Welcome to the Rollercoaster

Hey guys! Welcome to what I'm discovering is the ride of a lifetime. For those of you who stumbled upon this or me or are just plain interested, my name is Lauren, and I am a junior at Western Kentucky University. I'm majoring in Organizational and Corporate Communication, and am a member of the WKU Forensics team. I've been in a relationship with the same man for over two years now, and he is one of the single most supportive and loving individuals I've ever met. I'm lucky to have him in my life- that's for sure. And I, as of yesterday, am four months pregnant.

So that's the background. Or rather, what's relevant for you to get what's happening now. If you are squeemish, or not interested in how this whole situation came about, then perhaps you better skip this post.

At 16 years old, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, just like almost every woman in my family. Essentially what this means is that every time Aunt Flow visits, the tissue in my uterus gets stripped away so forcefully that it causes scarring- making it difficult for a fertilized egg to ever latch on. I have for years been told that pregnancy was not in my future.

In an attempt to regulate the condition, I was put on birth control. I was pretty faithful about taking it, especially considering the relationship I'm in. I was on the pill for years leading up to the conception, and was on it for two months after conception. As my doctor put it, this should have spurred a miscarriage.

As if that wasn't enough, I had my period several weeks after conceiving.

All of this was part of the reason that when the test results read "pregnant" in mid-December, I nearly fell off my chair.

Now, I won't pretend that this news was immediately received with shouts of joy and open arms. Though my boyfriend and I have always been interested in children, and marriage has been considered inevitable for over a year now, the timing of this life-changing event certainly could have been better. My boyfriend graduates this year, but I still have a year left, and while we can get by, our joint income is not astronomical by any means.

However, the tears and questions without answers did not last long. Considering the odds this kid had already beat, the conclusion was that this child was a fighter, and clearly, fate had seen it fit to make us the baby's guardian. Given the chances of me conceiving again, this news was a blessing, whether it was on our timetable or not.

Man oh man. Telling people. Scary as hell. For real. And back to writing in complete sentences... We were totally scared out of our wits about telling anyone. Though I told my best friend almost immediately, both of us dreaded telling our parents and close friends due to concerns about responses. Our first thought was to wait until we knew the sex of the baby. I mean, we figured if the baby had a definite name, they'd be considered a person in their eyes, and the Grandparents-to-be couldn't get angry. Could they?

This made Christmas one of the craziest time period of my life. At this point, I was about two months pregnant, so I wasn't showing or anything, but my body was yelling at me constantly to make sure I didn't forget. Air travel makes me miserable, my morning sickness was more like all day nausea, and my sister's affinity for punching me in the stomach was suddenly unacceptable on every level. I spent that short amount of time at home panicked and paranoid.

I still kept my secret pretty well until a week or two into January. I was suffering from a terrible head cold (which I later learned had more to do with the pregnancy than I thought- but more on that later), and didn't know what medicines were safe. Miserable and exhausted, I caved and called the one person I knew would have answers- my mom.

My mom had me at age 19. She and my dad had to go through hell, but stuck it out and stuck together. From the time I was young, they had encouraged me to avoid their path in life. It wasn't that they regretted the choices they'd made; they just wanted an easier go for me. I was afraid they might get angry that I'd followed in their footsteps. Instead, my mom cried with me and pledged all the support my family could muster.

Having the support of my family made life much easier. I now had a continual source of information for questions about medicines, foods and lifestyle choices. The next step was to tell my team.

Telling my Director of Forensics surprised me. She's a fairly conservative individual, but she just said she was proud of me for keeping the baby, for wanting to continue to compete, and then told me that she had competed at four tournaments pregnant herself! It blew my mind.

Knowing that I had the support of my family and my coaches, I let the cat out of the bag and told the world about the pregnancy. Except my boyfriend's family- that was his news to share, and I wasn't going to touch the subject with a ten foot pole.

If there's one thing I've learned thus far, it's that people will surprise you. I am surprised every day by the outpouring of support I have received from friends, family and total strangers. I have never felt so loved or safe in my life, and it's a time when things are most uncertain for me.

I know that this is not the norm, though. I've known girls thrown out of their houses, who have felt as though they have no options, who have suffered under a sense of shame and embarrassment. That's not ok. I know I can't save the world, but if there's one thing I want to accomplish, it's to help turn the tide on that wave of shame.

So come with me on this journey. I'll try to keep updates on the pregnancy throughout the next five months. If you're pregnant, you can laugh with me as you draw similarities between us. If you're not, you can laugh at me as I stumble my way through this mess we call life. But regardless of who you are, you can realize that just because I'm pregnant does not mean my life is over. A new chapter has just begun. Things are about to get interesting. You ready?