One of the questions that several friends asked me when I announced my pregnancy was “How did you know you were pregnant”? And the answer is… it took me a bit.
Basically, The Boy and I were “trying”. I put that in quotations because we were having sex and I wasn’t on The Pill anymore. But we weren’t monitoring or testing or anything like that. On a whim, I had picked up a box of ovulation pee tester things but I’m such a dumbass that I immediately went home and peed on one without reading the directions first. This is dumbass because apparently, these tests involve doing math.
I don’t do math.
Needless to say, I was crap at doing those ovulation pee things. I would forget to write things down, do the math wrong, and the randomly pee on a stick. I finally decided to buy a couple of books on “how to get knocked up” (The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant and Fertility and Conception: A Complete Guide to Getting Pregnant) to help me understand what the hell I was supposed to be doing. Don’t get me wrong – I had the sex part down. It was the figuring out when part that was eluding me.
So, put in my order and went about my life (and got laid off the same week. Great timing, huh?). The Boy went on a long deer hunt weekend and while he was gone – I could not STOP eating. Now, I’m always willing to eat. All the time. But this was different, I was ravenous. Starving. I could not get enough food inside me. I also started getting really tired all the time. I just chalked both up to losing my job and stressing about bills.
Fast forward to Election Night 2013, I stayed up late to watch the returns and basically spent the entire night bawling my eyes out. When Obama was declared the winner, I sobbed from happiness. When states legalized gay marriage? Howling. When Colorado legalized recreational pot? I was a puddle on the floor.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully support legalizing, taxing, and regulating recreational pot. But crying in unbridled joy over it? Um, no. That’s when it clicked. I checked the dates in my planner and realized that I was overdue for my period. I was a bit overwhelmed so decided to call it a night.
The next morning, I woke up and remembered the night before. I happened to have a Digital Clearblue Pregnancy test, so I peed on the stick. Before I had even flushed the toilet that sucker said “Pregnant”.
Those “How To Get Pregnant” books? Arrived the day AFTER I found out I was pregnant.
How did you know you were pregnant?