It's Official

The last week has been quite interesting. Lynnell’s nausea is slowly getting worse. It was usually accompanied by the occasionally dry heave. Then more frequent dry heaves, but today we crossed the boundary between dry heaves and… well, you know. I feel bad for her, but at the same time it’s kind of humorous. Here’s an example. Last night we are lying on the couch watching some TV before bed when all of a sudden she starts heaving. I’m scrambling to get up to avoid being covered in dinner, but she just keeps lays there looking at me…heaving. Apparently she’s grown accustomed to it. Other incidents include cell phone conversations and trips in the car. I’ll leave it at that, but I can only guess that it gets better.

On the brighter side, we had our first doctor’s visit today. It went very well. Lynnell’s nurse is a very sweet lady who has quite a few years of experience (yes that’s an age reference) at this sort of thing. She’s very knowledgeable and willing to help and answer questions. The doctor seems like a cool guy. When I saw his picture in the pamphlet that the office sent us before we came in, I wasn’t too sure about him. He looked like an overpriced layer with a white afro or maybe a real estate agent (like the dorky ones you see on bus benches); maybe even like John Kerry only 6’-6”and 260lb. He has since cut his hair and doesn’t look so creepy.

I’ll have to say, my first experience at the OBGYN was interesting. Obviously Lynnell has gone through this sort of thing before (PAP smears and all), but not me. The doctor offered a nice walkthrough though. For anyone who’s been, you know what I’m talking about. He starts out by saying “I’m touching your leg.” Then he moves on…”I’m touching your….” Then he walks you though the rest of the…other stuff. It was quite entertaining. Lynnell later filled me in on the fact that they always give you the verbal walkthrough. I guess that’s good. I’d certainly be surprised if “the duck” was put places without warning.

Then came the ultrasound (complete with another verbal walkthrough…for free). It was sweet to finally see my wife’s womb and ovaries because… I’ve been waiting so long for that….? The fun part was seeing the baby of course. She’s only 7.5 (yeah that’s right .5. Not ½.) weeks along, so we can’t see anything but a blob and the yolk sack, but it was fun to see that for the first time. We faintly saw the heart beating, but when you’re looking at a bean you can’t expect much.

"You're what?"

Saturday Oct. 21 I got out of bed and showered as usual. Then, later on as I was eating my breakfast, my wife comes around the corner and ecstatically says:

“I’m pregnant.”

Me: “You’re what?”

Her: “I’m pregnant”

Me: “Are you sure?” (Smiling)

Her: “Yeah. I just took a test.”

Me: “What did it say?”

Her: “It said I’m pregnant.”

Me: “How do you know that’s what it said?”

Her: “Because I looked at it. Two strips if you’re pregnant. One if you aren’t. It had two strips.”

Me: “Where’s this test at?”

She left the test on the counter so it would have time to do the whole chemical reaction thing. So, I go in there to look at it. There’s one strip for sure, but the other one is barely visible. I read the box: “…second strip may be fainter than the first.” The thing is they don’t tell you how faint it may be. A picture would have been useful to use as a reference, but why would they do that. They want you to continue buying more tests (not cheap) until you are satisfied. So…we did. Only we got one that was a little more black and white. This one started out with the word ‘pregnant’ on it. If you are NOT pregnant, the word NOT appears. Lynnell instructs me that she has to wait until tomorrow morning to take it that way there is fresh test fluid (pee). At this point I thought to myself ‘this sucks’ because I had to leave for Maine the next day, and I would be there for two weeks.

We got up at 4:00 a.m. (my flight leaves at 6:00 a.m.). Lynnell comes out of the bathroom and says:

“I’m pregnant”

Me: “Are you sure?”

Her: “Yeah. I just took the test, and NOT did NOT appear. I’m pregnant.” (Huge grin)

Me: “Where’s the test? I want to see...“ (I go look at the test) “Where’s the NOT?” (Smiling and secretly thinking ‘she’s pregnant’)

Her: “There isn’t one. I’m pregnant.” (Bigger grin)

Me: “I guess so.”

We had a nice we-are-finally-pregnant moment then I hopped in the shower to get ready to head to Maine for two weeks. Pretty anticlimactic, but the rest of my day (and the following two weeks) gave me plenty of time to let it sink in.