We Have an Announcement to Make….

I WOULD call it the immaculate conception, but my husband thinks that’s both naive and sacrilegious…so I won’t.

Back in January, I decided to go to Urgent Care to get some antibiotics.  I had been sick for weeks and assumed I had some kind of vicious bacteria growing inside of me.  I thought I would stop by Rite Aid on my way and get a pregnancy test so that when the doctors asked if I was by any chance pregnant, I could confidently present to them my answer and get on the strongest medicine they had.

Someone had just gotten sick in the women’s bathroom, so I locked myself in the men’s bathroom to quickly pee on the stick.  Every other time that I’ve done this, I’ve shaken with anticipation, but this time I didn’t think it was  a possibility, so I didn’t even think about it.  Within seconds it said that I was pregnant.  My first thought was, “Darn you, Annie…you’re so cheap!”  I had bought the generic pregnancy test and the only logical explanation I could come up with was that the test was wrong.

I was in the bathroom over fifteen minutes, just looking in the mirror repeating, “This cannot be real.”  I hadn’t even slept in the same bed as my husband for over two weeks.  How was this biologically possible?  How could we fit another child in our car?  In our townhouse? In our budget?  In our busy schedule?

I’m not sure how many full-bladder-ed men heard whimpering and shouting coming from the bathroom door that morning, but eventually–after going through every possible emotion– I gathered my wits enough to exit Rite Aid.

It was then time for absolute and total panic.  WE WERE ABOUT TO HAVE ANOTHER BABY….and we hadn’t even taken down our Christmas tree yet!  It was as though the baby was coming out in the next four hours….I rushed to the post office, sent my brother his late Christmas present, hurried to the DMV to put my new address on my license, ran home, washed everyone’s sheets and bedroom windows, and frantically took down the Christmas tree.

I finished my tirade and collapsed on the couch.  I felt only slightly more prepared.

When I told Colby the news, he didn’t seem to be shaken up at all.  He was only excited and trusting.  One by one, I presented to him the reasons we were doomed, and each one he met with, “It will be okay;  God will provide.”  The last two months have been a blur of nausea and exhaustion, but I’m coming out of the worst of it now.  Some days I feel like I’m just trying to survive;  other days I have enough strength to actually work out and get groceries.  All in all, we are very excited for the newest Garman (we might as well refer to it as 4G for now) to arrive and be a part of our family.

When my mom came to visit in February, I decorated my tummy with the announcement and told her to close her eyes because we had a present for her.  Below is the video of my mom hearing the news of her 4th grandchild.  If you know my mother, Helen Haley, you know that her reaction was exactly as it should have been.

  Click here to watch “The Big Announcement”