I couldn’t sleep well the night before my beta test. I’ve never been an anxious person, but I can honestly say that my anxiety was at an all time high. We went to the lab right before it opened at 6:00am to get my blood drawn.
We planned to not look at the first results because I learned that the first number doesn’t matter. But in the end, we agreed that would be unbearable. We decided we would hope for at least 100 anyway and John would be the first to look at the results. I tried to keep my mind off it by throwing myself into work all morning while teleworking. I was in a virtual meeting, when I noticed that 5 minutes ago, I got an email that the lab results were in! I immediately opened it, pretended to still be engaged in my meeting, and handed my phone to John without taking my eyes off my laptop. From my peripheral vision I saw that he smiled. I stared at him until he said, “275!” I tried not to change my face, covered my mouth, made sure my laptop mic was muted, and was making ecstatic noises! This was way higher than we had prepared ourselves for! After my meeting, we tried to calm down and told ourselves that we needed to wait two more days.
Two days later…
We were still both so nervous. John describes these in-between days as calling a timeout on his feelings and being guarded leading up to this day, so that he could try to manage his expectations. Thank goodness I wasn’t working this day. I got another email that my lab results were in. I handed my phone to John again. I grabbed his camera to record his reaction, he opened the results, paused, and said, “649! More than double!” We kinda already knew from two days ago, but this confirmation was so relieving!
I had this idea of taking this picture as our pandesal in the oven baby announcement.
Instead, we FaceTimed our family and friends to announce the news to them as individually and personally as possible. It was so sweet seeing everyone’s different reactions to our news – from tears and OMGs, to I knew its, to About time! My cousins took shots and my uncle and John cheered with beers. We’ve been spoiled with so much love and kindness throughout this whole process. It felt like a dream to be able to celebrate with everyone.
