One year ago today I woke up feeling funny.  If I was confident about anything last year, it was knowing my body.  I had never been so in tune with it, being so dedicated to its health and well being… that morning I woke up and really thought about how off I had been feeling for about a week or two.  It was Hector’s day off and I asked him to take me to work.  As he drove me to work I was experiencing a headache and a slight panic in my chest.  You see, I had this app on my phone which tracked my periods and it was telling me I was about 7 days late.  Well, I’d always had a longer cycle and my phone was brand new so it didn’t have any of my old data stored but I figured it wasn’t longer than 37 days so I decided to tell Hector that maybe we should grab a pregnancy test, or two.

The look of fear and panic crossed Hector’s face as I mentioned it.  We had JUST gotten married and were planning on doing a million things before children.  We wanted a house, I wanted to start a new career and continue working on fitness related things.  I had just gotten an awesome job, that I loved (a part-time that I wished would turn into full-time, on top of my full-time job) so babies was the last thing on our list, yet here we were at Walgreens buying a first response pregnancy test.  This was the result:

Our reaction?  Disbelief.  Yep, utter disbelief.  In fact, because the line on the first test I took was so faint, I actually thought it was negative at first.  If I thought the look of fear had crossed his fact when I asked Hector to buy the test, those double lines were life changing and the look on Hector’s face said it all.  This was the most silent day of his life, I still wonder what he was thinking that day… I know what I was thinking.. “OMG OMG, this is NUTS I’M NOT READY I’M NOT READY OMG… ”

I’m also not going to lie, we weren’t jumping for joy.  I still feel guilty about this some days (but am working to let it go).  I always thought the day I found out I was pregnant would be a day of absolute joy – this was not the case for us.  Like I said, we weren’t prepared and it was a complete and utter shock.  That day I told my mom and my sister, my mom seemed pretty excited but this was curbed a bit because of my reaction to the news.

We didn’t tell anyone but our closest friends and my parents and sister for a very long time.  I announced I was pregnant when I was about 13 weeks along because I feared disappointment from work colleagues and those who knew a career was what I wanted to focus on.  Looking back, this was so silly.  I was ashamed of being pregnant, why?  Because so many people would tell me before I got pregnant that having a baby meant your life was over.  This mentality seems so backward to me now.  But a year ago after taking that test, I indeed felt my life was over.  I know now, that it has been the greatest thing to ever happen to me.  Evan has given me this wonderful gift, I want to be successful now more then ever.  I want him to be proud of me.

Needless to say we both eventually were very excited about our baby:

This year has been filled with:

– My truth about the early days of pregnancy.

– Daily belly rubs with this stuff – I used about 8 tubs of it… YEP it was a worth-while investment too as this girl didn’t get any stretch marks – But, a disclaimer:  If I had, it would have been difficult to deal with I’m sure, but at the same time they are scars that would have proven I cooked a healthy beautiful baby and they would have been worth it, I have tons of them from high school anyway at least there would have been a reason for these.  At the same time, the vain part of me thanks God every day I didn’t get them, my body was very good to me I credit it to steady weight gain, tons and TONS of water and this butter – I also didn’t have ONE itchy day.  Not one.  I thank my beautiful BFF Nicole for this stuff.  Some other pregnancy must have for me?  Here.

– Tears.  Happy tears, sad tears, I want his over tears… Grateful tears… Everything tears.

– A gender reveal via cupcakes (they were filled with blue frosting)

– Beautiful baby shower.

– Good days, not so good days and lots of faith.

– Fabulous friends and family.

and in July of this year… My beautiful baby boy:

He has now been in our lives for four 17 weeks.  Happy 17 weeks my little love.