You know those life experiences way in the future that you think about now and are like “I wonder what it will be like when _____ happens?!” I wonder what it will be like when I’m in high school? I wonder what my first day of college classes will be like? I wonder who I’ll marry and what our wedding will be like?

For me that ‘thing’ has always been having a baby. And by always, I literally mean since I learned what a uterus is and that I had one. It’s just something I’ve always been so excited for, and have spent many many nights laying awake thinking about it. We knew when we got married that babies would be a few years out for us, and I went through many phases during those four years feeling like my ovaries might explode. There were weeks when it took daily prayers for patience and repeated attempts to not get caught up in a future that wasn’t promised. It seems pretty trivial when written out like that, but it was a real struggle for me.

And then my sweet husband came home from class one day and said “ok, let’s do this.” And so we did. And before I knew it I was holding a positive pregnancy test (wondering what I was supposed to do with a stick that I just peed on?) and mailing cute little onesies to our families. And all of a sudden, that time that I had anxiously anticipated for so long was here.

And honestly, I didn’t feel too different at first. I’ve obviously been excited since the peeing incident, but it was hard to really wrap my head around what was happening when I couldn’t feel anything happening inside of me (besides nausea of course.)  I knew I loved the baby and had so many butterflies just thinking about the reality of it, but nothing about it felt very tangible.

Then we had our first ultrasound, and this little gummy bear shaped human popped up on the screen. And I instantly knew that little gummy bear was unlike any other gummy bear that had ever been or will ever be on that screen again. It was our gummy bear, and it was real. A month later we heard the heartbeat for the first time, and I cried for about 2 days thinking about how that’s the heartbeat that baby, our baby, will have for his or her entire life. And then a couple weeks ago I felt a little kick, and I was flooded with all the emotions I could possibly feel for a banana-sized human I’ve never met before. And every day it gets a little more tangible, and every little movement I feel makes this love I’ve felt from the beginning seem a little more real.

Of course there are a lot of things we are nervous for, like moving to a new city in the midst of all this, figuring out a birth plan (seriously, I cringed just typing that), deciding what stroller to buy, how many years of braces we’ll have to pay for, telling the cats, and, oh yeah, the whole ‘raising a child’ thing. But I’m not really thinking about any of those things. These are the days I’ve dreamed about for so long, and all I’m thinking about is how in love I am with with my little sidekick, and the boy who helped me make it.