Monday, December 15, 2014

An introduction...

I've decided to start this blog as a diary of sorts.

You see, I'm really just a normal, average individual in a very subjective sorta way.  I'm in my early thirties.  I live in Pittsburgh, PA.  I have a wonderful husband and a lovable, neurotic dog.  I work in contracts and project management for a small start-up in the biotech industry.  I love to read.  I dabble in writing. I don't usually write in fragmented sentences.

However...

In late summer of this past year, my normal, average, everyday life got thrown for a loop.  A big one.

It was a Saturday morning and we'd just finished up a big golf tournament that my husband and I organize every year in honor of a dear friend of ours.  We'd worked long and hard on getting donations for skill prizes, organizing the foursomes, working with the golf course, and making sure everyone had a good time. After all the weekend festivities, I was finding it hard to roll myself out of bed to do anything.  My eyes were heavy, my limbs didn't want to get with the program, and I slept pretty much the entire day after a proper 8 hours of sleep the night before.

I'm generally not a napper.  I'm pretty energetic and I try to make the most of my weekends before the work week starts again on Mondays.  I just chalked it up to having a pretty tiring week and decided that everyone needed a day of rest now and then.  But then Sunday came around.  I did manage to get out of bed, but only as far as the couch.  I didn't feel sick or icky in any way, just extremely fatigued.  

My husband said jokingly, 'Maybe you should take a pregnancy test.'

To which I replied, "Ha. Maybe you should make me lunch."

[I should probably interject at this point in the story that three years ago, my husband and I started trying to have a baby.  We'd tried for a year without luck and my doctor sent me to the lab for a slew of blood tests just to check on a few things.  Well, that lab visit and the many vials of blood that they wanted to pull from my veins provoked a series of medical events.  The abridged version:  I passed out at the lab (not the first time), had a seizure (not the first time), had to see a neurologist (not the first time), had my license suspended for 18 long months (that was a first and it sucked), during which time I was wrongly diagnosed with epilepsy (not the first time), correctly re-diagnosed with vasovagal syncope, and then I got a pacemaker.  So needless to say, because of all this hoopla, our plans for starting a family were put on hold for a long time.]

Eventually, I did take a pregnancy test.  And as I'm sure you've guessed, that test turned out positive.  And here I am at 23 weeks and counting and I'm still knocked up.  

It's pretty much taken this entire time to wrap my head around the fact that we're going to have a baby.  And I'd like to use this blog as a platform to talk about some of the perplexing things that I'll have to think about, plan for, and eventually do as a first time mom.  I'm happy, I'm shocked, I'm terrified.  And you are welcome to come along for the ride!