Happy Father's Day.

Don't miss the CafePress onesie and T-shirt giveaway! Still six days left to enter! (Comments are being weird, yet again. If you entered and your post isn't showing up, give it time. There are a ton more entries than Blogger is showing, and it's running on like a 24 hour delay or something.)

It has been exactly one year since we told the world about Adelyn. I can't even remember how much sooner before that we found out. It wasn't until we told our families that it seemed real, that it started to seem less terrifying and more celebratory. No amount of introspection brings that first week or weeks back to me. I just can't remember it, it was all too much. So I like to think of Adelyn's timeline beginning here, when everyone was happy.

Father's day, that I remember. I'd finally worked up the courage to tell my mom. I was going to wait, maybe until the second trimester, maybe until I'd come to terms with it myself, but I literally could not hold the words in any longer. My mom has always been my touchstone, the person whose perspective I want to hear and learn from the most. So I told her. I made her go to lunch with me on father's day, even though neither of us were hungry and we were going to eat with my dad in a matter of hours for dinner. I spilled the words out in the car. She nearly swerved into the stop sign and brought the car to a halt. This is what I was expecting--the shock, because no one had expected it, now right now, not anytime soon. But once she put the car in park--ten feet away from my house, that's all the time it took for me to summon the words--she was happy, and spoke nothing but happy words, and then in that moment I started to feel at ease about becoming a mother.

When we got back home from lunch I told my dad. And that was infinitely harder. I didn't want to tell him on father's day, but my mom promised me it would bring him happiness, too. That's the thing about fathers, though--I'm not sure if Jason and I had been married for a decade and I was in my late 30s if I would have felt much differently telling him. But I did, and once again, he was happy. He said it was the best father's day he'd ever had.

Later that day I drove to Jason's parents' house, and we told them. (Again, nothing but joy out of our fear.) They called Adelyn's great grandparents over. Happiness all around.

It wasn't until we were back at home that Adelyn truly came into being in my mind. It was no longer a pregnancy but a new life. That day created a new father, two new grandfathers, a great-grandpa, two aunts, countless other family members alive and passed on who made up this tiny heartbeat inside of my belly, and the heartbeat that is napping right now beside me.

So happy first (or is it second?) father's day, Jason, and to my dad, Jason's dad, Jason's grandfathers and my grandfather and all of the countless fathers out there who have created new life.

And for the memory I'll always hold close of father's day, the day when Adelyn stopped being just a situation but a creation, for that I will always be thankful we used this day to share the news.

Read more...

New family.

In the beginning, I really wasn't sure I could do this. I know that's a normal thing for a first time mother to think, but that doesn't change the fear in the thought.

The idea of telling my parents, and Jason's parents, felt like the worst part. I don't know why. I know I'm not 16 and that Jason and I live as adults already. Still, part of the scared 16-year-old clings to your psyche for a long time. I thought I had let them all down.

As soon as we told them (in one fell swoop--we drove straight to Jason's parents' house after telling mine), the Adelyn adventure stopped seeming like a terrifying burden and more like a blessing.

That has a lot to do with my own realization that I'm capable of being mother. That I'm 23, not 16. That Jason and I are ready. But I owe a lot of it to two families that never fail to go above and beyond what I hoped and expected of them.

I've read and heard some horror stories about in-laws, pushy mother-in-laws and nosy sister-in-laws. I just happen to have fallen in love with my fiance's family before I even fell in love with him. His sister is one of my best, best friends, and was for years before Jason and I went on our first date. I already loved her parents. I just thought her big brother was, like, totally cute.

And now that family really will be my family. I couldn't be more thankful they're the ones that I get.

Last week, my mom and I went with Jason, his mom and sister to pick out our wedding cake. We went out to eat afterward, and as soon as the first bite of food made its way into my stomach I felt Adelyn start her familiar dance. I scooted my chair over to Jason's mom, grabbing her hand and placing it on my stomach without a warning.

My mom told me later how incredibly touched she'd been to witness my bond with another mother. Because the look on her eyes when she felt Adelyn for the first time was undeniably filled with disbelief and joy and actual, honest adoration--not because of a bond forced together by logistics, but because we actually like each other. Love each other.

And the following week, Jason and I drove to their house to meet them for lunch. When I walked in the door, his usual rough-and-tumble, "let's clean the four-wheelers" dad was waiting with a glass of ice water (because he'd heard it was Adelyn's favorite), ready to feel the movement himself. And when she didn't move for him after I gulped it, he couldn't hide his disappointment. So Jason and I drove all the way back to their house that evening, because she'd started kicking again and we wanted him to feel it, too.

Read more...

Telling your boss you're pregnant

After a lot of anxiety and worry and unnecessary freak-outs and soul searching, I finally told my boss(es) that I'm pregnant.

I told the first one toward the end of my overnight shift. She's the executive producer of the morning news, so my boss during those hours although not the boss (or the decision-maker) of the entire organization. She's engaged, as well, and every now and then, between the never-ending list of things you have to do in 30 seconds or less to produce a three-hour newscast, we talk about our impending nuptials.

"So how goes the wedding planning?" I ask her, both of us still typing away, our backs to each other.

"It's good," she says. "I realized yesterday I hadn't actually picked flowers or a cake or a DJ yet, and there's only four months to go, so I scheduled all of them at once."

(Oh, the days when my wedding was my main source of worry and planning and not how I'm somehow going to manage to care for an infant that was in no way expected or scheduled.)

"Well, it must be nice to be all done," I respond.

And then, in the clumsy way I've become accustomed to telling people, I blurt it out.

"My wedding's been postponed a month, because I'm pregnant and due in February."

The typing stops, and for a moment the only sound filling the newsroom is the dozen or so police scanners all screaming about a suspect on the loose or a suspicious man in a white T-shirt and jeans roaming the streets.

She turns toward me and puts her hands on my knees.

"Congratulations, Sarah!" she says wholeheartedly. "I can't believe you've been working this shift the whole time; I can't even imagine!"

Her answer's not completely shocking or anything, but this is a woman who is always in work-mode (you really can't be any other way in this business). She's seems nice, but never exceedingly warm or compassionate.

I tell her about my fears of staying at this job, of pushing myself too hard. She tells me what I needed to hear, that my life and health are more important, that it's my right to take time off for a child.

Later, I get up the nerve to tell my other boss, the executive producer over the whole shebang. We go into her office, where I presume she thinks we're going to talk about me taking on some shows by myself as a producer.

The second the door closes, I blurt it out again, this time with arguably even less tact.

"I'm pregnant," I say.

This woman is a mother of three. When she hired me, she told me she'd worked there for eight years and had taken off two when her third was born. I worried the most about telling her, since she was the one who hired me, interviewed me, promoted me, had the authority to fire me or grant me the leave I want or deny it. But I hoped she would be understanding. She'd taken off two years, after all.

But the look on her face is nothing but pure compassion. She knows about my Crohn's and that I've been working frequent 12 hour overnight shifts.

And she tells me the same thing.

"Sarah, when it comes to this job," she says, "your personal life is always more important. When it comes to your life, screw this place."

She says I can leave whenever I want (granted I give plenty of notice). I tell her I plan to leave in November or December, and to (hopefully) come back two months or so after giving birth.

"Whatever you need," she says.

And I'm not even kidding.

From the second I saw the result on my home pregnancy test, I've been convinced the world wouldn't approve. In this age of Bristol Palin and 16 and Pregnant and Britney Spears' public parenting tactics and Judd Apatow's take on procreating and drive-through Plan B pills, being pregnant hardly feels like a good thing.

With my parents, my sister, my friends, the world, even myself, I was terrified each time I admitted it. I sweat and nearly hyperventilate each time I plan to say the words.

"I'm pregnant."

To be pregnant at my age, before I've gotten married, before I obviously planned it, feels like admitting failure. I didn't use condoms and birth control, and I easily could have, so, therefore, I failed.

But each time I've let the secret slip, I've been presently surprised. Everyone's been exceedingly supportive.

I left work that day, for the first time in ages, feeling genuinely okay about my job and what this baby might mean for my career.

I haven't told the number one guy in the office--guy being the operative word. But I don't really care. He's a man, and although he has children of his own, he's never had to push one of them out. I have female support behind me, and that's plenty. Even if he vetoes the whole thing and kicks me to the curb altogether, at least then I'll know it's just because he doesn't--and can't--understand, not because I did something wrong.

It's all gonna be just fine, I think.

Maybe even better than it would've been otherwise, if everything had gone to plan.

Read more...