Grandma's are Great

I spoke with my Grandma Elaine a couple days ago and she has read my two posts via e-mail from my Aunt Vickie and she is so excited that I'm writing about our little journey. So many people keep this process a big secret, which I can totally understand (Aubrey and I originally were just going to surprise everyone by telling them we were pregnant when it happened), but it's so not me. Glad to hear that I'll be entertaining the grandparents with stories of sex, puking, getting fat, hormones, a morphing stomach tattoo, and ultimately squeezing a baby out of my coochie. Grandma said that back in her day there was no talk of ovulation. She claims that she was fertile from the day after her period ended 'til the day it started. With five kids all about 1-2 years apart, it makes me doubt the validity of the ovulation window. Her response to finding out she was late was, "Oh Shit." That made me laugh, but didn't surprise me at all. Grandpa said that they had so many kids because he was so horny. That also made me laugh, but also didn't surprise me. How does that famous quote of Grandpa's go..."The better part of your father ran down your grandma's leg."

Goals until ovulation

Apparently there are really only a few days that it is possible to get pregnant. When I exclaimed "Really?" to my doctor when she told me this information, she responded, "Yeah it's kind of crazy considering how many unwanted pregnancies there are and how hard it is to get pregnant." So I guess when Kellie asked me if I knew when I was going to be ovulating and I told her that we were just planning on having a lot of sex (which may be hard since Aubrey has vowed to never have sex me again now that I'm susceptible to pregnancy), she actually had a very valid point. Aubrey's and my plan is to have a late fall birth so that the Little F*#@er (that's the kid's nickname, I'll explain in a different post) is old enough to handle camping out in the pop-up for all of Aubrey's races. We'd both prefer a spring baby, but considering Aubrey feels that his life will be over once the child comes, we need to work a bit with his race schedule. My rough calculations put me around day 20 of my cycle and the doc confirmed that I will not be able to get pregnant until next month. In response to my first question about pregnancy, "Will I be able to have a glass of wine or two?" my doc advised that I should hold off until at least after the first trimester and then a bit here and there will be okay.

With that information in hand, I have come up with a goal for the next 3 weeks:

Drink, a lot.

(oh yeah, and take prenatal vitamins)

"Nice knowing you."

Well, folks, Aubrey and I have decided that it's time to start makin' babies. Some of you already knew this and some of you have just shit your pants. With Aubrey getting old, the potential to have a cute kid (have you seen our baby pictures? Adorable!), the pressure to provide Lucy with a cousin, and the fact that we never get to have people over to our house because they all have little rugrats that need to be in bed by 7 have all played a role in our decision to start a family. So there's a few more serious reasons too, but whatever. This time we want to add a member that does not walk on all fours. (Aubrey may wish that he would have just let me get another dog.) We have decided that we're going to make our journey into parenthood a blog for all to read. How the idea came about is like this:

On January 20th I went to my doctor to have my IUD removed. (Note: this procedure was about 100% less painful than having it inserted.) When I got back into the car I texted Aubrey, "Let the baby making begin!" Aubrey responded, "Nice knowing you." At that moment I knew that I wanted to journal this experience. That exchange is something I never want to forget and I assume there will be a lot of new experiences with my body and things that we're thinking that will be interesting to look back on. I told Lisa that I wanted to journal this little adventure and she suggested that I blog it. I had a bit of apprehension about blogging it because I want to be really candid. Then I remembered that most of you that know me well enough, know that I don't have a problem speaking openly. My private journal is now for all to read. This will not be "G" rated. My plan is to be both honest and entertaining as I take you through our journey into parenthood. I really hope that we know what we're getting ourselves into.