We’re Havin’ A Baby!

I’ve never been so excited to write a blog post! I feel like I’ve been keeping this secret foooorever! On February 24, our lives turned upside-down when we found out we’ve got a little one on the way. WAHOOOO!! We are over-the-moon excited to start the journey of parenthood! (I’m going to share a little bit more about the past 3 months in another blog post, because it’s safe to say that they’ve been the craziest roller coaster of my life…physically, emotionally, the whole shebang! To those of you who made it through the first trimester without nausea, I offer you a lukewarm congratulations…)

In February, I started feeling a little funky. Nothing crazy, but I noticed I needed more sleep than usual (I slept in until 9:00 am the morning after I wrote this day in the life post, and I normally wake up between 5:30 and 7 am.) Actually, at one point in February, I told Nate that he needed to stop making so much Detroit-style pizza (he’s been perfecting his recipe this year and was making pizza 2X/week in Jan/Feb, haha) because my stomach was feeling so bloated and my jeans were a little tight. Haha! Little did we know that it wasn’t (solely) the pizza’s fault…

I woke up on a Sunday morning and just had this urge to check and see if maaayyyybe I was pregnant. I heard Nate out in the kitchen watching a soccer game and making breakfast, so I headed into our bathroom, took a pregnancy test, and (I kid you not…) before I even had time to put the cap back on the stick, two pink lines showed up in less than 5 seconds! It was instant, and my poor emotions didn’t even have time to catch up to the reality that WE ARE HAVING A BABY.

I got in the shower and started sobbing. I put both of my hands on my belly and tried to transfer as much love as possible to this pea-sized embryo who is now growing, growing, growing and getting ready to make an entrance into this crazy, beautiful world. I thought about Nate, who was standing in the kitchen frying bacon and watching soccer and totally unaware that his life was about to change when I told him the news in a few moments, and I started crying harder. (I know….hot mess, right?)

Ok, so how did I tell Nate? I hadn’t planned ANYTHING cute or creative, but I knew I needed to tell him right away! We were driving up to Dallas that day to see some of my extended family who were in town, and we had planned to stop at a brewery on the way, so I knew I really couldn’t keep it a secret from him. I told him I had to run to the pharmacy to “get some tampons before the road trip to Dallas” (hahahah…you funny, Kelsey), and I did what any sane woman would do: I bought a multipack of the most expensive pregnancy tests I could find (because those obviously work better, right?), brought them back home to my bathroom, and took every single one.

Yep, definitely pregnant.

While Nate was packing to get ready to go, I opened the Calendar app on my phone and added “Baby Kennedy Arrives!” on our shared family calendar. (We’re a little obsessed with scheduling every little thing in our lives that might affect the other person…it just helps family life run more smoothly.) I told him I had a little surprise for him, and he had to check his calendar. Since March is our anniversary month, I think he assumed it was an anniversary surprise, so he started scrolling through the calendar so slowly. 

First week of March.

Second week of March.

Third week of March…

Eventually I was like, “ok babe, let’s move forward a few more months!” Ha! He told me he figured it out when I said that, and his hunch was confirmed when he found the calendar alert in October.

In the 5 years I’ve known Nate, I’ve only seen him get tears in his eyes twice: the first time was when we said our vows at our wedding, and the second time was on this perfect Sunday morning in February, when I got to tell him that he’s going to be a dad. I’m never going to forget that moment. I know that we still have many special moments and memories up ahead, but I’m pretty sure that this one is always going to be one of my favorites.

So we drove to Dallas that day. We stopped for prenatal vitamins at CVS and listened to pregnancy podcasts and talked about everything that’s about to change (OMG, no Food & Wine Fest for me this year! OMG we can’t take that huge trip to Thailand in December that we had been planning! OMG we’re going to have a little bundle of love to snuggle during the holidays this year!) I randomly burst into tears while I was driving (nothing triggered the tears, I just started crying and couldn’t stop) and I had to pull over so I wouldn’t crash the car that was now carrying THREE lives. We did end up stopping at that brewery on the way to Dallas, and Nate got a flight of beer to drink and I swirled and sniffed every one of them (yum, hops!) and then drank a nonalcoholic ginger beer.

I somehow kept it a secret from my family all day long. I put a decoy glass of red wine in front of my dinner plate and sipped sparkling water all day. Of course, we were able to do fun pregnancy announcements for our families in the following weeks, but Nate and I wanted that day to keep the secret to ourselves.

As of now, I’m 15 weeks pregnant and expecting our little one to arrive in late October.

Here’s another fun little surprise: we already know the sex of our baby! (We’re those crazies who found out at 10 weeks because we just could. not. wait. any. longer.) I’m going to share our gender reveal tomorrow morning on the blog!

Finally, here’s what a pregnancy means for So Much Life Blog: this has always been an Austin food + lifestyle blog, and it’s going to stay the same. I’m still going to be researching the best food in Austin, and I’ll still be sharing it with you. I care about helping you find the best eats and drinks in Austin, and this is not going to turn into a full-fledged mommy blog. I’m already pretty open about my life on this blog, and the lifestyle posts will (obviously) reflect what’s going on in my real life: this baby! So while you might occasionally see some life updates about pregnancy and ideas for kid-friendly places around Austin, the core of this blog will remain the same.

A big thank you for reading if you got this far, and all my love and hugs,

Kelsey XO