Hellobee

Of all the things I have wanted and worked for in my life, the desire to be a wife and a mom has always been the strongest. When Mr. Lion and I got married, my heart was overflowing with joy and after figuring out our first year as a married couple, we decided we were ready to grow our little family.

Like many young women, I assumed that once we decided we wanted a baby, it would happen right away. I remember taking that first pregnancy test, sure that it would be positive. But it wasn’t… and the worry began. What if we couldn’t get pregnant? I read that it could take up to a year of trying, and to me a year felt like an eternity! We were ready for a baby now. Wasn’t 9 months long enough to have to wait?

I have never been one to deal well with uncertainty. Planning is in my nature, and I appreciate a good formula for solving a problem. However, there are no formulas when it comes to parenting. Our journey toward parenthood taught me this lesson the hard way.

Our TTC journey is a story for another day, but after 10 months of (not so patiently) waiting, Mr. Lion and I needed something to distract ourselves; a way to spend time together and focus on something other than our desire to be parents. He came to me one afternoon with a gleam in his eye that told me he had big plans. He wanted us to try a 140 mile hike on the Appalachian Trail. Neither one of us had done anything like this before, so after the initial “we can’t do THAT,” we started discussing how maybe we could. It would take a lot of training, and a lot of learning, but we decided that getting ready would be a great way to spend our summer.

Training with our packs

And it was. The summer of 2012 was filled with hiking trips around the state, as well as shorter evening hikes around lakes close to home. We spent more time in REI than I can count, looking for all the tiny versions of our favorite camping gear. We rented packs for the last month before the trip so that we could get used to hiking carrying 40 lbs gradually. In the back of my mind, I always kind of feared (and maybe hoped, once I learned we would probably encounter bears) that by the time the trip came around, I would be pregnant and we wouldn’t end up getting to go. But the months went by, and the negative tests kept on coming.

In my heart I felt that this trip would be good for us, and that it would be an opportunity for us to achieve a goal in the midst of feeling like a failure in the baby-making department. I fully expected that when we returned, we would need to discuss fertility options and try to figure out what our next steps would be. It would have been over a year of trying at that point, so I tried to focus on the task at hand and not worry about what was to come.

But the week before our trip was scheduled, we got the surprise of a lifetime. I came out of the bathroom that morning to a still sleeping Mr. Lion, overwhelmed with shock and joy. Our Little Lion was here, just when we least expected him.

We decided to continue on with our hiking with the blessing of my doctor, under the instructions to “not let myself get too tired” and to “drink lots of water.” Ok. I could do that. But a seed was planted in my mind… what if I got too tired when we were 3 days from a town? What if our cell phones didn’t work? What if I tripped and fell down the mountain? What if our water filter didn’t work and I got sick? All the things that seemed like not that big a deal when it was just the two of us were suddenly terrifying, knowing that it would really be the three of us on this trip.

The morning we were scheduled to leave, we couldn’t find the parking lot. Along the Appalachian trail there are many many points at which you can enter, and most of them have small hidden parking lots in tucked away corners in the mountains. The fact that we couldn’t navigate to the parking lot with our GPS, cell phone, and a map began to intensify my worry. After driving around for an hour, we realized that it was too late for us to leave and get to our first planned resting point if we went to our initial drop off point, so we decided to drive to the next stop along the trail instead. We found this one without too much trouble, got out of the car, and it immediately started raining. My worry intensified further. Maybe God was trying to tell me that this trip was not a good idea.

Ready to go…in the rain!

But we had come so far, and we were there. I told myself that if it was awful, we would spend the night at the first planned resting spot and then hike back in the morning. I didn’t want to quit, but I didn’t want to spend 12 days in the woods miserable either. By this point the first trimester fatigue was setting in, and hiking wasn’t really even sounding like fun anymore.

We started up the mountain, expecting this to be an easy day based on the terrain map we had. It wasn’t easy. This stretch of the trail was straight uphill. After about 30 minutes, I lost it. I was already tired, and the doctor said not to let myself get too tired… what did that even mean? I was hiking uphill carrying 40 pounds! I was scared. I turned into a blubbering mess. So we quit. We called Mr. Lion’s sister to find out if she had picked up our car yet, and she had, but she wasn’t too far away. We hustled down the mountain to meet her. By the time we got to the bottom, we had been hiking for a grand total of an hour and a half. I am not sure if I was more embarrassed or relieved. When his sister saw us, she chuckled a little. “An hour, huh?” Turns out it was a good time to tell her that she was going to be an aunt!

Rather than face all of our friends who knew about our trip (but not about Little Lion), we decided to use the 2 weeks of vacation we had planned for anyway. We spent a night with Mr. Lion’s family and then headed home. We decided in honor of our failed camping experience (and because we had spent our entire vacation budget renting gear that we wouldn’t be using), we would try camping anyway, somewhere cooler and with all of our normal gear. We packed the car and headed north to Virginia Beach. We stayed off the grid for a about a week, mostly to postpone the ensuing embarrassment over our failed attempt.

Our big tent, complete with the comforts of home (yes, that is an AC unit). Slightly different than backpacking.

Enjoying the beach!

Our return home was followed by a lot of laughter from our friends. We didn’t want to announce our news until after our first appointment where we would confirm that he/she had a heartbeat and all was well, so we endured about a month of jokes at our expense. All the teasing just made it that much more fun when we got to tell everyone the REAL reason we bailed on our adventure. And now Mr. Lion can always use me as the excuse as to why we didn’t make it. I am okay with that. I had never felt fear and anxiety like that before, and I feel like we made the right decision. Little did I know, there was a lot more anxiety to come.

… to be continued.