In February of 2009, Brett and I were living together. I was teaching. Brett runs his own marketing business and worked from home or various cafes. He is lucky that he can do his work anywhere there is an internet connection. We both had traveled, loved traveling. He had lived abroad before and I always wanted to. So, I sought out and accepted a job teaching at an international school in Shenzhen, China - just outside of Hong Kong on the mainland. The prospect of going overseas 'unattached' to one another made both of us a bit nervous. Although talk of marriage hadn't come up, I knew that I could see myself with him for the long haul.
We were married under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon with a few friends present and had a big reception in June. The next month, we were in China. Those two years are an entire blog unto themselves. Filled with travel, culture shock, amazing new people and tremendous growth. When my contract was up, we contemplated moving elsewhere abroad and I initially took a job in Nairobi, Kenya. But after much debate (are you starting to see a pattern here?) we decided to move back to Portland, at least for a little while. I came back to a new position in the same school district; Brett continued to work with his clients and we waited for all of our stuff to arrive from China. We repainted the house, cleaned up the yard, and I got ready for the school year to begin. Living overseas, living in China, certainly gives you perspective. It even impacted my views on family and children. In a country where it is illegal to have more than one child (if you're not in the upper echelons of the party, that is) children are the center of everything. Extended families tend to be close to one another, if not living together, and the family revolves around that baby. And they are everywhere. It is amazing how valuable family and children were in China, often at the expense of not caring for others who aren't in your immediate family. It isn't a warm culture, to say the least. But it seems that they care tremendously about their families.
September came and went and it slowly started to feel as if our lives were getting back to normal. We had serious moments of reverse culture shock and periods of adjustments - we are still going through them. So when October came and my period did not, it didn't seem strange. Neither did the extreme exhaustion I felt. That was a start of the school year norm - a result of having to wake up to an alarm and be somewhere all day. It wasn't until I sent a text to my friend Errin, mother of 6 with one on the way, that I began to wonder. "If I were you I'd be peeing on a stick already," she texted. Reluctantly, I went to the store after work and bought a pregnancy test. I came home, went upstairs and did my thing. Within seconds, two faint pink lines were present. "Seriously? No way..." I went downstairs to find Brett. I brought him upstairs and showed the test to him. He was seriously confused, "What? What does that mean?" Neither of us seemed convinced.
Errin! She'd know, mother of 6 with one on the way. I scrambled to take a picture of the test and sent it to her. "You're so pregnant," was her reply. I chugged a glass of water and we ran back upstairs; luckily the box had 3 tests in it. I took it again. I needed a second opinion. Same thing. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I honestly have never quite felt that emotion before. And so it seemed the universe had made her move.
