We're pregnant! Husband's perspective part I- finding out we're pregnant

We have been a little busy in the last couple of months and thus our blog has been neglected, but we are back in a little bit of a swing of things, so let the blogging commence!  The past few months have seen the saying goodbye to several of our friends here in Asia, a trip back to America where I tested my feet in the graduate school pool, and oh yeah, we're pregnant.  This happened back in April, so at this point we are about halfway through the pregnancy.  I thought that this would be a great blog theme.  There are several blogs about pregnancy, books about pregnancy, movies about pregnancy, and with the exception of a terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, almost all of them are for women.  This makes sense seeing as pregnancy is largely a woman's issue.  However, I thought it would be a good idea, and I hope that I can stick to this plan, to track pregnancy from the impregnator's point of view.  (Come to think of it "The Impregnator" sounds like a Schwarzenegger movie.)  I am already behind seeing that Shelley is now 4 and a half months pregnant, so I will post several "catch up" blogs over the next couple of days to try to catch up to 4.5 months.  I will start with "the announcement."

You always see wives telling their husbands that they are pregnant on movies and they either react with extreme joy or extreme surprise followed by extreme joy.  I expected it to be like that.  Shelley would have tears of joy and I would pick her up and swing her around.  Instead, our "announcement" went something like this:

Shelley: "I took a pregnancy test and it said I might be pregnant."
Me (brushing my teeth): "Hmm."
Shelley: "Like, these lines here mean I might be pregnant."
Me: "How do you know if you are definitely pregnant?"
Shelley: "The lines are darker, but then you have to go to the doctor to find out."
Me: "Hmm." 

"Maybe pregnant" was nothing new to me.  Ever since we pulled the goalie I figured we might be pregnant because I knew the possibility was out there, so that announcement was kind of like the President giving the State of the Union, which I find to be one of the most interesting political traditions of all time.  He literally stands up there and gives a slightly optimistic view on what everyone already knows.  No one ever wakes up thinking "I wonder what America is like?" because we all know already.  And yet three branches of the government gather once a year for him to make an applause-interrupted speech about something that is no surprise to anyone. Can you imagine anyone getting the attention that this guy does for telling the state of something that everyone listening already knows about?  Just once I want the President to get up and say "The State of our Union... well we can't exactly call it a Union anymore because I sold West Virginia and Oregon to Micronesia yesterday for my own private island.  How is that for budget control House!?!?  Straight from the lower 48!  PREZ MAKIN PAPER!!!" and then walk off the stage with a microphone squeek.  That would be worthy of a State of the Union address.  All that to say that when Shelley told me she was "maybe pregnant," it was kind of like a State of the Uterus address.  Nothing I didn't already know anyway... 

...Until we were walking the dog later on that morning and she told me how disappointed she was in my reaction and how stressed she was.  I still did not understand what there was to be stressed about.  We were not trying to not get pregnant, and therefore we might have been pregnant, so... maybe pregnant.  Then she explained to me that "maybe pregnant" on a pregnancy test means that a hormone is present that would only be present if one was pregnant but not enough of the hormone to make the lines dark enough to give a green light.  Ohhhhhhh... so maybe pregnant meant she was pregnant.

This was one of the most confusing things to me.  A pregnancy test measures a hormone, and this hormone is only present if one is pregnant, and the test is only turned pink by this hormone... so why is there a maybe option?  It seems that there are 2 options, pregnant or not pregnant.  The only purposes that "maybe pregnant" can serve are the following:

1. Do Jedi mind tricks on a woman who is anxiously waiting to find out if she is pregnant
2. Make you buy more pregnancy tests
3. GET THE MAN WHO DOESN'T REACT STRONGLY ENOUGH TO "MAYBE PREGNANT" IN SERIOUS TROUBLE WITH HIS WIFE!!!

In our case, it achieved all 3 goals.  Thank you Dawei pregnancy tests.  A week later, Shelley came to me with a pregnancy test absolutely positive.  Only this time we weren't really that excited, because we already knew... maybe.

I will say at this point that this means so much more to the woman than it does to the man, and women, I beg for grace here.  Nothing changes in us at this point the way that it changes in you.  When we picture a child, we typically picture it able to run, walk, throw a ball, and ask us for money.  We don't have a picture of the 3 years and 9 months prior to that.  When we picture you pregnant... well we never picture our wives pregnant, just naked.  We don't know what pregnancy is like until you go through it for the first time.  I don't know if any of that is right or wrong, but it is what it is.  For Shelley to be pregnant was a huge deal to her, and it was a huge deal to me, but not as huge of a deal because it wasn't me who was staring down the barrel of body metamorphosis and morning sickness and different clothes and diet and labor and delivery.  I now understand that better than I did at the point that the announcement was made.  My tip to any other guys out there who is not trying not to get pregnant: make it a big deal because it is to her.  And maybe means definitely.