PREGNANT — and not

In the many years I’ve been struggling to get pregnant (and I succeeded once), I’ve never taken a pregnancy test in hopes that it would be negative.

But that’s what I did last week.

A couple of months earlier I took another pregnancy test. I took that one because I was about to begin a medication for a sports injury and the pharmacist warned that you can’t take it if you’re pregnant. 

I laughed and said, “OK.”

I had been trying for a second child for two and a half years, and after expensive acupuncture treatments and one failed IVF, I gave up. I had exhausted my emotional stamina. It’s not going to happen, I told myself. I’m too old. I’ll have to find some other path to a second child.

So I took the medication.  But then I paused.  Just because I had given up didn’t mean my husband and I had stopped having sex.  And wasn’t my period due around now? 

Just to be responsible, I took the test, treating it like a routine, as  if I were about to brush my teeth.

I was SHOCKED to see the double pink lines. My hands shook when I called my husband to tell him that after all this time we were actually, really pregnant.

That was early October. On Halloween I went in for an ultrasound and it was discovered that the embryo had apparently deceased. 

“No heartbeat.  We’re sorry.”

I felt my trepid hope deflate out of me.

I went to a restaurant and had a long, slow glass of wine. I thought of all the things I did that might have caused this, but most likely nothing I did caused this.  For two days, I embraced the loss, crying and feeling numb, and then I let it go.

At ten weeks I started to miscarry. Although the bleeding has stopped, the double lines on the pregnancy test last week tell me I’m still pregnant, and so it will be a while longer before my body is clear again for another fresh start.

And I believe in a fresh start, despite my just turning 44. My doctor expressed confidence that it could happen again, and there is something to be said, too, about giving up, letting go, and releasing yourself from the pressure.

But I’m wary of hope.

So here’s what I’m thinking: I am not giving up and I am not hoping. I am just going to try to live my life as fully as I can with what I have in the moment.

By Cindy Bailey