How and When I Found Out

I found out that I was pregnant with Sprout on the evening of November 11, the same day the Democrats took back control of Congress. After I looked at the pregnancy test, I doubled checked the instructions to make sure that "+" really meant pregnant. Then I took another test. "+" still meant pregnant. Not, "yes, you're not pregnant."

Early in the fall we had thought that maybe we'd wait until after Rodney had finished the classes he needed to take in order to become a high school English teacher. What if he made less money? How could we fit a child in our 800 sq. ft. condo? Then on October 4, my sister-in-law, Saskia, gave birth to our darling niece Harper B -- I still remember the phone call at 2 a.m. "Hello Uncle Rodney," Saskia said in a sly but proud voice -- and Rodney and I decided that there was no perfect time to have a baby.

Still, that was October 4 and here we were, barely a month later, pregnant.