10 Weeks

10 Weeks. 10 weeks today. How did this happen? How is it even possible? I am still living in the hypothetical. I squint at my husband, peering incredulously into his face. "Do YOU think we are going to have a baby?" He looks at me with wide eyes and an amused smirk. "Yes, dear."

Really?

I didn't feel this way about the other two pregnancies. I was really happy and excited. Doubting Thomas didn't really play a starring role in my psyche. I made baby blankets and watched the Food Network religiously. Perhaps this seems so surreal because we don't have cable? I kind of feel like my body is playing a joke on me this time, waiting behind a corner to jump out and yell, "Got you!" And then laugh maniacally.

Another thing that lends itself to the hypothetical is that I can't even think of any names I like. Everything is too common or too weird or starts with an M or is basically Jelly Bean's name with a couple of different consonants/vowels. (Oh the conundrum of the -en type names. What were we thinking? They're all the same!) And I can't find my copy of the Baby Name Wizard. If that's not an ominous beginning, I don't know what is.

And I am terrified of finding out what this little hypothetical baby is. I am equally apprehensive about either gender. What if it is a boy and is wild like Jelly Bean? Three boys. OMG. What if Jelly Bean hates it because it is a 'little boy to take his place'? What if it is (holymolybracemyself) a GIRL? Ugggg, Disney Princesses and feminism and pink things and hormones and dating violence... What if Jelly Bean hates it because it is a 'little girl who you love more than me'? What if Brother gets so shuffled off into a corner because of his relatively good behavior and lack of neediness that he twists his anger inward and becomes a drug addict at the age of 9, slugging back Benadryl and sleeping inordinate amounts of time in his new racecar bed tent.

Ok, now I'm being melodramatic. I know. Honey says that right now I can feel however I feel, but once I see this little baby, it will be real and I will want it. He is sure of this, so I will try to be sure, too.

Still, I keep on squinting at the future. Really?

Peer Pressure

Everybody's doing it....this is my early pregnancy edition.

Eggnog or Hot Chocolate? Both are categorically disgusting, like all other edible things in this world.

Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? Santa brings one impressive wrapped gift to leave under the tree. Usually the thing we have most coveted during the holiday season.

Colored lights on a tree or white? Colored lights with one of those programmable things so that they intermittently and randomly fade. Like twinkling rainbow starlight.

Do you hang mistletoe? No. Kissing is gross.

When do you put your decorations up? On Thanksgiving or the Friday after. The weekend after at the very latest.

What is your favorite holiday dish? Mmmmm, water. Perhaps in a few weeks I will be able to answer this one better.

Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Not traditionally, but we have been known to do it in the past. Just for funsies.

How do you decorate your Christmas tree? With everything we've got! I like a tree to look as far from the kinds you see in department stores as possible. With the handmade ornaments (we even have a plain white index card hung by a red ribbon on which Brother wrote "I Love You" from last year). My favorite ornaments are the ones my mother made when I was a kid and we were broke. She cut out animals that had been printed on wrapping paper and pasted them to thin cardboard. These are the most beat up and beloved ornaments I have.

Snow. Love it or hate it? Meh, I am ambivalent towards it. It is pretty and all, but I wouldn't want to live somewhere where it snowed...like all the time. The once-every-five-year-dusting we get suits me just fine.

Can you ice skate? Never tried! But I can Rollerblade. Is that similar?

What is your favorite holiday dessert? Again with the food. Stop. It.

What is your favorite holiday tradition? Um...sleeping through New Year's?

Candy Canes. Yum or yuck? Yuck! Edibles! GROOOOOSSSSS!

Favorite Christmas Show? The ones from when I was a kid...like Frosty and Rudolf and the Grinch cartoon.


But really, despite being tired and feeling yuck, it is going to be a good Christmas. I just know it.

Welcome Christmas, come this way. Welcome Christmas, Christmas Day!

Maybe

**Contains tales of reproductive workings. You have been forewarned.**

Thank you for all your warm warm comments with a healthy dose of enthusiasm. I needed that.
I am a little concerned this time though. I am feeling like this time, it is so tenuous and can disappear at any moment. I could be pregnant today, but perhaps not tomorrow. I am trying to make my peace with this, but can't help but feel like the whole thing is hypothetical at this point. There is a reason for this.

See, I had an IUD and then I got it out because we were going to start trying in January...the one that hasn't happened yet. We did this in October and were supposed to wait to get pregnant until I had a couple of cycles under my belt to make sure the uterine lining was thickening enough to sustain a pregnancy. Apparently, this is a concern after IUD removal. Ok. Makes sense. We can do that.

And then, I had the most god-awful period of my life about two weeks after it came out. I was actually kicking myself because I hadn't had anything even remotely like this in the 3 years I was on the IUD and I seriously felt like, "PUT IT BACK IN! PUT IT BACK IN!" But, sure enough, it ended. And I was glad it had came and went because I was keeping track of such things, because...you know. January.

Then, on Thanksgiving night, I woke up and sat straight up in bed, and said aloud, "Where's my period?" Well? Where the hell was it? We had been "being careful" and "taking precautions"....right? Right? I am a grown woman and my husband is a grown man. Surely we know how to prevent pregnancy, even in the absence of chemical birth control!

Yeah. Not so much.

So I peed on a stick and there were the two little lines. I was disbelieving because we had been trying to wait and were actively NOT trying to get pregnant. I told my mother but told her that it was too soon and not to run out and start buying baby clothes just yet.

And the next day, I woke up to bleeding. So, as soon as the weekend is over, I run to the doctor's office and they do blood work and then do some more blood work a couple days later, which was declared, "Beautiful" by my favorite nurse. Thing is, I have been spotting for over two weeks now...and this hasn't ever happened to me before. So I still feel so uncertain. I'm not excited. I keep asking Honey, "Do you really think we're going to have a baby? Really?"

Apparently there is a Kidney Bean floating around down there for the time being. I feel like crap, so I am taking that as a good sign that my hormones are making me want to vomit at the sight or smell of anything edible.

I feel like I am on a journey in uncharted territory, in the Land of Maybe.

Ug

I feel so completely wretched. Like there is really nothing reasonable to do but to lay my head on my desk and feel the cool cool surface on my cheek. And maybe go to sleep.

Damn job. Wish I were in bed.

Although, I am not sure being in bed would be such a treat as our floors are littered with debris. No, a natural disaster didn't strike my house. Nevertheless there are suitcases and clean clothes and dirty clothes and wrapping paper containers and, inexplicably, literal trash all over our floors. Both the recycling and the compost needs taken out, but it is dark at the very reasonable hour I get home and the only thing I can bring myself to do is throw cheese and crackers at the kids and lay on the couch, trying not to smell anything.

I can't even LOOK at some of your blog posts, because you have lovingly put pictures of your beautiful holiday baked goods on the pages and just a picture makes me want to puke into the trash can to my left. (Please don't take it personally. I had to run out of my boss's office just the other day because she wouldn't stop talking about doughnuts *gag* even though I asked her to please stop.)

I haven't gotten Brother onto the bus all week and have had to bring him to school. For some reason, I am just not waking up...and neither is Jelly Bean, Alarm Clock Boy Extraordinaire. Because he is sleeping in our bed. Which, I can see, will become a problem in the near future.

TAP is running me into the ground with its neediness. Fortunately, I have an ironclad excuse not to run for office again.

I'm guessing I'm about 8 weeks. The Kidney Bean is due in July.