My First Parental Failure

My life changed three years ago today.  To be precise, it changed slightly more than three years ago, but three years ago today I found out that it would be changing.  That would be my little Julia.

My husband was always more open to the idea of children than I was.  I liked them just fine, but it was kind of nice to not deal with the ongoing responsibility of them.  Sometimes you have a tough day and just want to go home and be a lump on the couch and eat popcorn for dinner.  With a kid, you can't really do that.  If you factor in their cost, the maintenance, the time, the energy, their extracurricular activities, the worry, the illnesses, the pain, etc., my inner cost/benefit analysis always tilted in the favor of, "Are you freaking nuts to even consider this?" 

It was 2007.  We were fairly financially stable.  We both had completed our master degrees.  We both had jobs with benefits.  We had been married for 7 years.  We owned a house. All of the criteria I thought we had to meet before becoming parents had been met.  And, after both graduating while working full-time, we had a lot more time on our hands than we were used to.  We just might be able to do this.

It was, like, August 29th or something that we decided to try to have a baby.  That would be an early summer baby.  I certainly didn't want a late summer baby - I don't do heat - so we'd try for a month, maybe 2, and then reevaluate.  Maybe.

Our version of trying for a baby was really weak.  At the time I write this in 2010, I know there are about 50 bajillion fertility products on the market and several different methods to use, such as gauging body temperature.  Back then I had no idea.  Instead I just channeled my distant memory of what I learned while working at the OB/GYN and simply said, "I think now might work."

I had no faith that it actually would work. Most women with fertility determination are not to be messed with, and their obsession level with the process is quite high.  I kind of forgot about it because I had other things to preoccupy my time.  I had wisdom teeth removed, then I was painting the living room the next weekend.  I felt just fine, so I wasn't at all suspicious.  My friend and I took off from work on a Thursday, and we went to the local fair.  The fair runs 3 weeks a year, and it's the closest thing to an amusement park in this fine state.  We rode everything, ate a whole load of crappy fair food, and I felt great.

The next day (Friday) my husband calls me at work and asks me if I know if I am pregnant.  I tell him I think it's too early, and I feel just fine.  I highly doubt it.  But just in case, I stop at the store and pick up several pregnancy tests.  Okay, I really picked them up to shut him up.  Of the two of us, he is much more of a nag than I am.

So I get home, and I take it.  I see the one line that you get if you simply breathe (and can pee).  You have to let the thing sit for a while (10 minutes), so I start a load of laundry, start dinner, take out the garbage... 20 minutes later I remember that the test is sitting up in the bathroom.  I go look at it and see the one line there still.  Then I throw it in the garbage can.  Go back downstairs and finish dinner.  Husband is still not home, and I amble back upstairs.  I'm bored, so I go pull out the test from the garbage and look at the little manual that comes with it.  On further inspection, it does look like there may be a second line if you hold it up a certain way, but the second line is extremely faint.  Huh?  The little book says that after 20 minutes the test isn't valid, and you might see another line show up.  Oh, okay.

Husband finally gets home, we talk about random stuff, and then I tell him to look at something.  I retrieve the test and say that I'm not sure what it means.

My dear husband breaks it to me that I'm pregnant.  And I have utterly failed the very first parental hoop - reading a dang pregnancy test.  He proceeds to pull up pictures of what a positive pregnancy test looks like for this brand of test from the internet.  Oh.

Then we go out for a Friday night date to Target to pick up prenatal vitamins.  He seems happy.  I am shell shocked and rather insistent that a positive test result should have two lines of equal intensity instead of one really bold and one so faint that it almost isn't there.

It was one of those nights that goes down in the history books as something that you totally never planned that it would go anything like that.  It was quirky how it all played out, and I suppose my inability to read a pregnancy test, particularly really early on in a pregnancy, is actually kind of funny.  This will always be a monumental anniversary in my head because I officially became responsible for someone besides myself.