>Seriously? has it been almost two years since I wrote on here? Embarrassing. Of course, in those two years, Chris and I have bought a home, and within seconds of closing, it seems, I was pregnant. I didn’t know it for nearly two months (guess that’s the mark of an easy pregnancy, huh?), so it made the whole pregnancy go by a little faster than it might have!

On the same night that I confirmed I was pregnant — I didn’t share with him the news when I only had the “two pink lines” test. I waited a day until I could use one of the fancy schmancy digital tests that blinks at you and says, “pregnant!” Boy, was he surprised and excited! It seems like SO long ago. I figured out that I might be pregnant when I was sitting in my Biopsychosocial Assessment and Wellness class at UNT one November Thursday night, and I went to look for a highlighter in my purse. I came across a handful of tampons, and I thought, “Hmmm. I threw those in here this week because I SHOULD have needed them.” Well, if you’ve read any of the previous posts from 2008, you know that it was a year of intense physical suffering from chronic hives, and let’s just say that my menstrual period’s regularity or even its existence was not of great concern to me. Anyhoo, all I knew to do, in class, to figure out if I might be PG was to trace my cycle all the way back to March because I knew I had started a pack of birth control pills at the beginning of wedding week. For obvious reasons. So here was this piece of notebook paper with monthly calendars and calculations on it for 8 months. And guess what? Yep, I should have needed those feminine hygiene products!

So, there we went. I started my voracious reading about birth and pregnancy and all things related. I showed Chris the awesome documentary that Ricki Lake made called “The Business of Being Born” because I knew that I wanted to have a home waterbirth with a midwife attending, and I knew I was going to need his support in order for that to work that way it was intended. He saw it and was in!

In order to tell my parents face to face, I drove like a madwoman to Marshall, Texas, the day after Thanksgiving because my Dad was leaving for China to be gone for far longer than I would have been able to keep that kind of secret. I almost made him miss his flight, but I got to deliver the news face to face. My step-mom had already guessed, but she had not said anything to him. He was so excited. To tell my mom, I had my niece, Jeorgia, ask her if she wanted to be a MeMe again! I think she didn’t know what to say! She was excited too. We told Chris’ family by praying for our little baby-in-the-belly before we ate our Thanksgiving meal with them. So cool.

Spring brought the much-awaited second trimester — the first one was just exhausting. I was SO tired and just wanted to eat chocolate milk shakes and peanut butter sandwiches all the time. Trimester 2 brought on the Cheerios and spaghetti cravings and some relief from the tiredness. We did a great childbirth class in May/June with Rosemary Walker called “Sweetbirth 101.” I highly recommend it!

I am not much of a frilly nursery decoration advocate, so I did not ever have that stress. We chose not to learn the gender of our baby until birth-day, so we officially drove everyone else crazy with not getting to know, either! We were given some amazing baby showers in Marshall and Mesquite and Dallas by friends, family, and coworkers, and we could tell by the way that little one flipped and flopped in my belly, that fun times were ahead for us!

In May, I went to hang out with my friends Leslie and Robert Faust, who beautifully photographed our wedding for us, and Leslie shot some beautiful photographs of my bump. Here is one of my favorites:

Faust Imaging