I Watched My Pregnancy Fade Away
I knew I was pregnant, even days before an early pregnant test would have picked up a positive result. I had become much more in-tune with my body since giving birth to my son 17 months earlier, so I had been noticing various signs. For a week or more, my senses had become more fine-tuned and I noticed a few small changes in my body. My son had changed up his nursing habits and my dog was suddenly acting more clingy, much the same as how he acted during my first pregnancy. Also, the owner of my biggest account at work told me I looked like I was glowing, which was something out of the ordinary for him to say. Any one or two of these things on their own wouldn’t have raised any suspicions, but they were all starting to add up. The kicker was at Thanksgiving dinner, when I took a sip of wine and it tasted like it had somehow gone bad. Everyone else at the table was enjoying it, so I took another sip. It sent a chill through me that gave me goosebumps and it still tasted bad. That one really made me suspicious. I didn’t mention anything to my husband yet, but I knew as soon as I took a test that it would be positive. I would tell him then, and our lives would change for the better, again.
We had just started discussing trying to get pregnant with our second baby, but hadn’t really started trying, per se. For the past few weeks, we were just being fairly lax about sex, but there were probably only two days we had sex when I could have possibly gotten pregnant, but they certainly weren’t peak days, so I didn’t expect it, at all. That’s why I was still not even thinking twice about having a small glass of wine, on occasion, with dinner.
Around the time when my period would have been due within about a couple of day, I figured it was time to take a pregnancy test. I thought we still had an extra test in the bathroom cabinet, but I couldn’t find it. I vaguely remembered seeing an extra test in the bottom of the little zipper pocket of my purse where I usually kept a couple tampons, nursing pads from months earlier, a condom, etc. I found my purse and got the test out. It looked like it had been opened, which I thought was weird, so I pulled the test out of the foil package, and sure enough it had been used. What the hell? Why did I have a used (negative) pregnancy test in my purse? I suddenly remembered. It was from over a year earlier, when my son was exclusively nursing, and my cycle would occasionally go a few extra days. I didn’t think I was probably pregnant then, but I wanted to take a test just in case. It was negative, but there wasn’t a trashcan in the office bathroom where I took the test, so I remember putting it back in the package and in my purse so I could throw it away later on, at home. Of course, out of sight and out of mind, so I obviously forgot about it for so long that the next time I saw it I thought it was a new, unused test. Gross. That got thrown away in my bathroom trash as soon as possible. Later that day, I stopped at the store and bought a two pack of early detection pregnancy tests. I used the first test, and sure enough, two pink lines, just as I expected. I was meeting my husband for a few minutes around lunchtime, so I threw together a quick card that said something along the lines of, “The preliminary results are in; you’re going to be a daddy again!” and I put the positive test in the envelope.
Let’s just say that I’m not the superstar wife who leaves sweet notes in envelopes all around the house, so my husband immediately knew something was up when he saw that I had a card for him. He saw the test before he saw the note, and his first response was, “Oh, shit! Are you serious?” He read the card and said, “Holy crap! That was the fastest ever. I’m excited!” We were at a cafe that we visit often, so we had to make sure the staff didn’t see what was going on, since we personally knew some of them. We wanted it to be our little secret for the next few weeks or months. This particular cafe was the first place we went after we found out we were pregnant with our son, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tell him there.
We talked about how quickly we got pregnant with our first, and how this one happened almost too quickly, so we really must be ridiculously fertile like we always joked. Or maybe we were just really lucky and blessed. Or both. Later on, just to be sure, I wanted to take another test. Just as I suspected, I got another positive result. The second line wasn’t really dark, but it was certainly still 100% a positive test. I’d taken enough of them with my first to know. I even found the positive tests from my first pregnancy and the results looked the same.
My husband and I talked about when our kid (probably another boy) would be due and it was perfect timing. Baby number two would be a summer baby and would be born within a few months of some of our friend’s babies since a few of our friends were also newly pregnant. We had family pictures taken earlier that day and it was so much fun to think about how different the next set of family pictures would be. Our first son would be over two years old and we could get pictures of him holding his newborn baby sibling. Or my husband and I could hold the baby as our son ran around like his wild, crazy self for the photographer. We were on cloud nine.
We got done talking and I put the second positive test in a drawer with the first. I’m usually a fairly detail-orientated person, so I noticed that the line on the second test was just a hint lighter than the first test. I pointed it out to my husband, but our thought was basically that it was still definitely a positive result, so no big deal. We could get another test and take it the next day just to ease our minds.
We got another box of pregnancy tests and I took another test the next morning and it was also positive, but again, still, just a bit more faint. This was getting weird. This was a morning pee and those were supposed to be the best because of the concentration. Oh well, again, it was still positive, so I wasn’t going to worry too much about it. Yeah right! I couldn’t get it off my mind. I took my fourth pregnancy test and this one was perhaps the most puzzling. It looked negative at a glance, but if you looked closely, you could see where the second line was. There was a hint of it showing. I rummaged through the trash to find that negative test from forever ago that I had just thrown away. I was suddenly so thankful that I had just found that old negative test so that I could compare them. The old negative test had no second line at all, so I knew that this fourth test was still reading a positive, but it wasn’t all adding up. Why did the line get lighter each time and why did it seem like it was suddenly becoming almost non-existent?
I called the test manufacturer and after the girl on the other side of the phone and I played 20 questions with each other for a few minutes, her suggestion was to contact a physician’s office because I was definitely getting positive results but it seemed to show that my body had less and less of the hormone each time. We got off the phone and I was trying to keep myself together; I was trying to piece together what everything could mean. I called my husband but he was at work and not wanting his office to hear the conversation, so he was talking really quietly and low. I was getting pissed because I couldn’t hear him and he was getting irritated because I was being a jerk about telling him to speak up. I more or less ended up hanging up on him before the situation escalated. We switched to texting. We texted for a few minutes and one of his questions was, “Is your intuition that you are pregnant?” I didn’t answer that question. I didn’t want to speak, type, or think the answer. I was at our little cafe and had a ton of work to do on my laptop and calls I needed to make. My husband came up during a break so that we could talk face to face, but I was mostly just burying myself in my work because it was easier to do that than face the possible reality that maybe this pregnancy was fading away.
I texted a friend who works at the birth center where I gave birth to my son and asked if they did any fancy testing there. She was off that day, but said there was a test or two they could probably do and that I’d feel better and less stressed if I just made an appointment. She called me later and said she could tell I was freaking out and that I should at least call the nurses there and ask for their advice and opinion. I called and left a message on the nurse line.
Waiting the almost two hours for a call back was torture for my mind. I swear it felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. I’m normally not so high strung and anxious, but man, the possibility of being pregnant…or not pregnant. My mind had no idea how to compartmentalize this knowledge…or lack of knowledge. A nurse called back and we talked for a few minutes. Her suggestion was that since I really wasn’t too late with my period, the best course of action would probably just be to wait. I could come in and get some lab tests done, or I could just wait a couple of days to see what happened. We talked about the fact that years ago, a lot of pregnancies would end in a really early miscarriage and no one would ever even know about it. Now, though, with all the early detection tests out there, women are getting that early positive result then they are actually realizing and aware when they lose the pregnancy. I decided that at this point, with the amount of stress the past couple of days had caused, it might have been better to never have known definitively that I was pregnant if that’s what was happening to me.
I felt a little more at ease after talking with the nurse, and headed to a work appointment with a client. Thankfully I didn’t have much on the schedule for that day because I started feeling worn down and crampy after I met my client. I went home early and took a nap, which was exactly what I needed. I woke up feeling less stressed and a bit better. I got my son from the babysitter and was thankful for everything I had. I took the responsibility for this pending pregnancy off of myself and realized that whatever was going to happen would happen. I could wish for it, pray for it, and hope for it, but whatever was meant to be would be. I was thankful for the family I had, but I certainly wanted this new family that my husband and I had just gotten excited about.
The next morning I took my fifth pregnancy test. I was pretty sure I knew what the outcome would be, but I had to take it. I had to know. The second line was there, but again, basically non-existent. It was the hardest second line to see yet. I left my husband a note saying that I never thought this situation would be so hard. I left the house before the sun was up and headed to my office to work a long day of meetings, training new employees, and calling a lot of clients. When my husband woke up, he texted me that he could see the second line on the fifth test. It was very faint, but he could see it. I messaged him back that in my head I had chalked it up as a loss because I couldn’t go on being unsure or hoping for an answer I knew I wasn’t going to get. It was messing with my head.
I had to face the realization that over the three or four days I took the pregnancy tests, that I was slowly watching my pregnancy fade away, line by line.
I had a very good and productive day at work, but coming home brought back the pain all over again. I wanted to see my family, but my family was also just a reminder of what I knew I had just lost. I had just gotten home, but I just wanted to get away again. The thought of wanting to have sex anytime soon just seemed like it would bring back up the painful thoughts of the void of a potential lost pregnancy. How could my husband ever really understand that, though? In a way, I felt very alone. I didn’t want anyone else in the world to know what had happened, but I also didn’t think my husband could fully understand all the emotions I was feeling. The house was messy and my husband and I got in a fairly substantial fight about it. The main thing wasn’t that the house was messy. The main thing was that our minds and hearts were a mess, but the house was just a way to start a fight that had such a deeper issue. I was an emotional roller-coaster and he was definitely on edge, too.
I took a scalding hot bath, as if I thought that would somehow burn away the pain. I did some reading on early miscarriages, or chemical pregnancies. I was pretty sure that’s what had just happened, and I certainly wasn’t alone. It was a lot more common than a lot of people knew or realized. But having the facts certainly didn’t make it easier to deal with. In fact, I would have never imagined that I would take it this hard. But as my husband said, “We were so excited and we were ready. Then we found out that maybe there was nothing to be ready and excited for.”
This was all out of my realm of living. I usually operated in three categories: happy and content; smart Alec jokester; and occasionally, really pissed off. Being sad or feeling depressed certainly wasn’t something that was common for me. At all. But it had certainly hit me much more hard than I ever would have expected.
My husband and I went to the same high school, and in required health/psychology class we had to learn about something called DABDA. It is the series of steps that a person goes through when dealing with grief or loss. The categories are: Denial; Anger; Depression; and, if you ever make it to the last point, Acceptance. I certainly hit denial at the beginning, but surprisingly enough, I skipped over anger. I started to try to do some bargaining with myself and with God, but as soon as I realized what I was doing, I just gave it over to Him and took it out of my own hands. After all, at this point, I knew there was nothing I could do to change the outcome. I certainly hit my bouts of depression, and slowly worked on moving towards acceptance as I started my cycle early the next morning. For the next days afterwards I felt like I was getting more and more to the point of acceptance. But then there were the times when a friend would ask if we wanted more kids and I’d have to act nonchalant when I said, “At some point, eventually”. Or there was a song that just hit an emotion where I would almost lose it. Over time, though, it got a little easier and the pain slowly felt more distant.
If you’re going through something similar, keep your head up, and be the utmost sensitive if you know someone going through this painful process.