Bacon and a Waffle

This morning I woke up with a secret, but I wasn't sure it was real. Still not sure if it is, but I'm feeling very hopeful. I had a wonderful day yesterday with a Mary Kay sister, Jen, who is expecting a baby girl very very soon. We talked a lot and I was so energized by the time I spent with her I felt very attune to myself and full of positive energy that I've been missing. I've been very short tempered, crampy, and generally PMS'ing, but then I put the peanut butter jar in the refrigerator. I realized it WAY later and thought, I don't remember doing that. Then I had some low backaches last night. I figured it was one of two things. I looked at my calendar and counted 14 days past my calculated date of ovulation - Saturday morning. I normally believe I have a 16 luteal phase so I wasn't expecting a period until Monday, but nowadays they say you can test 5 days before a missed period so I figured I'd use first morning urine and take a home pregnancy test. If It was positive I wanted the weekend to celebrate with Joe.

When Joe got out of bed at 8 am, Lincoln and Bella followed. I got out of bed too, shut the bathroom door, and took the test on my own. I set the stick down on the bathtub wall and watched the digital hour glass flash and flash and flash and flash and flash and flash and flash and flash and flash... ok, game over, I knew if it had to think that long that the chances of it coming up positive weren't very good. Then I saw the screen go blank. No, not blank, not not pregnant. It said very clearly in it's digital word "pregnant" on the bottom half of the screen. I punched the air in excitement and hid the test in the door under the sink. I didn't want to tell Joe yet. Then I grabbed the test and put it in my waistband. I wanted to keep it on me.

I took Bella outside to go potty with Lincoln and thought about all the ideas I've read from other women who told their men in creative ways. I waited over a week to tell Joe about Lincoln because I wanted to tell him in person. This was a whole new moment. When I walked back in the house I smelled bacon. That gave me my idea. I would use bacon and a waffle to spell it out on Lincoln's breakfast tray. I pinned it on Pinterest and thought it was cute (even though I figured it might take Joe a minute)

I put Lincoln in his chair with his tray and told Joe I wanted Lincoln to have a waffle because he hadn't been eating his toast (true story) and when it was done I formed "P" and "R" in bacon and put the Eggo Waffle behind it. I asked Joe to read what Lincoln's breakfast said. Of course it looks like "PRO" but he looked at it again and said he didn't get it. So I asked him what kind of waffle it was and he figured out the "eggo" part. So I got too excited and fed it to him "P. r. eggo", "preggo!" and handed him the test tearing up. He hugged me and then high-fived me.

Well, one digital test isn't enough. I wanted to get another test, so we got a basic 'plus sign' test. We watched it together and it looked negative. We thought we saw a very faint line appear with the control line that made its positivity questionable. But consider, this is no longer first morning urine, so needless to say we're not sure (but, hopeful) and I will be peeing on a stick again tomorrow morning and calling immediately on Monday for a blood test unless nature determines either unnecessary.

With this possibility of new life comes all the things I forgot about:
- I need to be more regular with Prenatal Vitamins
- bye-bye caffeine
- bye-bye artificial sweetener
- Michaela, meet exercise, it's been awhile
- I love naps
- It's going to be a long, hot, fat summer. UGH

We're not even medically sure yet that I'm pregnant or viably pregnant and we're throwing out names and asking the big question, are we going to find out the gender or not? Right now we're at 'no'. It would be nice to keep it for the delivery to hear that, "it's a...!!!" We already have our girl's name. We picked out Emilyn Grace almost 3 years ago and have been holding onto it since. I know Joe doesn't LOVE Emilyn because he doesn't like 'lyn' but we want to call her Emi. We told everyone what both the girl and the boy names were when I was pregnant with Lincoln. I never felt the need to keep it secret. Obviously, I love the name, and it's not "mine to keep", but I'm feeling slightly emotional about it because I may not get to use it-we could be, and likely are, having another boy-and it meant so much to me having two of my best friends named Emily. I remember crying uncontrollably on the floor in the bathroom for 30 minutes that first shift after finding out Lincoln was a boy and there was an "EmmaLynn" on the mom-baby floor. I don't feel like that now, but I did feel a little heart pound when I saw on Facebook another girl I know naming her baby Emelyn. I sound pregnant, don't I?