holy moley!

Wowza. Monday afternoon, after being a few days late with my always on time period, I decided, really quick before heading to Ikea, to take this pregnancy test that I had sitting around the house. To say I was shocked with the result would be an understatement. I walked around the house for a good 20 minutes, with the test in hand and my jaw on the floor. I picked up the phone to call Damon, but realized that telling him such news over the phone would be silly. Plus, he would never believe me without proof. So Luisa picked me up to head to Ikea, and I kept the news to myself. I couldn't deal with the children's section there and all of the mommies with their little ones. I bought Damon a couple of plants for his office, and finally, errands were over and I headed home. I put the plants in two separate old x-mas gift bags and the positive test in another. When he finally returned home...."Ho, ho, ho. sure looks like Santa came a little early this year." Needless to say, he looked less than excited, since he doesn't really like me buying him stuff. So he opened both of the plants, and I believe he was pleasantly surprised. Finally, the third bag came around. He opened it. "What is this...oh, very funny, Andrea". He thought it was just a pregnancy test...then..."Wait, this already says 'pregnant'....what the...?" He didn't believe me. For a good five minutes, he said "NO WAY!" over and over, finally accusing me of getting our prego friend Kathryn to pee on the stick for the positive reading. When I finally suggested walking down the street and buying another test, he finally came around. We walked to Hanabi for dinner and sat there staring at each other, eating our gyoza and veggie rolls. When we got home, my sister, new mama to Tyler, just happened to call, so I shared the news with her. Tears. She was pretty excited and it did make me a little more excited. You see, this isn't really a surprise, but it sure as hell is a shock. I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. Damon and I went to bed eventually, but for the first time in my life, I was unable to sleep. I woke at 3am, went to the couch and read about 100 pages of my book, not really being able to concentrate. The next morning, Damon came with me to see my nurse acquaintance at UCSF to make sure. Suzanna gave us two more tests, one clearly saying positive, the other being a little faint-lined. Suzanna offered lots of great advice, seeing that she's had two children in the city. I drove Damon to work, then ran more errands, one of which is buying the book, "What to Expect When Your Expecting". This book isn't great, but at least it gave me something to put my mind around. When I got home, I took another prego test to confirm, so indeed, I am knocked up. The Internet is going to be the end of me. But thankfully, it's easy to find a pregnancy calculator. It looks like s/he will be arriving somewhere in mid-March. So come Tuesday, we have to break the news to Belinda and Nick. We basically pulled the same present trick that I used on Damo, telling them we had something to give them. they were certainly as shocked as we were, but excited. Damo and Nick drank vodka. We had to decide how and when we are going to break the news to people. I always have had a hard time keeping my own secrets, so I knew this would be tough. But we think that, even though it's so early, we will tell people who we would tell, god forbid, if a miscarriage were to happen, since now is the danger zone. Also, I decided to tell friends the news only face-to-face, unless they lived very far away. So..here is who we have told so far: Angela, Belinda/Nick, both moms, both grannys, Luisa, Missy, Joe, Brian, Jeremy/Kathryn, and Allie. It's funny how people react and it's very indicative of my personality: nobody believes me. I guess I joke too much. It's fun telling people who are really excited for us. A little hard telling people who think we are going to drop from the face of the earth once he/she is born. There are many more people I am excited to tell, but since I made the face-to-face deal, it's a little tough. -sigh- Yesterday, I went to lunch with Belinda and she made me go into one of those hip baby shops in Hayes Valley. I thought I was gonna freak, but it was sort of fun (sort of), and I was feeling much calmer being around her and I think the excitement is starting to seep in. The shock is still there, but not as overwhelming. We are going back packing with Luisa and Jeff, leaving this afternoon, so it will be good to be way, without phones, email, lunch dates. We can have this to ourselves for several days. Crazy.