Out of the closet...

Well, the secret's out. And when I say out, I mean OUT. I guess you have no idea how many people care about your business until you post a status update on Facebook that says "I'm pregnant." Whoa...

So, backing up a little. We found out on Thanksgiving morning, shortly after I wrote this blog post. I'd been feeling not quite like myself for a few weeks but chalked it up to getting over a bad cold. And I actually did try to mountain bike, but I called it a day after one loop of a course I normally ride three times!

Later that morning, I went home and got the shock of my life! Of course, neither Brad nor I believed the first test...or the second...and by the third, we were finally convinced that the test was positive (not that I was pregnant, necessarily - just that the test was positive). The next day we went to my high-school reunion and hit a deer. Talk about an emotional roller-coaster of a weekend! And I couldn't even do shots of tequila with my old classmates. It was rough!

At first I felt perfectly fine, which worried me. Where were all these symptoms I was supposed to get? Oh, they were coming! Weeks 6-10 were miserable. Just thinking about Christmas makes me want to puke a little - the only foods I could stomach during that time were chocolate-chip muffins, oranges and Wendy's cheeseburgers (I can't even think about any of those things now without throwing up in my mouth). I never had the severe nausea and vomiting that some women do, but I basically felt seasick every waking hour of the day.

At about 6 weeks, just when I was starting to actually "feel" pregnant, we had a bit of a scare that involved an emergency trip to the doctor in a massive blizzard. Luckily, it turned out to be nothing, but it still prevented me from getting really excited about the pregnancy just yet. Plus, I was too seasick to get excited anyway.

Over the past two weeks, things have finally gotten exciting. We heard the heartbeat on a doppler machine and we had an ultrasound that showed the baby moving around, kicking its little heart out and doing flips! Unlike my emergency ultrasound at 6 weeks when the baby was a fuzzy blob, it actually looked like a miniature human! And I'm officially out of the first trimester, so my queasy stomach has calmed down quite a bit.

Still, though, the nerves haven't gone away, and I've really struggled with whether or not I should tell people about the pregnancy. I'm now in the "safe zone" for miscarriage, but I will probably continue to worry for the next, oh, 22 years. I hope I'll soon get to the point where I can relax and enjoy this, but for now, my emotions are wavering between tentative joy and sheer terror!

So, there you have it. We're no longer just Brad and Alison; we're now Brad, Alison and Cookie the Fetus. It's going to be an interesting year!