Welcome To Pregnancy: Here's a Pick Mattock.

I can bet that most mothers remember when they were suspicious they may be pregnant for the first time. I can bet that most of those stories don't involve digging a large pit in the middle of Maine's densely forested 100-Mile Wilderness.

Climbing a tree to set up a high line

When I tell family and friends that I'm doing trail work, or leading teens in trail work, or helping run adult volunteer trail work days, I'm not sure they fully grasp what it is I'm doing. Sometimes they probe more and I explain that in trail work we maintain existing trails and install new structures to help with water and/or erosion control. Sometimes we install new signs. Sometimes we walk for miles with loppers and simply cut back what is growing into the trail. They "get it" a little more, but it's one of those things that's hard to imagine if you've never done anything like it. Up until now my work had been all with volunteers, first with teens and then with various groups of adults ranging from early 20s to early 70s. Professional crews, however, are much different. The focus is on output, not on making sure your volunteers are safe and having a good time. While leaders of volunteer crews (especially teen crews) do often take on the hardest, most dangerous tasks, the intensity of work is much higher on a professional crew.

For starters, we are usually out 10 days at a time. There are less of us and often more tools, and most often we bring heavier, more complicated tools such as grip hoists and chainsaws. A four person crew can easily carry out 50-80 pound packboards strapped to the gills with tools, a tool in each hand, and usually multiple strapped to personal packs (and of course, our personal packs have food, extra clothes, and water, etc.) on the first day and still not have it all. That's not every 10-day stint, but it's not uncommon. So, we slog all of this stuff in and then do at least 8 hours of hard, physical work per day for 10 days (sometimes 5, depending on the schedule) straight. We hike in and out of our work site every day. The day isn't over when the work day is over, for we have night time chores of cooking dinner, fetching and filtering water (depending on where we are), and washing dishes before finally passing out. We don't take the day off if it rains, not even if it rains for 5 days straight. We don't get to call out sick because we have a headache; well, you could, but it ends up being a decent chunk of money out of your paycheck for a relatively short fall season.

Hike home from work

Our first stint in the woods, what we call a "hitch", was only 3 days because of orientation & paperwork stuff, and it was a perfect amount of time to gear up for the season without totally wiping ourselves out. The next hitch was 9 days (we got Labor Day off), and it went well for me but the whole crew was understandably toasted by day 8. It was the next hitch, the first true 10-day, that really kicked my butt. Or so I thought.

Why yes, I dug this giant hole.

It actually started before our hitch. I had a lazy day off and tried to take a mid-day nap. I succeeded for a while, but when I got up I felt almost drunk. I was still so tired that I felt unsteady on my feet. Convinced I just woke up in the wrong part of my sleep cycle, I went on with life. As I packed for our 10-day stint I knew I should bring the trusty DivaCup (if you don't know what that is, it is, in short, a woman's best friend in the woods). I track my cycle using an app on my phone, which helps in instances like this when being in the middle of the woods without a tampon would be a bummer, to say the least.

The first few days went well but small red flags started to pop up. It's hard to interpret your bodies signals when you're doing trail work. Tired? That makes sense. Sore breasts? Smash them into a sports bra for most of the day, of course they'll be sore. Generally not feeling well? A sickness had been going around on the crew, maybe I just got that... Period one, two, three days late? It's not uncommon to delay or skip a period because of significant physical activity or illness.

It wasn't until I was 2 days late that I started doing the math and ended up crying in a pit in the woods that I started to admit to reality. I was 2 days late for my "average" cycle, and I put average in quotes because my last few cycles had been longer than normal. I realized that if I went by my normal average, I was 6 days late. 2 days versus 6 days late is a big deal. 2 days late isn't anything to write home about, 6 days is. Later that day I went to our "borrow pit", which is a giant hole you dig in the middle of the woods to get mineral soil (more durable for trail surfaces than top soil). I slowly lumbered into the pit and sluggishly scooped a few loads of dirt into the bucket. Suddenly, I realized 5 minutes had gone by and I was just staring at the ground like a robot that's battery just kicked the bucket. I began to cry not because I was sad, but because I was so tired.

Mornings at our "spike" (remote) campsite

For the next two days I played mental ping pong convincing myself that I was pregnant and then immediately discrediting it. We planned to go into town on our 7th day in the woods for a surprise birthday party for one of our crew mates. I chickened out on telling anyone, and I think it was because saying it out loud made it real and I wasn't ready for it to be real yet. We all had to go to the store together to refill our propane tank, and thankfully it's a store in town where you can buy a box of cereal, a rifle, and a pregnancy test all in one trip if you want. I scurried into the store hoping no one would follow closely behind, and to my horror I saw that pregnancy tests were located behind the courtesy desk, with other contraband for deviants such as cigarettes and booze, and required flagging down an employee. I wasn't ashamed to buy a pregnancy test, but I was concerned because every one knows every one else and all of your business in Greenville. In the end I did escape unnoticed, but not entirely. I would find out later that one of the cashiers said to another member on my crew, "oh yeah, a girl was in here a few days to buy a pregnancy test! I didn't even know we kept them over there!" She immediately suspected it was me, and she was right. Damnit, Greenville.

I didn't want to steal my crew mates thunder at his own birthday dinner, and I wasn't sure I wanted to find out my fate in a dingy, LED-lit restaurant/bar bathroom, but I was fooling myself thinking I had the patience to wait. I didn't wait. The test was almost immediately positive. There is no protocol for how to react when getting a positive pregnancy test during a birthday dinner in the bathroom of a bar where locals go to get hammered on a Tuesday, so I just went out to the table and tried to act like nothing was going on. I texted dad-to-be some casual, vague thing about his schedule the next day, and he immediately knew something was up. I wasn't in the state to pull off a good white lie, so I reluctantly but excitedly shared the news over the phone.

Here I sit not even one week after taking the test and it feels like it's been a month. By our calculations I'm just over 6 weeks preggo, but our first ultrasound in ten days will give us more accurate information. The whirlwind of stress, joy, anticipation, research, finding a doctor, discussing the future, more stress, more bursting-at-the-seams-happiness, has taken a lot out of us. Not to mention the dreaded - BUM BUM BUMMMM - first trimester symptoms.

Every time I think I've finally figured out when I'll feel good and when I won't, something changes. Luckily (*knocks on wood*) I've gotten by with just dealing with nausea and not vomiting, so I'm able to eat here and there. One day I'll feel all but normal, the next I'll wake up and not want anyone to speak to me, touch me, move near me, breathe around me, or even exist in my presence for a solid 4-5 hours. I'm embracing most of the symptoms and getting used to my new normal, but there's times when I cannot simply embrace how I feel.

Of course, this post won't be up until much later when I reach my second trimester and we tell the world the good news. That should be in about 6.5 - 7 weeks (around Thanksgiving) if our initial calculations are right.