And now that I’ve caught up on the events of October 13, I get to start blogging real time! Hurray!

So, for the first week after finding out we were pregnant, I had some spotting – not serious, but I had no idea what to expect and Googling is the worst. Luckily, after a nasty encounter with one receptionist at my new midwives’ office (“well you’re only four weeks and you’re a likely miscarriage, so they will not see you anyway” – SERIOUSLY?!), a nurse called me back from the office and scheduled me for monitoring my HCG and progesterone levels. I was, very honestly, just barely pregnant that week, but the numbers were rising appropriately, so it was worth the additional hassel to go in for blood draws.

We decided to go ahead and tell my folks about ten days after we found out our news, mostly for additional support for me. Since we won’t see them until December, we sent them a cute couple of pictures online of us and the tests.

I am now 6 weeks along! I have had some nausea, but mostly I am just sore. I’ve lost two pounds and gone up a bra size – so far, pregnancy is amazing ha! I’m sure Little Bean will make his or her debut by Christmastime, but for now no one’s the wiser.

I’ve already experienced some pregnancy brain. Oh my the forgetfulness, already. I forgot my laptop at home one morning and didn’t discover until I got to work. I also forgot and walked through airport security with a full bottle of water. I travel all the time! I am just a wee bit distracted I guess.

I am proud to say I survived a business trip with a partner just this past week. I avoided going through security with him with some lame excuse about wanting to shop before going to the gates, and I also avoided dinner with opposing counsel on our way out there (which would have been nothing but boozing), by taking a later flight down after the partner. I did need the time to do the extra work anyway.

Overall, I feel good. I am still working out with my regular Jillian Michaels’ tapes – just at my own pace since we’re not trying to get results. I feel strong.

I am tired by 10pm consistently and need about 7 1/2 and 9 hours a sleep a night. This is rare, since I was doing the 5-6 hours pattern during the week, with lots of caffeine to keep going as a general rule. I dropped caffeine cold turkey right when I found out, surprisingly with no ill effects.

I’m also HUNGRY.ALL.THE.TIME. I’m eating well though – lots of color and not a lot of junk. I’ve had a craving for steak, which has been very unusual. I also made my own steak one night, regardless of whether DM could join me for dinner, which I never do.

I signed up for those “your baby is…” emails. Baby Center tells me Little Bean is the size of a lentil. Delightful.

Well, if a pregnancy isn’t a prompt to really get into blogging, I’m not sure what is. For years I’ve followed blogs of all kinds – wedding planning, home decor, cooks, moms, and travel. DM and I have blogged some of our travels in the past, but we’re hoping to do something a bit more anonymously, with some of our travel highlights, and also document our more regular, every day life together.

On October 13, 2012, we found out we were expecting our first baby, dubbed “Little Bean,” sometime in early summer 2013. I’ve always wanted an online journal, so no time like the present, right?

I’m DJ, and my husband is DM. We’re early thirty somethings (VERY early for me – I just turned 31) living in Chicago, IL. We married in the summer of 2009 at Notre Dame – our alma mater (more stories about all of that to come at a later time….along with an explanation of our choice of blog URL/name).

So, after a little more than three years of marriage, we decided no time like the present to give parenthood a shot. We’d been “open” to a baby for, oh, about three months, maybe, kind of/but not really, and “really tried” for a baby for ONE month. We are Catholic, but we had some priorities involving career and travel ahead of trying for kiddos. Fertility is a something that I never took for granted and always wondered if everything would work properly due to some fits and starts during my young adult life. We are thankful to be so so lucky this soon (and not without nearly two years of “planning” to get to this point…also another post for another time). We are also thankful we had a fair amount of hesitation to get started though – otherwise we’d likely be pregnant with baby number 3 by now!!

Any whooo, so, we decided we were going to try for a baby. We go to a wedding in San Francisco for the weekend on October 11. It is a Sunday wedding, with plans to drink at a Notre Dame game watch all afternoon on the Saturday before. Of course I had a huge bag of pregnancy tests waiting for me at our home in Chicago – the cheap ones – because boy was I prepared to try for a while. I wanted to be ready, and I, being frugal, was not about to pay a ton on silly pregnancy tests!

Instead, I wake up in our hotel, and know immediately that I need to go to the nearest Walgreens to buy and take a (comparatively very expensive) test before boozing all day. And it was EARLY – like one week post conception/one week before AF was due EARLY. But, I felt different, hot, sore, etcetera. And Google officially let me know I “might” be pregnant, so out to Walgreens we went.

While at Walgreens I was super glad to see a line of 30 people deep to wait to check out with my tests. Ok, so only 10 people were in line, but still. I felt like a teenager with my contraband, though that is perfectly ridiculous. I made sure my wedding bands were showing. DM waited at the front of the store to let me wait it out on my own. I picked up a chocolate bar to awkwardly hold along with the tests. Why not right? I thought I might need the chocolate.

After our drug store run we picked up breakfast at a tea cafe, and then had a nice moment eating it in the sun before going back inside the hotel to do more work. Unforunately this wedding weekend was mostly a working weekend for us. The night before we’d been up until midnight working, and settled for thai takeout and a couple of drinks from the hotel bar.

I immediately took the test and stayed in the hotel bathroom while it developed the faintest, but distinct, second pink line. WOWZA. I walked out of the bathroom to share the news and ask DM how he felt. His response: “Tired.” HA! In his defense – we were and ARE generally tired these days. I’m an attorney, he’s a consultant, and he’s getting his MBA part time on evenings and weekends to boot. He started that process in summer 2010 and will finish in March 2013 – not too soon!

We arguably spent the rest of the day in disbelief while I’m wondering how I’m going to keep this under wraps for the weekend (and oh, the next three months). We realize we aren’t really sure of the exact date when “it” could have happened, but what do you expect when you actually start trying, right?

We went on to have a relatively low key day. We watched ND beat Stanford in a close one, and then had a nice dinner out, just the two of us, at Commonwealth in San Francisco. The food was awesome – poached oysters, octopus, radish salad with “ancient greens,” wagyu beef, grape sorbet, and a snickers ice cream bar delight for dessert. DM got the wine pairing, and I enjoyed baby bird sips of each as I bid adeiu to my drinking days. We took a couple of fun pictures of me getting ready to go out to dinner. I love those skinny jeans – SIGH!

On Sunday we had the wedding, and while it was likely in my head, I felt overheated, or nauseous, or starving alternately all day long. We were becoming less shocked and more excited. I took another test. Gee, same result! I also continued to puzzle over my cycle days and when the magic actually happened. To which DM joked “maybe its twins and that’s why we know so early – y’know, the double tap.” YIKES. Twins hadn’t even crossed my mind – I started to laugh so hard I ended up crying.

Parents and elders, TMI alert – you may want to look away/skip to the next paragraph now. When trying to figure out how far along I might be, we looked at our past few date nights and chuckled that one night we ate at the Pump Room, a few days after my 31st birthday. We also ate out one night at Piccolo Sogno (“little dream”). We’d done a good job of scheduling fun date nights for this whole babymaking agenda – but really, we were expecting to wine and dine for much longer!

At any rate, the wedding on Sunday night was perfect – the couple are close friends and their ceremony was so heartfelt. We had a great time, and have an awesome weekend memory of how we found out about this new adventure. Due to the Sunday night wedding we traveled on Monday back home. I called and made my initial appointment with my regular healthcare provider for first thing on Tuesday. I paced back and forth at the airport when talking to parents and catching up about our weekend. My one thought in all of this then and now has been – how in the heck are we going to keep this quiet for another six weeks? Hence, the blog. I’m excited to use this for a real-time journal of what we’re going through.