Pregnant for a day

Earlier this June we were pregnant.

For one day.

All I knew was that I was tired. Not the rainy days/Mondays tired but the last few days I would opt my lunch hour for a nap. I never do that. The hypochondriac in me started to worry. I always want to fix things immediately at the first sight of trouble or possibly even sooner. More than once my husband Eric has accused me of trying to wash his plate before he was even done eating. I wanted to fix this swapping-lunch-for-nap thing, but at the same time I didn’t want anything to be wrong. I was scared. The first couple days I made somewhat rational excuses that in all honesty could easily have been true; running past street construction and thus inhaling dust, eating too much sugar, not getting enough sleep, etc., etc. When the third day of feeling crappy and making excuses coincided with the third day of my-period-should-be-here by now – I peed on a stick.

I left it neatly placed in the bathroom and nervously collapsed into our living room sofa. I felt this overwhelming heaviness, like I was a six year old in serious trouble. Eric sensed the unordinary quiet and popped his head up from his laptop. “What’s up?” He asked. “I just peed on a stick, it’s in the bathroom.” “What does it say?” his response was upbeat, somewhat teasing, playing along as if I were playing some sort of practical joke on him and he had no intention of falling for it. “I don’t know, but I want us to look at it together.” “Let’s go.” We held hands as we walked back into the bathroom. As we approached the counter top I could see our images in the mirror looking back at us. I looked down. The stick said YES.

Holy shit. It actually says YES. I wasn’t immediately happy, I wasn’t immediately sad. I was.....holy shit. I never imagined that it could even say that, but there it was, Y. E. S. I did run past street construction dust, and I haven’t gotten much sleep lately....and I’m pregnant. We were not trying. Not in the slightest. This was not in the plan. I looked into the mirror and there was Eric, standing behind me, his arms wrapped around me....squeezing tight....smiling. “Aren’t you freaked out?” I asked. “Nothing we can do about it now.” he gleamed. Still shocked I tried to rationalize. “I took a lot of vitamins this morning and my pee was really yellow so that could’ve....” Eric kept holding onto me. “I don’t think it works that way” he said.

Eventually I calmed down, and we talked. Gradually, an overall sense of “frightened happiness” filled our apartment. We planned. Eric will finish his MBA, we’ll move the second bedroom dresser next to the first and put the crib right there....we’d make it work. I threw out every “what if” I could think of and my husband seemed to have a solid answer for each one. He was sensible and teasing and goofy. I was so grateful for him, and I feel deeper in love with this dark haired man. He agreed with me that we should make it “two out of three” and we walked down the street to Walgreens to get a 2-pack of pee sticks. As we walked through the store we clung tightly to each other, me calling him my “Baby Daddy,” and him giving me the random extra squeeze and kiss on the forehead.

About nine hours later I felt strong cramps. Painful ones. Before I went to bed that night pee stick #2 registered a NO. The next morning, #3 gave the same response. My period showed up later that afternoon. The following week I saw my gynecologist and I learned a few things. I was probably pregnant for 2 weeks and didn’t know it. The good news was that both Eric and I are physically healthy and it should be easy to get pregnant again. “50% of all women have miscarriages.” he said. He said it....miscarriage. That word never crossed my mind. If I never peed on that stick it would have just been that my period took an extra few days to show up....nothing more. I was just extra tired for a few days....nothing more. I didn’t know I was pregnant, we were not trying to get pregnant, but somehow that word made me instantly feel like I lost something very important that I didn’t know I even had. I was a 24 year old girl who blinked and is now a 37 year old woman wrapped in a cotton sheet in her gynecologist’s office discussing her miscarriage.

After a few days locked in a confused bubble of grief-but-not-grief, I figured some things out. I need to focus on what I can see in front of me. What is real in this moment right now is that I have a wonderful husband who was just as happy with a YES as with a NO. I know that I love my life, and that I love it being just the two of us. For now. I know that one day it will be just the three of us, and that will be great too. Until that day comes, I’m going to cherish every moment of the two of us.