Becky took a pregnancy test on the morning of December 23rd, 2003. At first I thought it was negative, because the second line was so faint. Over the course of that day we started getting our hopes up little by little.Becky took another the morning of Christmas Eve, and this time the line was still faint, but darker than the day before. We went to see Becky’s doctor later that morning, who confirmed that we were going to be parents.
We were overwhelmed with excitement and couldn’t wait to tell everyone, but I foolishly thought that we should only tell our immediate family and wait the traditional three months before telling everyone else. It was Becky’s idea to wrap up a bib declaring “I love my grandma” or “I love my grandpa” and give them to our parents for Christmas, except for her mother, who already knew.
After being told, my mother promptly refused to keep our secret, and then scurried off to her bedroom where she began calling everyone she knew to tell him or her that she was going to be a grandmother. At this point I started making phone calls of my own to try and stay ahead of Mom’s vast social network.
For Becky’s birthday (the 29th), we went to Victoria, BC, since she had declared that she wanted to go on a trip before finding out she was expecting. We had fun, spending a lot of our time talking about the baby, but the trip was cut short as Becky began feeling some of her first pregnancy symptoms, which aren’t altogether pleasant.
First Trimester
The first trimester was fairly typical, which is to say that it was an awful experience for Becky. She soon discovered that morning sickness actually lasts all day, and that most of those odd cravings are actually for the only foods that were bland enough for her weak stomach to tolerate.We first got to see the baby on February 5th, when Dr Tsuang pulled out the sonogram to make an estimate of the baby’s heart rate. The baby was just a tiny blob of pixels on an LCD screen, but it was touching to actually see this tiny human that we had created.
On February 29th, we were watching the Academy Awards (commercial edited thanks to TiVo) with the future Hovenkotter grandparents and uncles when Becky felt some twitches that she had never felt before. This we guessed, and the doctor later confirmed, were the first of the baby’s movements that Becky could feel.
Second Trimester
Pregnancy’s second three months are the easiest on the expectant mother. Becky was a little cheated since her nausea lasted 16 weeks instead of 12, but by and large this was the period of time that was easiest on her. Plus it was during this time that she started to “show,” and while she didn’t like the changes to her body, she appreciated having some evidence of her condition.
On April 2nd, we had our first ultrasound. Since we both embrace the technological capabilities of modern medicine and were too impatient to wait, we were very excited to find out if we were going to have a little boy or little girl. As Becky had been secretly hoping (Brett didn’t particularly care), we learned that we were going to have a daughter. This was for the best since we couldn’t agree on a boy name, but had picked a girl name even before we were pregnant: Kyla Ashley Hovenkotter.
Third Trimester
As the third trimester began, the kicks had started becoming stronger; strong enough that Becky started having trouble sleeping through the night. Fetuses tend to be most active when mothers are at rest, and to her dismay Kyla was no exception.We started attending classes where I learned that everything I had been taught about labor from movies and television was wrong. Apparently less than 10% of labors begin with the breaking of the water, and the hospital won’t even admit you until you’ve made it through early labor, which can last for over eight hours.
This was about the time that we kicked into high gear to get the nursery ready for its future resident. We put up two coats of paint and Becky began designing the perfect baby room. The Baby Shower was on July 10th, and we received two carloads of gifts, and the next day we went to Babies ‘R’ Us and bought three shopping carts full of baby stuff.
My project has been this Website, which I have spent many hours getting ready for putting up lots of pictures of Kyla as soon as we get home from the hospital. Computer geeks have their own priorities when it comes to their children.
The Waiting
The first eight and a half months of this pregnancy flew by, but now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, time has slowed to a crawl. Becky’s mood is profoundly affected by her inability to sleep, her physical discomfort, and her irritation that Kyla isn’t ready to come out yet. Excited friends and grandparents-to-be often call us, just in case we forgot about them. It is clear to me that Mother Nature knew what she was doing when she put the burden of choosing when the Big Day will be on the babies and not the mothers, because otherwise no baby would ever be carried to term.Keep coming back for updates and news of Kyla’s arrival.
