Two Pink Lines

Because I do whatever Swistle says, here is the story of how I found out I was pregnant. (My one male reader may want to skip this one.)

We'd been trying for almost a year to get pregnant. As I was rapidly approaching the dreaded age 35, it wasn't looking good. Since I was so close to "advanced maternal age", my doctor suggested that after 6 months of trying we start investigating fertility rather than waiting the normal 12 months. Thus we had R checked out (normal), then the next step was for me to have an HSG. At the last minute my doctor was unable to do the HSG herself. This was extremely unfortunate because my uterus is very tilted and getting the speculum in place isn't alway easy, so you can imagine how very much more unpleasant it was to have a radiologist (an untrained speculum professional) do the insertion. UGH!

Anyway, I digress. My HSG results came back great, there were no blockages, and as my doctor went over the results with me a couple weeks later she also gave me an RX for Clomid to start my next cycle. Turns out that for a lot of people having an HSG done is sort of like blowingthe cobwebs out of the tubes, so to speak. At that appointment with my doctor I was actually pregnant but didn't know it yet.

I was charting and temperature taking and all that, so even though I was not late (my cycles varied wildly each month) I knew when it was time to start pregnancy testing, which anyone who has tried to get pregnant knows, is sort of like crack. Even though you know you shouldn't test, you are powerless to resist. The first morning it was time for testing, R had to go into the office very early and I waited until he left. As soon as he was gone I leapt out of bed and did the pee stick.

Those are always the two longest minutes, aren't they?

For the first time ever, there were two very faint pink lines.

Holy shit!!!

I crawled back into bed and called R as he was driving to work, sort of laughing nervously. I told him about the two pink lines, that I thought I was pregnant and was was completely unimpressed. A few months earlier we'd thought I was pregnant when my period was really, really late, and he was so disappointed when it didn't turn out to be true. So even though I was telling him I saw two pink lines, he did not want to get his hopes up.

Then I started to doubt myself. Maybe I wanted to see two pink lines so badly I was hallucinating them. So I took a picture of the test and emailed it to him at work. Did he see the two pink lines also? Yes, he did. At that point I knew we were pregnant. R was not so sure. He made me take a test every day for over a week, even though every day the lines came in darker and faster. Poor guy was trying to guard himself against disappointment that it was a false positive.

The rest, of course, is history.

I still have that very first positive pee stick in a baggie in my jewelry box. I also used a positive pee stick (I had so many!) to tell my mom I was pregnant. I visited my parents just a few weeks later and I gave my mother a bracelet box all wrapped and pretty but inside was the positive test. I'm not sure if she still has it, but I know she kept if for awhile.