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Friday, March 25, 2011

And then we were just pregnant.

When trying to get pregnant, women often become paranoid and overly sensitive when the calendar approaches that special week of the month.

For me, that "time of the month" just happened to coincide with my birthday. Yay. :-\

On the morning of my 24th birthday, I awoke to cramping and sore breasts. "Wonderful," I thought, "Not only am I not pregnant, but now I'm going to be not-pregnant and miserable on my birthday."

Later at lunch, I dined with two good college friends in celebration of my special day. I aired my resentment to them. "There's nothing like trying to get pregnant for months and months, and nothing happening. It's like a monthly defeat."

But by Saturday, my period still hadn't shown up.

On Sunday, I was praying for it to quickly begin, so the PMS symptoms would go away.

Then on Monday, I thought, "What the Hell? I'll take a pregnancy test to get it started. There's nothing like taking a pregnancy test to cue the universe to start your period." Ironic, I know, but it seemed to always happen during those months that I was 1-3 days late (and so excited at the prospect of being pregnant).

After grabbing a quick lunch with my husband, I stopped by the local drug store and grabbed a new box of tests.

By the time I got home, it was approaching 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I toyed with the idea of waiting to take the test in the morning, since the tests are more accurate after the urine sitting stagnant in your bladder during the night. But as I walked to the bathroom to put the tests away, I thought, "Oh, what difference does it make. It'll be negative this afternoon, and I'll take another negative one in the morning."

So I peed on the stick.
And guess what?

As I was placing the stick on the counter, the plus sign immediately appeared.

That had never happened before. Strange.

Months and months of peeing on sticks, staring at them (with no blinking) for 3-5 minutes, and always just a negative sign. Negative.

Then, all of a sudden, in a 2 second window, the blue plus sign appeared, as if it had always been there.

Since my husband of four years and I had been trying to conceive for a while, we had discussed this day many times. How we would feel, what we would be thinking, the nerves we would both be undoubtedly dealing with.  But I never stopped to think about how I would just drop the initial information.

So from 3 pm until 3:45pm, I sat still.

But, oddly enough, during this entire 45 minutes, I never ran through even one scenario.

At 3:45, my husband got home early. Showtime!

I put the test in my pocket and walked outside to meet him in the driveway.

I stared. I smiled.  I grinned like Jack Nicholson from a scene of The Shining.

Husband looked nervous. ;-)

I handed him the test.

"Are you serious, right now?" he said, looking as if I were the biggest practical joke-ster in the world. (I will forever narrate his inner thoughts at this moment as "What month is it? Is it April already? Where did the entire month of March go? It's gotta be April Fool's Day...")

It was at this point that I began to cry.

And then we were just pregnant.

|MrsG