The Pregnancy…..#2

In January of 2010 my husband and I had a chat about the fact that we did want 2 kids, we did want them pretty close together and if we were going to start trying #2 after Connor turned 1 (in Feb), what was the point of NOT trying for another month. For those of you that don’t know, when we decided to have Connor, we were pregnant the next month. So we figured that surely lighting would not strike twice and we were in for a longer road to getting pregnant. I am sure you have already guessed what happened next (or read my last blog and did the math-in which case you think too much) anyways, yes, by February I was telling my husband we needed to swing by CVS for a pregnancy test. Actually we were walking around in the mall (because that is what parents of young children do on a Friday night) and I said just that “honey I need to stop by CVS while we are here to pick up a pregnancy test”.

For the record, buying those things is never a comfortable transaction. I would actually put it up there with buying condoms and ky. Of course buying all of those together would be even more awkward, but I digress.

We went home, I pee’ed on the little stick that night, we waited while Connor crawled all over us on the floor, and a few minutes later…boom….we are soon going to be a family of 4. And I cried. They were not tears of joy either. Yes, having 2 was my idea and yes, I was the brilliant one who wanted them close together. But the minute that test came back positive I realized I had just changed Connor’s life forever. I changed everything about him with one random night of sex (really, just one, we have kids after all), and I actually felt really bad. I was just surprised with myself, wasn’t the emotional reaction I was expecting but hey, pregnant women are crazy so….

The timing was ok, but not great to have a positive pregnancy test. I was just about to head to Punta Cana with the hubby for an all expenses paid business trip that was basically a 5 day open bar party in the sun. Let me emphasis the open bar part. Crap, shit, crap….. f*ing pregnant. And I’m in the weird spot of being pregnant where I not going to tell anyone about it because heaven forbid something happen. Yippee. But that just was what it was and let’s just say, I got a lot of reading done on the beach.

When I got back I figured it was time to call the Dr. and get the prenatal care going. Since this was round 2, I really wasn’t all that jazzed about the 8 million Drs. appointments where they basically tell you your doubling in size and ask if you have any questions. And I had decided to change practices to one I actually liked (sorry AWBW, you sucked). I had my first appointment, the nurse seemed very nice, I pee’ed in the cup, gave my 10 pounds of blood and off I went without a single thought other than ‘really, only 1 cup of coffee a day?’.

To this day I will never forget where I was when I got the phone call from the nurse saying she was just following up on my test results. I was at work, knee-deep in a huge technology implementation, and stepped out of my office for 2 minutes to take the call. She was casually reading off my results, iron a little low -take vitamins, normal, normal normal, Oh, you tested positive for toxoplasmosis……It was obvious we were both getting the news for the first time. My file ended up in the ‘call back vs. send letter’ pile and she was reading it as she called me. When I asked what the positive result meant, she didn’t know. Now I want to get something very clear here, this particular nurse was an angel to me. I thank God everyday it was her to made that first phone call, and that she was the one who figuratively and literally held my hand through many many many months of not knowing what was going to come next. And I do not blame her for not knowing what that positive result meant. All I know is about 15 minutes later, her, myself & Bill were all hitting up Google pretty hard and what we were finding wasn’t good.

To explain everything about Toxo would take links, a science lesson and, well, time I just don’t have right now. Someday I will fill you all in, but let’s just say it is very rare and because it is very rare, there is not a lot of real concrete information out there about it. We had a long haul of specialists, blood tests & an amino before we really even started telling people we were pregnant. I wouldn’t wish our experience on my worst enemy, but as I said, I will write more about that later.

Everyone told me the 2nd time around you would feel everything more…more tired, more sick, more headaches, just more. And they were right. On top of all the emotional stress we were going through, I was twice as tired, twice as achy, twice as hungry, just flat-out twice as everything vs. the first time around. However, on the bright side, the pregnancy also went by twice as fast Of course the last few weeks were pure hell, but I just don’t think anything will ever fix that other than having the baby early which is not the right solution. So instead we just bitch like maniacs to anyone who will listen. Lucky me one of my girlfriends was due around the same time so we bitched to each other a lot…..frankly by 9 mths no one else gives a crap about how uncomfortable you are any more anyways.

All in all it was the longest, quick 40 weeks of my life. And since we are only having 2 kids I can honestly say, I am ok with never having to go through it again.