On Food

I love my dog. Let me just begin that way. She's sitting next to me on the bed right now looking over with her big sweet brown eyes, her fuzzy hair sticking up in all directions, and her hilarious underbite sticking right out. But a few hours ago, she nearly had me in tears.

The title of this post is food and that is exactly what our confrontation had to do with. At approximately 7 weeks I have not had any nausea (knock on wood!) but for the past few days my stomach is a little funny. I get very hungry and then when I start eating I lose my appetite. I'm also having bouts of mild to moderate heartburn. Not the end of the world by far. But a bit annoying. So today I left the office at exactly 5 pm and headed home with a bit of an empty stomach. I thought the whole way about what I could eat. My husband starts a trial tomorrow so it was just going to be me at home for the next few hours. I came up with a plan.

I wish I could blame the weird recipe on pregnancy, but to be honest I've always eaten like this. Here's what I did: two pieces of fried tofu on toasted bread with a vinegar cabbage and carrot slaw, mayo, and hot sauce. I don't know what you would call it, but I wanted to eat it. I sat down at the dining room table with my sandwich and my most recent Bill Bryson book. At that exact moment the doorbell rang.

Let's not distract ourselves with who rang my doorbell or what he wanted. Suffice it to say I was gone for about 5 minutes. Maybe less. But about 5. That was all the time she needed. I came back to a 9 pound dog standing squarely in the center of my dining room table scarfing down the last shred of my sandwich. Bits of cabbage were strewn from my now-empty plate to her furry little criminal paws. I have rarely felt heartbreak like this. I was crushed.

I put the dog in her crate (still licking her lips), cleaned up the remnants of my dinner-that-wasn't, and heated up some leftovers. I was still pouting when my husband came home a few hours later. And Cocoa was still in her crate. Lesson learned: don't get in between a pregnant lady and her dinner.

Of course, it's possible the sandwich-napping was payback for humiliating things I've done to her, such as:

What? Dogs can wear raincoats.

The News

On Saturday March 27, 2010 I married my best friend and true love. On Sunday June 20, 2010 I found out that I was pregnant. Here's how it all went down.

I was 29 on our wedding day. I was also once divorced, done with grad school, a homeowner, and ready to have a baby. Well, by "ready" let's just say I wanted one. My clock was ticking, plain and simple. Leading up to the wedding my husband had told me "If you get X job, we'll start trying to have a baby." I got X job. I went off the pill 7 days before our wedding.

June 20 was Father's Day this year, and my husband and I joined his parents, brother, and sister for dinner at a nearby restaurant. I had two glasses of wine with dinner. Halfway through my dessert wine, I furrowed my brow and wondered "How long has it been since I had my period?"

Hmm.

I have never been good at keeping track of my cycle. I've spent time on and off the pill in my adult life and just never paid much attention. My periods aren't notably early, late, heavy, light, or anything else. Each month it just happened. Until it didn't.

As we got in the car to drive home it was slowly dawning on me that I was actually late. About a week before this I had finished a huge trial which consumed every bit of my time and attention for a week. The week when I probably should have had my period, now that I thought about it. I casually asked "Should we stop by CVS and get a pregnancy test?"

To his credit, my husband took that question very calmly. "No," he said, "Let's wait until you're definitely late." Just the day before I had told him I felt crampy and must be getting my period, and that it may be a bit late. "OK," I answered. "But I think I'm actually pretty late right now. And I really have to pee." We stopped at CVS.

The directions on the home pregnancy test say to wait two minutes for results. It took approximately 3 seconds for both lines to turn a bright, solid blue. My first thought was "That's weird, I thought two lines meant pregnant. But both of my lines are blue. Huh." Then I looked at the directions. I was still sitting on the toilet. That's how fast this all happened. So I looked at the little folded sheet from inside the package. Oh. Then I looked at the front of the box. It has a picture of two tests - one is pregnant and one is not. Ho-ly shit.

My husband was still walking the dog when I made it out the front door on wobbly knees. I met him in the front yard. He took one look at my face and asked, "What!?" I barely managed a weak smile.

"Happy Father's Day."