Why the name pride and pregnancy? Well, I have to admit I am a bit of a prideful person... at least when it comes to my fitness and strength training. As for my history, a multi-sport athlete all of my life never "taking-off" for more than a couple of days at a time. Rowed on a division 1 collegiate varsity level. I have completed an iron-man (full and half), a whole boat-load of triathlons (mixed distances), marathons (fulls and halves), road bike and mountain bike races, finished the whole JMT trail in seven days solo (here's the link to my trail journal www.summitpost.org/john-muir-trail/802049), and I LOVE to lift. I'm not talking about those pink dumbbells either. I Olympic lift consistently 5 days a week, and do my more serious strength training sessions three times a week (i.e. Back Squat, Front Squat, Deadlift, OH Press, Bench Press, Bent Rows, Pull-ups/Chin-ups, RDLs, Good Mornings, etc). Oh yeah, and it helps that I am a strength and conditioning coach at a university, I suppose. So this brief background can give you a more clear idea of where all of this supposed pride I have is coming from.
When we found out that we were pregnant, I must admit we were caught completely off-guard. We were still going mountain biking on our weekends. I had just finished a marathon a few weeks prior (which I suspect to be the culprit of ovulating a week later than normal and hence why I now have a fetus growing inside of me). I was starting my series of new PR's in my Olympic lifts (which I am still PRing in). We had just had our official wedding ceremony in August and thinking about a baby was years down the road still. After all, we wanted to be as selfish as possible with this honeymoon stage of our marriage we heard so much about!
November 1, 2012: Thursday 12:00pm lunch time
I'm at work, at my desk and thinking to myself, my period is really late now. My boobs are feeling bigger than usual PMS boobs and hurt the way they do if I was going to have a tremendously bad period. Still, I have been telling my husband, Gus, for days now: "Don't worry honey, I think I'm going to get it today." Well, as it turns out all of the signs from PMS are so darn close to that of being pregnant. What made me think otherwise were a few small things. 1) My boobs were now hurting for over a week. I needed to double up my sports bras for almost everything I did involving any type of movement. 2) My "cramps" felt like they were different somehow, like tendons stretching on the sides of my uterus. 3) I felt like I was retaining more water than normal (puffiness).
Lucky for me, I was the one driving today instead of bike commuting and bussing it. So my lunch break could be spent productively; Rite Aid here I come! As I pull into the parking spot, I spy on the white bumper of the car next to me about 4 bumper stickers about being pregnant and scared (call 1-800-blah-blah-blah), pro-life etc. etc. Hmm, interesting I think to myself; probably just another weird coincidence. I walk briskly to the aisle with all different sorts of tests (of course all of us women have had a scare once before, and sometimes we even send our men out to get the test for us). There I am staring at these crazy pregnancy tests and ovulation tests by 16 different companies, all claiming the highest accuracy and earliest detection. I am thinking: "Cheapest for a two pack, cheapest for a two pack. I can always keep the second one." Rite Aid brand wins! I check-out (female checker, late 40's who gives me "the look" saying I know what this means). I hurry back to work, run to the female coaches' locker room with just one pregnancy test jammed into my wallet so no one can see what I am about to do. There isn't much explanation needed for this sort of thing. Here I am at work peeing on a sti-... oh shit... oh shit... I thought this thing needed two minutes and here it is showing positive within seconds of my pee hitting the strip!! OH SHIT!
I put the test down on the counter and start pacing and sweating. I'm not just talking a few drops of sweat, I'm talking about the I just got done with a run type of sweating. Immediately, I'm dialing Gus. His damn phone doesn't work at his office, so luckily since his sister, Lyndsey's, does I call her since they work together. Oh man, is she happy to hear the news... Then she gets Gus... what's he going to say? I blurt it out... "Oh, wow." Is that a happy wow? "Wow, well, that speeds things up a bit." He's happy and somewhat shocked. I guess that changes the mental process for his day a bit.
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