Wish Come True (The Blogger Diaries Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

We were the first ones here, so it’s only a few minutes before I’m called back. I wanted Mom to come with me, but the nurse said she wasn’t allowed for the testing, but that she could for the results. She has me step up on a scale to find out my weight, and then I sit in a chair for her to take my temperature and blood pressure. After writing my name on a clear cup with a green lid in Sharpie, she hands it to me and points me toward the restroom, telling me to set it inside the metal window after I fill it to the line, and then I can go back out and have a seat when I’m done.
 

I’m only in the waiting room for five minutes before Mom and I are heading back to the nurse’s office to get my results. Even though I
feel
pregnant, and had my at-home test confirm I’m positive, I’m a little nervous. Yesterday, we spent the day talking and daydreaming about nothing but this little one growing inside me, Jason even taking a moment to get on his knees and kiss my tummy before I slid on my little black dress I was wearing to our Trans-Siberian Orchestra performance, and it gave me a chance for it to really sink in this was really happening. It would be absolutely devastating to find out that it was just a false positive and something else going on with my body.
 

With my heart pounding in my ears, I sit down in one of the two chairs facing the nurse’s rolling one, Mom sitting in the other, holding her purse in her lap. I watch as the woman in pink scrubs pulls out a piece of paper from the manila file folder in front of her.

She looks at it a split second before turning to me with a smile on her face. “Your paperwork says you have one child, a girl, who is twenty months?” She poses it more as a question, even though she can clearly see that’s what I wrote down.
 

My nerves are making me grumpy and impatient, so I have to force myself to leave the “Duh” out of my voice when I answer, “Yes, ma’am,” as I wait for her to get the hell on with it.

“Well, congratulations. In nine months, if all goes well, you’ll be a mommy of two little ones,” she says pleasantly, obviously gauging my reaction and purposely keeping a happy tone in her voice to offset if I were to have a bad one.
 

A gust of breath leaves me, and my face splits into a grin as I look over at Mom, who nods at the confirmation, a small smile on her lips.
 

“So let’s find out your due date, shall we?” the nurse prompts, and I watch her take out some kind of paper wheel with a bunch of numbers and dates on it. “When was the first day of your last period?”

“Oh, hell. I have no idea. My cycle has been so screwed up since I stopped breastfeeding that I don’t know when it’s coming. But there’s only one week I could have possibly gotten pregnant in the last couple of months. My boyfriend and I date long-distance. I live in North Carolina and he lives here. In the last two months, meaning November and December, I only saw him for the week of Thanksgiving before coming to see him this past Friday. It had to have happened that week, because I had a period before he came, but not since,” I explain.
 

She nods and turns the wheel around on itself, and when she has it aligned the way she wants it, she looks at it closely and says, “Alrighty, that’s means this baby is due August 28
^th
,” making a note on my paperwork. She checks a few things on the form and then tears the copies apart, handing me the top portion and keeping the bottom to put back into the manila folder. “The building directly behind us is where you’ll go next.” She smiles and stands, nudging the rolling stool out of our way.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask, confused about why I need to go anywhere else, since we came to find out for sure I’m pregnant, and she already confirmed that.

She gives me a perplexed look before hooking her toe on the caster of the stool and pulling it back toward her to sit on. “Well, I assume since you’re here that you don’t have any health insurance, correct?” I nod and she continues. “Did you have insurance with your last child?”

“Yes, ma’am. I was a military spouse,” I clarify.

“Ah, okay. So since you don’t have insurance, the building behind us is where you will go to register for Medicaid. Once they see if you qualify, that will be your insurance provider, and then you’ll be able to find an OB.”

“Oh. I hadn’t even thought that far ahead,” I say quietly. I’ve been military my whole life. All I’ve ever had to do is walk into Womack Army Medical Center, and no matter what my ailment, they’d just send me to whoever I needed to see within the same hospital. There was no having to seek out my own doctor.

Mom reaches over and pats my leg. “No need to worry about all that. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” Then she turns to the nurse with a serious look on her face. “Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between the pregnancy tests y’all give, the ones at a true doctor’s office, and the over-the-counter ones like she got from the dollar store?”

“Honestly, nothing. In fact, I worked at a doctor’s office before I moved here, and when we ran out of pregnancy tests, they sent me to the dollar store to load up on some until our shipment of the exact same ones was due to come in the next day. All it is, is a little strip that will be activated to change color if the hormone HCG is found in the urine. So whether you pay a dollar for it there, or thirty dollars for the fancy ones, they’re all the same. One is no more accurate than another,” she replies, standing once more. “Do y’all have any more questions?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, and with a nod, she opens the door for us, and then I hear her go into another room as we walk out into the waiting room and then through the front door. We drive around until we see the large brick building that houses the Medicaid office.

The next hour is spent filling out a ton of paperwork, but then we discover I have to have a valid Texas ID in order to get Medicaid, because each state has their own program. We take a number in line in order to ask the person in the window some questions, and when it’s our turn, Mom doesn’t hesitate in asking anything and everything she can think of, including her last question, which I’ve heard her ask different people before. “All right, I’ve asked everything I can think of. Is there anything else I should have asked that you can tell me?” Such a smart lady.

“It’ll take approximately three weeks for her to get on Medicaid once she turns in all her paperwork with her valid Texas ID.” He turns to me. “If I were you, I’d go ahead and get your Texas driver’s license while you’re here. That way you can go ahead and start the process, instead of waiting until you actually move here.”

My heart gives a tremendous thud thinking about all this. It’s all happening so fast. I just found out I’m pregnant two days ago. And now, in what seems to be a blink of an eye, there’s all this talk about moving to Texas as soon as possible. I mean, yes, awesome, super happy I’ll be with my Jason. But holy shitballs. I haven’t even told my mom I’m pregnant yet! I can’t just go planning this huge change in my life, uprooting Josalyn and myself and leaving my mom and Granny, when I was just supposed to come to Texas on one of our normal visits, where we’d fly back home and wait until the next time we’d go for a visit, doing it all over again, always going back home. This would be different. Next time I went home, from the way things were sounding, it would be to pack up our stuff and move here.
 

I thank the man who answered all of our questions and start heading toward the door, needing some fresh air. When Mom catches up to me, she tells me I look pale and asks if I’m okay.
 

“Just a little overwhelmed. And I think I need to eat something. I’m getting that weird, off-balance feeling again,” I reply, and when we get into her Highlander, she takes me to Saltgrass Steakhouse and makes me eat a big house salad with Ranch dressing, plus a six-ounce sirloin steak to make sure I have a good amount of iron in my system. When we leave, I feel ten times better, and we head home.

Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog

March 24, 2009

Finding out I’m pregnant threw a little wrench in my New Year's plans to go out dancing with Jason and get white-girl wasted. Instead, we ended up going back to Beaumont for his Aunt Melissa’s surprise birthday party her kids were throwing her at the boat docks. They had tables and chairs set up all over the pier, a table of food off to the side that I took full advantage of, realizing how different this pregnancy already is from Josalyn’s, and even had fireworks set off.

There were tubs of beer and bottles of wine next to the table of food, and I was happily impressed with Jason when his cousin, Lisa, offered him a beer and he told her, “Sure, but just the one.” His cousin, however, was flabbergasted.
 

“Just the one? First, your girlfriend here turns down a glass of wine, and now you’re only going to have one beer…on New Year's? If it’s the drive home you’re worried about, don’t. You can always stay with us,” she told him.

And that’s when it seemed to dawn on her. I could almost see the little light bulb go on over her pretty blonde head. “Oh, my God. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

I’m the most horrible liar on the planet. Even if the lie were to come out of my mouth, you’d never believe me, because I have absolutely no control over what my face does when I react to something. I felt my eyes bug out of my head as I turned to look up at Jason, who had a shit-eating grin on his face.

Lisa’s smile lit up her whole face and she gave us both a big hug. We told her I just found out the night we came to Beaumont the weekend before and that no one knew except Jason’s parents. “Well, better you than me, girl. I don’t think I want any more kids, at least not right now. Two little girls is enough.”

As I type this, I’m laughing my ass off, because little did she know a few weeks later, not only is she pregnant, but Jason’s other cousin, Dianna, who was also at the party, is as well!
 

When I got off the plane in Fayetteville with Josalyn, I didn’t even have a chance to say hardly one word to my mom before I shoved Josalyn’s stroller at her and ran into the bathroom, my hand clamped firmly over my mouth. As I puked my brains out, I heard Mom come in behind me and coo at Josalyn, “So, guess who’s going to be a big sister? Youuu are!” And between heaves, I had to wonder how the hell my mom could possibly know. I mean, I could just be nauseous from the flight. How did she guess I was pregnant?

When I swayed out of my stall after catching my breath, I looked at my mom with a questioning look. “I had my suspicions before you left. This just confirmed it,” she told me with a smirk. “I think you should name him Jensen. Jensen is a fine name.”

She’s convinced it’s a boy. She was dead-on with Josalyn, knowing super early it was a girl, but I have no idea. That was the first time I’d gotten even a little bit nauseous during this pregnancy, when I could barely keep down water with Josalyn’s for the first trimester. Maybe it is a boy, and that’s why this time feels so different.
 

We told Granny when we got home, and then I let them know what Jason, his family, and I had been discussing while I was there. They weren’t happy Josalyn and I would be moving away, but they understood there were many more opportunities in Houston than in little Fayetteville. The Robichauxs offered for me to move in with them until Jason and I could get a place of our own.

During this same conversation, I told them the whole story of how I found out I was pregnant, from the initial feeling of just not feeling right, all the way to the part when Steve gave me the big hug that put my mind at ease. Mom stopped me when I told her about how I was so scared Josalyn would think I’m trying to replace her, and that I wouldn’t love this baby as much as her. She asked me, “KD, do you think I love Tony any less than I do Mark?” I shook my head adamantly. “Do you think I love Jay any less than I love your other two brothers?” I shook my head again, tears filling my eyes. “And do you think I love you any less than I love the three of them?” This one made me snort.

“Of course not. They’re always picking on me, saying I’m your princess and the favorite, and I came last,” I replied.

She wrapped me up in her arms, where I sat next to her on the couch with Josalyn on my knees, who was reaching up and putting clips in my hair. “You don’t have to worry about any of that, baby doll. Josalyn will have a sibling to play with and grow up having her best friend live with her. And as for you, you don’t run out of love. Your heart just grows.” As if that line wasn’t enough, she hit me with some truth. “Plus, this is Jason’s baby. Do you really think you wouldn’t love the child you created with the man of your dreams?”

I can be a real turd sometimes.
 

This is why I’m a momma’s girl. After that, I had no fear.

Jason got a job at Friendswood Roofing a couple of weeks ago, the work perfect for his mathematical brain. He gets up on people’s roofs, measures them, comes up with all the square footage and whatnot, and then prices them out for the customer. With so many homes still damaged from Hurricane Ike last year, there is plenty of work to be done. I offered to get a job as well, but Jason told me no, to focus on my schoolwork. He wasn’t going to allow anything to get in my way of finishing my degree I was so close to completing. This would be my last full year of school if I kept going the pace I was at, and I could graduate at the end of the winter semester.