Pregnancy Story: Part One

This was a very planned pregnancy (I say "very," because we landed on the exact due date that we wanted!), so I was very eager to take a pregnancy test as soon as possible. I bought those "earliest detection" sticks and tried the test a couple days before my period was due. I bought the sticks and did the tests without Jeff knowing what I was up to, because I thought it would be so much fun to be able to surprise him with the good news. I think the way that I had decided I would tell him was going to be by cooking him a dinner full of "baby" foods: baby back ribs, baby carrots, maybe a Dutch baby for dessert? and seeing if he caught on. But, all the tests came back negative. Even though I knew that we may not get pregnant on the very first try, it was still really hard to see negative test after negative test - and I just could stop taking them, which meant I had to buy more and more, and those suckers are expensive! Finally, I couldn't take the disappointing news on my own anymore, so I told Jeff what I had been up to. I had one stick left and we both decided that I should wait a couple of days before using it.

This was right around Thanksgiving and we had decided to drive all the way to Chicago to spend the weekend with my cousins. It was a good diversion, but I couldn't help myself from talking about the possibility of my being pregnant with the family. My cousin's husband asked me one question, "Are your breasts sore?" And oh boy, the answer to that question was definitely yes. "Then you're pregnant," he said. And of course, he was right. I took the final test on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the day that Jeff and I were driving home, and it was the first one that Jeff and I looked at together, and it was positive.

I have to pause the narrative here for a moment to backtrack and rant about pregnancy tests a little bit. First of all, I totally do not believe that they work before your period is due. Maybe one in 100 women gets a positive early result, but on the side of the package, it says something ludicrous like 80% of negative early results could actually be positive. I thought I would be one of those super fertile one in 100 women, but I was not, and it's totally useless to get a negative result which could actually be positive. Secondly, I now understand that commercial that says that some high percentage of women can "misread a traditional pregnancy test." When I first saw those commercials (for digital sticks), I thought, "What idiot can't tell the difference between a plus sign and a minus sign? Or a blue line versus a pink line?" But guess what? I couldn't tell the difference! I am one of those idiots. I had one of the sticks that is supposed to come up with a plus sign if positive and in the instructions it says that if there is any vertical line (the horizontal line is automatic, to show you that the test is working), that means you're pregnant. Well, the last couple of tests that I took before we left for Chicago did have very faint vertical lines, but when I say faint, I mean FAINT. Like, I don't know whether I'm actually seeing a line or just willing it to be so. They were so faint that I needed a magnifying glass to see them and I assumed it was just the trace of chemicals that would turn into a blue line when positive. Oh well, so maybe I'm just an idiot, but I think those tests are really little devil sticks meant to mess with already unstable women's fragile minds. The one upside was that when we did eventually get the positive result, it was so obviously and without-a-doubt positive that it made me feel extra wonderful.