Sunday, October 3, 2010

Announcment

So I've had one heck of a week. (We're trying to break ourselves of cussing now that small fry is imitating our words.)

A week from last Friday, we had our Lincoln leave us stranded in traffic. This delayed our road trip, but thankfully only cost us around $514 in repairs.

We had a lovely trip to Ohio to visit my in-laws and that whole side of the family.

Monday, I returned to work and they told me that I'd be loosing my job in December. They gave me the rest of Monday off, with pay. A few minutes later, Priscilla at daycare called me to come get my sick child.

I spent the next several days at home wiping his nose and administering OTC medicines.

Lately, I seem to have more faith in Murphy's Law (anything that can go ironically wrong, will) than faith in God. I really gotta work on that. I'm thinking of starting a new blog about my faith journey. Anyway, based on Murphy's Law, what do you think would happen next in my "heck of a week"?

That's right. I'm pregnant.

Thursday morning, in those early morning, half-formed thoughts, I started to wonder when I should have started my period. Wasn't I supposed to have started while we were in Ohio. Hmmmm. When did I start last month? The 26th, I think. What day is today? The 30th? Oh crap.

So I went and took a test. After I had started the test, I thought, "maybe I don't want to know this today. I'm going back to work for the first time since they've emailed the whole company saying that I'm loosing my job. And last night, Hubby really talked down to me about why I'm loosing my job. " Too late to worry about that.

When I saw the two little blue marks, I let out a little shriek of surprise. Thankfully, I didn't wake up my husband with my little shriek. I trembled through the rest of preparing for work and left without telling him. I just didn't have the guts.

I had an appointment with my GP that morning anyway for a followup for some of my medications. His nurse is a sturdy black guy. He asked me how my day was going so far. I emphatically said, "not good." He paused in his blood pressure taking and looked at me funny. I told him that I found out on Monday that I'm loosing my job and I just had positive pregnancy test. He gave one small snort of amusement and then said, "Mazel tov!" throwing wide his arms for a congratulatory hug. Three times while I was telling him the details of my wonderful week, he would hug me, say "Mazel tov!" By the third, I was nearly weeping on his shoulder. He kept patting me and telling me that it will be OK, you'll have some great stories to tell in 20 years, children are a blessing, and other encouraging phrases that did not sound corny. (Other folks told me the corny ones.) At one point, I referred to the pregnancy as "the baby" and realized that I didn't mean Quint. That hit me like a blow to the stomach.

I told the GP as well. He said his youngest three children were similarly close together, but the last two were twins. Yikes. I told him and the nurse that I hadn't told my husband yet. At one point, the GP suddenly stopped listening to my chest and said, quite alarmed, "You have told your husband about the job, right? It's really not nice to hit a man with both on the same day." I assured him that Hubby knew about the job. He told me to make an appointment with my OB/GYN and try not to worry about it. Things will work out alright.

I left and went to work - my first day back since they had sent around an email saying that I would be leaving. I was dreading having 15 people drop into my guest chair and caringly asking me if I was OK and saying they were sorry and all the sympathy you would expect at a job you've had for nearly 5 years.

As soon as I got to work, I put my stuff down and went to the desk of my best friend at work. She's the first person I told about my other pregnancy, she lent me maternity clothes, a breast pump and gave me tons of advice. I drop down in her guest chair and request a piece of paper and a pen. She gives me an odd look and hands me some scratch paper. As I'm writing, she asks me if I'm OK. I just grunt. I hold up my sign saying, "I'm pregnant" and then immediately start shredding it. I hold up my trembling hand which she takes in hers. She asks me if I'm alright and I say "NO!" She hugs me, then holds her head up - fingers on temples - and keeps saying "are you f***ing kidding me?" over and over. I've had similar thoughts!

While we're still sitting there in shock, a co-worker comes up to her desk and wants to know what we think of the news on the email. What news? We look and it seems that one other person has resigned, and another person who was not well liked seems to have been fired. Of course the firing was reported quite diplomatically and politely, but does anyone resign - effective yesterday - on their own?

So because of this new news, my job news was no longer the latest news! There were by far more (gleeful) hall conversations about the firing than folks stopping by my desk. I was quite relieved. I was delighted that Quint had been sick and put off my return to work until that day.

Throughout the day, I just barely resisted the urge to beat my head against the desk at our stellar pregnancy preventing skills. Near lunch time, when I probably needed protein the worst, I was nearly in an all out panic. I went on a walk, called a friend and basically freaked out screaming "what am I gonna do?!" After some acknowledgment that this might not be fantastic news, she answered my question. "You're going to look for work and have a baby." Of course, I am. My take out lunch hit bottom around then and I started to think rationally again. She was very reassuring and peeled me off the ceiling again. I was worried that Hubby would think he needed to bolt right out and get a different job that made more money, or would head into a spiral of "we're going to be destitute FOREVER!" or some other non-helpful over-reaction. He works in politics. It's an election year. He may start to talk to folks about theoretical jobs, but none of those will be hired until January. And none of the maneuvering can start until after the election anyway. Conversations along the lines of, "if I get elected and I could offer you blah, would you be interested?" have, in my experience, been the most useless conversations ever. Contingencies based on 3 maybes are pretty much pointless to discuss, much less count on.

How on earth am I going to tell my sister and friend who have been trying to get pregnant for so long?! How do I tell them that I'm knocked up by accident?!

When I got home at the end of the day, Hubby had a friend over to have a fire in the firepit. Quint was out there with them and was a snot covered mess! I took him in and gave him a bath, hosing down his gooey eyes and nose in the process. Hubby's friend left while we were in the tub.

As Quint was playing on the living room floor, oscillating back and forth between his parents, I asked Hubby to mute the national news. My heart was pounding. I said, "I have good news and bad news, which would you like first?" He made three guesses as to bad news about my job. I finally said, "it has nothing to do with work." He thought for a second and then said, "you're pregnant!" "Yes."

His first reaction was a thrilled, double fist clenched, "YESSSS!!!" which relieved me to no end. It took him about 60 seconds to get down to the, "oh crap, what does that mean for our money?" (The answer to that is "nothing good".) But joy was the overriding emotion. We talked about things for a few minutes and then he excitedly said we should go for a walk. Great idea. He asked if he could call someone (I forget who) and I asked if we could just own the news for the duration of the walk, and then tell people. He agreed.

On our walk, we had a very good talk and there was no extreme drama on his part. There was no panicked reaction like "I need a job" with him grabbing his keys as if he's going to bolt out the door and go find one this instant. He took it quite well and my own joy started to take over.

We now need me to have a new job sooner than later. We need to check to see if I could still get my severance pay even if I left before December 10th. We will need a double stroller. Quint will be 21 months old when the new baby is born.

When we got back from our walk, I fed Quint and he and I went to choir practice. We called Hubby's mother before I went to choir and we called my folks after I got back from choir. I tried to be all casual with my folks, calmly asking Dad to come to the phone as well, talking about Quint's sickness while I waited. I said, "we've got some news." and mom blurted excitedly, "you're pregnant!" Well, yes! We had a fun conversation.

Throughout the weekend, we told just about everyone else. I'm sure we missed someone, but I'm not sure who, seeing how we were both making phone calls. We would tell them about my job, then ask, "then what do you think happened?" and nearly every time, people would guess that I'm pregnant. And then laugh like hyenas.

Here are the frequent questions:
Were you trying? No.
How long have you suspected? I suspected about 15 minutes before I found out.
Are you going to go back to work after your job ends? As our money stands now, I have to.
When are you due? June 2nd.
What are you going to name her (everyone thinks it's a her!)? Charlotte Rose was what we talked about a few months ago.
How did Hubby react? see above. Also, when I showed him the stick later, which he insisted that he didn't need to see, it seemed like it electrocuted him a bit. I said, it seems a lot more real when you see that, huh?

So, we're going to have a baby. Last time, we found out we were pregnant and Hubby got a job three days later after months of being out of work. This time, I find out I'm losing my job and three days later we find out I'm pregnant. This supports my sister's theory that you can only get pregnant when one of you is out of work.

1 comment:

  1. Excellent! I keeping telling Husband that I need to be a stay at home wife. Then maybe we could get pregnant.

    All four of you are in our prayers. We are so happy for you!

    ReplyDelete