Twenty-two has become a special number for me over the years, mostly (entirely?) in the context of the calendar. Our wedding anniversary is May 22. Two years before we were married, on June 22, the Gods of Rock smiled upon me and landed me in the front row, dead center, at a Pearl Jam concert. And last year on July 22 I took my first-ever pregnancy test and officially found out that I was pregnant (rather than merely suspecting that might be the case). I don’t believe I’ve put this in the baby book yet, but my initial reaction to the news was: “Oh shit!”
We didn’t tell anybody for almost a month after we found out. Or, rather, I didn’t tell anybody. Jon told his brother immediately but swore him to secrecy. I was recently lunching — during the gloriously office-free days of maternity leave — with a friend who has three little girls and discussing at what point in our pregnancies we informed family and friends. In that conversation I cited worries about miscarriage as partial grounds for keeping it close to the vest, but as I thought about it later, that wasn’t it at all. I had forgotten how long it took me to get comfortable with the fact that I was (we were) actually going to have a baby. By the time we told our parents about a month later, after our first appointment with the nurse midwife and ultrasound, it was beginning to sink in.
This July 22, I took Samuel to his 4-month well baby appointment at the pediatrician. Pretty crazy how so much can happen in the space of a year.
