And baby makes three...

Sorry this is all scrunched together. This blogger is a POS. But bear with me.

I'd first like to address the issue of when I will begin posting pics of my ever expanding belly. The short answer to that is not anytime soon. The reason for this is simple: I am a big girl, I always have been, and at this point I have very few qualms with that. However, as many big girls do, I have a tummy, and not a flat one at that. In the past year that tummy's gotten relatively smaller; however, it's still there. Now, at this point in my pregnancy I have begun to "show" in the sense that I am gaining weight, which in turn is emphasising that tummy and those rolls that I have worked so hard to get rid of. Now, until I start showing enough that those rolls start to smoothe out, no one is seeing my belly. You can tell a little bit in the picture below that I'm starting to stick out a bit more than I have in a while. If I can keep taking clothed pictures of my belly that make me look relatively cute, then you will continue to see them, however, I can't wait until I actually look pregnant, then I'll be taking pictures galore.

However, I will be glad to share some fun pictures of me and Daddy. We're always only by ourselves so we can't often take pics of the two of us, unless of course they are arms length, as with the following two.

Yes, I know, we're adorable.

Next, I'd like to continue with the story of my "condition", and by "condition" I mean pregnancy.

We arrived in Grundy, Virginia on August 12, and I started school. Almost immediately upon his arrival, we reconviened our... um... "relationship"... if you know what I mean. Now, ever since we met practically we've talked about chillins. I honestly had hoped to be pregnant when I came back from the Emerald Isle. But that was not to be. Actually I started thinking that there was something wrong with one of us, considering the quanitity of relations we shared, and the complete lack of caution, and still nothing. So when he got here we didn't really think much of it. We did discuss the pill a time or two, but decided against that. We figured, if it happened we wouldn't be upset by it. And oh did it happen...

We went about our lives like normal people do. In the two weeks that followed his arrival, we had a bit of a rough time adapting and making sure we had done the right thing. We had a run in with a tennis court that led to a major fight, which then led into my questions about the last two weeks he was in Ireland, and his complete disclosure of the events. That was a hard night. At that point I was already pregnant, so had our fight been bad enough for him to leave, I would have been screwed. Thank the Lord baby Jesus, we were able to work through that, and life went on as normal.

Now, let me know if this is TMI for any of you, but I was supposed to be visited by Aunt Flow on August 28. On September 6th, I thought to myself "hmmm, I wonder what that's all about...", so I told my lover and we braced ourselves. I bought two pregnancy tests, and took one on September 6th, which was a Tuesday. I was actually super excited about it. And then it came out negative. And I felt defeated.

I tried not thinking about it, but it still made me wonder why I was late, and so I stopped all the medication I was taking and continued to cut back on Caffeine and all that wonderful stuff, and thought to myself "Ok, if I'm still late by Sunday, I'll take another test". Yeah, try going five days thinking about that. It's a lot of fun. Sunday rolls around, and it's around 5:30 in the morning and I feel the roomate slip out of bed beside me and I think "Well, I'm awake and it's Sunday. Shall we see what the ol' first response has to say?" I climed out of bed and headed for the bathroom. A 20 foot trip that would alter my life forever. I did the whole peeing on the stick thing, set it on the sink, and waited. There was the dark pink line that shows up on all tests, and then right beside it, there was a faint pink line, which made it a double pink line, which meant positive. So I ran into Darko and said "How many lines are here" and he said "I don't know, one... " and I was like "No, no... THERE'S TWO!!!!". And he just looked at me and said "What does that mean", and I just smiled, and he got the picture.

It was a little early to call my mother so I had to wait a few hours, but the second I could I called mom. I know you're supposed to wait and all, but how can I keep that from my mother. I went to the doctor that week, you know, just to make sure and all, and for those of you who don't know how they determine how far along you are, they count by the first day of your last period, which for me was July 29th. And then they count two weeks from that to determine when you're conception date was. So, by the time you know you're pregnant because of the whole aunt flow thing, you're already a month pregnant. And when you concieve you are already two weeks pregnant. It's weird, I know, but that's how they do it. So my conception date was August 12th. Darko arrived on August 10... yeah, we didn't waste much time, which means those two weeks prior to his arrival when I was close to a nervous breakdown, I was "pregnant". Unbelievable. When I went to the doctors they told me I was 5 weeks along. And now I'm 12 weeks, and happier than ever.

Now, I'm going to rant about American healthcare for a minute. So, on most healthcare plans you have to be on the plan for six months to a year before you can get pregnant. If you get pregnant before that, they refuse to pay for ANYTHING. NOTHING. So, while I was in Ireland I wasn't on any American healthcare plan. I got back at the end of May and immediately got health insurance. You do the math. At the end of August when I found out I was pregnant I had only been on health insurance for four months. That's right. I would not be insured for my pregnancy. That was a stressful period. We're fine now, and all insured and what not, but it was no easy feat. But what bothers me most about the whole situation is that a lot of women don't know about that whole waiting period thing. I mean, my mother didn't even know about it. She had more of an idea about it than I did, but she didn't know all the details. It just doesn't make sense to me. What if you aren't planning on getting pregnant and it just happens. Are you supposed to have an abortion because you're health isurance won't cover it. It really makes me angry. But Darko and Mom were so good about the whole situation. I kept thinking "We're going to have to go to Europe where I can get free healthcare", but my mom kept saying "Honey, we'll just make payments on it if we have to" and Darko kept saying "We'll pay for it somehow". They were both very supportive of the whole thing, and that made the situation much better. But everything is fine now.

After the inital doctor's visit, I went three weeks later, when I was 8 weeks, at which I got to pee in a cup, got probed and prodded, and stuck, and all that other fun stuff that goes along with an OBGYN visit. Yeah, that was nice, and everything was moving along as planned. I have my next visit on Thursday. I can't wait till I'm 20 weeks and we can find out the sex. I'm super excited about that.

So, that's it for now. Next time, the United States Government and Immigration nightmares.