I'm Pregnant!

I'm finally able to announce it to the world - I'm pregnant and due in November 2019! Junkyu and I are so excited and it sometimes still doesn't feel real.

My first ultrasound - we got to hear the heartbeat!

We have been married for three years now and I've had baby fever for a while. I knew I didn't want us to have kids until we were financially secure, so we saved up and paid off our only debt, which was our loan for our apartment. I also knew I wanted to travel and be able to safely say I was ready to be a parent, so I went on my dream trip to Europe last year (which I've been documenting and will continue to do so).

Last year, before my trip, I started seeing an OB/GYN at a big women's hospital in Daejeon who was recommended to me because he speaks English well and has had other foreign patients. I am glad I went because I had to get some vaccine boosters and I found out my blood type and all of that. The more I went to the hospital, the more I was surrounded by pregnant women and babies and the more I wanted to get pregnant.

When I came back from my Europe trip, I was excited to start trying. I thought it would just happen once I stopped taking my birth control, but it took a few months and I got really impatient and frustrated. It was difficult to see baby pictures and kids everywhere during that time, and I totally feel for any couple who deals with the pain of wanting to get pregnant and it not happening.

I realized that it usually takes about six months to a year for most couples, and it was nice talking to other friends who experienced what I was going through. My cycles were irregular and every time I got my period I felt horrible. We were lucky and it only took us about four months, but it felt like forever at the time. I'm a lot more sensitive to all the sorts of things women deal with when trying to get pregnant now, especially the insensitive comments people can make. I might write a post on that soon.

One morning I decided to take a pregnancy test because I felt a little different. I'd seen tons of negatives and was expecting to see another one that morning, too. Junkyu went to work and I bolted out of bed to take one of my tests. (I had a stash.) When the five minutes was up, I picked the test up, ready to throw it away if it was negative, and I actually saw two lines!

It was March 14th, which is White Day in Korea. White Day is like an extension of Valentine's Day, held the month after, and usually men give the women who gave them Valentine's Day presents candy in return. We usually don't celebrate it because I told my husband I'd rather just have Valentine's Day be a date day, and we did go on a date in Seoul the weekend after V Day this year.

However, I knew it would be a fun surprise if I told him on White Day, so I went to the store and bought a bunch of cute piggy items (since our baby will be born in the Year of the Pig). I bought a Piglet plushie, some candy shaped like a pig, a piggy soap dish, and some other pink things to match the color of the pink lines on the pregnancy test. I ended up taking another test, too, just to be sure.

I called him and asked him what we could do for White Day and he said, "We don't do anything because we had a date on Valentine's Day!" but I insisted that we should celebrate. He ended up working in a nearby city that has a Papa John's, which is my favorite pizza place, and promised to bring me a pizza home. The Papa John's in Daejeon closed, so now any time he's near one on the way home, he'll bring me some.

Since the city he was in was about an hour away, I told him to call me a few minutes before arriving so I could preheat the oven and reheat the pizza. He scoffed, saying our oven doesn't need to preheat for that long and that he didn't need to call me. But I wanted to film his reaction, so I needed to know when to set up the camera. I tried to not seem weird on the phone but insisted that he call me before he got to the house.

He actually forgot to call, so when I heard the door unlock, I shot up to get a video of him coming in. I had set up all the stuff I bought on the table and I made a card that said, "Today is not White Day, it's Pink Day!" in Korean. Underneath the card, I put the two pregnancy tests on the piggy soap holder. He came in and put down the pizza and I told him to look at the card.

I managed to record his reaction and it was really cute. Usually he doesn't get super outwardly excited about things, and I wasn't sure what to expect, but when he saw the tests, he said, "You're pregnant??" and started smiling and laughing. He realized I was filming him but didn't seem to care because he was so shocked and happy. He actually went out after that and told me he was practicing his saxophone, but he came back with a potted plant with pink flowers in celebration of "Pink Day" which was really sweet.

Then I got to eat my favorite pizza and it was a good night. I kept taking pregnancy tests over the course of the next week or so to make sure the lines were getting progressively darker, and we made an appointment at my OB office for a few weeks later, when I would be 8 weeks along. I waited to tell most people until after that appointment so I could have an ultrasound picture.

I'll document more of my pregnancy and share what's been happening until now, too. I'm still in a kind of state of disbelief! We're both really looking forward to being parents and the baby is due around Thanksgiving!