"Do you know what this means?"

It's 7am on a Saturday in early June. I get out of bed early because my period is a day late and I know if I don't just take a stupid pregnancy test, I'll obsess about "Am I or am I not?" all freaking day, and then when I get my period later, I'll have a little pity-party and I just want to short circuit the whole thing. We have one test left in the house from when we thought getting pregnant was a foregone conclusion.

After the deed is done, I set the test on the counter to wait the requisite three minutes. After about 15 seconds, a second pink line pops up, clear as day. "Wait a minute," I think, "it's supposed to take three minutes. Why is there a second pink line?"

"Maybe it will disappear? I should just wait the whole three minutes before I freak out. Deep breath."

Those may have been the longest three minutes of my life. Trying not to stare at that stick. Wondering if the test is broken or expired. The lines weren't supposed to show up that fast!

After three minutes, it's official. That little stick is showing two bright pink lines and it's starting to sink in that maybe, possibly, I could be pregnant. But how?! (Well, I know how...) We haven't been "trying". No timing, no Clomid, no fertility predictors, nothing. How is it that after two years of trying, the month where we put no thought or special effort into it is the month when I get pregnant?!

I walk back to the bedroom, shaking and crying a little and wake Allen. "I need you to come look at something in the bathroom right. Now." Allen is bleary eyed and not really awake, a little flustered at being shaken awake so early by a clearly upset wife, and not wearing his glasses. I shove the stick in his face and demand, "What do you see?" "Um... Is it two pink lines?", he asks, squinting. "It is. Do you know what that means?" "...No..." "It means I'm pregnant." And then I burst into tears.

If I haven't made it abundantly clear on this blog and in my daily life, Allen is an amazing human being. He held me, walked me back to bed and we laid down for another hour just marveling at the possibility. Neither of us wanted to get our hopes up too much, so we decided to treat it as a "definite maybe" until I could get to the doctor. Our final, official, this is absolutely happening confirmation didn't come until 4 weeks later, when I had an ultrasound at eight weeks pregnant. Seeing the fluttery little contractions of our baby's heartbeat was the finest sight these eyes have seen. The technician turned the sound up and we heard the rushing thud of the heartbeat for the first time that day. It was a sound like galloping horses and pounding surf at the same time. I'll never forget that whooshwhooshwhoosh sound as long as I live.

Even now, at 15 weeks, I still marvel every day that there is a tiny human growing inside me. I strive every day to be the person our baby needs me to be. I think I make it most days, minus a pint of ice cream here and there. And though I am completely, totally, 100% over the moon excited about this new and unexpected journey, I feel a small sense of sadness about putting the adoption paperwork on hold. But I remind myself that in the end, we will have the children we are supposed to have. We have to wait a little longer to meet them, maybe, but they will still be ours and we will make one, big, happy family.