Once
the bliss of the first few hours wears off (the bliss is accompanied by
multiple trips to the drugstore for additional pregnancy tests, just to be sure), a
number of decisions need to be made. Not
the big decisions, like names, color schemes, colleges, etc., but the smaller
decisions. Decisions like, “When do I
have to start wearing pregnancy underwear?” “How are we announcing this?”, “Do
we REALLY have to tell our parents?” and “Do I HAVE TO deliver this baby?”
It
can be difficult to make rational decisions with one’s head so high in the
clouds. All we wanted to do was get on
the phone with our friends who had been imploring us to start our family and
hear them share in our excitement. Being
the scientifically-minded and superstitious folks that we are though, we
decided that the more people we called to announce our pregnancy, the more
people we’d have to call if anything (knock-on-wood) were to go wrong. So we made what we thought was the
appropriate decision and scheduled a confirmatory doctor’s appointment with Jan’s
OB/GYN, determined that we should wait until the end of the first trimester to
announce everything, and sat down to wait.
It must be the feeling that television game-show winners experience,
knowing that they’ve won a large sum of money but can’t legally tell anyone
until the show airs.
Our
decision to hold off on announcing, however prudent, was not without
issues. As previously mentioned, Jan
works in an administrative capacity in a local school system. She works in special education, and
coordinates the delivery of instruction to students with a variety of physical
and emotional concerns (including medical issues and explosive behavioral
problems). She had to navigate a number
of problems during our first trimester, ranging from not being able to help
physically stabilize children having serious physical outbursts to having to
manage the report of a student in her school with a diagnosed case of
Tuberculosis. She reported almost daily
incidents of coworkers throwing serious shade (am I still young enough to say that?) as she cautiously and
inexplicably retreated from tantruming children with actual muscle definition.
Beyond
the gauntlet of public schools, in January the two of us had registered to run
the Disneyland Half Marathon at the end of August. Well, crap.
My wife, who I’m sure was experiencing the normal amount of first-time-mom
paranoia, was now going to fly across the country and engage in an endurance
running event. …at her own pace, but
still. We decided that we would play our
announcement by ear with the four friends we were meeting, but embraced the
fact that at some point, it was bound to come out. Especially since we would put “pregnant” on
the back of her bib as a “current medical condition”. Within minutes of arrival at Disneyland, we
met up with two great college friends at Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar, who were waiting for us with
a four-person, high-octane drink.
So, the cat was out of the bag pretty quickly.
Sorry, Jan.
This was the first time that it was pointed out to me (by my loving wife) that I had found myself a designated driver
for the next 8.5 months. Suddenly, I felt
compelled to meet all of our friends at bars.
We met up with two other great friends the next morning; to their credit, all four friends were incredibly
excited and amazingly supportive as all six of us gradually willed our way across the
finish line during a freak heat-wave in Anaheim. 5 hours of touristy walking the day before, 3
miles of roundtrip walking to and from the race, plus the 13.1 actual race
miles… all before we walked around the park for half of a day. We were 6 weeks into this pregnancy, and
already I was floored by my wife and what she was capable of doing. I definitely felt bad that she was sidelined
for her favorite ride, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and was forced to promise to bring her back and sit with our child whilst she rode it as often as she wanted in the future. For suffering through this trip, she definitely earned her fair share of
In-N-Out Burger!
Oh, she earned it.
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