It’s true! We’re having a baby due June 14th!

We didn’t really keep it a secret that after we got married in August, we were hoping to start a family sooner rather than later.  However, we had no idea how long it would take.  Turns out, the answer is not long.  We found out on October 7th, when I marched into the kitchen while D was making dinner holding a pregnancy test (in hindsight, not exactly the most hygienic thing to do) showing two lines.  “Two lines? What does that mean? Am I reading this correctly?”

Luckily we had preemptively decided to do “Octsober” –  a month of no drinking after a particularly boozy summer beginning October 1st. This was not only good news for the health of our baby, but it meant I had a good cover story for October (or at least I thought I did) for why I wasn’t drinking.  If you know me, you know that I never turn down a glass of wine.  As it turns out, it was pretty obvious to most people.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t try to act normal.  Here are some of the ridiculous little decoy tricks I tried:

• Putting my lips with freshly applied lipstick up to a wine glass before company came over.  Then, filling the empty glass up with wine, but not drinking it. Results? FAIL. I tried this in front of my Mom and she was watching me like a hawk, and instantly knew.
• Drinking grape juice out of a wine glass.  Results? FAIL. While mid sip, my friend A actually asked me if a baby was on the way.
• While out with other couples for dinner, saying that I was going to be in on the bottle(s) of wine, but continuously swapping my glass with D’s so it looked like my glass was going down.  Results? MIXED SUCCESS.  Our friends weren’t sure if I was really drinking or not.  However, D got reeeally tipsy because he was drinking two people’s worth of wine in a short period of time.  At one point later in the night, I looked over and caught him giving very passionate, tipsy advice on how good frozen Junior Mints are and how our friends had to try them.  He was also hungover the next day. So this trick kind of worked, but wasn’t perfect.

Anyway, the news is now out and we have luckily received all good results from our 20 week ultrasound, where they do a lot of diagnostic stuff to make sure baby is developing okay.  I’m starting to show, and find it really weird to have a little baby bump (but I’m glad it now looks like I’m pregnant, rather than just getting chubby).

We’ve nicknamed our baby Bean (this started way back in the early weeks when he was just the size of a kidney bean).  Just today, we learned that Bean is a boy in a really cute way – we had our doctor write the gender down and put the paper in an envelope, then took the envelope to Sweet Bake Shop in Yaletown without knowing what was inside.  They made us the beautiful cake pictured above, and when we cut into it, we would either see pink or blue depending on the results.  It was just the two of us, and it was a really sweet moment when we saw the blue cake.  Now we can start bonding and picking out names and a few cute little clothes for the little guy.  I can’t wait to meet him!

So… life is really good right now.  As amazing as it has been, it has also made me stop and think of how lucky we are that this is in the cards for us.  I know not everyone who wants children is so lucky, and I can’t imagine how hard it is to want that and see it happening for others when it’s not happening for you, whether due to fertility issues, problems carrying to term, or because of relationship issues/status, etc.  So I am going to try and be cognizant of that and won’t let this baby business dominate my blog, or my conversations, or social media.  And I am also going to try my best to remember that this transition to motherhood is a blessing, even when it’s 3am, Bean is crying, and I feel like I haven’t slept in years…

xoxo
Karine