The factory is silent. Its assembly line stands motionless. Somewhere off in the darkness, a buzzer sounds. One by one, lights begin to flicker and illuminate on long-unmanned diagnostic panels, giving a sense of enormity and complexity and scale to the machinery. The low hum of power supplies warming up comes next, followed by the higher and louder whine of turbines and electric motors. A whistle sounds, and one by one, employees begin to file in and take their places at the controls. Purposed for a single task, whose time has now come, the factory slowly comes to life...

Friday, June 20, 2008

The first few days...


I swear, I looked at that test the first time and only saw one line. I think I was so determined that it was going to be negative* that I actually convinced myself it was. So I handed it to Kathy and said, "oh, no big deal... you can look at it." To which she responded, "um, yeah... that looks like two lines to me."

So we went to the OB/GYN on Wednesday for the "real" test (Kathy will probably have more to say about this) which was also positive. Kathy was about 4.5 weeks pregnant. They collected a bunch of blood and other genetic material from Kathy, loaded us up with reading material, and sent us on our way. We return in four weeks for a more comprehensive checkup, once the fetus is actually developed enough to see.

As you may or may not know, the first trimester can be the most touch-and-go phase of the pregnancy, as the potential for miscarriage and other problems is high. Therefore, we determined that we were only going to tell a select few people the good news until the end of the third month of pregnancy (or thereabouts) when it would be more clear whether this thing would actually be going all the way to 11 (that's a Spinal Tap reference, not an implication that I want Kathy to carry a baby for 11 months... I'm not a monster. 9 will do just fine.). My point is, some of you may be back reading to get to this entry by the time you find out about this blog, but we wanted to get it down on "e-paper" now for posterity's sake.

I know this isn't my usual brand of "funny" writing, but I'm still taking this all in, and I'm sure I'll "warm up" as time goes on. I had a moment on the couch last night where it all really "hit" me and the weight of my potential future responsibility became all too real. It's a fine balance, "dealing" with it vs. not getting too excited or invested until we have a better idea of how things will turn out.

That's it for now, I'll post more thoughts as I have them, as I'm sure Kathy will too.

- Craig.

* being a cancer survivor who didn't "save some for a rainy day", it could have gone either way
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