For those who had a "surprise" pregnancy...

[Tuckins1]

... how did DH react to the news? How did you react? Were you shocked/sad/happy/etc?...
I wasn't sad about it, but since it wasn't on my mind, I was completely shocked and didn't know exactly how I felt. DH was calm and was fine with it. It took me a few days to actually feel "excited". I was sort-of in denial with the first test I took because that meant we couldn't go on our trip to Hawaii that we had just booked, and I REALLY wanted to go! However, once the reality sunk in I got over that real quick...

 

[DivaDiamond007]

I am pregnant with our second child and while we weren't ttc, we also weren't preventing so when I got a positive test I was more shocked than anything. I wasn't in denial about it, but in the very beginning I had thoughts of OMG, this ruins everything! Once the news settled in I was totally excited and now I cannot wait to meet our daughter. I am very high risk, however, so this pregnancy hasn't been nearly as fun so there are days when I can't wait for it to be over and done with even though I love being pregnant.

My husband was super excited from day 1. He loves babies and kids and would have a brood of children if he could I am not having any more kids after this one so I tell him that we can have more when men do the gestating

 

[fieryred33143]

I peeled myself off the ground and wiped the tears enough to ask a question about pregnancy tests on PS preggo thread. I was given that POAS link which confirmed that I wasn't just seeing things and then plopped myself back on the ground to cry.

Needless to say, I was not happy. FI was very quiet about it. He didn't feel it would be appropriate to jump for joy while I was walking around repeating "what the hell did we do, how could this be."

It took a few days for me to come to terms with everything and acknowledge responsibility. It took one look at the disco ball of a heartbeat for me to fall completely head over heels in love FI was scared from the beginning but happy overall.

 

[SB621]

I'm not really sure if I fall into this category exactly. You see we decided that we would TTC and got pregnant on the first night. DH is military so we don't see each other all the time. He was leaving for a few weeks so I thought I would get pregnant when he came back or start TTC then. Well he came back and instead we found out that I was 7 weeks pregnant. I was in complete denial and DH was in shock. Even though we had it in our heads that we wanted to get pregant it just didn't set in. It took about a week for us to really wrap our heads around it.

 

[taovandel]

I was planning a destination wedding actually and my parents had just booked the hotel rooms for our guests(thankfully the deposit was refundable if canceled within a certain amount of time of booking!).

I was in complete shock for about 2 days...had my husband run out to buy more pregnancy test (1st was negative, 2nd was positive, I needed a tie breaker!)...

I just remember sitting on the bed and us saying "Wow." like a million times!

After that we were totally okay with everything.....

 

[Dreamer_D]

... how did DH react to the news? How did you react? Were you shocked/sad/happy/etc?...
I wasn't sad about it, but since it wasn't on my mind, I was completely shocked and didn't know exactly how I felt. DH was calm and was fine with it. It took me a few days to actually feel "excited". I was sort-of in denial with the first test I took because that meant we couldn't go on our trip to Hawaii that we had just booked, and I REALLY wanted to go! However, once the reality sunk in I got over that real quick...

You can still go to Hawaii as long as you are under about 32 weeks.

 

[Tuckins1]

... how did DH react to the news? How did you react? Were you shocked/sad/happy/etc?...
I wasn't sad about it, but since it wasn't on my mind, I was completely shocked and didn't know exactly how I felt. DH was calm and was fine with it. It took me a few days to actually feel "excited". I was sort-of in denial with the first test I took because that meant we couldn't go on our trip to Hawaii that we had just booked, and I REALLY wanted to go! However, once the reality sunk in I got over that real quick...

You can still go to Hawaii as long as you are under about 32 weeks.

Yeah, but my due date is May 26 and the trip was booked for June 26... Not that I wouldn't mind recovering in Hawaii, but I don't think I could leave the baby.

 

[Tuckins1]

Sounds like many of you had similar experiences to me... We weren't in "denial" so much as in shock that it occurred (especially since we were trying NOT to conceive!!) It's all good though, we are super stoked now. Thanks for sharing your stories!

 

[LaurenThePartier]

Congratulations, Tuckins!

 

[Pandora II]

Not me, but my sister who is 24 found out she was pregnant at the end of September. The baby is due at the end of December so she was already 7 months.

She'd been put into medically induced menopause for various reasons and it was supposed to be impossible for her to become pregnant. Add to that she and the bf only DTD once the month she got PG. So, when she started feeling sick and putting on a bit of weight everyone told her it was just a side-effect of the medication. She's also 6ft 2" and big build so she could hide it well. When I saw her I would never in a million years have guessed she was pregnant, plus my father who is an MD had seen her pretty much every week for the previous months and he didn't suspect a thing.

I went straight down to see her the day she found out and she was beyond distraught. The GP reckoned she was at them most 12 weeks but sent her for a scan to check before he booked her for a termination. When she found out at the scan that she was at least 26 weeks and probably more and so past the cut-off for terminating the pregnancy she totally lost it. She has bipolar disorder with very bad depression and my first reaction when I heard she was in hospital was that she had tried to kill herself, so she's not exactly in the situation where a baby would be a good thing.

Add to that, she split up with the boyfriend about 2 weeks after she would have got pregnant and they are absolutely not on speaking terms.

Anyway, she is having the baby and keeping it but isn't too happy about it. My parents have been great and she's moving in with them for the first 9 months. I asked her how she was feeling a couple of weeks ago and she said she'd stopped crying every time she thought about it but she's dreading it. My father will be her birth-partner which I think will be good for him and my sister, and with any luck they'll both fall in love with the baby when he arrives.

She has now told the ex-bf and he says he wants nothing to do with the child (thank goodness) but his parents do. My sister told him that wasn't happening!

I feel really sorry for her and I think she's going to find it very, very hard and she is at huge risk for postnatal depression and post-partum psychosis. I have bipolar disorder as well and the risk is 70% for PND and 50% for PPP - I had a huge team coming to see me in hospital and every week for the first year to help me through and check I wasn't going downhill and adjusting my meds. She won't have any of that - although my father will be able to keep an eye out.

 

[Tuckins1]

Not me, but my sister who is 24 found out she was pregnant at the end of September. The baby is due at the end of December so she was already 7 months.

She'd been put into medically induced menopause for various reasons and it was supposed to be impossible for her to become pregnant. Add to that she and the bf only DTD once the month she got PG. So, when she started feeling sick and putting on a bit of weight everyone told her it was just a side-effect of the medication. She's also 6ft 2" and big build so she could hide it well. When I saw her I would never in a million years have guessed she was pregnant, plus my father who is an MD had seen her pretty much every week for the previous months and he didn't suspect a thing.

I went straight down to see her the day she found out and she was beyond distraught. The GP reckoned she was at them most 12 weeks but sent her for a scan to check before he booked her for a termination. When she found out at the scan that she was at least 26 weeks and probably more and so past the cut-off for terminating the pregnancy she totally lost it. She has bipolar disorder with very bad depression and my first reaction when I heard she was in hospital was that she had tried to kill herself, so she's not exactly in the situation where a baby would be a good thing.

Add to that, she split up with the boyfriend about 2 weeks after she would have got pregnant and they are absolutely not on speaking terms.

Anyway, she is having the baby and keeping it but isn't too happy about it. My parents have been great and she's moving in with them for the first 9 months. I asked her how she was feeling a couple of weeks ago and she said she'd stopped crying every time she thought about it but she's dreading it. My father will be her birth-partner which I think will be good for him and my sister, and with any luck they'll both fall in love with the baby when he arrives.

She has now told the ex-bf and he says he wants nothing to do with the child (thank goodness) but his parents do. My sister told him that wasn't happening!

I feel really sorry for her and I think she's going to find it very, very hard and she is at huge risk for postnatal depression and post-partum psychosis. I have bipolar disorder as well and the risk is 70% for PND and 50% for PPP - I had a huge team coming to see me in hospital and every week for the first year to help me through and check I wasn't going downhill and adjusting my meds. She won't have any of that - although my father will be able to keep an eye out.

Wow, that's quite the story! I hope everything goes well for mom and baby!

 

[Tuckins1]

Pandora, you don't have to share if you don't want to, but why would they need to give your sister chemically induced menopause? What kind of medical conditions would warrant something like that? I'm just curious, I don't want to be nosy but i've never heard of that before.

 

[Pandora II]

Her bipolar disorder is, I think, very likely more a case of Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) which is very closely associated with the bipolar disorder group than Bipolar II. Because I have classic manic depression she is automatically treated for that as it's dangerous to give anti-depressants if you are bipolar as it can trigger you into hypomania (what happened rather often to me till I got diagnosed!) or mania. So instead they treat any depression in siblings/children with a mood-stabiliser like lithium or carbamazepine instead. I had been on at her and my mother to discuss the possibility of PMDD with her psychiatrist and try a different line in treatment which is what this was.

My sister only has depressive phases and no history of hypomania/mania and her depressions seem to be very tied into her menstrual cycle. The idea is that putting her into menopause would control the hormones and symptoms and hopefully get her depression under control. It's totally reversible so they would have stopped the treatment when she decided to get pregnant. It seemed to be working very well - she'd been on the treatment for around 5 months when she got pregnant - so it's a total PITA that this happened.

She's also been very stable while she's been pregnant so it looks like the hormone route is the one to take, but it could get really bad once she's had the baby.

The really sad thing was that after 5 years of being very unwell she had just started to sort her life out... got rid of the boyfriend, got a decent job and new flat, got rid of some of her less desirable friends, applied to go back to University to finish her degree in Psychology (she dropped out 3 weeks before her finals as she was convinced she would fail - which she wouldn't have done) and bought herself a Bengal kitten as something to love, keep her company and look after. My parents were thrilled that she finally seemed to be getting her life straightened out and thought getting the kitten would help her learn about being responsible for something other than just herself. She didn't really need this kind of spanner in the works!

I hope she'll be okay - I'm the eldest of 4 (she's 14 years younger than me!) so we've all rallied round a bit. DH and I aren't planning another child so I've given her my co-sleeper crib, car-seat & base, play-mat, jumperoo and masses of blankets, nappies and other bits and pieces. My parents love babies (although my father is definitely a fan of little girls rather than boys - we are 3 girls and 1 boy) although I don't think they thought they'd be getting another one to parent!

 

[basil]

Wow, Pandora, that's a scary situation!

I don't know if this counts as a "surprise" pregnancy cause it wasn't an "oops"...we knew what we were doing when we stopped BC! But we hadn't been charting or timing or even trying very hard. So when the first 2 tests I took came up positive and I told DH he insisted we go to the store and get "different brands" of tests in case the first ones were faulty. I took 7 tests on that night. All positive!

After the initial period of shock DH got really excited. I have to admit it took me a few days to come around, now I'm just trying to restrain my excitement until after the first ultrasound...But I think the person the most excited is my mom! She keeps giving me nutrition advice, so I accused her of just treating me like a vessel for her grandchild now!

 

[Mrs]

congrats Tuckins

Pandora, I'll be keeping your sister in my thoughts! It sounds like a rather difficult situation and I'm so sorry the circumstances are less than ideal. I hope it all works out for the best though and that her mental health improves once the baby arrives! She's fortunate to have a sister like you.

 

[MonkeyPie]

Pandora, what an unfortunate situation for your sister all around! Please, let us know how she's doing when the baby arrives.

Micah was a surprise. We were living with my parents to pay down bills and help them out, and had no intention of getting PG. And then I was at work one day and said something to a co-worker about how I felt really nauseous that morning and no food sounded good, and I was super tired. She laughed and asked if I was pregnant, and a light bulb went on in my head. I went home that night and took a test, and I was so early (not even quite four weeks, not late for my period or anything yet) , and the line was super faint. So I called my best friend, who is a nurse in the NICU, and asked her if any line at all meant pregnancy. She said yes, and reading the instructions (duh, MP) confirmed it.

I burst into tears and fell into DH's lap, and we huddled together and worried for about two minutes - then it was nothing but happiness and excitement. Micah is the love of my life, and I don't regret a thing.

 

[meresal]

Right after I took the first test, I was laughing because it only took about 20 seconds to come back "Pregnant", and I just couldn't process what it actually meant. I took the second one, and that is when I started crying.

I cried myself to sleep... he held me the whole night. He really didn't say much. Neither of us did.

I took the next 2 days off of work in order to get the pregnancy verified and an ultrasound. (We had only been married for 4 weeks, and since my period the week of the wedding only lasted 2 days, I was terrified that it had happened before then... this was my main worry. In all honesty, I was worried that we were too far along to even *have* an option. I never in a million years wanted to admit to my parents that I let this happen before getting married.)

Once I found out that I was indeed only 4 weeks along, we talked about finances and how our *plan* was changing, and within about a week we were full on ecstatic!


The next one, I want to be excited from the get-go though.

ETA: Pandora, I really hope that your sister is going to come away from this a healthy girl with a beautiful son that she loves. Having been thru that first week after, I am so glad that she has yours and your parents full support. I can only imagine how much she is going to need it.

 

[Tuckins1]

Pandora, thank you for sharing! I really hope that everything turns out well for your sister!

Girls, thanks for sharing your experiences!