week 13 day 4

So I have a couple things to say today.

First, Mike's friend mentioned that he and his wife are waiting to have a baby until they can afford it.  That was Mike's and my plan too.  In fact, if anything, we just needed more time to grow up and live life as a responsible couple.  But if there's one thing I've learned in the past few years, it's that Heavenly Father will only let me choose so many of my own decisions before he says, "Actually, let's do it this way."  Which means, for us at least, that unless we had money like Angelina Jolie, we might never be prepared for kids.  Waiting for Mike to have a very stable, full-time job and waiting for me to have a well-paying full-time job would definitely be ideal and I was completely prepared to wait for it.  Perhaps with that kind of money we could live in a house where the heat and cold doesn't leak through the windows, where the temperature gauge doesn't tell us the temperature is over 70 but it feels like 60 (and I'm pretty sure it is), where black widows don't roam, and where I don't feel like the ceiling is about to crash in at any moment.  But we don't.  And we're not ready.  And I'm okay with that.  I like the cold and fear and fear of danger ...

Second, we've been asked a lot recently about our plans to have children because as we have been saying for quite a while, we wanted to wait to have children for a couple of years yet here we are, 7 months into our marriage and we're pregnant.  But Kara, my friend, and I called it.  We knew the more Mike and I said we were going to wait, the sooner we'd have a kid.  Well, if you want the low-down as to what happened, here it is (it is long and may be information you don't want to know.  Read at your own risk):

Back in May, I hung up this amazing poster I got in my women's health class (if any of you are attending BYU, I'd strongly recommend this class.  It was amazing.  I loved my professor - I loved the class).  Our professor walked in one day, late and out of breath since she was about 7 months pregnant at that time, turned to us and said, "I have a present for you guys!"  She sat the box down in the middle of the classroom and pulled out what it contained.  It was a piece of paper.  Our excitement quickly diminished.  She unfolded the paper, showed it to us and said, "It's a birth control chart!"  After a few seconds of silence, we all burst out in laughter and said to each other, "Seriously?"  Yep, she was serious.  We all walked out of class with at least one.

So when Mike and I moved into our new place, I had to hang it up somewhere and I decided the fridge would be the best place.  I went over the chart with Mike, explaining the different birth control methods and when he asked about the birth control pill, I explained that it can cause breast cancer, uterine cancer, strokes, and heart attacks, just to name a few.  Then I explained the pill I was taking and the new facts I had just heard about and how it can cause blood clots, DVT, pulmonary embolism, and gallbladder disease.  Why the doctor even signed for the prescription, I don't even know.  But, being the stubborn person I am, I wanted to continue taking it.  So I did until we were switching insurances.  I got a prescription refilled for the pill and headed to the nearest drug store.  On my way, I all of the sudden decided I wasn't going to get it filled and I headed home.  I stared at that piece of paper, signed and ready to be filled, but I couldn't bring myself to take it anywhere.  So it ended up in the trash a few days later.  I should at least get a different kind of birth control pill, I thought.  But I never did.

Thanks to my women's health class, I knew how to watch for ovulation and a lot about my body that I didn't know before (oddly enough even though I was an exercise science major where I had to take 3 anatomy classes, physiology classes, and a lot of other classes that told me about my body).  Mike and I watched the signs, watched the dates and thought we were doing pretty well.

At the beginning of September, I felt like I should start talking to Mike about having a baby because for some reason I had gone from, 'babies are cute but I don't want one' to 'we really need to have one right now.'  So we talked and the final decision was no.  No baby.  A few weeks later, however, I thought we were pregnant.  I took test after test and they all said negative.  It didn't make sense.  A missed period is usually a good sign of pregnancy and I felt like we were pregnant, but the tests said no.  But I was positive that we were so we became a lot more lax in keeping track of days.

Then, on November 3, we found out the good news.  The tests were right - not pregnant but thanks to my lack of believing them, we now have a little child on the way!