The purpose of this weblog:

• To keep record of the events leading up to the birth of my yet-to-be-conceived child.
• To keep record of the events that take place during the birth of the child. I want to write a detailed account of the entire laboring process from start to finish. Hopefully, I'll be able to make a few posts while in early labor to give up-to-the-minute updates on what's happening with my soon-to-errupt body and how I'm coping with my surroundings.
• To keep record of the events immediately following the birth of the child until I am forced to quit wasting time blogging my life as a new parent because there are too many gum-in-the-hair, riding-the-dog-like-it's-a-pony, "Mom, Billy's bleeding" incidences while I'm sitting @ my computer.
• To amuse myself with my own poorly drawn illustrations.

My initial inclination was to write each post as if I were addressing the little unconceived person in a letter, but let's face it, there's something sort of creepy about a grown adult writing letters to a person that has not been born. Well, okay, that in of itself is not so creepy, but writing to a person that has not even made its home in a womb yet is pretty...um....odd.

But in a way, this pregancy (which is not even a pregnancy yet) started when the idea of a child in our lives was conceived.

My husband and I have been married for 5 years and 6 months. A few months ago, when we were driving home from a trip up North to visit my family, we stopped at a Burger King in a travel plaza. I'm sure if I thought really hard, I could come up with the name of the highway and which state we were in, but I don't feel like it right now. Maybe I'll research it and add that later for sentimental purposes.

DH and I don't eat at Burger King very often. I am a little overweight and have cut junk food out of my diet, barring the occasional lapse when I totally blow it and eat deep-fried Snickers wrapped in bacon every meal for an entire weekend. During our two week trip visiting my family, I ate like I was in a race to see how much partially hydrogenated soybean oil I could get coursing through my veins at any given moment. Up until that point, I had gone from 213 lbs to 172 lbs over a period of several months of eating a healthy diet and exercising in a very half-assed kind of way. DH and I both knew that this sugar-capade we had been on was about to come to a close as we entered our real lives (why do I think that travel gives me the license to suddenly go nuts and drown my food in chocolate and gravy??). So, we thought that scarffing a Whopper was the logical thing to do before having to face reality. NOTE: DH is awesome and is eating healthy with me, despite the fact that he is very trim and does not need to lose any weight at all. What a trooper.

As we sat our trays down at the dirty booth and began to eat this horribly delightful meal, DH asked me what my goal weight was and if I thought I could achieve it by the end of the Summer. At that particular moment, for reasons that are obvious, I didn't really want to think about my weight-loss goals. But the reason why he was asking me right then was not to pressure me or make me feel guilty, but because he knew in the past I had said that I'd like to get down to my "ideal weight" before I ever even think about getting pregnant.

He did the math on how many pounds a month I would have to lose in order to reach the goal by the end of August and surprisingly finished his sentence with "because I think it would be cool to have an April baby".

I was totally floored because he has always been reluctant about the idea of having kids. I mean, I thought it would be something that would happen in the very distant future, but honestly it didn't look like Matt was going to warm up to the prospect of a baby any time soon.

I was ecstatic, to say the least. A few days earlier, when I wasn't around, he told my sister about his plans to tell me that he is ready to start planning for a baby. She has 3 kids of her own and I have mentioned to her my desire to have kids as well as DH's reluctance, so she knew what huge news this would be for me. DH said that his change of heart came with the thought that I had supported him in all his endeavors....... like the time he quit his job and became a full-time professional musician with a relatively successful Christian rock band that toured over 200 days out of each year, I was right on board with him wanting him to achieve his dream. He realized that maybe my dream is to be a mom, and he'd like to support me in that dream the way I supported his dream of being a professional musician.

At this point, I must digress and break my own rule of not "talking" to the yet-to-be-conceived child at this moment and say:

Little Person, this was the moment your Dad and I decided that we wanted you to be in our family. Sitting in that icky Burger King booth at a travel plaza somewhere along our travels, the IDEA of you was conceived, and we started making plans to bring you into this world.

Labels: being sappy, dh, ttc