I'm so excited to announce that Erik and I are expecting our first baby! I'm currently 15 weeks along, and as someone who wasn't sure if she was even going to be able to get pregnant, it's been an emotional time. There are so many words I could use to describe these first few months: thrilling, joyous, terrifying, love-filled, insightful, heartwarming, did i mention terrifying?! We are so in love with the little kumquat in my belly already, and getting more and more used to the idea that we are growing a human. Wait.. WHAT? We're growing a human?!?!
Until I met Erik, I never really saw myself settling down with someone. I always had a hard time envisioning myself married, or having a family. It was like having two puzzle pieces that were from two completely different puzzles. I spent my 20's working, paying off debts, playing in bands, writing music, learning how to cook, drinking lots of wine and just generally having a really great time. When Erik and I met we spent years focusing on our band and our work. After 4 or 5 years of being super in love together, I started mentioning having kids. It was always the same conversation. I'd say "What do you think about having a baby?" He would reply " I think It'd be fun!" Now, while this wasn't quite the response I felt super comfortable with, I knew that it meant our visions of the future were similar and I was ok with having a family without doing the big wedding and marriage thing.
So of course, what happened next is that Erik proposed. We spent 10 months planning our wedding, and this left us very little time for anything else, so I put conception on the back burner till after the wedding. I mean, we still made time for you-know-what but I didn't want to be 5 months pregnant at my wedding, I wanted to enjoy the open bar!
We were married in a charming and rustic 100 year old octagonal barn with our amazing friends and family, near Portland, Oregon in July of last year and spent the next few weeks visiting family on the west coast. We decided to buy Erik's grandmother's car from her and we drove it from Vancouver Island back to Montreal in 4 days. We planned on taking our honeymoon in the winter, but this little road trip was the sweetest impromptu honeymoon I could have ever imagined. I couldn't believe we did it! We were married and I still only used my xanax on an as needed basis, which really wasn't very often at all!
Fall and Winter came quickly and we spent a lot of time indoors. Erik was starting a new business and I work from home and it was just sooo cold outside. -10 degrees, -20 degrees, -30 gajillion degrees. I was also seeing a naturopath who recommended I test for heavy metals in my body (because of fillings I had gotten when I was a kid). It turned out that I had 3 times the 'recommended' amount of lead in my system, So I spent 2 and a half months doing a pretty intense detoxification. The detox ended in early December and I was re-tested for heavy metals and everything was in the normal range, something I was very relieved about. We spent Christmas out on Vancouver Island with Erik's family and physically my body was beginning to heal and recover from the intense few months of detox.
Shortly after New Year's day this year, I got the flu. I had never had the flu like this. I was feverish and nauseous, couldn't eat, lost 10 lbs, was dizzy and actually wondered if my organs were starting to fail. (All normal symptoms except that last one, but truth be told, I'm a recovering hypochondriac).
I was maniacally googling symptoms trying to figure out what was wrong with me. (hello, things you are never ever supposed to do), and I googled 'hard stomach' because that particular hour my stomach was feeling hard. When it lead me to an articled entitled '9 early pregnancy symptoms', I had a "things that makes you go hmmm" moment. I was sooo sick with the flu, but I thought to myself: "I'll take a pregnancy test just to rule out that it isn't That."
Since we had sort of kind of been trying to get pregnant for a year-ish, (which basically means not trying, but not not trying), I happened to have a dollar store pregnancy test in my bathroom cupboard. I won't go into details but this dollar store pregnancy test was not so simple as pee on a stick. I ended up blowing it and using it wrong and throwing it away. I went to the pharmacy and got the most expensive pee on a stick test they had. I got home, ripped it open, peed and then did some dishes, some laundry, made the bed.. and then remembered "Oh yeah, I have to go see that that test says that I'm not pregnant". So when that 2nd pink line said I was, in actuality, a little bit pregnant….. my fear of my organs failing melted away and was replaced by a million thousand hundred other feelings. I literally took 5 more pregnancy tests after that one, and they all continued to be positive. Erik was a little surprised when he came home that afternoon and I told him that it looked like I needed to buy that book "What to Expect When You're Expecting", but without skipping a beat he was super huggy and letting me know that he thought this was 'going to be fun.' The first couple of days of knowing were some of the most exciting, nerve-wracking few days of my life. Can I really handle the responsibility of growing this being?! Can I handle all of the mystery of not being able to see inside of my stomach and hear the little kumquat say "hey, everything's good in here, I'm digging the doughnut / kale combo, keep it up!" But here's the big one: Am I going to be a good mother?
I've spent years learning and practicing how to be unconditionally loving and accepting, how to be a deeply comforting listener, how to be gently and courageously honest. I'm not quite sure I'm there yet, wherever "there" is, but I am so excited to find out who this little person is and to learn and practice even more ways of how to be a real human being.
Are you still with me? If you've made it this far, I'm impressed!
Well, that's it! That is the story of how I came to be pregnant and some of my thoughts about it. It's one of the most interesting things that has happened to me in this lifetime and I am so excited that I get to experience it with someone that I love so very much. Thanks for letting me share this with you guys.
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