First off- at the risk of not wanting to sound crass- it took everything in my power not to name this entry 'Knocked Up Nuptials'.
Anyway, let's get into it. I'm 35. I just got married. I'm pregnant.
Anyone who has read this blog before, or has known me personally, knows that the majority of my adult life has consisted of two things; dating everyone under the sun in my clumsy quest to find The One, and desperately, DESPERATELY wanting to be a mother.
In the summer of 2019 I decided that in the spring of 2020 I would start the process of having a baby on my own. I had a good job, I had saved up enough money for a down payment on a house (albeit, a small house), and I felt like I had my shit together enough to do the parenthood thing on my own.
As we know, 2020 had other plans, and in March I lost my job due to Covid and therefore my income and all of my plans went kaput.
Luckily, at the very, very end of December 2019 I had met a guy and knew immediately that he was The One I had been searching for. In April of 2020 he moved in and in January of 2021 he proposed.
Duh, I said yes.
Jason and I started planning our wedding and we planned to have it that September so we could have an outdoor ceremony and then start trying for a baby right away.
I've been told since I was a teenager that I most likely would not be able to get pregnant naturally. In the past three years I have had two miscarriages. I told Jason that we should prepare ourselves to have to turn to fertility treatments, and that became our plan.
In the meantime we turned our attention back to our wedding. This is what I learned in the process: planning a wedding is inexplicably stressful and expensive, no matter how often you cheerfully say, "We're going to make this as stress-free as cost efficient as possible!". Planning a wedding during a pandemic sucks. It is the absolute worst. Because of safety restrictions enforced in Philly, we were not able to taste test any food or cake for our wedding. We read a menu, picked some stuff, and hoped for the best. When picking a venue, we had no clue if at any point capacity restrictions would change and we would have to scramble to downsize or straight up cancel. When choosing a dress, you weren't allowed to touch any of the dresses in the shops- you had to just show them some pictures and hope that the consultant brought you what you wanted. The florist I met with relied on Google images for our flowers.
And the money. Sweet fuckin hell, the money. At a certain point you just close your eyes and start throwing out paper airplane checks.
Around mid-summer we started getting a hold on our to-do list and basically at that point it was just small details and paying off deposit after deposit after deposit. There was a small, tiny, hopeful light at the end of the tunnel.
On the morning of July 4th, Jason and I woke up and started getting ready to go to my aunt's house for a family get together. As I was washing my face I suddenly got ungodly nauseous and prepared myself to spend America's birthday spewing patriotism all over my bathroom. After about ten minutes the feeling passed and I felt totally ok, so I shrugged it off and we headed to the get-together.
Two days later, on Tuesday July 6th, I woke up feeling like my normal amount of shit and blamed the fact that my period was super late (not something that was abnormal for me). A little trick that girls sometimes do is to take a pregnancy test when your period is late. Because 9 times out of 10, the second you take that test, your ovaries are like, "oh shit, we forgot, sorry bout that!" and your period arrives and you move on with your life.
So there I was, peeing on sticks and not thinking twice about it. I put the test on the edge of my sink and went about getting ready for the day. I looked down and noticed the first pink line slowly but surely coming into sight. The first pink line means you're pregnant. I had only ever seen the second pink line. What. The Fuck. Was Happening.
I remember saying "Holy shit" over and over again, and then I walked out to the kitchen where Jason was working and just blurted out "I'M PREGNANT". Not as an exclamation, just as a new, solid fact. Jason looked up from his computer, I'm sure shocked as hell, and said, "Congratulations?".
From that point, I went into overdrive. I called my doctor and made an appointment. I went to the store and bought a million more tests in a million different brands. I went to my sister-in-law's house and took each test. They all came up pregnant practically while I was still taking them.
I was very, very with-child.
I always thought that my gyno was being compassionately dramatic when she told me years ago that the way I have felt every morning of my life is akin to how pregnant women in their first trimester feel, but I'll be damned if she wasn't telling the truth because I truly had no clue pregnancy was something I should have even been considering for the past few weeks.
I can't really describe what it's like to find out you're pregnant two months before your wedding, but I do know that one of the words is not "relieved". Having a baby is all I ever wanted, but I also knew that I never, ever wanted to be pregnant during my wedding.
I was terrified. I had no time to mentally, physically, or financially prepare for this. I did not think my parents would react well. I had to completely reconfigure how I approached this wedding. Jason and I lived- and still live- in an apartment so small that it barely fit one person comfortably, let alone two adults, a dog, a baby, and all the necessary infant furniture. I had recently went back to work but it was part time which meant a smaller income and no maternity leave.
Much like planning the wedding, I had to come up with a pregnancy to-do list. Jason and I told our parents. We were excited to tell his, and insanely nervous to tell mine. Luckily, everything ended up fine on both ends. Then I had to figure out my wedding dress situation. The dress I had already picked was beautiful and like a fairy princess dress; the exact opposite of what I ever thought I would want. It also left absolutely no give for even a food baby after a large meal, let alone an actual baby belly. I went to the seamstress and tried on the dress and the pins that had been put into the sides immediately shot out on both sides, and the seam in the back split open. It was like a really stressful cartoon. I cried. Hard.
I ended up getting a second dress about a month before the wedding and it was beautiful. I brought it to a seamstress near me and when I went to pick it up the week before my wedding, she had completely botched the whole thing. It was ruined. Again, I cried. So four days before my wedding, after losing an upsetting amount of money on the previous two dresses, I ordered a $50 dress online and it arrived and it was perfect and it needed no alterations and it left plenty of room for my belly.
During this time, wedding planning started to fall apart. The event coordinator at our venue became impossible to get a hold of. Our caterer (who was also handling equipment rentals, bartenders and staff, the cake, etc etc) seemed to suddenly get amnesia about everything we had discussed before and it was like we had to replan our menu and the setup and the cake. Our DJ regularly fell off the face of the earth.
I also had a ridiculous amount of doctor's appointments. Since I was 34-about-to-turn-35 when I got pregnant, plus it being during covid plus my history of infertility, I was considered a high risk pregnancy. During our first appointment, a brash doctor walked in, handed us a folder filled with an impossible amount of forms, then spent the next 45 minutes spit firing questions and instructions at us. She left and Jason and I felt more bewildered than ever.
I also was absolutely petrified that I was going to lose this baby. We hadn't had an ultrasound yet so we really didn't know what was even really going on in there. Every minute of every day I waited for The Loss to come. It was an awful thing to experience. It was impossible to get through each day worrying that my baby was going to go away, while also trying to plan a wedding that I really didn't even care about anymore, and also dealing with the fact that I had to go off of my anti depressants while pregnant and I was feeling yucky emotions that had been medicinally suppressed for the past 8 months.
The few people that knew about the pregnancy would ask me if I was excited and they seemed insulted when I wasn't automatically like, "YES!!!". The fact of the matter was, like I mentioned before, I was terrified and I had had no time to prepare myself for this. Their response was always, "But this is what you've always wanted!", which immediately made me feel like a piece of shit and like I was already a bad mother. Yeah, true, I have always wanted this. I just didn't expect it to happen LIKE THIS. Give me a second to wrap my head around it, damn.
Also, I had an overwhelming sense of guilt. I got pregnant without even trying. I spent so many years pre-relating with beloved friends who have gone through hell trying to get pregnant, and here I was having it happen as easy as can be. A part of me likened it to survivor's guilt- only because I had nothing else to compare it to- but the bottom line is I felt like I had done something wrong.
It wasn't until Jason and I had our first ultrasound that it all felt truly real. The technician put the wand on my abdomen and a little tiny baby immediately popped up on the screen. Tears ran down my face and Jason reached for my hand and held it while we looked at our child. It was finally real.
I knew from Day 1 that it was a girl. I just had a feeling. Jason hoped it was a boy. Luckily, it took him no time at all to come around when we got the call that we would be having a daughter.
I had a really rough first trimester. Constant, crippling nausea 24/7. Exhaustion that is indescribable. It never let up. I hoped and prayed that I would feel better by the wedding.
Our wedding was amazing. Everything that could have gone wrong in the months leading up to it happened (including nightmares with the guys' suits and the bridesmaids dresses, and our florist giving us bouquets that were NOTHING like what we had discussed and what had been paid for. When I showed up a couple of hours before the wedding to pick them up, she hadn't even started the boutonniere or cake decorations that I had ordered. I'm still bitter if you can't tell). But then our ceremony started and it was the most magical experience of my life. Jason's vows were indescribable. I got choked up multiple times when reading mine to the man of my dreams. Except for about an hour when I almost passed out and puked all over myself, I was feeling good. The weather was perfect. The neighborhood over happened to have fireworks that night that you could see from the reception pavilion. Jason and I were husband and wife. *Chef's Kiss*
Now I could focus on all the weird shit that happens when you're pregnant. Watching your bellybutton slowly disappear is one of the most bizarre experiences I've gone through. I'm at the point now where it pops out when I inhale and goes back in when I exhale. It's kinda gross guys, I'm not gonna lie.
I don't know who these girls are who get thick, luxurious hair when they're pregnant, but I'm not one of them.
MY BOOBS. Y'ALL. I get it now. I get why boobs are such a big deal. I have them for the first time in my life and They. Are. Awesome.
Weird, blotchy red spots on my face. Not ideal but they're for a good cause.
Veins in places that they were NOT invited to.
A darling little thing called Lightning Crotch. I'll let you make your own assumptions because they're most likely right on target.
During all of this, Jason has been the best husband I could have asked for. He has taken care of me and loved me in every way possible. I barely lifted a finger until just a couple of weeks ago (partly because I didn't have the energy to even blink most of the time). He is going to be the most amazing father.
We started associating sunshine and sunflowers with our daughter, and today our little Sunshine is 20 weeks old. We are officially halfway there and she is making herself known slowly but surely with little kicks and somersaults. She is so loved, and so wanted, and I can't believe she's ours.
