Father's Day 2013

It seemed like the third time in as many days that we had to backtrack, break down the miscommunication, apologize to each other, offer reassurance, make a new plan, and then try to invent humor or romance out of dry air to move forward with our evening together on a positive note. This from a couple who usually never fights.

Unaccustomed to my happily ever after being shaken up, I wanted to know what the deal was.

"I'm trying to be everything I need to be here. It's hard."

I suddenly saw him as I first saw him, and realized in a moment how much he has had to change for us. The first time I met him he was 24 and still wearing his college wardrobe, almost hyperactively trying to impress me. His business was just taking off and he had more money than he knew what to do with. He cut his own hair, spent all his time with his friends, and had more light moments than serious ones. He could get his work done in one sitting without getting interrupted. His most important family role was to be a good son. He was always available when a friend needed him and he saw all the new movies when they came out in theaters. His actions affected only himself. His highest degree of responsibility was to his clients. There were no life or death situations. No one depended on him to be able to eat. He spent every day fending off boredom, and he did it well.

Everything since then has changed, and I suddenly felt sad for asking this of him. As I went along marrying him and making him a father, I didn't really think about how I was also urging him into heavier and heavier responsibility. Before me sits the complete package: loving husband, dependable provider, joyful dad, constant companion, dream chaser. He works so hard for us to be all that he is.

"I'm sorry you had to give up your easy life for this."

And then the same boyish grin and sparkling eyes I saw at my front door on the first night I met him smiled at me and said: "I'm not."

settling in

It's April now and we're doing fine. We've been traveling a lot, fitting in visits with family members before wedding season sets in solid and keeps us in Chicago all summer. Most of my family is in the South, so we're enjoying the warm weather where they are while it continues to snow in Chicago.

My mother in law assured me that at 3 months, babies just settle, and I've found that to be true for Liesel and me and our new life together. It's just getting easier every day. A lot of the ease is because I'm letting go of some expectations I had and just letting our family find its own pace apart from other models and schedules I was trying to copy.

We have our very own dynamic in the Tab house. Unless it's a wedding day, Tim and I are both home working together to juggle baby needs, business needs and household needs. I run the gamut of being a working mom, stay at home mom, and work-at-home mom on any given day. Some days Tim's workload is heavier than mine so I take care of Liesel's needs and on other days I get behind on my own work and Tim takes over with Liesel. It's not a regular schedule or a single-minded task. It wasn't before Liesel either. I tried really hard to get her on a predictable timetable early on but after a couple of months of that not working I've just relaxed into flexibility, because that's the only thing that works and doesn't result in a crying baby, crying me, and stressed out Tim.

I've been so pleased to experience the good changes that have come to our marriage with the addition of our baby. We have a new glue. A new joy. We are stronger together but incomplete without her. She is a new reason to love each other and work together for her good. Part of me was a little afraid that adding a baby would stress out my marriage, and we do have our moments of stress and difference of opinion, but overall we just have this grand new common obsession to experience together. 

I'm so proud of the man I married. When we were dating, I thought once or twice that he would be a good dad and moved on. I had no idea how precious he would be with her. I can't picture these things in my mind before they happen in front of me. Liesel loves him so much. The sound of his voice still makes her stop and reach out, like she did before she was even born. I'm so thankful that I get to parent with him for the rest of our lives.

I'm sinking into my role as a mom with comfort. The stroller pushing, spit-up wiping, baby rocking, nursing, kissing, dressing, diaper-changing...I'm good with this. I know I may struggle in the future, but this is meaningful work for me now and I'm humbled and grateful that I get to feel this way about it. She is an important person. Her life is so valuable and I get to be her caretaker and role model to get her ready to work in and impact her world. But before all that, this time of littleness while she's still all mine is so precious to me.

External Version Day

At my 37 week midwife appointment, I was still breech. So, after much research and discussion between ourselves and with our midwives, Tim and I decided to schedule an external cephalic version at the hospital for Tuesday morning. We knew the risks. I read all the statistics and studied the drug that would be involved. I watched videos of the procedure being done on other women, and we felt confident that we were making the right decision, especially for the long-term of our family, this baby, and our future babies. 

We checked into the hospital at 8am. I tried to push down negative feelings about the intimidation of the triage room and the mystery stains on the hospital gown I had to wear. 

Being in a hospital is kind of like landing on a foreign planet. Everything is unfamiliar and so many factors remain unexplained because the staff is just too busy to help you understand. I had to get a blood typing test even though my blood type was written on my chart. I couldn't drink water but had to get an IV put in my arm just for fluids. I brought my own tank top that covered much less surface area than the baggy hospital gown but couldn't wear it...not sure why. And all of this comes under the bigger umbrella of the thought: "what are they really going to do to me?"

I knew that for this particular procedure to actually work, I was going to have to relax my mind and muscles and be as docile and compliant as possible to let the powers that be put their hands on me and move my baby within me. Oh, the tug of war in my mind as we waited. I got hooked up to a fetal heart monitor and we started the mandatory two hours of monitoring before the procedure.

Thankfully, I had Tim with me. I held onto his arm and his good-natured optimism and light heart. We drew on what we learned in our birth class about deep breathing and relaxation techniques. He talked to me about happier things and the beach and made me laugh so hard I gave myself contractions that went off the grid of the monitor (exhibit A right above). 

Eventually our Obstetrician came in and we got some real human interaction with her, which was awesome. She did an ultrasound and together we learned some good details: no part of the baby was engaged in my pelvis, and I still had pockets of amniotic fluid to give them some free room in maneuvering the baby around. I knew these factors contributed significantly to the success rate of the external version, so knowing this really helped me feel better.

Our doctor had to rush off but we soon got a visit from a kindred soul. Gayle, one of my midwives, was having a crazy morning delivering babies too but she came to check on us and talk to us about what was going to happen. She let me know that they were going to give me an injection of Terbutaline, a drug to relax my uterus, immediately before they started the procedure. It would make me shaky and anxious and increase mine and the baby's heart rates and I might find it hard to breathe...yikes. Since I was going to have three people working on my stomach, the only place for Tim was at my feet and he could give me a foot massage to try to help me stay relaxed throughout the version.

Suddenly, the tiny room was full of people. Gayle, our obstetrician, a nurse, and a new male doctor I had never met before. And another unidentified woman who came and left a few times. I quickly figured out that the man in the room was a medical student who was learning this procedure from our OB. Deep breath...I so didn't want me and my baby to be a practice subject under these circumstances, but there was no time to talk about it and I really do value the education process that doctors have to go through. We need good, experienced doctors so badly in this country. So I forced a smile and shook his hand. He took my left side, and the women stood on my right. They lowered the head of the bed until I was totally flat and gave me the shot of Terbutaline in my thigh.

I've wondered how much to share about what happened next. It was very difficult for me to endure, and it's a painful memory now. Suffice it to say that I had three people pushing down, pulling, fisting, and wrenching on my abdomen and my baby with all their might for about six minutes. It was much more painful than I expected and very frightening, and it just felt wrong for them to be handling my baby like that. I didn't make it to the end without breaking down into big embarrassing sobs. It was so hard to stay relaxed for them, to even stay still on the table for them, but I knew it was so important to try to breathe deeply for me and the baby until it was over. I was aware that it was working, the direction of their hands on the baby told me that. I felt so bad for Tim having to watch it all happen, because if it had been me at the end of the table I wouldn't have been able to hold myself together while watching him go through that.

Finally, they let up and confirmed with ultrasound that the baby was head down, but the baby's heart rate was not good. I heard little snippets like "he's not happy", "put her on her side", "get the oxygen" and I just knew we were headed next door to the operating room for an emergency c-section. But we didn't. Within seconds (that felt more like minutes) of me taking long deep breaths into the oxygen mask, the baby's heart rate was back to normal and everyone relaxed and started celebrating the success of the version. There were high fives with the staff as a nurse wrapped my torso with a corset-style velcro binder to keep the baby in place. I tried to be happy, but in the moments after the procedure I just kept thinking "I made the wrong decision. I shouldn't have put my baby through that. A c-section would have been easier for him or her."

Gayle stayed back for a while to comfort me and outwardly validate what I had been thinking. "It's so hard...I know you're normally so gentle with your baby...it just seems wrong...I know...but your baby is already fine, look at this awesome heart rate...you're going to have bruises..." I appreciated her care more than I can say. As soon as she left and it was just me and Tim again, I fell apart in his arms and just wept. Why couldn't I feel happy that we got exactly what we hoped for? I started to realize that I was trembling all over and I couldn't catch my breath through all the crying. It was the Terbutaline. I was anxious, my heart was racing, I was having every side effect that Gayle had prepared me for. It helped a little bit to know that I was feeling the effects of a drug, not necessarily all of my own faculties. So I just laid there and cried it out and waited for the tremors to pass. They let me drink water so I tried to flood and flush out the Terbutaline.

We had to do two more hours of monitoring to make sure the baby held on to his/her good heart rate. It was really comforting to hear the steady beat through the monitor. Slowly, I started to feel better and come back to being my real self. Our nurse brought me some food and encouraged me to eat, and I did. 

By the time we were ready to leave, I was able to smile again and sincerely thank Gayle and our nurse (the doctors were long gone) for everything. I could walk, get myself dressed, leave the hospital, and climb the three flights of stairs back up to our apartment all on my own strength. By the evening, I was feeling the positive effects of having the baby in the right position. I could breathe easier since the baby's head wasn't pushing up on my lungs. I was feeling kicks and little feet poking into my side, which was so welcome. I started to think again about how we could have a natural birth.

I'm still very sore from the actual procedure, but the all-day every-day Braxton Hicks I've been having since 34 weeks are basically gone. Last night Tim and I went out to dinner and then Christmas shopping until 10pm, something I haven't felt like doing for the last month because the contractions were so strong at night that sometimes I couldn't stand up straight. I'm glad now that we did the external version and I can stay pregnant as long as the baby needs me to (we would have been scheduled for a c-section at 39 weeks). I don't feel like Tim, me, or the baby is ready for birth before my due date and I even hope we go a little over. I'm not sure why, it's just the general sense I have about it.

If you or someone you love is considering doing an external version, I have some really useless advice: if it works, it's totally worth it, and if it doesn't work, it's not worth it at all. On the day it happened, I told my sister that I wasn't sure I would recommend this procedure to her if she was in my position, just because I wouldn't want her to go through the fear and pain of the procedure, but the farther away I get from the experience, the happier I feel about the outcome...it was just really hard while we were going through it.

from venice

Heyo! We're in Florida. This was our first wedding-less weekend since August, and Southwest had a deal so we flew down on the cheap. 

I highly recommend talking your parents into moving somewhere with a beach. Between that and my mom's dishwasher and in-home laundry machines, it's going to be a teensy bit hard going back to Chicago.

This is me with my mom. She's a full time nurse and a part time professor and a part time student finishing up her Master's degree. She also clears her whole schedule when her kids come home to visit. She's completely awesome.

Add in Dad. He can't keep any secrets ever and really loves to make jokes. I was afraid that he might make a joke about my big pregnant belly when he picked us up at the airport and I was also afraid I might be hungry after getting off the plane where they only feed people peanuts on four hour long flights and I was afraid I might kill him if those two potential circumstances came to pass, so I warned him ahead of time to zip it and provide me food lest I become hangry (= hungry + angry), and he did both very well. So he's awesome too. 

What a hunk. Tim has been working so hard since March. Much harder than me, that's for sure, because he carried my work load when I was busy being sick for five months (which is over now, thank God!). He's had so many weeks packed with shoots (read: weeks with little time to catch up on editing) that have necessitated more than a few all-nighters lately. We've been looking forward to this trip as the light at the end of the tunnel of wedding season and it makes me very glad to see him with his relaxed vacation face on. I love that face.

Our work is our bread and butter, and it's damn good work to have. We are blessed and thankful and so happy. We wake up in love every day and relish spending all of our minutes together, toiling our little business, lifting each other to high places and carrying each other through the low spots. I'm still in awe of the goodness of God because none of these things that I have in my life is fair or deserved. I just found it, like a pearl in a field. I gave up everything I had for it, and got back so much more than I surrendered.

Here's the 31 week belly, you guys. I'm ready for it to stop growing, but we have a ways to go. New Tab's been rolling around like crazy and I'm trying so hard to get to know this baby inside me. Is that a foot or an elbow? A hick-up or a kick? Am I carrying a boy or a girl?
Some of my mom's friends threw me a shower this week. They gave me some precious books and yellow ducky baby sized towels and obscure advice from the other side, like "drink in every minute!", "you'll have all you need when you need it", "your birth will be your birth",  and "just take it one day at a time". But I also got some literal pointers too, like "order your diapers off amazon", "expect to wear your maternity clothes for a few months after the birth", and "don't compare yourself to anyone else". I'm very grateful for those ladies and this vacation. It's nice to feel rested and surrounded at a time like this.

on the job. together.

I never thought I'd be the type of person who could work with my spouse. When Tim first broached the idea of me joining him in his business, the idea was intimidating. I told him I wouldn't do it.

There were lots of factors playing into the situation. One of us had to move to be near the other, and we decided together that it would be in the eventual best interest of both of us for him to not give up or displace his business (we knew we were probably getting married). That meant I had to quit my job and move to Chicago. Coincidentally, all this happened during his biggest year yet in his wedding photography business, and he needed help. All signs pointed toward me working with him, but I was resistant.

In the world of wedding photography, it's pretty common for couples to work together. But I wasn't in that world yet. It wasn't the idea of working with him that scared me, it was the idea of working for him. I loved boundaries and independence and earning my own wage and dropping it in my own bank account.  I also loved catching my own mistakes early and fixing them before anyone else saw my error. I knew I would have a lot to learn and I would be putting myself on really shaky ground by having my boyfriend be my boss and letting him teach me a new trade and give me a paycheck. It didn't sound safe. 

As we made plans for my move, I started applying for lots of jobs. Looking back, I was ultimately acting on distrust for Tim and pride in myself and fear of failure as a photographer. I wasn't getting any job offers, and Tim was patient and intent on proving himself to be trustworthy. He kept letting me know that he wanted me to be happy in whatever job I chose to do, but his offer stood open in case I wanted to work with him.

Then he asked me to marry him. There's a lot packed into that question. It's really a question of many questions, a whole book of questions, and one of them is: "will you trust me to take care of you?". Also; "will you allow me to provide for you?". And I said yes to him, so some strongholds that I needed to survive being single had to fall away. I agreed to work with him.

So, Tim works from home five days a week. This I knew. This meant that we would be together all the time. Forty plus hours per week of time together spent on work alone, not to mention free time and wedding planning time and dating-each-other time. We'd never even lived in the same city at that point. It was going to be a steep transition, and I was afraid of conflict. But we moved forward. I cried tears of loss as we drove away from Kansas City with my life packed in my car, and cheered for the joy of a new beginning when we saw the Chicago skyline. The next day, we started working together.

He handed over client communications to me first, and I mean really handed it over and let me do it all without looking over my shoulder. For a girl who majored in Interpersonal and Public Communications, and who was also planning her own wedding, I couldn't have asked for a more well-suited job than emailing with brides to put them at ease about our part of their wedding day. I loved the work, Tim had hated that part, and suddenly he had about 20 more hours per week to work on editing pictures. I could see the immediate difference I was making in improving his workflow and stress level, and I loved it.

And then he put his cameras in my hands. I didn't even know how to use them (I had plenty of experience being an amateur with my own DSLR, but none with his professional grade equipment) but the clients were only paying for Tim's services, so whatever I added to their wedding pictures was gravy and it was a low-pressure environment to learn. It was kind of like getting thrown in the deep end of the pool with a couple of arm floaties. On our way to our second wedding together, Tim told me that he would usually get that pitted feeling in his stomach right before every wedding, but with me by his side he wasn't nervous anymore. I started to realize that he wasn't measuring the support I brought to him from a purely monetary perspective like I was.

I shot twenty weddings with him that first season, all for free to the clients so I could learn all that I needed before we added my second-shooting services to his new contracts. I learned so much during that time and gained a whole new confidence in myself as a worker in a new field. I started calling myself a photographer. This didn't feel like dependence, that icky word I feared as a single person. It felt like partnership. 

We've been at this for over a year now, closing in on our second wedding season together, and we've gotten really good at being a team. I can tell when he's under pressure and I know how to help him. He can tell when I'm struggling with a new technical situation and he always has the answer. 

And we have so much fun. If I had any idea how much fun this job would be, I never would have resisted in the first place. This is a no alarm clock job. We get to attend dance parties every week, we see people at their very best and happiest (...usually). Even when it's hard, it's still fun. We work until we're so tired it's hard to make it up the stairs at night, but we like working hard and we like working a lot.

We gets lots of different reactions when we tell people we work together, and they always make us smile. We know we've got a unique dynamic going on here, but it's perfect for us and if we wanted to change it, we would. 

It takes humility and gentleness to make this work relationship work. All that we do on the job is on display to each other and that can be hard, because we can't hide our mistakes when we make them. I get grumpy when I get tired, and he gets grumpy when he gets hungry, and being tired and hungry is part of almost every wedding day, so we get stretched and have to work not to hurt each other's feelings, and then be quick to apologize when we do.

But as long we keep putting our client's and each other's needs ahead of our own, working together doesn't cost our relationship anything, it only adds to it. All the time we get to spend together--have to spend together--is a good thing. My fears of not being able to survive without copious amounts of alone time (classic introvert here) evaporated somewhere along the way of settling into our marriage and work arrangement. 

And some people still think I quit my old job and didn't pick up another "real one". And that's okay. I am a stay-at-home wife just as much as Tim is a stay-at-home husband. We're just usually doing the above all day long at our stay-at-home job.
Except when we're busy trespassing and such :)

One year!

Today is our one year anniversary! We're not really sure how to celebrate an anniversary because we've never had one before. And we ate the top layer of our wedding cake the last time we were down in Florida visiting my parents. We needed dessert on a particular night and I couldn't exactly pack a frozen layer of cake in my suitcase back to Chicago, so you know.

So far today I've gotten a haircut. I bonded with a new stylist named George (or Georgie?) whom I might call my own from now on because I love my new hair and he's very kind and gave me a hug on my way out and called me sweetie. It's so great to have someone you trust cut your hair, no? Was I supposed to be focusing on my anniversary?

Anyways, then I stopped by Trader Joe's on my way home and bought Tim all his favorite treats. Meaty lasagna (I don't make lasagna from scratch. takes too long), frozen pizza, chocolate raspberry candies, and those mochi Japanese ice cream things that I don't like. While I was standing in the frozen aisle, my dad called and sang me the anniversary song. It's an original. 

I got some excitement and kisses out of my guy when I got home because I have hot new hair and his favorite treats. Happy anniversary, baby. Then we started working and now the day is escaping so we need to go out and do something celebratory. Oh, and we ordered our crib! Super great.

I couldn't resist posting some wedding pictures because I'm reminiscing a lot today. Our wedding is a beautiful, beautiful memory. 

 It's funny though, the ritual and celebration we performed one year ago today in front of 80 people was nothing compared to being launched into the work and joy of marriage that we've been privately experiencing since then. It's so very, very good. This year has seen us wrapped in a cocoon of safe and gentle transition into marriage. We are better at loving each other now than we were a year ago. I thought he was amazing when I married him, but he's so much better than what I was aware of even then. Marriage too. It gets a bad wrap a lot and I was scared of it a little, but marriage can be a profoundly good thing and I'm very glad I'm signed up for life. I want many more years with my Frenchman.

a post about AC units

This summer has been rough on our love affair with our apartment. Remember our perfect apartment?

When we were deciding to live here, I spent not one second contemplating the fact that it didn't have central air. It just didn't occur to me. It was winter, and this place had beautiful light pouring in from huge windows in every room and offered free radiator heat. Free heat! In Chicago! We were going to save thousands.

And we probably did. From February to May, life here was so comfortable and our monthly bills are a fraction of what we used to pay to heat and cool a townhouse. But then, summer set in early and weather records starting getting broken with the heat. Right around the same time, I started to get sick. At 5 weeks pregnant, I was nauseated and depleted of energy and started getting very sensitive to temperature and odor, and then we had a couple of 100 degree days.

It was a bad mix.

We went out and bought an air conditioning unit, and it was $150, which is fine for one AC unit, but we weren't going to buy any more at that price. Tim installed it in our bedroom and for the whole month of June, I spent my days and nights in that room working on my laptop and napping and vomiting and generally being pregnant. Tim toughed it out in the office (where we used to spend all of our working hours together) until he could stand it no longer and bought another $150 AC unit to give him some relief. Those two little units allowed us to work and sleep, but didn't improve much else at home. Call me cheap, but I wasn't willing to spend any more than $300 on improving a situation in an an apartment that we might not even live in next year. It would have cost us another $600 to outfit the rest of the rooms in our apartment with new AC units, and that was neither appealing nor in the budget.

Leaving the protective igloo of our air conditioned bedroom to run an errand or even go to the bathroom brought on a wave of heat, which brought on a wave of nausea, and I was so miserable. Those beautiful big windows in every room ushered in the full heat of the sun, and being on the top floor only increased the temperature as heat wafted up through the floorboards. Turning on the oven to cook dinner brought the kitchen to over 110 degrees, so we ate sandwiches. I left windows open to try to catch a breeze, and with it came extra dust that coated the floors. By the end of July, I was talking about moving out.

I was so mad at the situation. How could my life be made so difficult by the absence of one modern invention? Tim and I both grew up without air conditioning (albeit, in a cooler climate) and we survived. I hated the feeling that buying more really expensive stuff would make me happy, and had resentment that being pregnant was turning an irritating situation into an unbearable one just because of hormones and the fact that my body was changing outside of my control and couldn't take the heat. The absolute worst part of all this, the part that made it all plainly sad and unlivable, was that when Tim would reach for a hug, I couldn't return the affection without an inward grimace. He's just a big, warm man, and I was forever overheated and pukey.

And then last week, salvation came. We saw our downstairs neighbors packing up and moving out. Soon their kitchen window, which we had to walk by in order to get to our car, was bare and displayed a totally empty apartment save for 4 AC units grouped on the tile floor. We acted immediately by leaving a note on their door asking if we could PLEASE buy those units from them? And they called back and said yes, we could have all four for $100.

I don't have a moral to this story. Life in my home is livable and enjoyable again, and it's because of stuff. I don't know where we'll put them in the winter when we need to seal our windows again, and I don't know if we'll be able to recuperate any of the money we spent on these when we eventually move out, but I can cook a meal in my oven and eat at the kitchen table with my husband and hug him for a long time without having to pull away. So.

Oh, life.

Today, Tim and I met with a potential client in a coffee shop. The meeting went well and when it was over, I looked around me and noticed all of the other patrons in the shop who were sitting alone at little tables being so studious. They were buried in their head-phones and laptops and textbooks, all silently going hard after big things in life they really wanted, and for a second I remembered exactly what that was like and I deeply missed being in their shoes.

I had 6 years of that season of relentless pursuit. For most of that time, I worked a full-time job while taking a full-time load of coursework, and it was so hard. It felt like it would never end. Tuition ate up all of my money, but I could somehow always afford a cup of espresso to get me through the next studying session at the coffeehouse, even if it came from scavenged quarters and dimes dug up from under the seat of my car. Those days were glorious. They were full of questions that weren't light and I cried so many tears for the not knowing and being alone, but that work it did on my character was profoundly good and I am proud of those years. They felt long at the time but they're a vapor now, and I had no idea they would end so darn quickly and everything would change.

I wouldn't do them all again, but I'm not a "do it all again" kind of girl. I can't forget the bad stuff like the details of the heartbreaks and the not having enough money for haircuts or new tires with winter snow fast approaching. But still, they were good years.

Now I'm in a different place that feels more like coasting on all the stored up energy I worked up when I thought I was getting nowhere. And it's nice. Truly. I'm not discounting the fact that I get to travel and love my husband and start a family. This was the point of all that work.

I just never thought that wooing clients, sealing a deal, and making money would for a moment seem less fun than working my arse off to get a diploma and try to find myself by thinking existential thoughts fueled by coffee.

Oh, life.

Wherever you are, don't wish it away.

finding out

We found out on April 26th, 2012.

I was all excited to take my first pregnancy test, which I did on the earliest possible day that the package told me I'd get an accurate reading. It turns out that all the romantic notions I'd had about taking a pregnancy test and waiting on the results with my husband kind of poofed into thin air. You have to pee on a stick, which is kind of medical and gross, then wipe the pee splatters off the stick before your husband sees it, and do you peek at the results before you leave the bathroom? Is that allowed if you want to 'find out together'?

We sat on the bed together and waited for three minutes, and then looked. And it was negative.

And that was ok. I had worked hard to not build up hopeful expectations while I built up hopeful expectations anyway. It was only the first month. I really couldn't expect to get pregnant that fast and there was probably nothing wrong with either one of us. Except that I was well studied on the subject of fertility and my own body and I knew for sure that Mars and Venus had crossed paths at the right time...so...still, it was fine. Maybe next month.

I had been feeling a little weird and thought that meant I was pregnant. I had cried easily a couple of times over sentimental things and thought it was a sign. I had a few mood swings and thought that was a sign too. I tried to put all of that out of my mind and Tim and I went to run errands.

We walked into Whole Foods and the smell of the produce section hit me wrong. I had this clear moment of knowing that is hard to describe and I assertively walked over to the vitamin aisle and selected some prenatal vitamins and tossed them in the basket. I told Tim I should have started taking them a while ago. A week or so went by and I stayed in this limbo of thinking my body was telling me I was pregnant, but remembering the test results. 

We had a photographer's social planned at our house for a Thursday night, and that afternoon I got testy. I had a list of things to do to get the house ready for our guests and I was feeling overwhelmed. Tim was helping but at one point when he wasn't doing some household thing my way, I snapped at him and he retreated to the kitchen to wash dishes. 

I felt mean, and I hated that. I didn't feel like myself at all and I was tired of being denied that something real was happening to me and throwing me off kilter. I grabbed my last pregnancy test and snuck off to the bathroom to get my final answer, which I expected to be another negative result.

It wasn't. The horizontal line popped up immediately, no three-minute wait required. 

And then I realized that I was all alone in the bathroom with the weight of this realization, which was heavy, and my thoughts surprisingly weren't fairy-dusted or sunshiny. This is happening? And it's permanent? And I was just mean to my husband and now I have to go tell him I'm pregnant?

I made haste to the kitchen. Tim had his back turned to me as he was washing dishes and I reached for a hug first, which he immediately returned, and then I said; 
"I just took this pregnancy test..."
"WHOAH! I knew you weren't acting like yourself!"

He was so excited, which reminded me that I could be excited too. And then it all turned sweet. We forgot about the chores and the people who were coming soon and the food we needed to make and everything else, and we just held each other and rejoiced and lived in the moment for a while. In my heart, I fell to my knees and thanked God for giving us undeserved grace to be able to get pregnant so easily. It wasn't lost on me then, and still isn't, that I was spared the pain of what I could have gone without. 

deciding to try

Next time, I want to get pregnant by accident. Because getting pregnant on purpose is stressful.

The process is full of endless second guessing. Are we ready? No, but are we really ready? What's a justifiable reason to get pregnant? If I'm sad every day that I'm not, is that good enough reason to go for it? I'm 25. Is that too young? We've been married less than a year. What will people think? 

Well, that was my process. Tim's process was endearingly more simple. His had two levels: "I'm not ready yet", and "now I am". I will always envy his ability to make assertive decisions while I hem and haw and worry for weeks over what to do.

Back in February, we were having these talks a lot. We were almost ready, but not quite set yet. Then, I found out that I was a potential candidate to be a bone marrow donor, and I couldn't donate if I was pregnant. What a sweet relief it was to have an important reason to wait! And it was my only reason for the 8 weeks it took to determine that I was not the right candidate to donate my marrow. This coincided with the birth of our niece, and I then felt helpless against the overwhelming desire to start this process in my own family.

In the first days after Zaylee's birth, a few well-meaning people said out loud what my brain and heart were mercilessly screaming at me: "you're next!", "don't you want this too?", and the classic "whenever you're ready...".  Oh, what this did to me. 

It's not that I felt like I needed to meet anyone's approval. When people suggest ideas that are wrong for me, they're easy to brush off. I couldn't shake this because it was a deep, private desire of my own heart laid bare and spoken out loud. 

The ride home from visiting the maternity ward felt so severe. At first Tim didn't understand. "It's not a big deal. Don't pay any attention to what other people say." 

"It IS a big deal! And it's not because of what anyone's saying. It's what I'm feeling and what I've been wanting for so long."

Wait, how long had I been wanting this? I've always known I wanted to be a mother. I remember being 5 years old and squeezing my baby brother so tight he would cry every time I held him. When I was in my teens, I would dream freely about getting married and having babies. In my single twenties, I shut down those desires completely out of self-preservation. When Tim and I got serious and started talking about marriage, I started to dream again, this time about little dark-haired technologically inclined sassy Franco-American children. And now that we were settled and happy in marriage, the deep desire to start a family was past longing. It was primal. It was pain.

There was nothing to wait for. I wanted a baby more than a house. More than a Master's degree. More than another major-responsibility-free year in my twenties. More than a good night's sleep and more than the money we save by being childless. I wanted this more than any of those big things that couples usually want to get settled first before having a baby.

We took a few more weeks to pray about it, and then it was firmly decided. 

We would try.