Today when I pulled into church at Antioch, Jen Shuck was in the car right behind me (no husbands: mine was at home asleep since he works nights right now, and hers is in Hawaii on business). It was a sign! She was headed to her Sunday School class and I was walking into church service, but I called her over anyway. I told her that Jim and I had something we’d like Brian and her to pray for us about… that I was four weeks pregnant. She gasped and hugged me, and started crying! I told her that was because she’s pregnant too, and probably extra emotional. 🙂

We ended up talking in the parking lot at church so long that we missed service. So we bought tickets to the Ladies’ Christmas Dinner for us and our moms, and took off to Babies R Us instead! The brand new store just opened on Friday in Bellevue (what luck!) and Jen has been looking at some things online that she wanted to see in person. We spent a couple of hours testing out strollers, gawking at the amount of things you “need” for a baby.

I ended up buying a pregnancy journal and a book for Jim called What to Expect when Your Wife is Expanding. It is pretty funny, and it has lots of good information. When I got home, I gave it to Jim and he sat and read the first three chapters on the couch. (Okay, so the ice cream cone I made him kept him going, but still!)

Jim just couldn’t wait to tell someone, so we picked our good friends Adam and Sarah. Actually, we told their daughter (our god-daughter), Aly, first… but since she’s ten months old, she couldn’t tell anyone else.

We babysat Aly on Friday night and when we took her home, Jim broke the news that she would have a new little god-sibling soon! Adam and Sarah had to think about that for a moment, but pretty quickly they realized what it meant. We had fun sharing our story with them. Commonly heard phrases include, “That’s so crazy!” and “It’s just weird.” Sarah and I are thrilled that our babies will only be three months apart (since she’s pregnant, too).

We are excited to tell our parents, but want to wait until we’re face-to-face if we can. We’ll wait to really spread the news until the baby is twelve weeks, which falls right about New Year’s 2008.

When we went to PacLab in Issaquah to get the blood work done, they hadn’t received the work order from the doctor’s office. Jim said, “Can’t we pull the pregnancy card?” So the nice man at the front desk made some phone calls and decided that we could go ahead and get the blood drawn without the order.

So I got the blood drawn (all seven vials) on Thursday after work. Jim held my hand, talked about random things to keep me distracted, and kept feeding me Jolly Ranchers to keep my blood sugar up. We went out to dinner – Mexican – and got ice cream at Marble Slab in Maple Valley before returning home. Jim really, really wanted to tell someone, but I wanted to wait until we got the blood work results (even though in-office pregancy tests are very rarely false positive). I started reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting that night, since my mom had bought it for me about six months ago “just in case.”

Waiting all day on Friday for THE CALL turned out to be very difficult. I finally called the office about 2:30 because I started to worry that the mix-up with the lab order would affect the results somehow. Finally, at 5:15 PM, Nurse Nancy called me and said she had some bad news. The work order had been written wrong, and instead of running the pregnancy test and panel, the lab did the prenatal panel… which meant that there would be no results until Monday. Nancy said she really gave them a hard time, because this means waiting two whole days to find out results that we wanted to know right away. The good news was that I didn’t have to get more blood drawn; they could do the correct tests with what they had. Nancy said she’d call the lab and pester them first thing on Monday morning and call me as soon as she heard anything. Bummer! It’s been a roller coaster ride already!

I had already called Jim and told him a little bit about the appointment, including that I had taken a pregnancy test and that it was negative – just as we expected it to be. Erin had joked that now I could find a really creative way to tell him, since he wasn’t with me to find out. So I went to two stores and a library on the way home, trying to find a nice pregnancy book for dads. It turns out those aren’t very common. I ended up getting a Pilates pregnancy book (I don’t know why, but I felt like I needed something!).

When I got home, Jim was on the phone and getting ready to change into work clothes. I had to wait until he got off the phone before I started. I gave him a hug and asked him, “Will you still love me, no matter what?” He groaned and said, “Oh no, what did you do to the Explorer?”

I looked him right in the eyes and said, “The pregnancy test was positive.” He looked startled, but he quickly recovered and said, “Yeah, right.” I kept repeating myself, and he kept saying, “No!” and “You’re kidding, right?”

I had to tell him the whole story before he believed me! He got really excited and started kissing my belly… he even got teary with me when I said, “We’re going to have a baby!”

What a surprise! I went to the doctor for a routine check-up on November 8th. The nurse had me take a pregnancy test. I laughed and said, “I don’t think I’m pregnant.” Sure enough, the urine test was negative. I had a great visit with my new ARN-CNM, Erin.

A few hours after I left, I got a message on my cell phone from Erin. She asked if I could call her back. My first reaction was… oh, no, what’s wrong? When I called the office, the receptionist put me right through to Erin, even though she was eating lunch. I felt my stomach drop.

Erin was very cheerful and said that after I left, the nurse was cleaning up the room and noticed that my pregnancy test had a light second line on it. She continued to say that any second line at all is a positive test, and asked if I would like to come in to do a blood test just to be sure. My entire body broke out into a cold sweat! I had to ask her to repeat herself, and I started rubbing my head. It was all so unexpected! Erin told me that it would probably be easier to come in and get my pregnancy panel of blood tests instead of just testing to see if I was pregnant, because then I’d only have to get blood drawn once. Then she pointed out that I should schedule my six-week appointment and bring Jim so he could hear the heartbeat of our baby.

I was really sweating now, and starting to feel a little excited. I said, “I’m sorry, but could you just clarify something? Do you think I’m pregnant?” Erin laughed and said, “I am 99% positive you are pregnant, yes.” I said I’d come in and do the blood test that afternoon after work. Then I sat in my car for a good two minutes before I went back into my office.