Discovery – I’m Pregnant!

The first signs that made me think I was pregnant, before I was late, was that I hadn’t, ahem, gone to the bathroom – the important kind, for about three days.  This was serious for me – since I always go at LEAST once a day especially right in the morning.  So I thought, “what is wrong with me?”  Then I would get dizzy – intensely dizzy when I would stand up.  Plus, I had to pee twice in an hour. Typically I have a bladder like a horse and get annoyed by weaklings who for instance have to leave a movie to go pee; now I am that person.  Then the icing on the cake was when I got the weirdest sense of nausea that was unlike what I feel like when I am sick with the flu.

So I googled “early pregnancy signs” and sure enough – they were all there.  But even with all of those things I still thought, “No, surely not.” Then as if on cue, my boobs started hurting like hell and got suddenly HUGE – to the point that my bras weren’t and continue to not fit well.  One day, I looked at peter and said, “Do my boobs look bigger?” He smiled and said “super size me.”  It was about that time that I started to have a hunch.

A friend of mine, Naomi, had been aware that I hadn’t started my period and would continue to ask me each time she saw me what the latest news was.  There’s a word in Hebrew “Nu?” which translates in essence to “So?” which she would say each time she saw me.  I would look at her with raised eyebrows and a slight shake of my head that meant, “No!” This continued for a bout ten days till one evening – the fourth of July we had a few friends over for dinner.  One of our friends is a nutritionist and a masseuse; she has her doctorate in nutrition and she’s freaking brilliant.  At  the dinner Naomi called our nutritionist friend over and asked her to do a pregnancy test on me.  “What?” I asked.  Jan- the nutritionist, instantly went to work.  “Do I have a watch on?”  “No.”  “Okay, I’m going to test your kinetic energy.  Stand still for a minute.”  Jan then proceeded to place her hand on my forehead and also on my lower stomach, back and forth,  meanwhile I was to keep my middle finger and thumb connected in a circle.  Jan then asked me to make statements that we knew were true and as I would say them she would try and pull my fingers apart.  Say “I am Joy Kusek.”   I would say it she would attempt to pull my fingers apart, they would stay connected. Say, “I am married to Peter.” I would say it, she would pull my fingers apart they would stay connected.  Then she asked me to say something that wasn’t true and when I said it, my fingers would come apart as she pulled on them.  GET IT?  So then she finally asked me to say, “I am pregnant.”  When I did, my fingers stayed together.  She looked at me straight in the eyes and said, “You’re pregnant!”  Immediately I doubled over and laughed, or more like guffawed to the point that it created a small scene and others wanted to know what was going on.  I just ran straight to Peter.

So after Shabbat (everything is closed on Saturday) and with me officially being 2 weeks late – Peter and I walked to a drug store and bought a pregnancy test.  The drug store is run by religious Jews.  I walked to the counter and asked for a pregnancy test and the man immediately lowered his voice to a whisper and said “They’re over there.”  I said, in my normal voice, “There?” and again he whispered and “Yes there.”  I was amused by it – apparently a married woman can’t publicly buy a pregnancy test.  So Peter and walked home, pregnancy test in hand and talked about the “what ifs” together and I smiled like a freak.

When we got home, I waited for my next pee (which was only about five minutes) grabbed a clock off the wall, since I’m anal and read the directions and it said the result should appear between four and ten minutes and no longer than ten after you dip the stick in.  So I had this huge ass clock in my hand, along with my paper cup, I dipped the stick in for 15 seconds, and before I could even pull it out the results came up as positive.  “SHEEZ”, I thought, “I’m good and pregnant.”

When I came out of the bathroom and told Peter, “We’re having a baby!”  He smiled at me and said, “Did we have any doubts.”  Then he hugged me and prayed for us and our future baby.  Seriously, it sounds sappy, but it was the sweetest moment.

My parents were about to come home so I grabbed a birthday card and basically edited the card to announce a “birthday in march” and wrote “Congratulations G-ma and G-pa!” and placed the pregnancy test in it.  My mom opened the card and saw the pregnancy test and started laughing, and showed it to my dad,  my dad looked at me and said “What’s that?”  Then my mom showed the card to my dad and he said, “Whose birthday is in march?”  Funny enough, my dad didn’t get it until I said, “Dad, I’m pregnant”  and then there was lots of laughter and smiles and “it’s about time.”

Peter and I got pregnant in Poriya which we know means fruitful, but while we were there an Israeli man said that “fertile” was a better translation.  We were there working on our first official recording project – which was kinda cool.  We were also there to talk and pray about our future and our goals, it was there in Poriya that we choose made further life goals together.  Though, we were not planning on having a baby, we are thrilled.  We are scared.  We are excited. We are happy.