Two Pink Lines - The Aftermath

People asked us what it felt like to get married last year after being together for nine years, and we always said that "nothing changes, but everything changes", hinting at the ethereal nature of the marriage bond. Pregnancy on the other hand is totally different. There is no doubt that everything changes.

We immediately started thinking about who would be our OB doctor, how would we redo the office to turn it into a nursery, what to do about leave from work and all the other crap. The biggest decision up-front was to keep it a secret for the first trimester. K is in a higher-risk category being 37, so our biggest fear was failure of the pregnancy. Being the control freaks we are, we started reading voraciously and soon learned that 1 in 5 pregnancies fails. My attention also quickly turned to the risk of Down Syndrome, uncovering stats that indicate a 1 in 128 chance of the fetus having DS. These odds were too short for comfort, and I began to obsess about it. I was determined to hold my excitement and defer any big planning until the end of the first trimester.

We scheduled the first appointment with the OB, referred by K's gyn, for 8 weeks in, and I quickly learned that a pregnancy is measured from the start of the last normal period (LMP). It felt like we got two extra weeks for free! We figured out some dates: LMP was Dec 14th, ovulation Dec 30th and birth would be Sept 20th. We also figured out the probable date of conception and it was fun to reflect on the where/what/how!

K bought a book. Not the typical "What to Expect When You're Expecting" which was too touchy-feely for her taste but the more down-to-earth "The Pregnancy Book" which communicated in a straightforward fashion what is going on with both her body and the developing being inside her.

Tea-drinking habits immediately changed, as we switched to one decaf teabag and one regular in the pot of tea everyday, and K limited herself to one small cup instead of a more typical large mug. All other caffeine was cut out, as was all alcohol.

We also booked one last "not for pregnant women" activity, believing it would be okay this early (confirmed by the OB). When I bought a new car last year, one of the agreements I made was that K would get to do a track day in it, since it's definitely a high-performance car. We figured that it was now or never, so we scheduled it for Jan 25th.

It wasn't long before she started to feel the effects of the pregnancy...