Meet Blasto

Yep, that's a picture of Blasto. As you probably have guessed (or already know) Blasto is the baby I planted in Jen's tummy garden. And you're probably asking, why are you calling your baby Blasto? Well, apparently in the first seven weeks following conception, the technical name of an embryo is blastocyte. Or is it blastocyst? I don't know. Jen's been readin' up on pregnancy and told me about the whole blastocyst/cite thing, and being the huge goofballs we are, we shortened it to Blasto. I also told Jen that Blasto is a good name because he or she is going to shoot out of her vag like a bullet, and I made my version of the sound of a ricochet, which Jen spells "ping-pew!" That picture up there, though, is our baby at 12 weeks. After seven weeks the embryo is called a foetus, but Jen and I agree that we don't want to call our baby feeto or something stupid like that, so the name remains Blasto.

Jen and I have been married nearly 4 years, and though we agreed early on that we wanted to have a child, we also agreed that we wanted to have a little time to just be a couple before we started rearin' youngins. Originally I think the plan was to try to work things out so that we would have a baby for my 40th birthday, but when that time came I didn't feel like we were economically positioned to have a baby, and frankly I was enjoying the time I was spending with Jen as a married couple so much that I wasn't anxious to change the status quo. It still seemed like we had some time, since Jen was in her early 30's, but I was also rapidly approaching and soon passing the age of 40, so we knew we couldn't put it off forever.

What finally kicked our butts into gear was a medical scare. Jen was told that an annual test revealed that she had cervical cancer. Jen (and I) had to live with that prognosis for an excruciatingly long two days, then got a call from the doctors office that essentially said, "Oops, we misread your test results, you don't have cervical cancer, isn't that great?" We were indeed very relieved, but it made Jen realize that if we were gonna do this baby thing, we had better git to gittin', so she told me she wanted to try to have a baby.

Now readers, I want to make something clear. I'm not one of these guys who doesn't want kids and tries to string his wife along to avoid ever having them. In the beginning of our relationship, I very much wanted kids and Jen was not really super enthusiastic about the idea. It wasn't long until her attitude did a full 180 and she realized that she really did want to have a baby. I'm not saying she was yelling "Baby, now!" or anything like that, but she would look at little kids and babies and get a look on her face that let me know that her biological clock was ticking ever more loudly. Actually to be honest, when she'd get that look I would say, "Your womb's throbbing, isn't it?" That said, I still was sort of gently dragging my feet. It's pretty simple really, as I faced the idea of actually raising children I started to fear the responsibility, the economic challenges, and most of all that I'll completely fuck my kid up.

But after Jen's med scare, when she wanted to start trying to conceive right away, I realized I didn't have an argument that was strong enough to oppose her, and so we started in earnest to get the baby factory up and running. And once we got started Jen couldn't wait for some concrete results. Before September was up, she had convinced herself that we had had success, and she was certain she was pregnant. I thought it was super cute, but I also figured the chances that we conceived on our first try were pretty slim. I just kept my mouth shut and waited to see, but I have to admit that when it turned out that I was right, it was pretty sad. I hated to see Jen so disappointed, but all I could do was keep my end up (heh) and keep trying.

October was essentially a repeat of September. We did our best, Jen was all but sure we had succeeded, but once again it proved not to be our time. Jen announced that she just wasn't gonna worry about it and let nature take its course. She did pretty well, but toward the end of November she found out that this new approach didn't work either, and she spent a couple of days with some friends in Michigan who were on their third bundle of joy, and I could tell she was getting pissed.

Then someone suggested we try an ovulation indicator test. They're kinda like a home pregnancy test - the woman takes a whiz on a stick and a little window indicates whether she's popped out an egg or not.

In mid December, my company had its annual holiday party, and as part of the deal employees could get a room in the same fancy downtown Indianapolis hotel where the party was at a vastly reduced rate. I booked a room figuring it would be a nice little get away for us. As it turned out, it was also around the time Jen was expecting to be fertile, so she brought one of her tests with her, and early in the afternoon after we checked in she peed on the stick and lo and behold, the purple line showed that we better get crackin', so we enjoyed a little afternoon delight.

Now Jen was approaching everything with scientific precision, and she had calculated the exact date, time, minute and second when we could try a pregnancy test. It turned out that the day was December 31st, and the time was 5am, because that's when she woke me up and asked if I wanted to go to the bathroom with her to take the test. So I dragged my ass out of bed, watched her pee on yet another stick, which she handed to me while she finished up business. About 20 seconds after she handed it to me, one word suddenly appeared in the window, "PREGNANT." I asked Jen if the result ever changes from one thing to the other before they settle on the final answer. "No," she said, "Why, does it say not pregnant?" I said no, but apparently it sailed over her head as she continued to explain to me the ins and outs of pregnancy tests. Finally she stopped and asked what it said. I showed her and there was shrieking and hugging and stuff.

Then there was the long wait. We decided not to tell people about our new situation until Jen had made it through the first trimester. We had both known people who had lost babies in the first trimester, and that this was actually fairly common. Plus, Jen and I share a weird kind of superstition about God, in Jen's case; and the universe, in my case. We both think that if we tell too many people about something, or even want it too much, we will be denied happiness. So Jen struggled through the changes that began happening to her body, and I tried to do all I could around the house, because Jen was getting hit very hard by morning sickness. And through those first couple of months we basically didn't allow ourselves to be happy or excited about the pregnancy. Jen had an appointment near the end of February where they would do the first ultrasound and a complete medical checkup, so we set our sights on that day to know everything would be OK.

As you can probably imagine, living like that got to be pretty tiring after awhile, so we made plans to have a quick getaway in a cottage on Lake Lemon to take advantage of time off for the president's day holiday.

There we are on the deck. We both needed to unplug for a little bit and one night we took some time and each wrote a letter to Blasto. We then read each other's letters aloud. I can really only speak for myself, but I think Jen would say the same thing; taking the time to write down what I was feeling, then reading Jen's thoughts made me realize just how much I'm looking forward to meeting Blasto, and how much love Jen and I already have for this little kid.

After that it wasn't long to wait for the appointment, which happened to fall on my 41st birthday. The ultrasound was amazing. I saw Blasto move (I later told Jen that Blasto was doing crunches) and we heard a heartbeat. What a wonderful birthday gift. The doctor examined Jen and told us what we were dying to hear - everything looks great. So we're shouting it to the world, and we're waiting for September, when we can finally meet Blasto.