Coming April 2017!

It’s probably not a huge surprise that Jeffrey and I would want to round out our current family of 2 to something more. We got married 3 years ago, and have since moved out of our lil’ apartment in SF to a full-fledged house in Berkeley. We live near a lovely little park, in a neighborhood full of families. Berkeley is wonderful city, and has great public schools.

I think we’ve both always wanted to have a family; it was just a matter of when. And that time, as it turns out, is now!

We officially started “trying” at the beginning of the New Year, which means it took us about 8 months to conceive. It’s such a funny thing – as a woman, you spend your whole life being told that if you even look the wrong way at the opposite sex, you could get pregnant, etc. etc. But then when you actually WANT to get pregnant, sometimes it doesn’t just magically happen. In fact, as I learned, it can take many couples up to a year or longer.

I was just starting to get to the point of frustration, honestly. I worried that maybe we’d waited too long; or what if we just couldn’t have children? The whole “biological clock” thing kicked in more than I thought it would. What if we made this huge life decision to buy a house (not a small, or cheap, feat in the Bay Area) based on something that wasn’t going to happen?

Of course, I knew deep down that we would be fine either way. If we couldn’t have a family, that would be okay – more than okay, in fact! Our happiness together is not dependent on whether we have a child, and knowing this brought me immense comfort.

But then August rolled around. I started to feel a little nauseated and tired. And then, I missed my first period. Ever. I’ve literally never missed a period in my entire life of menstruation. I didn’t even have any spotting. The at-home pregnancy test said yes; a doctor officially confirmed a few weeks later.

I’m at 13 weeks now, and all is looking good. The baby is growing strong, and I’m happy to leave the first 12 weeks behind. The first trimester was a slog: a steady stream of nausea and fatigue, which was such a bummer. I couldn’t really exercise (besides walking), and it was all could do to not fall asleep at my desk every single day.

But the past two weeks, my energy levels have been up (I’ve been able to go running again!  . . . albeit a little slower than usual), and as long as I avoid particularly rich foods, my stomach troubles have mostly subsided.

Otherwise, we’ll be starting to make more plans – how much time I’ll take off work, how to prepare the house, how much help we’ll need, and so on so forth. Either way, we’re excited/scared/happy/all of the above!