I have been wanting to start this blog for a while, so I guess today is going to be the day. Maybe nobody will care what I have to say, but that's not why I am doing it. You see, about 12 years ago I met my wife (Shawna). I knew she would become my wife someday almost from the start. Almost three years ago we decided we should grow our family, and we were just starting to wonder if there was something wrong with our baby-making process when it happened. About seven weeks ago my wife called me and said that we should get a pregnancy test. Usually we buy the multi-pack as it's less expensive that way. When you are trying to get pregnant, you will use them anyway. That next morning, Shawna came downstairs freaking out about buying a minivan, paying off debt, rambling on so much that it didn't sink in right away. WE WERE PREGNANT!!!! You wouldn't know it from my attitude (not over-exuberant), but I couldn't be happier or more excited for what is to come! Shawna went and had a blood test done. They said that she was either 14 weeks pregnant, pregnant with twins, or pregnant ectopically. 14 weeks? How could we have not known? Twins? Holy crap! I mean twins were something I had always prayed about, but are we ready for two babies? Ec-top-ic? What's that? I opened Google and checked it out; it's not good. It means the baby is outside the uterus. How does that happen? Does the baby just decide that it wants to vacation near the kidneys? So, I did a little more research. No, that's not what it means. Usually it means the baby is implanted in the fallopian tube. Of course, when you research these things, it scares the crap out of you. Nearly all ectopic pregnancies end in the death of the baby, and some (if not caught) end in the death of the mother. Great - the emotional roller coaster has started, and we have known we are pregnant for about five minutes.... A gut-wrenching four days later we had our first sonogram. The technician was very nice. She wondered why we were there and we told her. It took her a little while to find the baby (we wouldn't find out until later that Shawna was only six weeks pregnant). I teared up a little once she showed the baby on the screen with the slight flicker of a heart beat. The baby was in the uterus. There was only one baby, and now I have more to worry about. The hormone levels were what caused the first nurse to think there was something wrong. There is nothing wrong, just high hormone levels, which is never a good thing for a husband! We got to take pictures home. Of course, at six weeks the baby is about the size of a grain of sand. So we had this cool picture, which you couldn't see anything on, but we were still super excited!
Days and weeks have passed, Shawna just passed the 13 week mark. Hopefully the second trimester will be better on Shawna's stomach. We have two puppies (adopted them in February, before we knew we would conceive in March) and Shawna's super sensitive nose makes her brain think its a good time to get nauseated when she smells them. She might be the only person in the county that can smell our dogs, but it still causes issues in the morning for her. Whether we have a mini van or have all of our debt paid off, in six months we will be parents (Lord willing) and the next adventure of our lives begins.
