Cat's Out of the Bag - Natasha

My daughter (and fourth child) celebrated her third birthday in February. By that time I had been feeling nauseous and not quite myself for a week, and strongly suspected that I was pregnant. We had miscarried just before Christmas, our second miscarriage, and in both cases there was no morning sickness (as there had been with each of my other pregnancies). So I took this as a good sign! Still I felt the need to proceed with caution, in case this wasn’t what I thought it was. I can become obsessed with taking pregnancy tests and searching for symptoms when I think I’m pregnant, and as we had just recently had a miscarriage both my husband and I felt it best to just take things one day at a time, and wait for some more concrete signals from my body, rather than place all of our hopes on a small coincidence (maybe it was just a stomach bug?) and be disappointed.

The following week my husband was scheduled for day surgery. We dropped the kids off at the babysitters and spent the day at the hospital. His surgery was an hour and a half, plus recovery time, and he asked if I would run to the drug store to pick up a few things for when we brought him home. “In that case, I will probably pick up a pregnancy test,” I told him. So I did. And right there, in the hospital bathroom, while my husband was under the knife, I found I had some good news to share with him when he woke up!

That evening was pretty crazy. I can’t remember when exactly I told him, though I think it was on the drive home. He was in a lot of pain, and it took a long time before he was even well enough to leave the hospital (every time he tried to stand, he almost passed out from the pain). When we finally had him loaded into the van, it was supper time. By the time we got home, he was having some complications. I couldn’t get the kids right away because I couldn’t leave him alone, and when I called Telecare to ask about what was happening to him they advised us to go back in. It was almost 7:00 pm at this time, so I went to get my kids (who were thankfully only ten minutes away), called my husband’s parents and asked if they would come sit with the kids while I took my husband back to the hospital. They arrived at the house shortly after I did, and thankfully his condition improved and we didn’t need to go in. Things were crazy!

That night my husband was up every hour to use the washroom, and was in so much pain that he needed me to help him in and out of the bed every time. I smiled as I remembered that this was exactly what it felt like to have a newborn in the house. Except my husband is much easier on me, because he lets me get right back to sleep! I was quite nauseous that evening, which was probably made worse by the lack of sleep. And so it was that I spent the evening of the discovery of my eighth pregnancy nursing my first baby back to health. 

The next few days of recovery were difficult for my husband, but once he finally started to feel better he asked, “So how long are we going to wait before we start telling people?” This is the first time ever that I have not been working (or on a maternity leave, preparing to go back to work). It is the first time we have not been responsible to a third party, an employer. We conceived while I was on maternity leave with my first child and I called my employer as soon as I found out, only to have the pregnancy end in miscarriage. After that experience, I always waited until the second trimester to officially spread the word – not because I wanted to keep it from friends and family, but social networking being what it is, I didn’t want word to get back to my employer before I had a chance to tell them when I was safely into my 14th week.

After our second miscarriage just prior to this pregnancy, this new baby came as joyful news to the both of us. “Why wait?” I said to him. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops! And this time, I felt like I could. For the first time ever, our kids were the first people we told. The younger ones are obviously oblivious, but the bigger ones (our oldest will be eight next month) are at an age where they get really excited about it. As a child, I can remember begging my mother constantly for another brother or sister (I have one brother who is three years younger than me) so it is a particular joy for me to share this with my kids. They helped us spread the happy news to both of our families, and for the first time in a long time the most blessed event of parenthood didn’t seem like a big bad secret that needed to be kept until we were certain that everything was going to be okay. We’re having another baby! And we couldn’t be happier.