I woke up on a Tuesday morning, body temperature unusually burning hot, and feeling seriously groggy.  Still in that limbo state of consciousness, and without even thinking, I opened my phone and searched for the date of my last period.  “A week late.  Hmmm.”  Pregnancy tests were still in the cabinet from when we were trying with Jules, so…

I had recently scored on an Intermix sale of my favorite crop tops and high-rise jeans.  I was enjoying half a cup of caffeinated coffee again since I was unusually tired during the day.  I joked to Mark about having flashbacks of morning sickness – I clarified that I didn’t have morning sickness but was very present to the feeling of nausea when I smelled BBQ’d meat, a certain scent of perfume, and spinach salads.  I was so in the not-having-a-baby mindset that even though the signs were there (nausea, fatigue, and cramping), they were completely overlooked.

Looking down at the results like I had so many times years before, certainly expecting to read “NOT PREGNANT,” the word “PREGNANT” appeared across the screen.  And just in the blink of a pregnancy stick screen, our lives changed.  We were planning for a second child but we were going to wait until Julian was closer to three.  This was a little earlier than expected. Have we had enough time with Jules?  Am I ready to be a mom of two?  I just started to feel like I was getting in my groove – going hiking and practicing yoga, going on fun dates with the hubby, and finally getting good sleep again now that Jules sleeps a solid 10-11 hours at night.

Do I wake Mark up and tell him or plan some kind of cute Pinterest “Promoted to Daddy of TWO!” surprise?  Without another moment of hesitation, I walked over to his bedside at 6:50am, nudged him, and said “babe… I’m pregnant.”  A knot formed in my throat.

We tried to conceive for years before we were blessed with jules.  Since I was sixteen, I’ve had endometriosis and intermittent PCOS.  Pelvic pain had become that unwanted neighbor – always there and not going anywhere.  Two surgeries in five years, trips to urgent care and the ER, and continued pain regardless of what I did, I came to accept that anything related to conception would be a struggle. 

With Jules it was planned and I was prepared.  While I’ve been through this all once before, I’m somewhat unsettled.  A strange feeling that should be relief that getting pregnant was this easy, is coupled with disbelief that it was actually this easy.  And while this came as a surprise, I couldn’t be more grateful.  

As I sit here writing, nauseous and fatigued, thinking about how I’m going to muster up enough energy for the next five hours until Jules goes to bed, my heart feels full imagining the future of our expanding family.  I partly think Jules somehow chose this for us.  They say it’s easier to have a baby once you’ve already had a baby – if it weren’t for him, maybe it wouldn’t have happened so effortlessly. 

Jules loves babies so much – he stalks them in public places.  He hands all babies – toy and real ones – to me and wants me to rock, feed, and cuddle them.  As much as I’m scared about the unknown of how I’m going to balance my marriage, work, play, caring for our human and fur babies, sleep… I am so excited to see how Jules grows as a big brother, how Mark grows as a father of two (that’s it, I’m crying now), and crap – how this makes things feel seriously real now.  Is it possible to feel overjoyed and nervous at the same time? Regardless of how I feel, we have 4.5 months and counting! Here we go!