Telling My Sister & My Parents in The REAL Baby Journey!

So I headed over to my sister's place on Monday, a cleverly designed 'workout date' that I'd insisted we make just so I could tell her. I brought along all of her other gifts - a beautiful rainbow themed hummingbird wind chime and some brilliantly bright peacock colored sandals - and gave her those first. Then I pulled out one last little package. Inside I had wrapped a onesie that said "Christmas Baby" around my positive pregnancy test. She slowly pulled it out of the bag, read the onesie, looked confused then the pregnancy test rolled out. She gasped. She grabbed the test, looked at me, looked at the test then at the onesie, then back at me. "Oh, Kelsey!! This is yours??" She jumped up, ran over and gave me a huge hug. She is SO excited :)

We spent the next two hours comparing symptoms, going over realization after realization (We'll have overlapping maternity leaves! We were both expecting to use our parents as babysitters - how will they handle two babies?! Wow Christmas will be different this year compared to last - two littles one instead of just the adults!) and were giddy with how huge this is. We both kept saying "I hope it works out. I hope we both stay pregnant. I hope we can really go through this together - only six weeks apart. I really want this to stick!" It was fun being able to say "I feel this way - did you feel that?" and since she is only a few weeks ago, she clearly remembers what she was feeling at every step. It's completely changed our relationship from me being jealous/angry/hurt/resentful to feeling more like we're on equal footing again. It is such a welcome change. I was really missing her and missing our bond...this seems to have brought it all back together and then some.

Up next was my parents. Rob and I made a plan during the day on Monday to just show up at their house after he got out of work. I had been telling my mom all last week and this week that I knew my period was coming and then, when I got a positive test on Sunday, I went so far as to even email her about my period and how crampy I was and dammit, another round of Clomid coming up. She bought it hook, line and sinker and offered some very sweet words of encouragement. She is such a little sneaky sleuth otherwise and figures everything out, reading my every tweet and Facebook message and email with a fine toothed comb to decipher any hidden meanings. She is like a mind reading wizard! I felt slightly bad lying to her but I knew being truly surprised would make her all the more excited. :) Somewhere along the way I had casually asked what they were up to on Monday night, just to see if they would be around, and my mom had said they had no plans and would be there, hanging out. I knew that was our time to strike. ;)

After lots of thinking and researching ways to surprise your parents and going through all kinds of options, I decided on buying some shirts from our local Wisconsin Bookstore and telling them we had come over to 'show them our new shirts.'

These shirts, specifically:

So we drive over there, Rob so super nervous the whole time that he is asking me what we're going to say and how we're going to say it and "do you think your dad will be mad when he finds out we're pregnant because it means we're having sex?" Ha! Adorable, by the way. :) We pull into the driveway, already my parents' dogs start barking we walk up and we ring the doorbell.

Through the door, we hear my mom say "Whoever that is better be worth it. We just sat down for dinner! Who comes over at 6:15 pm on a Monday?!" My dad pulls open the door, sees it's us and breaks into a big grin. He ushers us inside and I see my mom before Rob is all the way inside. She stops dead in her tracks from walking over from the kitchen. She practically screams "Oh my god! Who is with you?? Is Rob with you??" and I grin and say "Yes!" She immediately starts jumping up and down, no words from me at all about why we're there yet. Ha! :) I unzip my jacket right as Rob does and I said, "Just wanted to show you our new shirts...."

My dad wraps me in a huge hug before I can even get my coat off and my mom is just screaming "Noooo! No! It can't be! It happened?! Kelsey! It happened??! It worked?!! KELSEY! It worked?! Noo! Oh my gosh! Kelsey!!" and crying and hysterical. SO SO SO cute!! Rob is shaking my dad's hand and I run over and start cry jumping with my mom and she hugs and pulls back to read my shirt and hugs me again and jumps some more. Then she runs over and hugs Rob and hugs my dad and does a loop around the room. She is ECSTATIC. By far the best reaction I've gotten from anyone about anything ever. You could just see how happy she was and how proud and how much she truly wanted this for me. It made me cry all the more and so we hugged and cried together for a few minutes in the middle of the living room. :)

We stayed there for about an hour, talking about due dates, I showed them my positive test and my mom intermittently beamed with a huge grin across her face or was crying the happiest, biggest, most joyful tears. I had also brought along a Wisconsin Grandpa shirt for my dad (he is a huge Badger fan and will undoubtably wear that with pride as often as he can!) and a small gift for my mom.

A few months ago my mom had mentioned that one of the things she is most excited about with having grandkids is being able to read them the Harry Potter series for the very first time. Neither Rob nor I have read any of the books so we don't feel any real connection to that series but my mom has read the whole series something like seven full times and she so very much wants to be there to experience it with a little one for their first time through. Thus, I bought the first book in the series and wrote "Dear Grandma, I can't wait to read this with you! Love, Baby V" inside. She cried even more when she saw what I was pulling out of the gift bag and then just crumbled into a little crying puddle on the floor when she read the inscription. She was so touched and took the gift exactly as I had intended. It was perfect. Just perfect.

So today I'm off to get my second HCG blood draw done and will find out tonight how the labs look. Hoping my numbers doubled as expected and are on track with where they should be for nearly 5 weeks pregnant. I'm still feeling all the symptoms so I'm optimistic but I also know to take absolutely nothing about pregnancy for granted. I'm in for a wild ride and am letting my body tell me what it needs and wants. I still have my two best friends to tell (one I get to tell today!) and then that's it for IRL people finding out until we make an official announcement some time in June! I'll report back with what the lab results show. I'm nervous but excited! :)