Sunday Best

It looks like a beautiful day out there.  I'm sure it is hot and muggy, the breeze only strong enough to annoyingly move around the pieces of hair not sweating and clinging to your neck.  But it looks beautiful.

I was able to spend a glorious thirty minutes in the hospital's courtyard this morning.  I had been up for over three hours, but it was still early and cool and the birds were out, flying all around the enclosed space.  Before that, I had blood drawn, prenatal supplements and iron distributed.  I had been visited by three nurses and one attending doctor.  All of them asking me the same questions I hear every morning, afternoon, and night.  Any tenderness when I press here?  Any nausea?  How about blurred vision?  Can you still feel the baby move?

I read an article last night about birth control.  Apparently, my situation happens in only 6% of cases.

The bracelets on my wrist make me look like some sort of ACL attendee.  Except instead of getting me backstage, they alert doctors of my penicillin allergy, my blood type, and a bar code which is scanned a dozen times a day when any one of my fifteen nurses flushes my IV or gives me Tylenol or hooks the baby up to a heart monitor for 20 minutes (which always turns into over an hour because they have other patients too).

I have finished two books so far.  I wasn't very impressed with either of them.

I am trying to keep my spirits up, read books, write and think about baby names.  I'm trying to do my best.  But this week, I am going to allow myself to wallow a bit.  Just this week though.  Because had my life continued on the way it was supposed to go on, the way I thought it was going to continue, the way any just and kind God or universe or supreme being would allow it to go on, would still have allowed my boyfriend and I to be driving somewhere through Arkansas at this time.

I can still picture it.  I would be driving and looking for a friendly, grassy area to stop and walk Roxy around but edging myself just a bit further on,

Make it to 6:00pm.  

Keep going until you get to the next exit.  

Go another thirty miles and then you can stop.

I would be so excited and anxious to get there, to have a vacation from both of my jobs, to be able to get out of town and the heat and spend days and days with my family and old friends I haven't seen in years.  We would stop in Nashville tonight.  We would check into a cheap hotel, sneak Roxy in and walk around the city for a bit.  Then we'd crash and sleep hard but not long because I'd want to get on the road again.  We'd go to this little restaurant the boy had found, Biscuit Love (http://biscuitlove.com/) right as they opened and I would have bought a coffee mug.  We'd push the critter around the block once more before hitting the road again, our bellies full of benedicts and coffee.

Then it would be a race.  I wouldn't want to waste any time.  There is so much I have to do as the MOH and I would want to see my sister.  I would want to get this wild circus of a wedding week underway.  I would want to get everything started that we have been talking about for a year.

But instead, I can do little more than pick up a new book, read the first few pages and put it down again.  I count down the hours until I have to order another meal from the cafeteria.  I wonder what everyone else is doing today.  I've texted many; the boy, mom and sister and a few friends but haven't heard back from anyone yet.  It's so quiet.

My flowers are starting to die.  Some still look great and happy and beautiful.  But some have given up, no one to change their water, the window probably very warm there as they sit with nowhere to go.  It's been a week since they've all arrived.  But I don't want to get rid of them yet.  They add a lot of color.  They remind me of those who sent them, still out there, living their lives.

Unexpected

Of all of the posts I've written, of all of the words, these will absolutely be some of the weightiest and life-altering.

There really is no other way to say this except: I am pregnant.  I will be having a child.  It wasn't in the plan and any of you who has known me for more than five minutes knows that having children was not in my future vision for my life.  At all.  But, as many of you and now especially I know, life doesn't really care what our plans are.  My boyfriend and the father, is the only one I could imagine to be the one who is here with me now, next month and for whatever happens for our little family in the future.

My due date is September 17th.  Which is just shy of three and a half months away.  Without going too terribly far into the medical details but to also ensure I'm not grouped into the MTV-class of women eligible for a ridiculous reality show (Toilet-babies, anyone?), I had done everything I was supposed to, taken every measure to guarantee this didn't happen.  But, I ended up being the 1 in 100 for whom preventative methods just don't work, the less than 5%, the miracles or the ones who end up in a room being told something they never thought in a million years they would hear.  But I was that one.  I am in that small percent.  I heard those words at 1:34 p.m. on Wednesday June 8th telling me I would be a mother.

At this exact moment, I am listening to my baby's heartbeat.  It is sticking to a steady 145-160 bpm and much to my nurses' chagrin, he or she moves around a lot making the monitor unable to read as it should.  It is so surreal and so strange and so not at all what I thought I would be doing one day before my twenty-ninth birthday.  What a present, right?

In addition to being told I would be a mother, I would also be staying in the hospital...until the baby arrives.  We are both healthy at this moment but because of a small complication, I cannot go home.  I cannot work.  I cannot be out of bed for more than a few minutes at a time.  My full time job will to work through my reading list, write the next great American novel, and keep this little critter in my belly as long as possible which, best case, is two months but could be in the next two days (let's all not hope for that).

Someone, something, some great universal being or power or God himself wants me to have a kid, wants me to be a mom.  And know I am embracing this shift, this life-altering reality.  I am excited to TRY to be the kind of parent I've always said should exist to create the most incredible and respectful and just downright cool kid (because all any of us can ever do is try).  I have such an amazing support system and there are many things that are going to happen and plans (tentative because, well, you know, those can't always be counted on) we are so excited about.

I'm sure there is much to be figured out, steps to take, things to buy and favors to be asked but for now, know I am happy, we are healthy, and we couldn't be in better hands.

Much love to you all, from the three of us.  More to come...