To quote James Brown …

(By Erik)

Actually, I’ll get to that in a minute.

This story begins back in May, when my lovely wife handed me a home pregnancy test. She was convinced it was positive.

Here’s what I saw.


Now, come on, that looks like a sideways minus sign, right? Sure, if you squint you can make out a horizontal line, but that’s hardly a plus sign.

Unfortunately, we had thrown out the instruction sheet. (It was one half of a two-pack of pregnancy tests I bought a few years back — and that time it was undeniably negative.) So Jeanie got online and consulted the manufacturer’s Web site. I took a look at it and felt my heart jump up to the back of my throat.

That vertical line … it’s the “I’m pregnant” line. The horizontal line is the control line.

My pulse racing, I tried to rationalize. “That thing still looks like a minus sign to me. How do we know it’s a plus sign? When was this thing on the Internet written, anyway? What if someone in the factory put the thing in sideways?”

So, off to Wal-Mart to buy another test. Looking nervously over our shoulders to make sure we didn’t recognize anyone in the pharmacy section, we bought a three-pack of tests. These have two parallel lines, so I figured there would be less confusion.

We returned to the house and, after some prompting on my behalf (“Do you have to go again? Here, have some water! What about now?”) this was the result:


Still inconclusive, in my book. That one line looks awfully faint. Perhaps she’s just a little bit pregnant. There has to be a way to tell for sure.

So, finally, I took drastic measures. Unless these things are completely faulty (or I’ve somehow defied medical science, a la Gov. Schwarzenegger in “Junior”) we should have a clear indication of a what a negative reading looks like.


After seeing this, all I could think of to ask was, "Pink or blue?"

So, as James Brown would say, “Baby baby baby, baby baby baby, baby baby baby, I got that feelin.’”

That was a whole trimester ago. We’re 14 weeks along and, aside from the nausea and weird food cravings, we’re feeling fine. (Jeanie’s doing OK, too.)

Nonetheless, we’re both really squeamish about blogging about this in case something bad happens. But so far everything looks good.

I always thought I wanted a boy, but the second this happened, I didn’t care about that any more. It’s weird. Actually, I’m convinced we’re having a girl. Jeanie’s guessing boy.

Jan 17, 2008, is our anticipated big day. Please pray with us for a happy, healthy baby.