Thirty-One and Shocked

When I told Richard, “I think I might be pregnant,” his first response was, “What makes you think that?” My initial thought was to say, “umm the two positive pregnancy tests that are hidden throughout the multiple trashes in our house,” but instead of coming out all confident and solid. I said something to the effect of, “Uhh so I took two pregnancy tests and they’re both positive,” before I started crying. From there everything for the next hour or so gets kind of fuzzy.

The next discussion I remember having with Richard was about he didn’t want to have to tell his first child that his initial reaction was to cry when he heard the news—and surprisingly he took the news a lot better than I had imagined. For some reason I thought he would be angry with me, or feel as though I’d ruined his life—even though he was clearly an active and willing participant in this situation.

Fortunately, we’d already had multiple conversations about what “the plan” would be if this situation ever did arise, but that didn’t take away the initial shock for both of us. In hindsight I’m incredibly happy that I have always taken the initiative to have the “what would happen if” conversation with all of my significant others. Having had that conversation made things a lot easier that first night. Instead of talking about what our possible options were—because for us there was only one—we got to have the first conversation about what our next course of action would be to make sure that we’d do what is best for our future child.

During that first night we had conversations about everything we could imagine would come up—which was pretty limited since we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. There were plenty of awkward silences that first night as both of us were trying to process, but at that point we were both ready to strap in for the long bumpy—pun intended—ride ahead.