We talked about having kids many times before our wedding and many times after. Each time we thought we were “ready,” we came up with reason during date night why it made sense to wait a little longer. We felt as though we could be more “ready.” So we waited, and while we waited, we really enjoyed life. My husband is a little kid at heart. I am a planner, someone who looks ahead at what is next– so much so that I often miss living in the present moment and enjoying what is going on right in front of me. Tony grounds me. I am an excessive documenter of life. If I don’t capture it on camera, how could I possibly remember it years from now? Tony helps me stop and enjoy the present. In October of 2015, we traveled to Seattle together. Tony was presenting research at a conference, and I was tagging along for my first trip to the Pacific Northwest. We decided that it was to be on this trip that we “stop preventing” pregnancy and see where it takes us. He warned me that if I turned into Monica Bing and began peeing on ovulation sticks that month that he would not be happy. He told me that he needed a few months of transitioning from preventing pregnancy to achieving pregnancy without all the scariness of my inner control freak self coming out. And he was right to say that. I was convinced that I was going to get pregnant on that trip. I had been off oral birth control for about a year, so that shouldn’t prevent us from getting pregnant. And I have regular cycles, so around two weeks before my next one was due, I should get pregnant, right? Seeing my first negative pregnancy test in November devastated me in a way that surprised even me. I always thought that I was open to having kids, but truth be told I was never a person who felt as though I needed to have children to feel fulfilled in life. I didn’t have dreams about having children. Birth to me is absolutely miraculous, but also scares the crap out of me. I have a nurse brain- a NICU nurse brain to top it off. I know much more than I wish I knew about birth trauma, neonatal complications and fetal demise. As a NICU nurse, I meet so many parents who make me question what the world God was thinking as He blessed them with a healthy baby. Why does the couple who struggled for years to achieve pregnancy lose their child at 36 weeks unexplainably in utero? Why is a 19 year old having her second baby when she can’t even afford food for the first one? I have asked myself these questions since first stepping into the NICU world in nursing school, but suddenly those questions weighed much heavier on my heart. November came and went, and my cycle was a few days late. Could it be? Was I pregnant? No. BFN. (That’s big fat negative on a pregnancy test.) I began to learn these common abbreviations in the TTC (that’s trying to conceive) community. In early December I was convinced that I was pregnant. Sore boobs for two weeks- it had to be, right? No. BFN and incredibly painful period on Christmas Eve as I worked. I was only 3 months into “not not trying” and I was already getting frustrated. I kept thinking to myself, maybe good times are ahead in 2016. I remember celebrating that idea on New Year’s Eve—that pregnant days were surely ahead in 2016. I wasn’t wrong.
P.S. Seattle was amazing! We thoroughly enjoyed the sights and lived it up while we were there!
