Wishful thinking

Make a Wish, originally uploaded by Brandi Jordan, Flickr, Creative Commons.

All of this thought about what was happening in my life two years ago this month has made me a little antsy. I’ll be clear. We are not trying to have another baby right now. Even so, just in case the fates were smiling upon us (or laughing at us, whichever the case may be), I took a pregnancy test on the 25th. A Big Fat Negative stared back at me, as if to say “Ya shoulda known.”

I did have reason to wonder. My monthly visitor hemmed and hawed her way into my life this month, slowly and indecisively enough that I started reading online about strange aspects of early pregnancy. Possibility loomed. After all, we celebrated our annivesary a litte more than a week ago.

For several hours last Friday, I convinced myself that Bear would have a sibling shortly after she turned two. And, then I began anxiously thinking, “But, no! I am NOT READY for that! Bear is just becoming more independent! I am not ready to share myself with someone else! I love having a not-pregnant body right now. I don’t want to breastfeed again just yet…” and on and on. However, when my “visitor” did finally make a decisive appearance, I felt the familiar sadness of “not this time; not again.”

I am not ready to have a baby again, or even to start trying to have a baby again. I definitively know this. But, I think that I am getting closer. And, wouldn’t it be fun if it just happened?

The birthday gift

San Juan Islands, originally uploaded by HeyRocker, Flickr, Creative Commons.

Two years ago today, I snuck out bed in the early morning darkness while my husband slept in our hotel room in Canada. I fumbled through our suitcase in the dark and found something that I had eagerly been waiting to use. In the bathroom, I managed to break open the package with my teeth and somehow used the pregnancy test without making a mess. Once the appropriate time had passed (and not before, because I considered it bad luck to peek), I held the test up to the faint light coming through the window and focused my blurred, morning vision on the result. A line! I could see a line! Excitedly, I reached around the bathroom door and flipped on the light. There was definitely a line! Holy cow, there was a line!

I had been waiting and hoping for this moment for a long time. Now that it had arrived, I was unsure what to do or to think about it. I wrapped up the test in toilet paper, put it back into the box, hid it in the suitcase, and climbed back into bed with a racing mind.
When my husband woke up, I told him “happy birthday” but I did not share the news. Instead, we went through the same motions of the previous two mornings. We went downstairs and had a quiet breakfast. I avoided my usual coffee, but my husband didn’t seem to notice. Our time in Canada had ended, so we packed our suitcase and headed toward the ferry. As we climbed aboard and looked back out over the misty city, my husband said, “You know, if we ever have a girl, maybe we could name her Victoria after this city.” I still didn’t share the news. Once into the Puget Sound, we watched for whales and pointed at antelope darting from cliffs on nearby islands. Although I felt that words might jump out of me, I still didn’t share the news.

We arrived in Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands a few hours later, and as we stepped off the ferry, I saw a nearby bookstore. My request to go inside wasn’t an unusual one for me and so he didn’t notice that I was purposeful once inside. While my husband was looking at books that held his interest, I found a card with a picture from the San Juan Islands and quickly purchased it. Later, I made my husband stand at arms-length as I wrote inside the card.

The exact words are his, and someday, our daughter’s, but in essence, I told him that his birthday gift from me would be a life-changing piece of information. During his 29th year, we would have a baby.

I gave him his gift once we arrived at the bed and breakfast where we would be staying and were settled into our room. After reading the card, he looked at me with a mixture of wonder, excitement, and fear.

Two years later – today – this morning – we stood at the bathroom door to our bedroom and watched our daughter sit against the side of the bed and read books. I observed my husband as his eyes followed our daughter’s movements. The fear was gone. But, the wonder and excitement remained.