Untold Stories - The Contemplation of Life

I looked at the EPT. I looked at the directions. I looked at the lines on the stick, holding them under the light to be sure they didn't fade. I walked away for a couple minutes and came back to look at it. They were still there. It was definitely reading positive. Holy cow. I immediately burst into tears, a recurrence that would happen all to often over the next nine months, and picked up the phone to call Kim.

I don't remember much of the conversation, but I remember somewhere in there the worlds "I'm pregnant" and "Thank you" came out. I remember telling her that I needed to go shopping for a wedding present for some friends of ours. I remember hanging up. I grabbed my keys and drove the 45 minutes to JC Penney where our friends were registered and tried to think about the best way to tell Mike.

I was in shock. I don't remember daydreaming about anything on the way there. I don't remember wondering anything on the way there. I just remember that one minute I was in the car driving and the next, I was at the store. I wanted to go to the baby section and look around, but practicality held out and I went to purchase the wedding gift first-- then, I went to the baby section.

Little booties and socks, little hats and coats, cribs and toys and blankets and swings and... everything we'd soon be needing for a baby. They had little newborn outfits too, and suddenly I knew how I would tell Mike I was pregnant.

They had a little blue one with a cute puppy dog on the breast of the outfit. It came with a little hat and booties. I picked it off the shelf thinking that it had to be the cutest thing I'd ever seen. I took it to the counter and asked that they put it into a box. A plain white box with plain white tissue paper. There were some odd looks from the sales women, and a few moments of confusion, but finally they understood what I was looking for and I left the store with a plain white shirt box. The kind you'd get if you were purchasing some lingerie.

I took the box home and set it on the table, along with the wedding gift, went and grabbed the EPT and put it in the box, on top of the outfit. When Mike pulled the lid off of the box, the first thing he'd see was the test. Then, I sat down on the couch and waited for him to come home, anticipating his reaction, not knowing what it would be, but hoping for the best.

Mike's usual routine of coming home was to enter the house through the garage. It didn't matter if he was coming home from work or from fishing. He'd dump his things in the table, look through the mail, head to the bedroom for his slippers, head to the bathroom to wash his face, and then return to the kitchen, pausing to hear about my day in whatever room I was in. There was no change this day. I forced myself to sit on the couch and let it happen just like it always did, telling him about my day and then directing him to the things on the table. I let him know that the non-descript white box on the table was something for him.

I watched as he opened it, waiting for that reaction, the excitement. But, there was nothing. A curious glance and a statement, "I don't think it's going to fit, Dear."

"What do you mean?" I asked bewildered. Was he already thinking the baby would be huge? Did he think I was going to try to ingest it and put it on the baby via... esophagus?

"Well, it's a little small."

"Small?"

"What is it?"

I think maybe I was having an out of body experience, as confused as I was by the conversation. I couldn't read him. Was he joking? Or, was he suddenly blind? Surely he knew what it was, but I still put it out there.

"It's a baby's outfit." I paused, then asked, "Didn't you see what was on top?"

I watched as he opened the box once more and pulled out the pink and white pregnancy stick.

"Okay... so what is this?"

I was getting a little worried. This definitely wasn't what I'd had in mind when I put everything in the box. I know I wasn't expecting him to jump up and down and scream, but I figured he'd at least know what he was looking at. "It's a pregnancy test."

"Oh. What does it say?"

I eyed him skeptically, thinking that the baby clothes surely had to have answered that one. Was he joking now? Wouldn't the little blue outfit have been enough indication that we were having a baby? "It's positive." I replied.

"Oh. Well..." Mike sat down in the dining room chair with a thud. "Well... did you go to the Doctor?"

I responded that I hadn't, but would schedule an appointment when the weekend was over.

Looking back, I can remember that Mike seemed to be in a bit of shock, but at the time I was dealing with amazement of my own and it didn't register as much. I just remember that he disappeared into the garage. I remember thinking that he was going in there to clean up from fishing, but after a half hour of not hearing much moving around, I decided to check on him. He was sitting on a stool nursing a beer. Just sitting there. I asked if he was okay, and he said yes. I asked if he was excited, he said he would be more excited once the Doctor confirmed the pregnancy. I said okay. I shut the door.

An hour later, I repeated this. And an hour after that, I repeated it again.

On Monday, I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Christie and a blood test confirmed I was knocked up. I called Mike and his reaction was a lot less stunned the second time around.