Flashback to three weeks ago.

Thursday, June 1st: I was supposed to start my period. Or so I thought. I was confused (and this will make sense to those of you who chart your cycles) because I knew exactly when I ovulated, but my morning body temperature didn’t go up until four days later. I started counting from the day my temperature went up, not from the day I ovulated. I thought it was strange when I didn’t start my period on Thursday, and referenced my little book for some guidance.

It turns out, I was supposed to count those four days when my temperature was still low. So I realized on that particular Thursday that I actually should’ve started my period on Sunday, May 28th. (Did you catch that I realized this on June 1st? Four days after I should have started my period?)

“Huh,” I thought, “Then that means that I’m most likely…. Noooo, surely not!”

I was sure that I had just miscalculated or misunderstood something in the book, mostly because I didn’t want to be disappointed again. I decided that I would wait until Friday morning before I took a home pregnancy test.

I didn’t even really tell Dave what was going on. Or rather, I kinda-sorta gave him the “I think I might be late” hint, but he ignored it because he thought I was over-reacting (as I tend to do with a lot of things in life).

Friday, June 2nd: My alarm went off at 6 a.m. Normally I hit snooze for at least a half-hour, but there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep. I rocketed out of bed and did the whole peeing-upon-the-stick thing. And even though my cat followed me into the bathroom, like she always does, I managed to avoid hitting her in the face this time.

The instructions say that it takes three minutes for the results to show up. Mine showed up in a few seconds.

When I saw the word “Pregnant” in the little digital read-out screen, my hands started to shake and I started to cry. I didn’t know what to do because Dave doesn’t usually wake up until after 8:00, and it wasn’t even 6:05 yet. I paced back and forth around the bathroom for a couple of minutes trying to decide what to do. (And even though our bathroom might be bigger than some, pacing is still awfully silly in that small a space.)

“If I wake him up now, he’ll just be grumpy, and he might not be as excited about it as I want him to be,” I thought, “and that might set a whole negative precedent for the rest of this pregnancy, and then our child’s entire life, and I don’t want something this important to start off on a bad note. Maybe I should let him sleep. But then if I do, he might wonder why I didn’t wake him up for something this big.”

Finally, I decided to hell with it. I ran into the bedroom and jumped on the bed.

Me: (poke) Honeyhoneyhoneyhoney??? (pokepokepoke) Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!!! (pokepoke)
Dave: (snoring…) Mmmph?
Me: I know it’s really early but you have to WAKE UP right now!!!
Dave: (much unhappy groaning)… why?
Me: I have a late anniversary gift for you, but you have to open your eyes.

[Aside: the anniversary comment seemed appropriate, since it’s most likely that we made this baby on the night we celebrated our anniversary.]

We went back and forth like that for a bit, then finally Dave woke up and opened his eyes. I showed him the home pregnancy test. His eyes were all blurry and he was completely confused at first, wondering what this little stick thing was that I had shoved into his hand. Finally, he was like, “Wait, does that say… PREGNANT??” Yeah, it sure does! He did the happy dance – while still lying in bed, which was pretty hilarious. I cried some more.

[Second aside: when I was trying to wake Dave up and having such a hard time with it? He told me later that he thought I was just waking him up to remind him that it was trash day. Ha!]

That was one of the hardest days ever to prepare for work, because I was so distracted all morning. And when I finally got to work (late, of course), I had to fight the urge to scream, “I’m pregnant!” down the halls like some sort of modern day town crier. (I managed. Barely.)

We told our immediate families that day. I called my sister first, because she’s three hours ahead and I knew she’d be awake and already at work. I didn’t get to talk to my dad until that afternoon, because he had been at the golf course all day and he doesn’t have a cell phone. That was kind of fun:

Me: Hey Dad, what are you doing next February?
Him: Um… No idea. Why?
Me: Because that’s when you’re gonna be a grandpa!

He was completely shocked. I found that hilarious, because he knew we were trying, so I don’t know why it surprised him as much as it did. I suppose he hadn’t considered it because he didn’t want to think about his precious little daughter having sex. And now he has to acknowledge that I’m really not a virgin anymore. Poor guy.

So, that’s how this whole little journey got its start. Next: how my entire freakin’ extended family found out even though I had insisted that I wasn’t going to tell anyone until my second trimester. (HA!)