Making a Baby

After six years of marriage, Rocky and I decided to have a baby. We pretty much planned everything out to a tee. We started tracking my waking temperature and um. . ."mucous" about 9 months ago. I started reading books about pregnancy and talking to friends. We planned out our ideal month for getting pregnant, June. We even read into ways some people suggested increased the odds of making a boy (the idea of girls freaks Rocky out completely)! So last month, we set out to set our plan into action but at first things didn't seem to be going according to our perfect plan.

We were on Thailand Summer Project in June. When I noticed that it was that special babymaking day and that the time was right, I didn't want to wait but we had to be a meeting in like 5 minutes. Rocky's freaking out because he wants the time to be memorable and special and I'm freaking out because I just want to hurry so we don't miss the opportunity and so that people didn't start looking for us. So, um, I prevailed and 10 minutes later we're walking out the door for our meeting with a broken bed (yep, that's right) and high hopes that we sealed the deal.

As I monitored my temperatures over the course of the next week or so, I began to get quite freaked out. Generally once someone's pregnant their temperature increases and stays high all the way until the baby is born. Well, my temperatures went up the very next day but then plummeted a few days later and repeated the same thing again after that. I was concerned. According to everything I had read, I had lost our baby (our 2 day old baby). I wasn't that sad about it but I was just hoping my body would get back on track so that the following month we could try again.

Well a couple weeks later I kept expecting my period but it never came. I really was expecting it too; I even borrowed tampons from one of the STINT girls in Thailand cause I didn't bring any. After being about a week late, I decided maybe I should check into what's going on. Jordan, who was on STINT with us, and his wife, Mandy, were in the know and Mandy got 2 pregnancy tests for me at the Chiang Mai airport as we were on our way to Bangkok. She wanted me to take one in the airport bathroom but I wanted to wait and take it with Rocky alone later.

When we got to the KT GuestHouse in Bangkok that night we read the directions and set out to take one of the tests. We'd never taken one before so we were clueless. We knew it involved pee and sticks and such but that's about it. Well, the test was totally confusing. If there were 2 lines, we're pregnant, if there was 1, we weren't. Well there was a dark line and a faint line. In my mind, it totally confirmed what I thought my temperatures had been saying all along-- that we weren't pregnant.

The next morning Rocky and I (after a crazy fiasco with one of the project students losing his passport and running to the airport at 4:30am) took the next test. On this one, the second line was not quite as faint. Rocky and I kinda looked at each other, talked about, and decided we needed to visit a trained professional.

Ped picked us up from KT that day and we decided that we needed to tell him so he recommend a doctor for us. He was super excited and planned the appointment for the next day.

We went to Rama 9 hospital for the test, to the same doctor Tik went to. Ped wasn't able to make it though and the language barrier was a little rough between the doctor, Rocky, and I. We did understand though the we needed to take a blood test and that we'd hear the results in a couple of hours. Well, a few hours later Rocky gets a phone call from the nurse saying my hcg levels are something like 1500 something. We kinda know what that means but want as much confirmation as possible, so Rocky asked "does that mean we're having a baby?" The nurse replied, "baby, for sure."

I remember we looked at each other with these goofy grins for what seemed like 5 minutes after that.

That still wasn't quite enough for us though we wanted it in writing. We wanted more proof. (The morning sickness hadn't quite hit yet so I didn't have that to reassure me :). So we went back to hospital one more time to get a letter proclaiming "diagnosis is pregnancy." We were finally for sure. We were pregnant.