"We're Pregnant!" -2004-

We celebrate both Joshua and Veronica's birthdays in the next two weeks, a time that always stirs reflection about the days gone by. With this pregnancy, I wanted to take the time to write down the experience of finding out about each pregnancy as well as each birth. In the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing posts describing each of these experiences. Of course, these posts are somewhat self-indulgent and are a way for me to preserve those memories. But then of course, I guess that's pretty much what my blog is, isn't it? But I mostly wanted to give readers a heads up and let you know that this is what my posts will consist of for the next couple of weeks. If you're interested, read on. If not, see ya in April!

I graduated from the University of Washington in June of 2004 with a degree in English. Jason and I had been married for about nine months and were living in a tiny apartment, trying to save our money so that we could buy a place of our own. That June, my parents took us to Disneyland with my brothers Jeremy and Brendan and my sister Kristen as a gift for graduation.

A few weeks prior to that trip, we decided that we would like to start our family soon and I came off of the pill. But then we changed our minds. We got a little scared about the idea and decided that we weren't quite ready and began using birth control again.

During the week of the Fourth of July, we went to Lake Chelan with my family for a week. Before we left, I took a pregnancy test just to make sure that I hadn't become pregnant during those few weeks that we had taken out the goalie. I just wanted to be sure since I knew there would be a few vacation cocktails. The test was negative and we thoroughly enjoyed our week.

A few weeks later, I still had not had my period. Hmmmmmm. I told Jason as we went to bed one night that I was wondering if I might actually be pregnant. We turned out the light. A few minutes later, I asked Jason, "Can you go to the store?"

"Huh?"

"Please. Go to the store. Get a pregnancy test. I'm never going to be able to sleep."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. Please." And because he's a wonderful, patient and understanding husband, off he went.

Ten minutes a later, I peed on a stick and watched the two lines appear. I ran out of the bathroom and exclaimed, "It's positive! I'm pregnant! We are going to have a baby!" Jason and I cried and held each other and laughed and were completely filled with joy. It didn't matter that we had changed our minds. Three minutes later we called my parents and gave them the news.

I spent that pregnancy substitute teaching and we bought a townhouse in Kent. Jason came to every doctor's appointment and at the 20 week ultrasound, we found out it was a boy. We (and when I say "we," I mean Jason) painted the baby's room blue. In Jason's dad's family, it is a tradition for the first baby in the family to have the initials JDB. Thus, we decided on the name Joshua David Burdullis.

It being my first pregnancy, I obviously did not know what to expect in the last months leading up to the birth. I stopped teaching way too early, thinking I would just want the time to rest. Well, resting is nice and all but six weeks of it is just boring! The end of pregnancy is always long, but idle days only make that worse. It seemed to be forever before our little boy finally came . . .

(to be continued)