So yesterday's nesting post....

And a conversation with my friend Portia
made me recall my first pregnancy and my own real nesting. (as opposed to the tossing a little clutter and rearranging furniture mood I've been in lately...)

First of all, I'd had heartburn for a couple months.
Due to highly irregular cycles, it didn't even occur to me that I might be pregnant, even though we'd been hoping for a baby for about a year.

So when my doctor told me he thought I was pregnant, I laughed. And said, "I don't think so."

And he said, "Pee in this cup."
And I did. And the results were negative.
And he said, "I still think you're pregnant. Let's do a blood test."

Blood test results took two days. During that time I remember things being very blurry... nothing else but being focused on the possibility that I was pregnant.

And I was.

Carol Ann, the nurse, called me on January 22nd, 1987 at 2:14 PM and told me that I was about 5.5 or 6 weeks along.

So I called the OB. And made an appointment for a couple weeks down the road.

And when I showed up for that appointment, he told me that I was 22 weeks pregnant.

More than halfway there.


Oh. My. God.

I freaked out.

Had to get everything ready as soon as possible.

We went crib shopping the next weekend. Bought diapers and sheets and little booties and wipes and a diaper bag and this and that...

By mid-April, when my OB told me it was time to stop working, I was ready. Had my hospital bag packed. Ready, ready, ready.

I cleaned the apartment from one end to the other and had his little room all ready, although he was going to be in a cradle by my bed for the first couple months.

My friends Tammy and Diane threw a baby shower for me at my place... Tammy was pregnant too, (we were due three days apart, seeing the same doctor and had already learned that he did not give a group discount...) and it was just too overwhelming for her to have the shower at her apartment.

Besides, that way I didn't have to take all the stuff home!


About two weeks before my due date of June 10, I noticed the windows of our second floor apartment were dirty.

So I washed the insides.

Still dirty.

So I opened up the windows, perched on the sill, and leaned out over the concrete parking lot outside our little four unit building, hanging on to the frame with one hand and swiping the windows with the other. There was a wood ledge that I thought was strong enough and wide enough... okay, I didn't think at all. I was just worried about the windows.

A pregnant woman is not a rational human being.

So late one afternoon, I was washing the windows. And Eric pulled in to our little parking lot and parked his truck. I saw him down below and called out, "Hi Honey!"

He took off his cap, rubbed an arm across his forehead, put the cap back on and said, "Would you mind telling me what the fuck you're doing?"

I explained that I was washing the windows.
It didn't go over well.

The job did not get completed.

And it bothered me until we brought that little round headed baby home.

After that, it quit bothering me.

I think I've washed four or five windows in the intervening 23 years since those events... not that I've counted. Windows, I mean.