Friday, January 15, 2010

Blog ‘til I bust! - 25 Days to go

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Seven months ago, I sat in a doctor’s office in a pink paper robe admiring my tanned bare feet and cherry red toes hanging off the end of the examination table. Gabe read his wired magazine, casually rubbing my toes with his left hand, pausing only to flip a page.

“Congratulations!” said the Doctor when she entered.

Gabe and I exchanged smiles. I might have even blushed. It was the first time we had shared our secret and it was the first time we had been congratulated on getting ourselves knocked up.

We didn’t congratulate one another when I came out of the bathroom that Wednesday evening with two positive pregnancy sticks in my hand.

I placed them down on the coffee table and took about four jerky awkward steps backward.

“I’m pregnant,” I said, looking down at the table where the two little plastic tests rested. A long silence hung in the air. I was so absorbed in my own shock that I didn’t even have time to wonder what he was thinking. When I looked up, I caught a reflection of my own fear in Gabe’s eyes.

We said nothing.

I thought about the turmoil of the last few months, the break-up and subsequent getting back together. I thought about our first date and how I knew right away that this man was really special and would somehow impact my life profoundly. Was this the impact? I thought about how much I loved this man. I thought about our two+ years together filled with travel, adventure, romance, consideration and mutual respect. I knew I loved him, but were we ready for this?

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I wasn’t even supposed to be ABLE to get pregnant.

“How did this even happen?” I asked rhetorically. I mean, I guess it was always a possibility. But I had several doctors tell me that my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome was so severe that I hadn’t dropped an egg since I was seventeen.

Gabe’s face morphed into a wide smile, and though his own eyes were filled with fear, he held out his arms, beckoning me towards his hug. We lay together on the couch, present in one another’s embrace.

“We are going to be great parents Ingrid,” He assured me. “It might be sooner than we thought, but this is where we were always headed.”

“We are going to be okay,” I said, ½ asking and ½ assuring.

“We love each other. And we have more than enough love to share with another person.”

“Oh my God. We are going to be parents.”

“We are going to be parents.”

And the doctor confirmed it for us a few weeks later. What she also reminded us was that a pregnancy was something to celebrate. As we began to tell our friends and families and strangers on the bus, the “Congratulations” poured in. The consensus was clear, we had done something special.

Not everyone has this privilege and we are blessed to be given this opportunity to share our love and wisdom and experience with a new little person.

Congratulations indeed!

2 comments:

bloodmilk. said...

i love this!

Anonymous said...

I was watching Joe Schmo 2 and thinking "Oh man, I absolutely love Ingrid. How awesome would she be to have as a friend!" So I decided to Google you and your blog popped up. You're even more awesome that I initially imagined. :P
I, too, have PCOS and was told, from the time I was 13, that I wouldn't be able to have kids. But here I am at age 27 with 3 kids 3-years-old and under.
Thanks so much for sharing your story with us, Ingrid. You rock!

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