Day ~35.

I'm pregnant.

Yesterday, I pressed my cheek into the cool pillow and murmured these words aloud to the quiet, pale grey walls of my room. Repeat. I'm pregnant. Whisper. I'm pregnant.

It doesn't sound real, even out loud.

When I think about green galoshes running through a splashy pumpkin field, or pajama-ed feet padding across our creaky wood floors, or sweet, sleepy breaths on my neck, I smile. I'm in calm awe.

When I wake up in the morning and remember that the test showed a plus sign within 3 seconds, and this is real, this is forever, this is my new identity ... the world seems to slip on its axis, I go breathless. I am terrified. What if I'm not good at this?

What if I don't have enough to give?

Today, for the first day, I had a few hours of feeling perfectly normal, even forgetting for long moments about what's going on inside my body, out there in my future. The last five days, I had too much acid in my stomach, needed a nap, watched my breasts swell and pushed carefully at their tenderness. Focused on eating leafy greens and avoiding my sister-in-law's suspicious, smiling squint when I refused alcohol for the third night in a row.

Nobody knows, except DTB. My period usually comes at exactly 26 days. We were together every other night, during the time I knew I could be ovulating. It was planned, and clumsy, and nervous. We skipped two nights, and I was sure this meant it didn't work, and we'd try again, and I'd have four more weeks to wrap my brain around what we'd decided to do.

One try, the first try, and suddenly the 26th day of my cycle came and went. By the 29th day, I was suspicious, but refused to believe. No way, uh uh, any minute now my period will come and I'll laugh and I'll be disappointed and relieved at once. I was so sure that it didn't work, I drank champagne on New Year's Eve.

I shoved a pregnancy test into my shopping basket along with a lemon and a gallon of milk. I hid the pregnancy test behind the mirror in the bathroom so that DTB wouldn't see it and get giddy and insist that I pee on the stick. I zested the lemon, and made my grandmother's Cinnamon Crackle Cookies, and watched "The Biggest Loser" - a reality show about two families competing to lose weight. I refused to think about it. It's all I thought about.

In the dimly lit morning, before the alarm went off, I woke up and needed to pee. I could pee on the stick. I could wake him up, snuggled into his back, and whisper, "Good morning, daddy." No way no way no way ... I peed in the bowl, and went back to bed, and tried to sleep.

Then it was the 30th day. DTB came home from work, he couldn't stop smiling in my direction. "What?" I'd say. "What?" he'd say, grinning. He asked if he should go to the store. I said I had the test already, and I said no, I didn't want to take it. He cajoled, and I refused, he pulled on my hands, and I crossed them under my armpits, knowing I was buying just minutes, not a reversal. I made him swear he would remember me, the before me. I made him swear he understood how much he'd need to be there for me. He took our picture. The last picture of us, from before. He said I looked terrified, and took another one.

So I went and I peed on the stick and before I could even look away I could see the blue lines rushing into the round window, and I saw that they were perpendicular, they made a plus sign, and I looked away, and walked into the dining room and told him that he had to go look. That we were supposed to wait two minutes, but that I was pretty sure, and he had to be the one to really look.

I took photos of him reading the EPT instruction sheet. We took a photo of us, together, holding the stick between us, grinning. We laughed, and looked at each other shyly, and had no idea what to do. So we ate Indian food (bad idea for me ... no curries for awhile ...) and watched The Aviator and fell asleep. I didn't sleep much.

We went to the grocery store yesterday, and I looked at the rows of prenatal vitamins and I prayed no one from work would walk by and I wanted to wail. DTB asked if I was allowed to eat the brussel sprouts I was putting into the cart, and I wanted to shove him. I don't have the manual, I have no idea what's right, and this is just the first of the rest of my lifetime of not being totally sure, but needing to get it done anyway.

So I'm keeping this blog, so that I can write it out. Writing it out has always helped. It puts it into shapes on paper, letters into words into sentences into something that makes sense.

I read that the heart might be pumping by now, only as big as a poppy seed.