If we build it, they will come

Almost two years ago I remember staring at the positive pregnancy test as I sat in the bathroom stall at the Petco down the street - I was in utter disbelief.

When Berilac and I first got married we talked about waiting 3-5 years before starting a family. I was 24 when we got married; I thought having babies between the ages of 27-29 is perfect!

For our third wedding anniversary we drove to Mendocino and B&B'd there for a beautiful weekend. There's not much to do in Mendocino, so we spent hours brunching and meandering from quaint shop to boutique - it was a special time. One morning during our adventures we walked past a froo-froo baby shop and I gently nudged Berilac in. We ooh'ed and ahh'ed over the cute little onesies (ok, I was making most of the sounds) and we found an adorable lacey, French, overpriced onesie for our future baby girl. We spent some ridiculous amount of money on something similar in size to a pair of socks. I was so excited. I started to think about the cute little pictures of me from my toddler years, with my fine wispy blond hair rolled up tight into those old pink rag curlers (remember those?) as I stood by the Christmas tree smiling ... I could totally imagine what our daughter would look like, she'd be adorable.

It was around that time that I stopped taking birth control pills and starting charting to avoid. I wanted to make sure my cycles got back to normal before we started trying. For the next year Berilac and I discussed charting to achieve and kept deciding the timing was still not right. But ultimately it was up to me - as I was well aware of my cycles and I could have lied to him (telling him we could have unprotected sex because we were in a safe time of the month) but he was not completely comfortable with really trying and I didn't have the guts (or the deceit) to make myself open to conception.

At year four we decided to not, not try ... though let's be honest for any woman who has been charting for more than three months - you have an idea of how your body works. I would know if we were having sex in the fertile window ... and for a year, we never did. I made sure of this. Berilac and I were going through too much at the time. (We were living and working with 100 miles between the two and on the weekends we were doing a head-to-toe remodel of our home, DIY-style.)

Enter my experience at Petco two years ago.

A few weeks prior to this event Berilac and I had "risky" sex. I figured if some women can struggle for years to get pregnant then we can have one month of "risky" sex without getting pregnant. Our first month of sex within the fertile window and we got pregnant. If I hadn't been so mad for getting knocked up days before I started a new job, I might have appreciated this miracle that so many women would have longed for. But no, I cried.

After I wiped away a few tears, I headed back to the Walgreen’s to get a couple more pregnancy tests, the kind that read "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant" ... I don't need to decipher these crazy lines in my potentially fragile state. And this time I'll get more than one, just to confirm and reconfirm ... again. This time though I decided not to pee on a stick back in the Petco or a random gas station (I was running errands at the time I learned that I was pregnant - heck one of my errands was to pick up a pregnancy test because my period hadn't come) so I decided to knock out two errands at one stop. I headed to Barnes and Nobles and made a bee line straight for the bathrooms. There in that stall it was confirmed - I could buy "What to expect when you're expecting" and a "Baby Names" book as a gift for Berilac. I found the appropriate books and raced home to wrap them up along with a cute card and that dainty little onesie we bought years prior up in Mendocino. The gift bag was perfect and the wording in the card so cute and clever, hinting to Berilac that he was going to be a daddy soon.

During the next three pregnancies there were some times when people loaned me a "Your baby week by week" picture book or in one case I got a gift of a pregnancy journal (that I actually used with the hopes that this time things will be different). I had so much faith before we had our first miscarriage. I was actually worried about not being ready for a baby. After my first miscarriage it was my goal to 'have faith' rather than lose hope and think the worst. But it was with these few items that my future planning stopped. Since buying these few items: the onesie, the books ... I haven't purchased anything else for our future child(ren). In fact, I have made a point not to.

It's not that I don't have hope that it'll happen one day, it's more about not torturing myself with all of the paraphernalia lying around. Sometimes it can be overwhelming just to see car seats, baby strollers, and pregnant bellies - now imagine if I had those types of reminders falling out of my storage closets ... no thank you!

So I've been avoiding the baby stuff. And you can probably extend that to include I avoid not only having that stuff in my house, I avoid that stuff at other people's houses, and definitely at department stores!

Then, guess what I noticed right down the street from the fateful Petco just a few days ago? There's a Babies 'R Us going in just minutes away from our house. They are in the middle of constructing this monstrosity. In the last place we lived Babies 'R Us was 2 hours away. At first, I considered this just another slap in the face (another place that easily makes me feel uncomfortable) ... but then I started realizing how convenient it will be to register for my baby registry in a few short months with a store so close by.

I'm starting to think "if they build it, we will come" ... now I'm not saying I can go out and buy a boppy or a baby jumper - one mental step at a time, ok?