8:58 a.m. - 2006-03-24
I Heart Drama
I've known this my whole life, but yesterday, I inadvertently reminded myself that when life seems just a bit too placid, I thrive on finding ways to spice it up.
I'll preface this by saying that I don't know why I felt compelled to do this. Yesterday, at work, I'm rooting around in my desk drawer for something, when I happened upon an old pregnancy test. It was a box of two, and I had used one sometime last year when I thought I might have been pregnant. The other test was still intact, and since it wasn't expired, I thought, "Why not?" With all the artificial-ness I went through to get pregnant, I was warned not to use a home test, since the results would likely be inaccurate. So, I've only ever had blood tests to confirm pregnancy, and thought this might be a fun souvenir.
I went to the ladies room and peed on the stick as directed. There were two windows, and right away, a blue vertical line appeared in each window. I wasn't surprised... until I got back to my desk with the pee stick and re-read the directions, only to learn that a positive result manifested itself in one vertical line, and one plus mark. I looked at the windows again, and could see a extra line making the plus mark, but it was so faint, I had to squint to really see it. A guy could have peed on it and gotten the same result.
I did what any woman in my shoes would have done: I panicked. Why remain calm about something so life-altering? I kept the stick level, checking it every few minutes to see if the line would appear more clearly, but it didn't. So I tossed it in the trash, and even then I continued to check for the miraculous blue line.
What the hell did this mean? Could this really mean I was no longer pregnant? I had no signs to indicate otherwise: no bleeding or pain, and besides, I still had all my usual pregnancy symptoms (in fact, I was more exhausted the night before than I had remembered being in a long time). But I figured with my luck that this whole fun idea of pregnancy was too good to be true. I wasn't in tears, but I was definitely good and panicked.
After a bit, I decided to call my OB's office to check. I was sure they had heard stranger questions before, so what the hell. And I really needed to be reassured. I called and spoke with a nurse, who was indeed reassuring: she said if I had already seen the heartbeat on a sono, and I was almost 10 weeks, and I wasn't having any weird symptoms, then everything was fine. She suggested that the brand of test might be the culprit, and if I really wanted to, I could swing by the office for a blood test, just for confirmation. I decided that wasn't necessary -- hearing her confidence was good enough for me. Almost.
Just to be sure, I sprinted to CVS to buy another home test (making sure to get the kind that shows two blue lines if you're pregnant, and only one if you're not -- no plus signs for me this time). I almost waited until I got back to my office, but I really had to pee, and I just couldn't wait to see the results, so I ducked into the Starbucks next door and bolted into the ladies room with my test. I peed on the stick, and sweet relief... two lines almost instantly. Ahhhhh. I kept the test in my purse and looked at it at least ten more times throughout the day, lest that extra blue line decide to pull a disappearing act. So, all is again right with the world, and I am indeed still going to have a baby.
I am ten weeks along tomorrow, marking a small milestone -- I'm 25% of the way there! As of this week, the baby is no longer considered an embryo -- it's now a full-fledged fetus, about the size of a strawberry. Apparently, it moves around quite a bit, too, though I won't feel that for a while. What I do feel right now, however, is hungry, despite my enormous breakfast of scrambled eggs with tomatoes and spinach, and whole wheat toast with avocado slices. Off to scavenge for my second breakfast of the day...
