Period Three Or A Big Fat Positive (BFP)?

Welcome back to my journey through the uncharted territory of my first pregnancy! In last week’s post, “The Start of the Shortest Ride,” I shared some great information that I learned at my pre-conception doctor visit. In today’s post, I look at some eye-opening revelations I had during my trip back to Lagos and the one-of-a-kind anticipation that comes from waiting and hoping for a Big Fat Positive!

Touching down in Lagos is always hard for me. While it is the place where I grew up, each landing means that I’m far away from my heart and the life I’ve become used to. On the positive side, it also means that I get to see my parents, and this trip was extra special because I would also be able to see my sister who was in town and her two adorable kids. But there was a lot to be done before all the fun began.

Getting into my fitness routine

Each time I travel, my first course of action is to get my fitness regimen together, and for some reason I thought that it would be no different once I got pregnant. The truth is, at this point I technically shouldn’t have known whether I was pregnant or not, but I was tracking symptoms and they were all pointing me in the direction of a Big Fat Positive (BFP).

I was exhausted, emotional, and surprisingly crampy. I never have cramps outside of my period, so that threw me for a loop. The way I was feeling had me thinking about changing up my routine just in case. At this point, I was still doing HIIT, a primarily inversion/arm balance-focused yoga practice, and I was even toying around with CrossFit-style workouts. But I was feeling more sore than normal, and the exhaustion was like no other, so I decided to modify my training regimen.

EJ on her yoga mat *Photo by Opeyemi Photographic Art

My new program focused on gentle yoga and walking 13,000 steps a day. I won’t lie: I was a bit worried that I would gain weight if I did this, but I was keeping track of my eating and I knew where my weight and measurements stood before I left home, so there was no point in worrying about nothing. My rationale was that if I turned out not to be pregnant, I would simply go back to my usual training program.

Counting down to period three

Along with doing my modified fitness routine, I was also paying attention to any and all indications that I was (or was not) pregnant. The key symptom of pregnancy is a missed period, but I wasn’t letting the fact that my period start date wasn’t close keep me from wondering if I might be pregnant. I was feeling different, but all the signs that I was seeing also could have been signs of PMS. So all I could really do was wait. But while I was waiting, I was acting crazier than usual:

• I was checking every chance I got to see if Aunt Flow had showed. Who knows, maybe this time she’d come early . . .
• I almost got caught in the office bathroom talking to my “maybe baby.”
• I began treating my desire to have a baby like a career goal.

I didn’t like that last point one bit, and I had to pause and sit with my journal to check in with myself to see how I was really feeling. I felt like I was stringing myself along with expectations and I needed to stop. Then I realized that I didn’t want it to stop – I didn’t want it to be over, I wanted it all! This is not to say that I wanted to be in anticipation mode forever, but I wanted to experience everything:

• the bliss, the expectation, and the anticipation of conceiving or trying to conceive . . .
• the uncertainty, the joy, the discomfort, the awe, and the whole experience of the Big Fat Positive and being pregnant . . .
• the pain, the joy, and the miracle of arrival on the baby’s birth . . .
• the joy, the sleepless nights, the snot, the laughs, the cuddles, and everything else that comes with being a parent.

It bears repeating: I wanted to experience everything. I didn’t want to be done with the expectation – I wanted to experience it, along with whatever outcome the next few days or weeks had in store. As I journaled, I made a promise to myself to experience the heck out of all of it.

Armed with this new resolve, I waited for the first day of my next menstrual period. When the date of my third period finally arrived, nothing showed, and it became a different kind of countdown.

Hoping for a BFP

I needed to shake things loose while I waited, so I decided to have some fun with one of my soul sisters to keep myself from succumbing to the “wanting to be pregnant” fever. Half of the Yellow Sun was showing at Silverbird Galleria, and we decided to make it a movie-and-lunch kind of Sunday. The movie was so good – I cried in certain parts – and lunch was even better.

Though I had planned to wait until I got back to the states to test, my soul sister and I agreed that, for the sake of my sanity, it would be better not to wait. She drove me to the Palms and we got me a two-pack of Clear Blue. Later that evening, while video chatting with the hubs, I made an elaborate plan to test with first morning urine at 3:00 a.m. so that he could share in the moment. But after talking it through, I said, “What the hell – you are here, I’m here, let’s do this.” And I peed on the stick.

Getting the results

At 9:00 p.m. on August 3, 2014, while chatting with my husband on Google Talk, I got my Big Fat Positive! I couldn’t stop smiling as I emailed him a picture of the test. We both thought it would take us so much longer to get to this point, but it turned out to be a short eight-week ride from the time we first started trying until the first day of my last period. Now the real fun was about to start.

Be sure to check back next week for part 4, “Making Decisions and Facing Fears,” in which I enter the next phase of pregnancy . . . and the real-world challenges that go along with it.

Part 1:  Getting Ready For Baby | Part 2: A Baby Story: The Start Of The Shortest Ride