by the Mall Diva

Alright, so now that I’m retired, I have oodles and gobs of time! I could lay down my life’s story right here for you to read! Actually, my dad’s already done a pretty good job of that, so maybe I’ll just write about my experiences over the last several months…

Oh, and yes, I am retired.  My beauty career was just about four years long, and was cut maybe a bit short last Saturday to make room for my new career. Mommyhood. Mine will be a very active retirement.

So settle in, because this is going to be a long one. But then, it’s been a long time.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know that my own birth was something quite unexpected. I’m pretty sure it runs in the family. No, I didn’t go to such great lengths as having surgery, but I was darn good at popping that baby-stopper every day! This part of the story is fascinating to me, so I’m going to tell you, but if you don’t want to read about pills and blood, skip the next paragraph:

I was taking the pill, and for every three weeks of regular pills (blue), there is a week of placebos (green), and I would have my period, etc, etc. Well, last fall I’d gone through my week of green pills and continued with the blue ones, just like normal; but in about two days, I started bleeding again. A lot. That was NOT normal, it didn’t stop for about a week, and it was freaking me out! I decided that the pill was messing me up, and I wasn’t doing that drug any more!

So I stopped, and everything was fine…

It was around the first part of November, and I was expecting my little friend to be paying me a visit, but it was about two days late. Pair that with some really odd feelings going on in the region just below my stomach, and, well, gosh! What could possibly be going on??

I gave Benny the heads-up that “that time of the month” seemed to be postponing itself. I think our mutual feeling was probably one of “wow” mingled with “holy crap”; but we were both aware that our own plans were really not that important, and definitely nowhere near as awesome as Someone Else’s plans. “But we can’t get too excited yet.”

About a week later when I decided that my period wasn’t just being fashionably late- it wasn’t going to show, period (I had to!); it was time to take the test. It was a Sunday night, and Benny and I had been to the grocery store for food and the top secret test, eaten dinner, and just started watching the movie Up. Of course, in the beginning when they get married, they find out she can’t have children, and here I am just a ball of nerves and hormones trying not to sob. Then it hit me. “Ok, pause the movie, I have to pee!”

What we had already guessed was confirmed.

We were so excited! Benny asked something along the lines of “what do you want to do now?” “I’m going to go tell my family of course!” “Okay!”

I knew my mom would be just about beside herself; after all, she was the one “hinting” all the time: “If you get busy, we can have a 5-generation photo with Great Grammy!” …Whereas my response was always: “No babies til I have my own house!”

Benny and I came into the living room where the family was, and I handed my mom the positive test. She looked at it, and she looked at me with this really weird expression on her face.

“What is this?”

I went over what it was.

“I know, but are you ok? I thought you wanted to wait.”

This was not going how I had planned. She wasn’t jumping up and down. My dad wasn’t saying anything. I informed them that I was indeed very excited, and weren’t they, too? My mom was just a little stunned, I guess. My dad looked at Ben and said “This is all your fault.”
I think he was just nervous. TL was excited, though. “Can I be Auntie Ninja??”

It didn’t take too long, though, for the first reaction to wear off. At least for my mom, who proceeded to enlighten us to the fact that she knew we were going to have our first baby while living with them. I’m not sure how long it took for my dad to warm up to the idea, though.

Some time passed and I figured I was at about 10 weeks. I called a midwife whose name was given to me by a good friend. She was a little concerned my how soon I had gotten pregnant after being on the pill (I had told her I figured it was about a month after the bleeding incident that we had gotten pregnant), so she sent me to a clinic to have some hormone levels checked.

In the meantime, I felt huge already, and the girls at work were teasing me mercilessly: “Are you sure there’s only one in there??” So when I finally saw the doctor, I told her about this. “Well”, she said, “I’m pretty sure you’re not having twins, but I’ll tell you this: you’re 4 weeks farther than you thought.” That was a bigger surprise to me than even finding out I was having a behbeh. Apparently all that bleeding I was doing? Yep, that’s cuz I got pregnant on the pill. It’s my fertility wonder-drug.

Since then I’ve been doing great! I never had any morning sickness or nausea, or even cravings. The only things I could complain of were fatigue, my ribs hurting (a LOT) through my second trimester, a little heartburn, and my legs and hips tend to hurt when I sleep. Oh, and this huge belly that’s everywhere I want to be, and oftentimes being kicked and punched. This is one active little dude. (We’re pretty sure it’s a dude…)

Benny and I have been seeing my midwife from the beginning, and we’re planning on doing a waterbirth at home. I’ve got just about 4 weeks to go. Someone asked me if we were going to live-blog the birth. Not sure how that’s going to work, though, as my dad is going to be playing about 36 rounds of golf on that particular day…

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