Aftermath

Now in my last post I may have given the impression that my husband either really doesn’t take me seriously, or really doesn’t want to have kids. This is not the case. I was not kidding when I said I have spent about 4 days of every… single… month of the last three years thinking I was pregnant, so you really can’t blame the guy for being a little skeptical.

I knew this month was different though. Partially because of the lovely invention that is the iphone. I could live without my iphone, but it would be a miserable and sad life. I don’t know how I went without it before. Anyhow, thanks to the iphone’s period tracker application (I found petals to be the best one, although period tracker works well as well) I was finally able to track my period and fertile days. See, for the last three years I spent every month convinced my period was late. You would think after three months let alone three years, some part of me would go “huh… if my period is a week late every month, maybe, just maybe I’m not doing the math right.” But then I’m not always the brightest crayon in the box.

This was month six of using my petals application to track my periods and my fertile days, and each month the application had been extremely accurate. So now instead of spending a few days before my period thinking I was pregnant, and a few days after it should have started convinced I was pregnant, I only spent the time before wondering. This month I’d been so stressed, and so sick, and so busy, I really only wondered if I was pregnant the day my period was supposed to start.

So I yet again, bought a pregnancy test, and dutifully peed on a stick. Only this time the stick said positive. My husband was still sitting on the couch looking stunned, and I’m sure still wondering if I could be mistaken. “Maybe you should take another one.” He suggested.
I am all for taking another one, and on our way to Zaxby’s we dropped by Walgreen’s and purchased another pregnancy test. We debated eating in Zaxby’s, or going home, and decided to go home so I could take the test again, and we could figure out who/when to tell, and discuss everything.

After a yummy dinner, I took the test. I think it clicked for my husband when he saw the pink lines. I smiled and said I told you so, and started to toss the test into the trash.

“You’re throwing it away?” My husband asked in a voice that made me check to make sure the pregnancy test hadn’t been replaced by a large diamond while I wasn’t looking.

“You want to keep it?” I asked skeptically.

He thought about it for a second, then reached the same conclusion I had earlier that day, “No, that’s ok.”

Again we sat on the couch at a loss for words. We discussed whether we should tell everyone now, or wait until I hit the three month marker. We both agreed that the likelihood of me keeping my mouth shut for three months was slim, so it was best to announce it now, rather than having my mother find out on face book or something. I looked up my insurance company’s coverage information for maternity costs, and we were both happy to find that it was covered 100%. Not surprising really, since I had specifically chosen that insurance company because it covered pregnancy fully, but for some reason that didn’t stop me from that one second of heart pounding “oh my gosh, what about insurance” moment.

Then we had the not as fun conversation, money. I may have made it sound like I was really trying hard to have children with all my period tracking, and fertility tracking, but the truth was our philosophy on kids was “Que Surah Surah.” We weren’t trying not to, and we weren’t trying to. We knew we could handle it financially if we had children, and both of us were happy with the idea of children, but we weren’t going to force it to happen. We had been told, by our doctors, that children weren’t a likely outcome for us, and when they started discussing fertility treatments, we both opted for letting things happen, or not happen naturally. I didn’t plan sex on my fertile days, and I didn’t take birth control. My one conceit was to take prenatal vitamins all the time, because my doctor said if we got pregnant, it was very important in the early weeks. So, on a financial/lifestyle level (beyond choosing a health insurance that covered maternity and taking special vitamins) we weren’t expecting kids, because honestly in the last three years we’d stopped really believing it would happen.

Now, with my husband in pharmacy school an hour away every day, and working at the shop on weekends, and me working a million hours a week between the shop, and the preschool, and going to classes, and our shop just barely getting by, we suddenly needed to reevaluate everything. Fortunately, this was a great time to do that! Our apartment and shop lease renewal was right around the corner, and the semester was coming to a close. We took a look at the shops finances, a real look, not the fingers crossed look we’d been giving it the last few months, and saw the sad truth. It wasn’t paying us, and it wasn’t paying for itself. In a few months, we’d be out of the shops savings, and we’d have to start working to support it.

There was no where we could cut back, we weren’t selling enough for inventory to be an issue, ditto with paints and utilities were very low thanks to almost never having people present, and having very little to fire in the kiln. Rent was possibly going up, and we were no longer bringing home a paycheck. The art teacher brought in way more income than she cost; she made commission on classes, special order pieces, camps, and parties. I had to have my other employee there on Tuesdays for at least the rest of the semester, if things didn’t improve soon, we’d have to close. Our lease was up at the end of May, we needed to give a sixty day notice if we weren’t going to renew, and it was looking very likely we would have to close.
We talked about what to do for my job. My pay at the preschool was nearly being cancelled out by having someone cover the shop while I worked. I needed to work the hours I had been hired for, and nothing else. That fun conversation would have to take place tomorrow. I didn’t need to quit though, I needed to work, just not full time.

We discussed what to do about our town house. Our lease was up at the same time as the shops. He looked into married housing, which looked gross, but his scholarship/grant/loan money would cover. It would cut back on his commute, and pretty much eliminate rent, power, water, gas, cable, and internet from our monthly bills. That was nothing to scoff at. We had a plan, it wasn’t an ideal plan, but it was a plan, and it was stable. Stability was suddenly important to us. We’d have to stay with his mom until school started, but that would give us three months of no living expenses to save for the future. We were both feeling a little depressed, so we started talking about baby names, and thinking of nursery themes, and all of that, and once we were sufficiently happy enough we decided to call our families.