Pregnancy Journal: The First Four Days

Thank you for all the congratulations and well wishes!  

To read Day One, click here.

December 5, 2011 (Day Two):

When I first started reading about conceiving a baby, a clear theme emerged: it’s harder than you think.  Sure, in high school they tell you it can basically happen at any time: if you even think about having unprotected sex, you will get pregnant.  Fool around with that boy and you will get pregnant.  Breathe wrong and you will get pregnant.

Until I was 26 years old, I essentially believed I could get pregnant at any time; I just had to say the word.  After all, if it has taken so much effort to avoid it all this time, it only makes sense that the reverse would be equally true, right?

Then I got lost in the books and the studies and the statistics.  It turns out that the average couple takes 4-6 months to conceive, longer if the woman has a history of irregular cycles.  There is only a 15-25% chance of conceiving in any one ovulatory cycle, and that is if you’re under 25 and doing everything right.

We got lucky.  It didn’t take 4-6 months.  Kids, listen to your health teachers.

December 6, 2011 (Day Three):

Finding out you are pregnant and not being able to tell anyone is a unique torture.  We figure, if something bad does happen, there will be certain people we’ll want to talk with, anyway, so we choose four family members and spill the beans.  After this, a line from some Hollywood comedy flashes in my head: this sh*t just got REAL.

Suddenly I want to tell everyone.  Maybe not everyone…just a few friends.  And my therapist.  And the grocery clerk.  And a customer service representative from AT&T.

But that’s it.  We cannot tell anyone else.

December 7, 2011 (Day Four):

I need to stop reading pregnancy books.  They are all loudly alerting me what a sensitive time in the pregnancy this is, with scary statistics on miscarriage and every other possible thing that could go wrong.  I worry enough as it is; I don’t need books scaring me into becoming more paranoid.

After learning I was pregnant, the husband ordered about a million books online.  When the delivery arrived, he promptly handed a book over to me and said, “Read this one first.”

He knows me well.

Yet somehow, this book is actually inducing more panic than I had in the first place.  It’s telling me not to panic about things that I didn’t even know existed, which naturally means I will now panic about them.

I decide to go for a walk around Greenlake and take a figurative chill pill.

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Reflection:  Don’t worry, I’m not going to share my thoughts for every day of this pregnancy.  The first few days were so surreal that it’s been fun to revisit them.  I’ll do periodic Pregnancy Journal updates and promise to keep things brief!