“For something called ‘Clear Blue’, this thing isn’t very clear is it?” said my husband E as we squinted at the pregnancy test, looking for one vertical line.  “Look! It’s right there! I can see it!” I insisted.  “I don’t see it…wait, there it is! No I don’t…oh hold on! Wait…never mind” said E. Stupid pregnancy test, we both agreed. We’ll buy a new box.

We’ve talked about having kids since we got married in August 2004, but only decided the time was “right” last October. But then we decided we should probably wait until he made some career decisions. In January my grandfather died and I had one of those if-we-don’t-have-kids-soon-so-many-people-we-love-might-never-meet-them moments. We decided again to start trying. But I had promised to be Maid of Honor in my best friend’s wedding, so I didn’t want to be pregnant for that.  In March we decided the time was never going to be perfectly right so I threw out my birth control pills. No baby in April. E was out of town for his job in May and the first part of June, so I did some period math and figured out the first weekend he’d be home was just about the week I’d be ovulating. Did you know that when it comes to babies, everything gets counted from the first day of your period? For years I’ve thought I was most fertile two weeks after the end of my period. Nope. It’s days 10-14 of your whole cycle. Aaaaand now that I think about it, I’m damn lucky I never got pregnant accidentally due to my poor reproductive knowledge.

We had sex twice the weekend that was supposed to be right for baby-making. A week later I declared I was feeling queasy and must have morning sickness. Six days before my period I couldn’t take it anymore and bought a box of early response tests. The next morning I peed on the stick and waited three minutes, staring at my bathroom floor. It really needs to be cleaned. Times up, no line. Not even a really really really faint maybe-I-see-it line. According to the very long instructions in the box, there was still almost a 50% chance I was pregnant, but seeing the results come out negative seemed so final to me. I put pregnancy out of my mind and vowed to try again next month.

My period didn’t come. When I was officially 6 days late I couldn’t take the stress of waiting anymore, so I tried another Clear Blue test. This is how we ended up in the kitchen with a piece of plastic I had recently urinated on. “Maybe I’m just a little bit pregnant?” I suggested, even though I knew this isn’t really possible. “We’ll go get a better, fancier test. A digital test,” suggested my technophile husband.

Sunday July 20^th, my mother’s birthday, I took the better, fancier test. PREGNANT said the little window. I just stared at it with my mouth hanging open. “What’s the matter? What does it say?” E asked, grabbing it from me. “Hey, good job!” he said when he saw it. “Um, thanks. I’m pregnant,” I said, in case he was still unclear. “Yeah you are!” he grinned. “I’m pregnant” I said again, showing off my awesome conversation skills, “What do I do now?”

Tags: pregnancy