We now have 8 weeks until our planned stop of hormonal birth control. We are both getting very excited, but at the same time nervous, about our impending life change. I am extremely anxious about the changes that I will have to go through. I finished my first pregnancy book last week and have been reading more of David’s, and to be honest neither of them are helping to put me at ease. I have a few more that I’m going to consider exploring, but for now I’ve decided that one book each is enough. I’ve been reading through the Amazon.com previews of some of the others I’m considering and am having a hard time deciding which I really want and which I would consider borrowing from the library. I’ve found myself drawn to articles on babble.com and thebump.com. Some of them are extremely fascinating to me.

I’m still debating how I want to break the news to our parents. Obviously by the time anyone reads this they’ll already know, so you may know how we did it. I’ve thought about giving them envelopes with the pregnancy test results or something like that. I’ve also thought about giving them a series of pictures with week numbers on them or maybe just one large photograph with several pictures. I had also thought about waiting until our summer vacation, inviting everyone to go camping, and sometime while we’re all together letting them know that we’re expecting.

I think we are still planning to keep it a secret until we’re already pregnant since they are all under the impression that we’re waiting an extra year or two (which we decided against). It’s been very tough so far. I’ve seen my parents once since we decided, and we will be seeing them again this next Saturday, then we will see David’s family for Thanksgiving. I know that a grandchild from us is something both our parents are looking forward to (and are maybe anxiously awaiting) and they may be slightly disappointed that its been kept secret from them, but we really want to surprise them in a big way.

I’ve told several people so far that we’re planning for a baby in the next 6ish months. Two of my coworkers know. One is a work friend who I’ve known for almost a year and feel very comfortable talking to. The second is a new person with whom I happened upon the subject. One of our cousins also knows (and is sworn to secrecy), but I won’t mention which one. Of course the people we spoke with at The Sanctuary know, and I’m sure Amazon can guess that we’re planning based on my purchase history and my private baby wishlist.

I think I’ve got most of our basic baby gear items picked out. I have yet to pick a crib because I’d like to wait until we go to Babies R Us to set up a registry. I’ve picked the “bassinet” we’ll have in our room for nighttime for the first bit. Car seats and matching stroller are picked. 3 different baby wearing carriers have been chosen. I’ve researched the different choices for cloth diapering and seen a how-to video from the company I’ve selected. I’ve also decided against bottles (for now at least) as I will be home and won’t need to prep baby for me going back to work. I’ve done about as much research as I’m going to on all these items and am going to stick with the ones I’ve picked out while I am of sound mind.

8 weeks! Yay!