Ok, that was just a teaser

Sorry, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to taunt my dear, long-suffering mother with my prior post. That was horrible of me, and I am sure to suffer some karmic retribution for my wickedness.

And now, as that old dude on the radio used to say, for the rest of the story.

Before we embarked on the original Child Quest (you know, the one that ended up taking WAY longer than we expected and turned out to be fraught with obstacles and bizarre twists and sadness and lots and lots of needles and resulted in one absolutely beautiful child and one somewhat whingey blog), Atomic and I had agreed that we wanted to have two children. That seemed like the right number for us, which is not surprising given that we each have one sibling and each sibling has two gorgeous kids.

After the aforementioned long, fraught, needle-and-heartbreak-filled (and expensive! Did I mention expensive?) Quest, we had our sweet little Pebbles. We felt SO lucky and grateful for our good fortune that we agreed to just leave it up to the universe whether we had a second child or not.

Well, that lovely Zen attitude lasted, oh, about a year. And then we started to realize that, as grateful and complete and happy as we are with our one, precious child, it would be kind of nice if she had a sibling. And even though her initial reaction to said sibling might be something akin to murderous envy, it would be nice for her to have a little brother or sister who would be there after we're gone.

So we decided to saddle up and climb back into them stirrups. We had no idea how long it would take, or whether it would happen at all. Certainly the numbers were not with us. But we thought, what the heck. Let's roll the IUI dice. What's a few more injections? If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, and we still have the awesomest kid on the planet.

And guess what?

(Go on, guess)

Exactly! It happened!

And there was cautious rejoicing in the Land of Binky, Atomic, and Pebbles. And Binky threw up many times and learned that early pregnancy and labor negotiations are a terrible combination. And Atomic became ecstatic, worried, and grumpy by turns because he was not sure what he was getting himself into. And Pebbles carried on, blissfully unaware that her world was about to be set on its head by a tiny, squalling little interloper.

I couldn't quite bring myself to blog about it, though. I think that was primarily because this leg of the journey was comparably short and easy, which didn't really make for a good story. And then there was this other part of me, the superstitious part, that didn't want to say anything for fear of jinxing it. I still have that fear. I'm afraid that my joy, or my hubris, or my relative lack of suffering this time will cause something terrible to happen. Dumb, I know, but it feels real enough.

So I held off. And I decided to post today because, well, because my mom told me to. And because we got our CVS results back today, and we know there's a teeny little boy in there with exactly the right number of chromosomes in the right configurations. So, you know, maybe we'll actually be having another baby this December.

Eeep!