Nearly four years ago The Hubs and I went on a trip to Wisconsin, sort of a last hoorah before he began his second year of law school, and I went back to teaching in September. It wasn’t much of a trip, just to an inn with some restaurants, a pool, tennis courts (we were beginners, but very into tennis at the time), and about the right amount of activity to make us feel like we’d gotten to get away for a break before the drudgery began again. What you need to know, Dear Reader, before I continue with this story, is that we had also been “trying” for one month. With the expectation that getting pregnant would probably take six months or so, we decided to go ahead and get going on that, hoping we’d be successful at some point throughout the year…

So we set off. We swam in the pool, ate at nice restaurants, and had a leisurely time. But not long into our little excursion, things got weird. Let me be more specific: I got weird. It began at the tennis court, on a fairly hot day. We were new at tennis, so it wasn’t totally out of the ordinary for one of us to get frustrated with our own lack of ability, but go ahead and fast forward to the part where I am sitting in the middle of the tennis court crying and yelling at him that he is hitting the ball out of my reach on purpose!!! To which he would have said, had he not be petrified of me at the time, “Isn’t that the object of the game?” Instead, he recommended I drink more water and we head to our room for a rest. I declared that no, we would continue playing, but then every time I was forced to bend over and pick up a ball from the ground, I would start crying again.

We didn’t know why.

When we finally headed in, me, red-faced and swollen, him, dumbfounded, we had to climb a fairly substantial hill to get back to the inn. I had to stop and rest half way through. As you can imagine - more crying. But why do I have to stop and rest?! Why can’t I climb this hill?! YOU don’t have to rest. Let’s just go! At which point I proceeded to huff up the hill, tears still streaming down my face due to total exhaustion, with a bit of stubbornness thrown in.
We didn’t know why.

Inside our air conditioned room, we watched the US Open. I took a pregnancy test, just because I had them with me despite the fact that I knew it would be too early, but sometimes you just gotta check, right? It was negative.

Then the food thing began. Let me just say, I am big on elaborate breakfasts, especially at restaurants, so when I ordered toast and plain scrambled eggs one morning, The Hubs looked at me and doubt passed before his eyes - he wasn’t sure who I was. This was the woman who had eaten huge plates of blueberry pancakes every morning for eight days straight when we were on our honeymoon. When the food came, I ate only the toast.

We still didn’t know why.

That night, when it was time to discuss our dinner plans, I declared that I wanted to stay in and order room service, didn’t feel like going out. More importantly, I wanted French onion soup and apple pie for dinner. As The Hubs scanned the room service menu he said they might not have those things; apple pie was not listed. I said he’d better call down and see if they had some, because I was going to have French onion soup and apple pie for dinner, even if he had to go out and find me some apple pie. Mercifully (for him) they had both items and they arrived to our room a bit later. When the food was presented on the table, I’ll admit, it looked a bit odd, the combination that I’d required, that is. I’d probably never ordered onion soup before in my life.

But the weirder thing was the whole apple pie bit. I’d always hated baked apples. In fact, they make me gag because of the texture. Hubs had heard my story about the time my dad made me try apple pie at a restaurant with his parents even though I told him I didn’t like it, and I proceeded to gag and barf in front of my grandparents when he insisted (he never made me try it again after that:) And now, here we were sitting at a table with really salty soup and mushy pie before us, after it had been made abundantly clear that these were the necessary items, on penalty of who knows what, should they not have made it to my stomach in a timely fashion. I scarfed them down and went to bed early.

And still, we really didn’t know why. . .because apparently we are morons.

About a week later when we were home again. I took another test, and my heart stopped for a moment.

Then I took another.

Then I switched brands and took another.

Then I called Hubs. I had done this while he was at school, because I was so certain they would be negative anyway so it wouldn’t matter. I’d always regret that decision, wishing we could have been together for it. I spoke to him between classes, and told him there might be news, but that I wasn’t sure yet (um, how?) He went back to class, and at some point leaned back in his chair in a weird daze, tilting the whole thing over and falling out of his seat during the lecture in the stadium style classroom.

When he came home finally, I took another, fully expecting the result to be different now that he was here, because obviously it would be impossible for us to be pregnant on the first try.

That was test four (as my four fingers indicate). And he looked at me and said, “We did it!” And here I am, finally letting it hit me as we stood over the tests in our bathroom.

And here he is, looking proud and, um, potent.

And there we sat, having flashbacks of the previous week, the crying, the salty soup, the toast, the crazy woman (me), and, of course, the beer I shared with him, the seared rare tuna I ate for dinner one night, the underwater breath-holding contest we played in the pool, withholding oxygen from our poor spawn (I won though).

And then we knew why.

And we haven’t gotten to get back on the tennis court since.