Little Baby Mintzensop

5/6/12: 3 weeks pregnant

One thing I’ve learned is that when you’re trying to get pregnant you pee on way more devices than you would care to admit. I also learned that you pay mucho dinero for the privilege of peeing on these little sticks.  I had to resort to buying the less sexy looking ovulation and pregnancy tests in bulk from Amazon so as not to bankrupt myself. My most recent adventures on peeing-on-a-stick have resulted in 2 little lines. Introducing: little baby Mintzensop.

… Or as I like to say to say at this point, the little blastocyte. The blastocyte is the collection of cells that will eventually become an embryo, which then becomes a fetus etc etc. Blastocyte is easier to digest than baby. Denial, maybe? I’m not pregnant; I just have this little collection of cells the size of a poppy seed!  DON’T RUSH ME, BLASTOCYTE.

Another bonus is that “blastocyte” sounds like a Pokemon. Definite plus.

Joe and I recently moved into our own little casa, which meant that for the first time, having a baby would be semi-reasonable. Which is good, because my ovaries have been screaming, "WE CAN HAZ BABY NOW?!" at me for several years. So we talked it over and decided yeah, having a baby now would be as good as a time as ever. And eventually I did indeed get pregnant. Which is kind of dumbfounding and terrifying, though we wanted it very much. I can really only sum it up in the following words: SHIT JUST GOT REAL.

As far as symptoms, I really don’t have anything yet. I was really bloated for a few days but let’s be honest, that was probably just the entire head of broccoli that I ate. Probably more telling is that cottage cheese with Tabasco sounds oddly appealing and everything on Pinterest makes me cry. Mostly I feel like a lame super hero, where my power is the ability to make two lines appear on some overpriced scraps of plastic.

Nothing is official yet. Though I could probably pee on two-dozen pregnancy tests and get all positives, I refuse to believe anything until I get the results of my blood test back. Blood seems like a way more legit form of bodily fluid for some reason. Maybe because I’m a nurse so I’m like pee, whatever. Blood? Now we’re talking!

In the meantime, we are keeping hush-hush about it, which is kind of agonizing. I just want to walk around wearing one of those sandwich boards that reads, “I’M PREGNANT!!” while high fiving strangers. In this fantasy I am also a skilled breakdancer. But we will wait and I will write instead. And watch episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Stay tuned.