One Year Later

Being at the Kopp family cabin this past weekend, I couldn't help but think about the last July we were there... I found out that I was pregnant!! Since I started this blog at 12 weeks of pregnancy, I didn't have a chance to record what happened that day, so I'm going to do that now...

Last July 4th, we headed up to Lake Wawasee with Katy and Brandon. Ben and I had been trying to get pregnant since February, and were having a little trouble tracking my cycle so we had been tracking my temperature to get a better feeling of when I might be ovulating. Because of that, I knew that the weekend of July 4th fell right around when I could be pregnant. I brought a pregnancy test with me, not because I thought I was pregnant, but mostly because I wanted to be able to drink and not have any doubt in my mind that I wasn't influencing an unborn child in my belly.

In fact, I was so confident (I had taken lots of other tests leading up to this that were all negative) I told Katy I was going to take the test in the morning.

I woke up Saturday morning before everyone else to take the test and it was positive!!! Suddenly I panicked - this was not at all what I was expecting, and I realized I was in a strange place to find out I was pregnant. Ben and I were sleeping in seperate rooms, so I snuck over to his room (with all the boys) and pulled him out to share the news... I whispered the good news, we held each other for a bit, then snuck back into our respective rooms to wait until everyone else woke up.

I, of course, couldn't fall back asleep so as soon as Brandon poked his head in to see who wanted to go skiing, I jumped up to go, eager to have something to distract the millions of thoughts in my head. That's when Katy said she knew :) I wasn't the type to be eager about skiing at 7:30 in the morning... something must have been giving me extra energy!

Ben and I both decided we wanted to wait till the first doctor appointment to tell anyone, so the rest of the day/weekend I spent trying to convince Katy that I was not pregnant and tried to act as normal as possible. Looking back, she says I didn't do a great job and she knew that I was pregnant... but I tried really hard! Not knowing what was ok, and what wasn't I would pour coffee and grab beers, then when no one was looking have Ben chug my drinks so I didn't have to.

Ben and I were ecstatic. Any chance we got alone we'd ask each other a million questions, like when would the baby be born, what did it feel like, did we think it was a boy or a girl, what things were ok for me to do - and I would try to look up as much information as possible on my phone in between activities.

I was so thankful when we got home - it was tricky keeping a secret when you are with people 24 hours a day, and my head had been pounding from my cold turkey approach to kicking my caffeine habit (I didn't realize it's actually ok to have some caffeine when you're pregnant).

We kept the secret from family and friends for 8 weeks, till we met little Olive on the ultrasound. And I spent those 8 weeks hiding my exhaustion, cravings, and nausea... trying to act like I felt perfectly normal!