Remembering the Positives

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You all know what it's like to reminisce about the good times and the bad times, right?  It's usually easier to recognize the bad times that stand out in your head rather than the good.  Sometimes people can have a healthy balance of both.  One year ago today is a day that I can specifically remember as a 'positive' day...literally.

You've read in my previous posts this week about how Justin and I met and how we got engaged.  Justin and I have always been very open and honest with each other about everything and I love that we have that connection.  We both love to talk and can carry on a conversation for hours and hours.  It's certainly one of my favorite pastimes.  With that being said, after we met we of course wanted to know everything about each other and one of the topics that was particularly important to the both of us was family goals and values.  We have always wanted children and wanted to wait until we met that special person who we could see spending forever with.  Well after we met and dated for almost a year, we both couldn't imagine our lives without each other and knew that this was forever.  Someday when he was able to, Justin would buy a ring and propose to make it official.  Well because those feelings of certainty were shining in our love struck eyes, we decided to fully let God be the judge of whether we were ready to be parents or not.  Justin and I had pretty much decided that we were not going to prevent pregnancy and after we got married we would TRY to conceive.  We bought the book What To Expect Before You're Expecting and 5 months after we were married our lives came to a sudden change.

It was an early Wednesday morning and my "friend" was 2 days late.  We had some pregnancy tests on hand and we decided that because I was 2 days late, I might as well take a pregnancy test.  Justin was getting ready for work.  I took the test and within seconds the "+" started to appear.  My heart started racing, my mind started racing and I couldn't get to Justin who was in the room next to me quick enough!  I sat the test on the counter and met Justin in the hallway and said "Uuuuumm....honey?  You might want to see this."  He met me in the bathroom and looked at the counter with me and got a huge smile on his face!  I said, " Well it looks like we're pregnant, but it might be a false test.  I'll take another one tomorrow to see if we get the same results." However, part of us knew that we were in fact pregnant.  That whole morning while Justin was continuing to get ready for work, we met again in the kitchen and just smiled at each other.  Thousands of questions rushed through my head.  What if this test is right?  What if today is the day that we became aware that we are actually expecting a baby?  Should I start eating better and stay away from junk food all together?  Should I start religiously taking my prenatal vitamins?  Would that glass of wine that I had for Valentine's Day dinner affect the baby in any way?  There was no way that Justin was going to be able to concentrate at work.  And there was no way that I wasn't going to be Googling my head off at home.  

So he went to work and didn't concentrate while I was home Googling.  The next day, I took another test and another "+" came up.  I was still in disbelief, so I took 2 more tests and 2 more "+"s appeared.  I guess it was true! 

After obvious disbelief...

And one more just to quadruple check...

 Yep!  We were PREGNANT!

We were very blessed and fortunate to be able to conceive at all and so quickly.  I was going to be a mommy!  My husband was going to be a daddy!  The biggest and most important role you will ever have in your life...a parent. 

Wow.  For days we waited to tell the family because we wanted to get confirmation from the doctor first.  And as soon as we did, we made up plaques for each of our brothers and our parents and gave them as gifts.  First was Justin's parents, brother and his wife.  Then was my mom and brother.  For my dad and step mom who live in New Jersey, we emailed theirs to them and called them to hear their reaction just as they read it.

We later told our close friends and then after we were out of the first trimester, we told the rest of the world!  Waiting to tell everyone was SO HARD because we were so excited, but we didn't want to tell everyone so early just in case we had difficulties.  I'll never forget those wonderful positive moments filled with so much love and joy from our family and friends.  Thank you to all of you who were there for Justin and I to share in our love and excitement.  It means more to us than you'll ever know.