The Bailey Chronicles

April 2008: 2 months into pregnancy

Cramps persisted into the next couple of weeks. I felt more and more fatigued and I started becoming confused as to what my body was telling me. All signs pointed to me starting any day, but for some reason it never came. One night, early in April, I was kept awake by the cramps and decided to take a home pregnancy test to rule out that theory and to my surprise a second line started appearing in the window. However, when this second line started to appear in never fully came in. It was so faded you could barely tell it was even there. I have taken pregnancy tests before because my cycle tends to be irregular, and never before has there been any signs of a line. If there are no instruction around what that means, then how could I be certain of the results? The instructions said nothing about faded lines on whether it could mean a false reading or a definite positive. I awoke John and showed him the test. Confused, he looked at it and shrugged and suggested we take another in the morning. That night was impossible to get any sleep. Excited and nervous I tossed and turned until morning and tried again. The next test did the same. I felt fairly positive that this meant I was pregnant, but I was still not confident of the results since the tests came from the same box and were both barely ledge able. Later that evening we purchased a digital test which confirmed in seconds that we were undeniably pregnant! Although the pregnancy was unplanned, we both really wanted to have babies together so we were excited... scared but excited.

Technically I can't say the pregnancy was unplanned completely, we had decided that we wanted kids and since I was so irregular we had no idea how long it would take so we made the decision to not be careful but not really “try” at the same time. I have seen first hand through friends and family what the pressures of trying can do to a person so we figured this would be an easier approach since we weren't ready to seriously start, but we wouldn't be against it if it happened for us early. I say scared because pregnancy is a big deal and I wasn't confident in how prepared I felt. Apparently these are natural feelings to have about a pregnancy whether it was planned or unplanned according to the pregnancy books, but at the time that little tid bit of information gave me no sense of reassurance. Having children is a life changing event. You spend your whole life taking care of only yourself and now in a blink of an eye your life's journey is not about you anymore. It is a tremendous responsibility, not something to be taken lightly by any means. We both knew that this is something we desperately wanted with each other, after all this was why we decided to get a puppy... a sort of trial run with learning the responsibilities of parenthood. However one thing that weighed heavily on my mind is that, like I said earlier, I did not have medical insurance.

Originally when John proposed to me we set our wedding date to be in May of '08, but due to our financial struggles, and those of my parents it didn't seem like it was a possibility to do it this year. Now that John and I were pregnant, the urgency was put back on the wedding plans. I wanted to have a plan before presenting the fact that we were pregnant to the folks, not like I would be in trouble or anything since I was 25, but I felt a little stressed about not having a plan and I didn't want anybody else to make it worse. Plus, being pregnant feels like the worst period of your life with all of the hormones surging through your body. So honestly I couldn't handle any outside stress with a sense of composure in the first place. John and I decided that a Justice of the Peace wedding would have to suffice for now until the funds came in to do a ceremony, possibly the following year. This was a hard thing for me to agree to because neither of us have been married previously nor do we have any intentions on remarrying so it felt like it stripped us from our special moment. I broke the news to Candi and my lifelong friend Nikki first, then Mom and finally Dad. Candi has always had away with calming me down when I am a little stressed about things, so she played a big role in helping me find a JOP and a list of Obs. Mom did not like the idea of a JOP wedding any better than I did and went to work planning an actual ceremony with the help of her sister, my Aunt Kathy, Candi, and Nikki. They threw together a beautiful ceremony in a two week time frame, and it turned out to be perfect. I am not much of a planner, obviously, so this took all of the pressure and stress off my shoulders.

Mean while with the pregnancy, morning sickness hit me hard. I was in no shape to plan a wedding for I couldn't seem to keep anything down. I became lactose intolerant, extremely weak, had caffeine migraines, allergies from a tornado, incredibly motion sick, and nauseated all day and night long. I think I threw up on average at least three times per day. Fortunately I made it through the entire wedding, I can't say the same for the wedding night but at least the wedding was perfect. We were married on a Friday night, April 25th 2008. I will never forget how John looked at me that night.