This post is going to be a bit personal.  As in, more personal than I usually go.  I’m not sure whether it’s the hideous lack of sleep or the underlying events that are making me this chatty.  Either way, this is what I feel like writing about so that’s going to have to be good enough for now.

When I decided to blog about trying to get pregnant, I was worried that my blog would lose interest for anyone who’s not interested in kids and the making and raising of them.  I fretted about alienating some of the people who turn to me for their daily nonsense.  I love (the way only a blogger can love) everyone who hangs out with me here, and the last thing I want to do is change the blog to the point where some people forget why they started reading.

But.  I am trying to have a kid.  The process is relatively simple, but it’s going a lot less smoothly than I was anticipating and it’s this very topic I feel like writing about today.  I imagine that if I ever do manage to get pregnant, pregnancy and babies will forthwith become a popular topic around here.  Essentially, this will become a mom blog, albeit a mom blog with my perspective and penchant for sass.

However, long before this can become a mom blog, it’s got to get past what I’ve decided to call Operation Firstborn.  The operation hit a few snags this week.  As of yesterday, I was officially three days late if you took last month’s timing into perspective (which, why wouldn’t you?).  I was starting to suspect that Something Was Up.  I bought pregnancy tests and made plans to test this morning.

The problem was, I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited and nervous.  Excited because I could be getting a positive test result, and nervous because I had no idea what was going on if the result was negative.  I laid awake from 2 AM until 3 AM before deciding to just take the stupid test already and stop trying to force myself back to sleep.  I rationalized that a negative result at 3 AM would at least have the cushioning of fatigue to mask the disappointment.

A negative test result sucks just as much at 3 AM as it does any other time of the day.

I went back to bed, thinking purely in terms of expletives.  Mostly I was just scared because, if nothing was happening and I wasn’t pregnant, it could possibly mean that something was wrong with me.  My least favorite thought in the world is that something might be wrong with me, and the dark hours between 3 AM and 6 AM played those insecurities like a fiddle.  My mind cruelly ran through every woman I know personally who’s gotten pregnant while on the pill, then compared me to them and wondered why I couldn’t get pregnant when I was making it as easy as possible to do so.

I ended up falling asleep praying that things would get moving again if I wasn’t pregnant (weird prayer, I know, but if things getting going on their own meant that I was healthy and nothing was wrong, then it seemed a perfect prayer at the time) and when I woke up I was pleased to find that I was healthy and everything was going again just like it was supposed to.

A lot of information, I know.  When you’re running off an emotional breakdown hangover and three hours of sleep, the line of propriety shifts ever so slightly.  When you’re a blogger, writing about something so personal as pregnancy or raising children or even just trying to make children, it’s very difficult to properly tell the story without sharing a lot of information.

Operation Firstborn is still in full swing, though Wes and I are getting decidedly more relaxed about the whole thing as we go along.  Maybe March will be the month, maybe April, maybe even May.  I have no idea.  The lesson that getting pregnant is not the kind of thing you can plan is getting hammered into my skull more every day.

My hope is that if I ever do get pregnant, my joy would be magnified that much greater by the sorrows I overcame in getting there.  At least I have my health.  And my incredible husband who hugs me when I’m crying at 6 AM and doesn’t even seem grumpy about it.  And my puppy, who licks my face more if I’m crying and will even knock over my water glass for me if he thinks it’ll help.  For now, that’s more than enough for me.

This whole trying-to-get-pregnant thing has been a classic Erikan comedy of errors. At first, I was going to be coy about the whole thing. I was going to wait until I was out of the first trimester to break the news that Wes and I were expecting.

Ha.

That resolve lasted all of two seconds before I cracked from excitement and wrote in this post about how I hope Wes and I will be able to expand our family this year (and I didn’t mean with a hamster).

Once that cat was out of the bag, it was all over and before I knew it I was Twittering about feeling nauseous (not because of baby, but because of nasty pre-natal vitamins) and lamenting that those “Test 5 days early!” pregnancy tests are a waste of money but so. very. tempting.

It would appear that I lack the strength of will, or self-restraint if you will, to be coy about this whole process. Not like this lady. I don’t know how she managed to wait so long to tell the Internets but she is way more self-controlled than I am.

So, in the spirit of all the not-coy going on around here, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned so far during this whole phase of hopefully expanding our family (and my waistline):

• I am unbearably impatient. I am incapable of waiting (with grace, anyway) for anything I am even a little bit excited about. For past reference, please see my little episode with Ambien during the week before my wedding.
• I am ambitious. I want to be the chick who gets pregnant the very second she starts trying! With the smartest baby! And the lowest amount of weight gain! This is silly and will only lead to problems, which leads me to the next point.
• I am incapable of thinking rational thoughts when I’m excited. I can tell myself ’til I’m blue in the face that testing early is a huge waste of money, but as soon as The Crazy starts up I’m done for. I may as well possess no critical thinking skills whatsoever for how much good they do me during times like those.
• Wes in incredible, and quite possibly the most helpful and loving husband in the world.
• I no longer have the ability to keep my pie-hole closed about key matters in my personal life. The minute something happens I have the urge to either blog or tweet about it. Am done for. You can list “social media” as c.o.d.

That’s about all I’ve learned so far. Not too profound, but it’s been eye-opening in a way because I never knew these particular traits of mine would become so pronounced the minute we started trying to have a kid.

All I can do is shrug and tell you I’m not really surprised because really, if I get completely insane and impatient about birthday gifts, there’s really nothing at all surprising about me losing my mind over becoming a parent.

Babies are like the most intense gift ever, and they even come with a surprise element because 1) You don’t know what the gender is for a reeeally long time and 2) You never really know exactly when they’re going to show up.

Given that I can’t handle surprises, and it drives me crazy to be out of control and unable to plan for things, it just dawned on me: Babies are my kryptonite.