And Then There Were Four

Uh oh.

I looked down and saw a completely full cup of coffee on my desk. It was 11:00am and I was usually on my second. My stomach sank as the first thing that popped into my head was a little voice, “Ummm, that’s what happened when you were pregnant with Winnie….”. I shook it off and blamed the coffee aversion on the killer allergy attack I was enduring.  Later that night, we ordered Chinese food from the best place in town. I’d been thinking about it all day and couldn’t wait to dive in.  I took one bite and almost spit it out — it tasted unbelievably salty. “Girl, stop”, that little voice said (is anyone else’s inner voice a little condescending?) “This is another sign.” I refused to entertain the thought. Winnie was 5 months old, this could not really be happening. When, in all reality, it very well could have been happening. I expressed my musings to Will and he gave me a look, a look that said “I think you’re pregnant.” No. No, no, no. I came up with a million other reasons for the things happening to my body. Maybe it’s because I just stopped breastfeeding and my hormones are leveling out. Maybe I’m getting my period back and my body forgot what that was like. Maybe it’s the allergies.

Or,

maybe I was growing ANOTHER tiny human. We decided to wait a week to take a test, partly waiting for my body to get it together and partly out of sheer terror.

On February 1, 2019 at 4:00am Winnie woke up to eat and Will went to grab her. It was as good a time as any to take the test. Will came in with the baby and waited the longest 3 minutes ever with me. I took the digital test because I didn’t want any of the “faint line, maybe baby” bull crap going on. Every thirty seconds, I leaned over to see a blinking clock, taunting me. “I can’t look anymore!!” I shouted with impatient frustration. Will leaned over, closed his eyes, and clutched Winnie. For a second, I thought he saw a “-No” and was relieved. Then, I saw the tear roll down his cheek. I lunged for the test and saw a big, clear “+Yes” starring me right in the face. My hand slammed into my mouth in disbelief. Will and I just looked at each other for a good 2 minutes. I crumbled to the floor.

This was such a different feeling than when we found out we were pregnant with Winnie. This was several feelings. We were confused, shocked, scared, overwhelmed, and a little distraught. I burst into tears as a wave of guilt rushed over me. I just found out another life is inside of me, shouldn’t I be excited? After all we went through to get pregnant with Winnie, shouldn’t I be grateful to not have to go through that again? People I know are fighting with everything they have to get pregnant, shouldn’t I be happy? I should have been, but I wasn’t. I was terrified, selfishly terrified. I had JUST done this, I was just getting my body back, we were just getting into our groove as a family, how could we possibly do this? TWO INFANTS??

The negative thoughts spiraled as I lay in a ball of tears on the floor. How were we going to afford this? We couldn’t possibly pay for two kids in daycare. What will my body be like after two babies in two years? I had just started seriously working out again. How could I handle this? For some reason, the idea of two infants and a full time job seemed impossible.Will this negatively affect Winifred? She has barely had time with us to herself! I told myself to take a breath, women do this EVERYDAY. I’m not the first person in the world in this scenario. Everything seems overwhelming at 4 in the morning with lack of sleep.

(Note to self: stop taking the freaking pregnancy tests so freaking early!)

As my mind came to a pause, I realized that Will hadn’t said anything in about 15 minutes. I looked up to see him clutching Winifred, tears rolling down his face. “Why are YOU crying?” I asked. “Babe,” He breathed, “we’re never going to sleep ever again”. I couldn’t help it, a giggle busted from my belly. He was absolutely right. For the foreseeable future, it looked like the “Sleep-Deprived-Zombie-Parent” was going to be our signature look.

Will joined in the hysteria and the laughing continued as we stared at our perfect baby in his arms. This was ridiculous. How was this real life? Even in all the confusion two of those babies didn’t seem so bad. We were surviving with one, why not just add one more to the circus?? We already had allllllll the baby things still out (shout out to our procrastination in packing things up). The nursery was already gender neutral, so even if it was a boy we were covered! We decided not to freak out just yet. We crawled into bed with Winifred and soaked in the morning snuggles before Will went to work.

The rest of the day was a mix of tears, laughter, and “OMG” texts as we came to accept what our future looked like. I felt guilty for not being as excited as I was for Winifred. I couldn’t take that moment back, it was real and raw and true. In the weeks following, the excitement grew. We became so thrilled for Winifred to be a big sister. Picturing the complete mess of love our life was about to become was so much fun!

Now, we could not picture our life without the little toy soldier in my belly. We found out the gender and can’t wait to bring another Baby GIRL Lou into the world.

Was this our plan? Absolutely not. But, you know what they say. “Make a plan and God laughs”. Well, Big Guy, I’m hoping you got a real kick out of this one!