What I’m looking forward to the most in my pregnancy: feeling the baby kick and move. That will really solidify the reality of it for me and I feel like it will be my first introduction to this new person about to come into the world.

What I’m most not looking forward to in my pregnancy: getting stupid and forgetful. IQ can drop dramatically during pregnancy and I’m definitely not looking forward to that.

Have I mentioned I’m already feeling behind?

When the sticks announced the news I started reading. Some of the misconceptions I already knew– like “Morning Sickness” is rarely confined to just an AM puke. The nausea that keyed me into something being up was an all day occurrence and definitely not confined to just the morning.

The real shocker though was when I learned how pregnancy was counted.

Right now, I’m 9 weeks pregnant.

Read online and you may find statements like, “yes, this is confusing, because you’re in your 10th week, but it’s counted as being 9 weeks.” Like, right now I’m 31 but I’m in my 32nd year.

That’s not the confusing part at all! The confusing part is that I didn’t even conceive until 2 or 3 weeks pregnant. The count starts from the first day of my last period.

So does this mean every month since I started menstruating, I’ve been pregnant for a couple of weeks? When the nurse asked me if this was my first pregnancy and I said yes, was that a lie?

I knew that pregnancy lasted 40 weeks and it was actually closer to 10 months, not 9, but I didn’t know that even that was a lie. At 40 weeks, I will have only been growing a baby in me for 37-38 weeks.

At least the lie is consistent. It’s not like Celsius and Fahrenheit and needing to convert.

So when asked, I will continue with the deception and say, “I’m 9 weeks pregnant*” where the * subtly says “not really, but that’s how doctors decided to count it, so I’ll go with it.”

Can you hear the * in my voice?

But I’m not going to be a Discovery or TLC special! I still caught it relatively quick, but reading online “what to expect” type sites make me feel like I’m already behind!

My symptoms: Missed period, extreme nausea, sore breasts, soooo tired, frequent urination, strange food cravings and aversions, and strange abdominal pains.

Sure, sure, hindsight is 20/20 and it all makes sense. But I had very rational explanations for each symptom!

First: I was due for my menstral cycle middle/late March. But I traveled right around when I thought I was going to begin- went to Seattle. When I travel, it’s often thrown my cycle out of wack, so I didn’t think much about it.

When I returned, I felt PMS’y and the breast soreness and abdominal pains fit in perfectly with that.

It’s the beginning of allergy season, which means I’m a bit congested. I keep waking up at night with my mouth open and extremely dry. So I’ve been thirsty and drinking a lot more water. Which would lead to frequent urination naturally.

The tiredness and nausea I billed to getting sick. I started feeling run down and didn’t eat for a few days. Not too abnormal. It was when it lasted for almost two weeks that I finally got suspicious enough to decide to call a doctor. But before going, I figured I should take a test just to have that knowledge walking into an appointment.

The other reason I didn’t think anything was up was because we’ve been trying for so long. Over three years ago, Josh and I looked at each other and said, “What are we waiting for again?”. We had a house, we both had stable jobs we liked and we felt mature enough to handle it.

I knew it wouldn’t happen right away- the women in my family aren’t overly fertile, but after about a year I decided to try for real. We got out calendars- tracked fertile periods. I stopped eating soy. I read… a lot. Another year and I realize I’ll probably have to start talking with a fertility specialist and need to get checked. But I put it off and put it off because part of me is afraid of what they’ll say.

Holidays ‘08 we decided to stop trying. We wanted to work on our relationship and get settled and in a year or so we’d pick it back up.

4 months later… tada!

The first test that was positive showed two little pink lines immediately. But I put it down, figuring it hadn’t had time to brew and walked away for 3 minutes. Upon return to the two pink lines still staring at me, I brought the stick to Josh, who knew I was testing just to be sure I wasn’t and handed it to him.

He stared at it for a few seconds and at first I thought he understood the results and was disappointed.

After too-long-for-a-smart-guy he literally jumped back in his seat as if I had handed him an exposed electrical wire, but with Wiley Coyote timing, and shouted, “Are you pregnant!?” (The interobang is my favorite punctuation mark).

I cried. He jumped up and down. I disbelieved.

The next day, I took another test- this on the most expensive one at the drug store. I wanted to be sure. Forget the extra test in the box I had bought the day before, I wanted to eliminate variables.

No pink lines on this one- just the word “pregnant” staring up at me in confirmation.

I think one of my first thoughts was, “I’m glad I’m not sick!” All of the symptoms fell into place. I started reading online and found that even my nightly vivid dreams may be attributed to this new growth in my uterus.

My little, dependant growth for which every thought now revolves. My own little parasite.