Garrett M. Vonk

The story of how Heather shared the news of our pregnancy with me is the best kind of story: it begins with a sweaty gym bag, and ends with beer.

It was a Wednesday and I had agreed to meet Heather before going to the gym. I took the train from my office to hers and went to go change in the car. We carpool to work most days, and at the time, we were both going to kickboxing classes at the gym around the corner a few times a week. I took the train north from my office to hers (three stops on MARTA) and took the elevator in the parking deck up to the car. I sat down in the car to change into my gym clothes and grabbed my gym bag. As I pulled out my t-shirt, I noticed that something fell out of it. I reached back into the bag and retrieved the object: a pregnancy test. The readout: “Pregnant”. To be completely honest, I thought it might belong to someone else for about five seconds.

I quickly decided to skip the gym. I called Heather, still at her desk, and there was much rejoicing. We decided to go celebrate this new phase the best way we know how: beer and wings at Taco Mac. (OK, fine, the beer and wings were just for me.)

For the first time in my life, I just signed a form on the line marked “Signature of Parent/Guardian”.

I was confused for about 10 seconds while I wondered “Why would one of my parents need to sign this?”

Oh, right, I remember… that’ll be me.

To crib from Russ (Congrats Sauves!), I want to write a little more about this whole adventure than I have been. It may seem hokey or premature, but I do want to leave a record so that our child can one day look back and see what a nerd his or her dad really was, and how intense this whole process really is.

The first news is they changed Heather’s due date. We were due April 16th and now, based on their precise measurements, they pushed us back to April 22nd. This is exactly in line with what we’ve thought all along, so it didn’t come as a shock or anything. It’s an extra week of waiting and an extra week of everything else, but we always knew that the 22nd was more accurate.

Relief has arrived in the form of no more morning sickness. Seriously, this pregnancy has been really hard on Heather, and I was genuinely hopeful that the ongoing nausea would eventually go away. Well, it finally has. It cruised right into her second trimester, but faded away in the last week or two.

I find myself becoming more and more anxious, not in the sense that I am feeling stress, but in the sense that I just can’t wait. I can’t wait until we get to find out if we’re having a boy or a girl. I can’t wait until we actually have the baby. I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about something as I am about our child, but there’s not much I can really do in these months before the delivery. Apparently it is the size of a baked potato now. Isn’t that the same size as an uncooked potato?.

And at the same time, there is plenty to do and buy. To help with our many purchasing decisions, we were recommended Baby Bargains by a friend, and so far, it hasn’t disappointed. We still have several months before we will need to start stocking up, but this book is a big help, especially since the author is willing to say “Um, don’t buy [this thing] at all. You’ll never use it.”

It looks like we’re going to put a wall up to close off our existing office/den. It doesn’t sound like much fun to me, but I have lots of expert help. I am honestly relieved to be converting the space, since the office was never more than a big desk on which my crap accumulated. We got a new computer, moved a bunch of old junk into storage, and in a month or so, we’ll have a room–with a door–for the baby.

Oh, and here’s a line you don’t usually see in this space… Stay tuned for the sex!