I still remember the utter panic and overwhelming disbelief when I saw those two blue lines. I was 40 years old. My husband was 43. Covid had just made its deadly appearance, and we were all starting to feel the effects of that virus around the world. The previous week, my husband and I had just been talking about retirement. Possibly even early retirement.
We were planning on traveling around the United States and soaking up all the breath-taking views and adventures that our country has to offer. There were so many national parks, historical places and monuments that we wanted to see and explore. So many things we wanted to experience that we hadn't had time for yet. We had pictured ourselves retiring early and taking the country by storm in a decked-out RV, dragging our fur baby animals along with us for our epic retirement ride.
Since we had gotten married ten years before we had been told by countless doctors and specialists that having a baby was not going to happen for us. We had mourned that fact and grudgingly come to accept it. We had slowly made adjustments and made different plans for our future that didn't include trips to Disney Land while pushing a stroller or holding little hands while trick or treating. Don't get me wrong, there were times that it would still hit us hard. That realization that holding a baby that was ours, that had my husband's eyes, and my hair was not going to happen, was still crushing sometimes.
My husband had always been a goal orientated workaholic. So, he had little problem diving into a high stress, high demand and time-consuming job. I was a dreamer. An artist. Someone who worked because she had to. Not necessarily because I had any particular passion for it. However, about a year before the "Blue Lines" I had switched my career from being a certified para-optometric and did something crazy and totally worth the risk. I got a job as a ranch hand at a nonprofit horse rescue.
I had found my passion and my calling. I put my heart into my job. For once in my life, I had no problem staying late and coming in early. It was definitely not a job I did for the money or the ease of it. I did it because I could make a difference, one animal at a time. I loved every single second of the back breaking and more often than not heart-breaking work. All the shoveling of manure, the heat, the cold, the hauling of hay bales, the scooping of feed. The fixing of injuries and filling the water tanks. The general day to day care of the animals that were rescued from hellish situations and evil people made a difference. Seeing the horses come into the facility, sometimes skin and bones and always more than a little untrusting of humans and seeing them recover and blossom was the most amazing thing to witness. It fed my soul. It was my dream job. Now I would have to give that up.
I had always said if we had kids, I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I wanted to raise them. To teach them. To be the one who saw their first steps and heard their first words. But oh my gosh! What in the world was that going to entail at 40 years old? FOURTY! I was 40 years old having a baby. My body that already felt old beyond its years, that was not in great shape, was going to have to do what twenty something girls' bodies did. It was going to have to grow and stretch while my organs re-arranged. Was I even going to be able to physically to carry this baby to term? Was I going to be able to keep up with a toddler? We had no family here and very few friends we felt we could actually count on. Who was going to help us? Support us through the tough times? So many questions and so much anxiety.
All these thoughts and emotions flashed through me in a few seconds. I'm not exaggerating. I didn't actually have to wait for the recommended five minutes to see if there was a positive result. The pregnancy test was already a resounding positive by the time I got done providing the sample! I wasn't just pregnant. I was PREGNANT!
I sat in the bathroom for a few minutes trying to calm my racing heart and chaotic mind. I'm pretty sure there was a lot of talking to myself and more than a few expletives that came out of my mouth.
This was my husband's fault really. I was completely ok with putting the full blame on him. After all, I was the one who said we should use protection. We didn't want to get pregnant at this stage of our lives, did we? Of course, he replied with, "After all these years, what are the odds?". Well, the odds turned out to be really, really good.
What was it that they say? If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Well. God was laughing. Hard.
It was 11:30pm on a Friday night and I had to tell my husband, who had already had a couple "Friday Beers" that his forty-year-old wife was pregnant. Oh my gosh. What was he going to say? How was he going to react?
I knocked on the door to his man cave and popped my head in along with the pregnancy test. I blurted it out. Just blurted it. No fun or sweet pregnancy reveal for him. Just an angry, stressed out and scared, "I'm pregnant".
He was stunned for a second but recovered quickly. He was joyous! He jumped up and started towards me, grinning like a loon and saying, "That's amazing baby!".
I replied with "You're drunk" and slammed the door in his face and proceeded to go to our bedroom and cry. He wasn't drunk. I was hormonal and scared. He was a rock. He was amazing.
He came into the bedroom and held me. Told me that everything would be ok that we would figure everything out. He talked about how beautiful our baby would be no matter if it was a boy or a girl. He talked about all the fun things that we would get to do with our baby. How fun it would be to watch our child grow up and see all the beautiful things this world had to offer. How we could still do all the things we had talked about, explore all the places we wanted to see but that now it would be even better because we would have our little one with us.
The next day we went to a CVS Pharmacy Quick Care to confirm with a NP and another pregnancy test (I had already taken two more at home) that there was indeed a little nugget growing inside me. Again, we were greeted with a very positive pregnancy test result.
My husband cried happy tears. I cried too. Still anxious, but a little less scared now. We left with my first bottle of prenatal vitamins and a pamphlet about pregnancy and instructions to find an OBGYN. I was to see them as soon as possible because they estimated I was already over six weeks pregnant.
I think we were both stunned. Our lives had just been upended and reversed, turned inside out and blown up. Looking back, that was the day our lives really began.
Fast forward almost three years and I'm sitting here writing this blog as I watch our "surprise blessing" playing with his classmates during his swimming lesson. Where in the world has the time gone?
All I can think is, "Thank God that the time has gone by with this amazing little boy holding my hand."
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