1+1 = 3

Or... Why You Have Had to Wait for a Wedding Plan Post

Time to come out of the closet, the pregnancy closet that is. Especially now when I also literally have to step out of my regular closet and into a maternity one.

I've been wanting to write this post for so long and now when I'm typing I don't know where to begin. Sometimes it's hard to put words on feelings, especially when you are in a state of mind of pure happiness and bliss. We're just so happy and being pregnant is such an amazing feeling!

I'm in week 22, i.e. half-way and a bit through the pregnancy, and since a month or so the baby has been kicking a lot, making it all feel so real! I sometimes forget for a moment that I am pregnant - when I'm busy doing stuff and because by bump hasn't really been that visible until recently - but suddenly there's a little kick and I'm reminded that I always have a little companion. I like to think about him or her as my constant companion :)

The pregnancy wasn't actually planned - well, it was in the plans for the coming year or so - but we were absolutely thrilled when we found out! The little one has messed up our wedding plans but that's mundane in the scheme of things; we'll just have to work around that (more on that later).

We found out on 10 May when I took a pregnancy test because my period was four days late. My period is always regular to the day, or maybe the day after, so when it was only two days late I was getting suspicious. The day of the test (I bought it after work but obviously it was on my mind all day at work) I had a hard time believing I would actually be pregnant but I was secretely hoping I would be. Peter said afterwards that as soon as I voiced my suspicions he knew it would be so. I think that's why he was less shocked (though my shock was a happy kind of course) than me when the test turned blue immediately. I was in some sort of "I can't believe it's true" rush - with goosebumps and the shakes - while Peter was pretty calm and hugged me and said "congratulations". At that time it seemed like it was much more natural (for lack of a better word) to him but later he's confessed that he probably didn't really comprehend the hugeness of it at the time and that it was much later, a few months into the pregnancy, that he really realised. In many ways it's taken me some time too to really understand that we're having a baby, that we're going to become parents; I guess that's why we have nine months* to get used to the idea.

Why we were surprised and why I say the pregnancy wasn't planned, is that we weren't trying for a baby. I stopped taking the pill at the end of last summer but not in order to start trying then but in the anticipation that children were in the plans one-two years into the future and I wanted clear my body of extra hormones well in time (this may not be medically necessary but I felt that after so many years on the pill this was something I wanted to do). Instead we used other kinds of contraception. BUT, after we got engaged in early April we were a bit careless and had unprotected sex a couple of times around the time of the month when we thought it was safe. My period had just ended a few days earlier...

But there are no safe periods and evidently we had to turn 34 and 32 before we fully understood this fact! :) When I looked more closely at the menstrual and ovaluation cycle and worked out what seems to my usual cycle I realised that our unprotected sex took place a few days before my most fertile period of the month and as you may know a man's semen can survive for up to four days in the right environment...

With so many people around me having problems conceiving I have felt bad in a way that it was so easy for us. For that reason and due to the fact that miscarriages are also quite common, I was quite worried in the beginning of the pregnancy (probably not more worried than other women but...) and it was something that was often on my mind. Peter as well as friends and family have told me not to be silly but it's difficult to keep such thoughts completely at bay. But all-in-all I have enjoyed being pregnant - except for the morning sickness (though there is a plus-side to that too; breakfast in bed served by Peter almost every day for four months!) - and now, almost 5½ months pregnant, I'm way past the risk period and fully embracing the growing life inside me.

I'll finish this first post (I can reassure - or warn - you that there will be more written on the subject of pregnancy and babies...) with the obligatory bump shot. This one is from week 20+2, i.e. five months completed. We have been for two scans but only one visit (in week 9) with the midwife so far, however the next appointment is next Monday and from then on we will see her more regularly (one every four weeks to start with and then every two weeks). So then I should found if I'm "normal" but I think my bump is quite standard.

One thing that has really surprised me is how much my breasts have grown! I thought that happened towards the end of the pregnancy when the breasts filled with milk ahead of delivery. But those of you haven't experienced this yet; be prepared for growing one, two or even more cup sizes!

9 January 2011 is the magic date by the way!

* Or ten months actually since pregnancy is 40 weeks; why do we say it is nine months??