As Promised: Mikayla's Very Interrupted Nap

I shall strive for brevity in this post, but since it is my way of journaling, please bear with me as I also strive to capture each detail of this precious unfolding of events.

On Tuesday, July 5, 2011, I awoke at the early hour of 5:30 a.m. feeling suddenly and terribly ill. It was a nauseating combination of that woozy low-blood-sugar sensation and the feeling of being too hot all over, with the distinct possibility of throwing up everywhere to keep things interesting. It was not altogether unlike "the spins" which, you know, I have heard from a friend of a friend might sometimes happen after an evening of too much libation. Around 6 or 6:30, I sent Joel from the room for a cold washcloth and ultimately from the house for ginger ale and pepto bismol. Both of which I swigged generously upon his return. I canceled everything, believing myself to have come down with a nasty stomach bug.

In the next few days I continued to feel rather continuously nauseated, even as I muscled through supervision and appointments at work. By Friday, when I was still feeling ill, Joel and I were starting to wonder what was up. Over the weekend, the sickness seemed to come and go (but it mostly came), making it still difficult to eat much. We began to murmur between ourselves that it seemed an awful lot like the days of morning sickness but...Mikayla is only six months old, I am nursing her throughout the day, I haven't had any signs of returned fertility, and besides, do you remember how long it took us to conceive munchkin? It couldn't be...

I even took a pregnancy test to be sure. And it was negative. So were the next two... (I tend to be compulsive about pregnancy tests; that one wasn't positive, but what if I take one in five minutes and it IS??)

Now, I wasn't opposed to talking about baby #2. As I tell people, we were starting to talk about thinking about when trying for #2 might be on the radar. My goal was to have my postdoc comfortably finished and my license in hand before another child would arrive, but I also didn't want to wait TOO long.

With our discussion of morning sickness coming and going along with the nausea, I decided to order some cheapie pregnancy tests online on Sunday of that weekend, and promised Joel that I would hold off until they arrived later that week to test again. Besides, the sickness might clear up by then anyway, and it made no sense to keep wasting money on expensive tests at the store.

So Sunday night I dreamed that a baby suddenly and enthusiastically appeared in my belly and was trying to kick his way out. We're talking Alien-style attempts at hatching himself free of my body. Freaky, and when I woke up on Monday I thought you know...that is the kind of crazy vivid dream I used to have all the time when I was pregnant. Pretty much as soon as Joel left for work, I hustled Mikayla into the car and headed for the Dollar Store, my promises to hold off on testing completely forgotten (by me, anyway). I grabbed a couple of the cheap blue-dye tests and we headed back home.

I put munchkin down for her nap shortly upon arriving at home, and set about the process of, you know, creating the necessary conditions for taking a pregnancy test (read: lots of water). In the fullness of time (see what I did there?), I took a test and....the faintest of blue lines that only an experienced POAS-er would be able to detect. What?!?!

The emotions that swept through me were too many to recount. Tears sprang to my eyes. A positive pregnancy test was simultaneously the greatest shock and surprise to my eyes, but also the greatest confirmation of what I had known in my heart for almost a week. Oh, the song of praise and thanksgiving that went up from my spirit as I sat just taking in the sight of that little plus sign! Proof of a tiny, living person inside me! If Mikayla is our miracle baby because of all it took to conceive her, how much more is this unexpected child a miraculous gift from God? I almost laughed at this bounty from His hand.


This is the part where Mikayla becomes a victim of her momma's crazy.

After staring for two minutes or two hours, I jumped up and flew into Mikayla's room to share the thrilling news with the only person near enough to tell. Poor girl! I snatched her up from her crib and swung her around, bleary eyed, holding her close to me as I sang out that she would be a big sister. I showed her the pregnancy test, which she promptly attempted to eat. I just know that was her way of expressing her delight.

And because you just can't trust a faint line on a blue-dye test (and because I realized I shouldn't be washing my food down with pepto bismol anymore if I am pregnant), I immediately hustled Mikayla BACK into the car and over to the grocery store where I went through the checkout line with a baby on my hip, and a pregnancy test and bottle of Maalox in the other hand. Yes, ma'am, this is exactly what it looks like, why do you ask?

When Joel arrived home from work, he found (a sleepy) Mikayla in a bright yellow bib on which I had written (quickly and non-decoratively), "I'm the big sister!" The look on his face was priceless, and I know he was excited even though his first action was to take the Sharpie-fuming bib off of our infant daughter. Hey, I didn't have much time to plan the daddy-announcement, I did what I could. Besides, I'm pregnant, I do silly things! We spent several minutes in disbelief and excitement together, snuggling with Mikayla on our bed as we kept laughing, starry-eyed, and asking each other, can you believe we're going to have another one??

So, little 2P, you were not exactly on our radar ahead of time. But your absence from our plan is all the more proof that you were most certainly in the Lord's plan for us, long before I felt the first effects of your presence. Sweet, tiny one, you have started more with a bang than a whisper. You are precious to us already, and have brought great joy and laughter to our lives as we tell others about how bountiful and gracious our great God is to us. We can't wait to meet you, and see what our Father has in store for your life!

As always, soli deo gloria!