Rehash, Part 1 - The Discovery

To begin, I'm going to retrace the events and my reactions since we found out Sarah was pregnant...Sometime in late August:

Sarah and I hadn't really cut-loose in a while. We decided that we were really going to party it up on the night of Sarah's Sister's wedding. We had it all planned out: there was going to be dancing and booze, then, heading back to Sarah's parents' place, there was going to be more booze, sitting around the fire, talking with Sarah's parents and a few friends. It may sound a little lame to some of you, but that's how we party. As Mary's (Sarah's sister) big day approached, we noticed that Sarah's "monthly" was acting strange. I'll leave the details out, but I'll say that it was hard to determine if it had or had not arrived. Sarah was on some new medication for menstrual pain, Neproxine, and we were wondering if that was the cause of the strangeness. We tossed around the idea that she was pregnant, and determined that it was unlikely. However, we decided that if Sarah had not had her "monthly" by the night of Mary's wedding, we were going to take a pregnancy test. Obviously, we didn't want to do any boozing, if there was a baby present.

Mary's big night arrived, and everything was still unclear. Fortunately, the reception ended up being "dry." Later that night, instead of having our little party, Sarah's dad and I went on Consumer Reports, WebMD and a few other sites, to determine which pregnancy test was most accurate. Looking up pregnancy tests with your father-in-law is a strange situation to find yourself in, let me tell you. We found out that the best thing to do was to simply to get 2 tests: one for right away, and one for the morning. (Apparently there are more hormones in the morning.) Sarah took the first one that night, it came back negative. That is, until I looked at it again 15 minutes later where it showed a slight positive.

After some further googling, I discovered that it was too late to tell and that false positives often occur when looking at the test later than you're supposed to. However, I also discovered that we hadn't waited the appropriate amount of time to begin with. So, that test result was inconclusive. Rather than buying another test, or using the one designated for the morning, Sarah opted to abstain from alcohol that night and have our little party the next day.

The next morning arrived, and Sarah woke up to take the morning test. She informed me that the test was negative, and we went back to bed. A few hours later, we got up for the day, and Sarah casually mentioned that the test wasn't so clear. You see, she informed me, the line did change color but only barely. She had decided that if she was pregnant, the line would be clearer, perhaps blinking, or perhaps there'd be balloons. I decided that any color change would indicate the presence of the pregnancy hormone. Ultimately, the doctor would have to referee this match.

We scheduled an appointment with our new doctor at the AALFA Clinic (great clinic, btw!). And, as it turned out, Sarah was pregnant. It was a relief to find out for sure, but it was also terrifying. Thus began a 9 month period of near constant life-changing events, a period that isn't quite over yet. Even though the baby won't be born for another month or so, I'm a very different person than I was before the night of Mary's wedding. I've had to grow up considerably, taking on more responsibilities, making some difficult sacrifices. Yes, I was scared then, but I was also determined to make sure I was a support to Sarah throughout her pregnancy, and to continue on, growing as a husband, and growing into a father.