Oops.

We had decided to wait a few months before trying again so that we could go on vacation to Mexico. With all the unknown surrounding the Zika virus we had thought it would just be safer to wait until we were back and declared bite free before going for gold. Also, tequila. So I blocked off a good 8 days on our calendar during ovulation station time, writing DANGERZONE!!!!! with a Sharpie, and we planned to just avoid any fun nighttime activities together until we were back from the beach – bronzed, dehydrated, and hopefully mosquito free.

All was going well, until our friends decided to get married smack in the middle of the hot heat of DANGERZONE!!!!! (see above), and all that love and liquor celebrating the happy couple accidentally swept us away to the forbidden forest.

Still, we had visited this forest for months with no fruit to show for our efforts so we both really didn’t think anything would come of it and we went about our lives. And then, a few weeks later, I had an incredibly graphic dream about drinking a Summer Shandy and taking a positive pregnancy test, so the next day I took a test on a whim. Sans shandy. As I was at work. Lesson learned about doing anything dramatic at work – finding out SURPRISE, you’re with child! and then having to go about your day as usual is definitely a challenge. However, if you too someday find yourself in the middle of life-changing bathroom event at work, feel free to use this handy guide for surviving, nay, thriving in your time of need.

Step 1: Immediately, and shamelessly, take some awkward bathroom selfies with your pee stick. Do not feel bad that you are in the bathroom for 20 minutes and your co-workers are probably having to hold it. You are literally performing a miracle – the miracle of life yo! Pro tip: try to look sort of excited. Your kid might see these someday. It may take a few tries.

Aim for a more pleasant expression than this

Not quite there…

Nailed it! This says – future child, I was JACKED to find out you were sprouting inside of me!

Step 2: Quickly, and quietly mourn the loss of life as you know it. Bye-bye being a lazy and disgusting slob of a human being who cares only for them self and the speed of their internet connection. Farewell to the art of day drinking the weekends away in a haze of brunching and napping. Au revoir to your only concern in the world being getting the orange Cheeto stains off of your fingers before walking into work. Hello, and goodbye forever Mexican vacation, overflowing with tropical breezes and guacamole and horrifyingly fetal disabling mosquito-carried diseases. This mourning time should take on a level of sarcastic joviality, as this is supposed to be an extremely happy and exciting event. Resist the urge to wallow in your secret stubborn desire to remain in a state of perpetual immaturity for life. By now you have probably been in the bathroom for nearing a half an hour. Time to get out.

Step 3: Do not immediately text every single person you have ever known with your news. Do not promptly share offhand, suspiciously vague remarks with your coworkers such as: “No wonder I’ve felt so tired, nauseous, and emotional and having such a strong sense of smell lately!”. “Hmmm? Oh, nothing, never mind”. Do not stroke your stomach and stare into space with happy tears in your eyes. Refrain from googling “pregnancy”, creating a Pinterest board, or updating your Facebook status to something incredibly cryptic such as: “Just found out THE BEST news EVER! Can’t wait to share with everyone soon! ❤ ❤ “. This is not the time or place to be sharing anything with anyone but your partner. The kid is literally the size of a poppy seed. Which is baby opium. Nobody needs to know about baby opium yet! Also, if you work in healthcare, at this point in the steps you probably have patients waiting for you to get your life together and provide care. You have now reached the end of the steps, GREAT WORK!

I made it through that work day mainly thanks to the fact that every single person in the city of Milwaukee needed me to treat their genital warts and/or look at their linus and doodleberries, so before I could even catch my breath or spend even a second longer in the bathroom contemplating the meaning of life, the day was over and I was headed home. I found myself literally as nervous as a kid around their first crush thinking about dropping this truth bomb on Gates. I had an entire day to process this and still was feeling in shock. I brainstormed ways to share the news with him during rush hour. All of my ideas were extremely clever, expensive, and impractical, but this took up the majority of the ride, which I consider a win. In the end I came up with this: as we are both avid and hysterically immature frequent participants in little doodle games of Hangman – a Hangman puzzle:

_ _ _ _ _   _   _ _ _ _ _ _   _ _   _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _!   _ _ _ _,   _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _

Any guesses?

OH HOW WE LOL’D. He was so confused trying to solve the puzzle. Possibly due to the fact that I told him the theme was “Baseball”. He got everything down to the word baby and had “_A_Y” left and he asked, “Someone Gates? Is this a person?” and I said “Not in the conventional sense of the word”, which I thought was a very telling clue, but only led to more confusion. He was probably trying to think of a baseball player. I finally filled in that last letter and he lost it.  Ol’ Gatesy is indeed over the moon at the prospect of becoming a Papa Bear, and it was so awesome to see him literally freak out. Bummer about Mexico though. For real.

So that’s it! Officially on our journey to become Ma and Pa Gates. What will the future hold for us and little nugget opium? Stay tuned!