On That Whole Pregnancy Thing

Unrelated: I've gotten several notes that comments haven't been going through - I don't know what's wrong, but I have received comments today, so hopefully Blogger has resolved itself...

On the morning of September 10, I took a pregnancy test, and it came out negative. After I waited the tortuous three minutes and there was still no second line, I held the test up to the window, hoping to imagine a faint line into existence, but there was nothing there. I was of course disappointed, but knew that we'd only been trying for a month post-miscarriage, and that we could always try next month. I mean, really. OH NO, more sex. Our lives are so hard.

At any rate, I went through the day, going through the motions, trying not to think about it. At the reception after the Classics Colloquium that afternoon, I decided that - what the hell - I'd even have a beer. Part of me, however, must have been holding out some ounce of hope, because I ended up pouring at least half of it down the drain before leaving and heading home for the night.

The next day was September 11, which I don't think I even realized until the next week, when my doctor asked me the date of my first positive test. I went about my normal Saturday routine: I planned meals for the week, went to the grocery store, did a bit of homework and cleaning, and generally bummed around. I had told my younger brother (a freshman in college) I'd send him cookies in the mail that week, so that evening I decided to start a batch of peanut butter cookies for Matthew, and a batch of M&M cookies for William. Preston and William were at batting practice, so I had the apartment to myself. I brought in my laptop, put something on Hulu, and opened a bottle of wine before I started baking. Because I wasn't pregnant, so I COULD. I also had cookie dough for dinner. I have been the model of healthy pregnancy from the very beginning. 

I made the M&M cookies first, and then the peanut butter (both of which are now on my FAVORITE cookies list - as soon as I stop hating the kitchen, I will make batches of both and post recipes). While the last of the peanut butter cookies were in the oven, I popped into the bathroom and - on a complete whim - decided to take my last test (a fancy digital one). What can I say? It was late, I was having some weird symptoms, my period STILL hadn't come, and...I caved. So I took the test and set it down on the floor in front of the toilet. I washed my hands, slipped out of the bathroom, and went to check on the cookies. I took the last batch out of the oven, wiped down the countertops, and put the remaining cookies on cooling racks.

A minute later I slipped back into the bathroom, looked down at the test, and even from afar with my old lady eyesight, could definitely tell that it only had ONE word on it - as in, there was not a "not" in front of the "pregnant." With my heart thumping, I picked up the test and scrutinized it, but there was nothing to scrutinize - it was undeniably positive. 

For those of you who have taken pregnancy tests before, you know that the best time of day to take them is in the morning, when the concentration of HCG in your urine is the most concentrated (and yes! I have visited about ONE TRILLION pregnancy websites in the last eleven weeks/the last seven years), so to get a positive test at night was encouraging - if my HCG was strong enough to show up at 9 pm, then, oh my goodness, it COULDN'T be fake!  

My hands shook as I fumbled to call Preston. When he answered he said he was on the way home, and after I said, "um, um, um" about thirty times, I told him that I'd taken another pregnancy test just now, and that it was positive - we were actually, for real this time, pregnant. When he walked in the door, I was still in the kitchen, giddily holding the test. He hugged me, we took cheesy photos and we talked about having a May baby. 

Later that week I went to my doctor for an official urine test. I was still pregnant, to my great relief. Although everything has gone really well since then, I'm having a really hard time shaking the feeling that something is going to go wrong. The last however-many weeks have been as stressful as they have been joyful. I know my chance of miscarriage now is low, but I'm dealing with a lot of post-traumatic stress, and a lot of fear. It's been hard to relax. I've written more about this in my letters to Fake Baby, so I won't say more now, but I do want to say thank you to everyone for their kind words of congratulations - reading your emails and comments, and hearing your voices has made me more and more excited for this pregnancy/more and more able to believe that it is real. Thank you for your support, and for helping me to get over my Crazy. You rock.

And here! Is a cheesy video I shot after our September 27 appointment - the day we first saw Fake Baby via ultrasound. In rewatching it it strikes me that I seem really scared. And YEP that's pretty much still how I feel. I am a bundle of nerves. Tons of fun to be around. Ahem. This video is password protected at the moment, so that no one (read: Preston's students) will be able to find it on the Wide World of Internet. The password is: blog

To Fake Baby, I from Mary Frances on Vimeo.

{Although I certainly don't intend this to be a pregnancy blog - I intend it to be a "this is what I want to write about/this is what's going on in my life" sort of blog, and that is CERTAINLY more than pregnancy - right now, the floodgates have been opened, and after weeks of silence, I have SO MUCH to say. So just bear with me for a bit; I will stop talking ONLY about my uterus and our fake baby soon, I promise.}