a physical therapy appointment soon, and possibly have to be fitted for a back brace.

Talk about crazy body changes. I understand all this is normal, but it doesn’t mean its comfortable or anything of the sort. If I am being honest, and I usually am, I hate every bit of my body changing. Having no control over what's happening to your body is a scary feeling, plain and simple.

So far I haven’t gotten any bizarre cravings, but I am completely turned off by the smell of coffee being brewed. I cannot handle the smell of it. No coffee at our house for the time being.

Waiting to announce the pregnancy hasn’t been easy. Of course, we are excited and want to share our news with everyone and anyone! However, we did that last time we got pregnant and miscarried pretty early on. This time we wanted to make sure we were further along in case anything bad happened again.

I am super old fashioned myself, and a sucker for romance. So when I was deciding how to tell my mom and family I had a couple ideas. Most of us have heard the expression “bun in the oven." How perfect I thought until I remembered my mother's stove/oven is broken. Idea #2 was similar, but instead of a real oven, I would use a cut out fold up one. Even that idea didn’t pan out because it required special printing paper.

I finally found the perfect way to announce our pregnancy without it being a total give away. First let me quickly explain how my mom is a lotto ticket fanatic, always has been my whole life. These past few weeks she keeps telling me about this dream she has about winning the lottery. So, with that in mind, I totally bought a fake lotto ticket that once scratched reveals I am pregnant. I mean who would see that coming right?

First, it was hard enough trying to gather the household up in the same room. Then it felt like forever until my mom decided to scratch the darn ticket. She’s going to town with her lucky dime, and she starts saying she won $500. Of course, I knew it was a fake one, so there's no way she actually won any money. I tell her to look more closely at it. She never puts it together which was the funny part. She did notice the word baby at the bottom, but she said she didn’t understand why she was winning a baby.

I tell my brother to go help her read it since her eyes are bad. He sees it, starts laughing at her expense, then congratulated us, all while my mom is still thinking she won money. Now we all try to tell her its fake, and she assumes the whole thing was a joke. I mean talk about a laugh, my husband was doubled over during all this. Eventually, she puts it together and realizes yes she did win, and one of her dreams is coming true. She is going to be a grandparent finally!

Hugs, kisses, and 2 ultrasound pictures later, we said our goodbyes for the evening and went home. I haven’t officially come out on social media yet, but I am thinking in the next week or two I will make that announcement.

For now, I am just taking it easy, and enjoying myself. Learning a lot, as unpredictable as the future is, I am very excited for the journey. The saying goes, "be careful what you ask for you just might get it." In my case, I wanted a new me for the new year. I think this defiantly qualifies as a new me.