Several weeks passed, and I just felt anxious and exhausted. At first, I worried that depression was rearing its ugly head again. But this time, I felt really out of whack physically. I didn’t have much energy and longed for the next opportunity to sit down. After a while, I was convinced that my self-negligence had developed into some kind of sickness. If there is anything my time at Walter Reed taught me it’s to wisely (read: do not google symptoms and make cocktails of medications to get rid of sickness) try to treat yourself by charting your symptoms like a nurse would do if you were in the hospital. There’s nothing worse than spending your day getting a doctor’s appointment and waiting for hours just to get prescribed extra-strength Tylenol. So, I documented everything. I charted my temperature, wrote down my ailments during anxiety attacks, and tracked the regular ongoing issues: fatigue, random nausea, headaches, and so on. I had about a week’s worth of documented issues and racked my brain on what else a doctor might ask.
Just to cross it off the list, I decided I had better take a pregnancy test. Since the diagnosis could be a number of things, I didn’t want to waste time on pregnancy testing if I were to go to the doctor. I took one and continued to get ready for work, planning to call the doctor during my forty-five-minute commute. I had the phone number of the doctor’s office pulled up and was walking out the door when I remembered I needed to throw the pregnancy test away. I walked back to throw it away and glanced at the result. Gasping so hard I almost passed out, I read the word: PREGNANT. “Ooooooh my…” My voice shook. Here came that panic attack feeling again. I slid down the wall just like I did when the Department of the Army called me about Josh being blown up. I stared up at the ceiling and felt hot tears welling up in my eyes. I looked back down at the test, just to make sure I could read, and then back up at the ceiling again. I repeated that pattern for about five minutes before I got up and got in the car. The entire drive to work, I sat in silence. My mind was swimming in so many half-thought scenarios I was actually surprised when I pulled up at work. I hadn’t even paid attention to where I was going. Still freaked out, I backed out of my space and went to a nearby drugstore to get another pregnancy test, because, you know sometimes they just say “pregnant” for no reason, right? I took it to the women’s restroom outside my office, and it confirmed the first result.
I felt so different about this baby. This was nothing like the last time. Harper was the result of overcoming the ultimate odds. She was a medical miracle. We were already breaking down barriers every day in rehab, and then there came a baby for the victory lap. I couldn’t even remember the last time Josh and I even had had the opportunity to conceive a baby. When did we even have a good enough day with each other that would have ended in sex? I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me. I couldn’t hear myself saying through excited tears, “We’re having a baby!” like the last time. This time sounded a lot more like, “I’m pregnant.” Emotionless. Clinical. I’m alone. I’m making the sacrifice. I’m going to doing this by myself. I droned through my workday and locked myself in my room when I returned home. The only way I could pray about this was to write it down. “Today, I found out I am pregnant.” My vision blurred with tears as I read that statement over and over. “I feel really guilty for not being excited, but Josh and I are in a bad place. I just don’t know if we are even meant to be together anymore. We fight every day. Things are just so different than what I thought they would be. I always thought being in the hospital was our problem, but we truly don’t know how to handle ourselves. God, please forgive me for not reacting to this like the blessing that it is. It’s another scientific miracle! But our marriage needs a miracle too.” We went to church the next day. It was Valentine’s Day. The pastor preached a wonderful sermon on biblical love and the importance of intimacy and emotional connection with a spouse. Tears rolled down my face as I sat next to a person I barely knew anymore, knowing that we were light years away from what God wanted for us.
When I went to the OB-GYN, I found out I was nine weeks pregnant. I kept my pregnancy a secret for a long time: thirteen weeks, to be exact. Working in a different town than Josh helped me hide the day-to-day issues with being pregnant. I pulled over in the same Walmart parking lot almost every workday to take a nap. The pregnancy added a new problem to my job situation as well. This baby was due in October, right in the middle of what was supposed to be my first season at AUM. I wasn’t going to have a full-time assistant coach that first year, so how was I going to do my job the full semester? I became so nervous about the situation that I looked up legislation on whether they could fire me or not. Our carefully constructed mountain of wins that was our trophy to show the world our success was starting to crack at the edges.
