Disclaimer: Our Story and Who I Am

Welcome to Baby Dickey. I know I said that a long time ago when the blog started in April, but I never told our beginning story. If you’re new here, let me explain a few things… ((warning, this is a long story and probably only of interest to me – for my documentary purposes))

My life changed the morning of Sunday, April 19^th, 2009. I had been searching the country for an animalbehavior/ethology career with my recent MS degree in Animal Physiology. My husband was about to become a graduate in May with his degree in Civil (Environmental) Engineering – also searching the country for a career. Our options were WIDE open.

We spent the weekend with visiting friends for an annual festival at our university – my last time out and I didn’t even know it!

Sunday morning, with hubby still asleep, I ordered a pregnancy test (plus milk and cheetos to make it not so weird) from a grocery delivery business (sooo wish one of those existed where I live now!!) I just KNEW I was pregnant. I had taken tests before (negative, obviously), but I was about a week late this time – which wasn’t all that abnormal actually, since stopping birth control nearly a year before.

We all know where the story goes next.… two lines. I stared in disbelief, even though I KNEW it would be positive. I just had to stare, you know? I started crying almost immediately. I don’t know how some women wait to tell their husbands in some cute and creative way. Don’t get me wrong, I wish I could have done it that way, but there was absolutely no keeping it in. I had to go wake up my husband and shove the pee stick in his face (lovely, I know). He had no idea what it was and was more concerned with why I was crying (probably wondering if he did something wrong, haha).

“I’m pregnant,” finalllllly escaped (somehow) and we sat on the bed together staring into space, hugging each other. There was a moment of “wow, what are we going to do?” but it was pretty quickly replaced by excitement. We were planning on having kids… just not right THEN, so it was a surprise (not a mistake).

I also don’t know how some people can handle waiting until they announce the news. We instantly called our parents, close family and our closest friends. We waited a day or two and then we announced it to everyyyyone (facebook and twitter). We were 5 weeks along.

And now here we are.

The moment I saw the two lines, my life changed. It’s really not something you can explain to someone until they go through it themselves. My priorities, my goals, my decisions, my needs and my wants. Searching for an animal behavior career or PhD program went out the window. Planning a trip to Africa (my dream forever) was forgotten (until pretty much just now, really). My husband and I focused completely on moving back to our home town to be near family and finding jobs there. And that had become the best thing in the world to both of us.

I hear people who are contemplating getting pregnant talk about things like… but I want to do this first, I need to get this done, we don’t have enough money yet, there’s so much I want to do before having a baby… let me tell you, you don’t miss a thing once you see the two lines. It becomes your whole life – and not in a bad way. The best thing someone told me was, “it’s never going to feel like the right time and it’s never going to feel like you have enough money.”

Apart from priorities, my personality has changed, I think. If you know me, you know I’m really easy-going and probably somewhat of a pushover. I don’t like confrontation, I trust everyone and I’m friends with everyone. Not to say that has ALL changed and I’ve become a mean, cranky beast, but.… what I’ve noticed is that I care a lot less about what people think, I stand up for myself or speak my mind more often and I’m a stronger person, in general. And I love it. You’re making a baby and truly nothing else matters.

Speaking of “nothing else matters,” Steve and I have realized many of our true friends through this process and at first it was quite shocking. You see who is truly happy for you and who isn’t (jealousy? immaturity? just plain rudeness?). And the best part? It doesn’t matter. We don’t have time for it. We have the baby to worry about now, not who real friends might be. We are, however, extremely grateful for our close friends and family and love them very much – they’ve been wonderful through this. And as weird as it may sound to some of you, I am very appreciative of my “twitter (and blogger) friends” who are sometimes even more supportive, helpful and responsive than “real life” people. Thank you all!

Disclaimer: This is my personal blog. My husband and I are writing out our journey through our first pregnancy and plan on saving this in printed/book form once the pregnancy is over – for our keeping. However, we are more than happy to share it with all of you and are absolutely thrilled to have so many people want to follow along. Thank you!

And FYI: Dickey is my last name. Milftobe was created by my husband because he thinks I’m hot and I will never talk about my gas on this site (unless it happens to become so horrendous that my husband leaves me (like mine could be worse than his, HA!)… knock on wood, lol). However, if I poop on the delivery bed during labor, you bet you’re going to hear about it.