A Very Suprise Birthday Present

My birthday is on March 12, and this week I got a very surprise early birthday gift--I found out I'm pregnant!
On Monday night I had a dream that I was pregnant and it freaked me out, so Tuesday morning as I was getting dressed and ready to student teach, I took a pregnancy test. The test was an old store-brand one that I kept around in case of situations like this, and consequently I couldn't read it very well. The possibility of being pregnant stuck with me the whole day, and after school was out I went to Walgreen's and bought one of those super high-tech digital read out tests, telling myself it would of course be negative. I went home, took the test, and three minutes later looked down and saw it:
pregnant

I'm not going to lie, I flipped out, and not in a good way. My husband Aaron and I have always planned on having children, but we were planning on starting a family when we were around 28 and more financially stable, and after it had been just the two of us for a while. I called my older sister and left her a message saying I needed to talk and then tried to decide whether or not to go to my seminar class that evening. I decided that I really was not in a place where I could sit through the class, though I still went to turn in that day's assignment: a one-page personal teaching philosophy. I handed in my assignment and told my professor/supervisor that some family issues had come up and that I needed to leave. Then I went home and waited for Aaron to arrive from work.
As I was waiting my sister Miranda (who is 27 and teaches kindergarten) called back and said she had a half hour break from parent-teacher conferences and asked what I needed to talk to her about. I hated to spring this on her in the middle of such a grueling evening (p-t conferences are kind of crazy) but I really had to talk to someone, so I told her, "I think I'm pregnant." She told me the first thing I needed to do was go to the doctor to make sure and I told her I already had, and had an appointment at 3:15 the next day. She offered to go with me, but I told her that wouldn't be necessary. That night I also called my mom, she was happy for me, but also worried because of what a wreck I was.
Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon with Aaron and I sitting in the doctor's office, waiting for the test results--even though I think we both knew what they would be. Sure enough, the doctor confirmed I'm pregnant, gave me a prescription for pre-natal vitamins and told me good luck. That day we told Aaron's parents, grandparents and sister, who are all ecstatic, and on Thursday we told Aaron's brothers and significant others who are also all excited and supportive of course--we already have offers to babysit, haha.

Even though I was more or less a wreck when I first found out, it was something Aaron's mom (my mother-in-law) Rhonda said as she and Todd (my father-in-law) were leaving our apartment on Wednesday night that made me really start to feel happy about everything. She said, "Well, goodbye you two. Actually it's three of you now!"

I like that thought. That it's now Aaron, me and and the little one makes three.

So, even though this isn't what we planned, that's life, and I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, I'm just excited to meet our little boy or girl and find out what that reason turns out to be.


Background Information:



I have been married to my husband Aaron since October 10, 2009--we had a crazy awesome wedding and we are definitely each others best friend. We have been dating/together since fall of 2005. Currently I am finishing my degrees in Secondary Education and English and Aaron is finishing his degrees in History and Broadcast Journalism. We will both graduate this May and try to find jobs in our respective fields. This semester I am student teaching at a local high school and I absolutely love it. My students are great kids who always make me laugh and I have a really supportive Cooperating Teacher (CT) who gives me the freedom to experiment while still guiding me through what I need to improve on (which is a lot, haha). I also have a really great group of fellow student teachers and a supervisor who give me fantastic support.
I decided to do this blog for a few reasons:

• I have always loved writing and have kept a journal for the past 4 years in a trusty composition notebook. I find that writing helps me to discover and better articulate what I am feeling and often it is through writing that I am able to see connections and reach understandings.
• Student Teaching is an intense and very time consuming experience. I still have 8 weeks until I graduate, and I wonder how this new news of being pregnant will impact my experience. Am I going to be able to handle both at the same time? What happens if I get morning sickness while I'm teaching? Am I going to start to show before I graduate? How do I balance the roles of mother and teacher--these are roles I knew I would have to balance one day, I just didn't think it would be so soon.
• I want to record my experiences wading through the world of all the changes pregnancy brings combined with the other changes going on in my life: graduating, finding a job, *hopefully* starting my first year of teaching. These are all big steps, and to have them rolled into one year is pretty crazy.

So, let's do this! Just color me a mommy!