Day one
I check my phone ten times before midday, forgetting that there will be no text with instructions today. There will be no blood test results for fourteen days. I feel impatient, impotent. Fourteen days without contact from our fertility team will feel like years. I check my phone again.
Linda gets home from work with news: she has had some spotting. I don't hear anything else she says until I've completed my entirely dissatisfactory Google search. It's too early for implantation bleeding, and I can't find anything else that would've caused it. There was no spotting last time! But last time didn't work. Maybe there's supposed to be? Maybe this is a good sign? What does this mean?
Day two
I'm busy this morning, which makes things a little easier. I spend the afternoon using all of my willpower to not text Linda and ask about the status of her knickers. I listen to podcasts about Charlottesville and worry about the world our baby will be born into. What if it's a white supremacist? I want to google "how to make sure your baby isn't a white supremacist", but I play Candy Crush and chew the inside of my cheek to shreds instead.
Day three
I listen to a podcast about how to raise your baby to not be a white supremacist. I breathe a little easier.
Day four
We have a shoe storage crisis: we have too many shoes, and not enough places to put them. I mention that soon we might be adding a third person's worth of shoes. We both squeal imagining the tiny tiny shoes that might come with a tiny tiny person. This morning feels hopeful. It'll work sometime! And there will be TINY SHOES.
Day five
My momma comes over for dinner tonight, on her way overseas. She asks me what the due date will be if this round works, and I realise that I haven't looked it up. The timings were all messed up this month, and in all the mess I think I'd written this round off in my head. My mother's hope catches me by surprise, as though I'd never considered that this actually might work. A tiny glimmer nestles in my belly.
Day six, seven, and eight
I forgot to write on these days. I imagine they were fine.
Day nine
I finally run our conception date through the due date calculator website. May 6th. 6/5/18. The hopeful glimmer grows.
My sister's birthday is on May 10th, and I text her - we might be making you a little birthday buddy!
Day ten
Linda tells me she has pimples. I google pimples in early pregnancy. They're a thing! Linda tells me that they are also a PMS thing. She didn't get them last time, I whisper to myself.
Day eleven
Linda wakes up feeling crampy, and thinks it's bad news. I am screaming "IMPLANTATION CRAMPING" in my head, but I keep my mouth closed.
That evening, the cramps are gone. Implantationcrampingimplantationcrampingimplantationcramping oh my god it might maybe work IS SHE PREGNANT SHE MIGHT BE.
Day twelve
She is not.
We wake early to do an at-home test. This has become tradition, our chance to take some tiny sort of control and get the news on our own terms, on a day of our choosing, when nobody else knows. She pees in a cup (a different one from last time, because the last one was clearly unlucky) and we submerge the Pregnosis stick. When the alarm goes off three minutes later, it is the most negative result I have ever seen. Even with my eyes crossed and my vision blurred, there is only one line.
We are quiet, and sad. May 6th crawls away and curls up next to March 31st.
Later that morning, Linda sees cheap flights to Honolulu on grabaseat. Minutes later, we have purchased them, for a week at the end of November. We've never done that before - we usually start planning our holidays a year in advance. Perhaps we've finally realised that planning is a waste of time.
Day thirteen
Today, we are normal people. With the weight of the wait taken from us, but before the doom of tomorrow settles in, we happily exist.
Day fourteen
It takes us a long time to drag ourselves out of bed to get Linda's blood test this morning. I wish I could do it for her - the result would be the same. We go out for breakfast, then we go home and climb under the feather duvet and cry. Then we start researching our trip to Hawaii, plotting intricate details of a day in three months time, desperately trying to impose some control over our lives.
Around midday, the phone call we haven't been waiting for comes, and the news we already know is delivered gently. There's a brief discussion of what we need to do next: phone calls we need to make, medications to collect, blood tests to start. Our two week wait is over, and our next round begins.
I check my phone ten times before midday, forgetting that there will be no text with instructions today. There will be no blood test results for fourteen days. I feel impatient, impotent. Fourteen days without contact from our fertility team will feel like years. I check my phone again.
Linda gets home from work with news: she has had some spotting. I don't hear anything else she says until I've completed my entirely dissatisfactory Google search. It's too early for implantation bleeding, and I can't find anything else that would've caused it. There was no spotting last time! But last time didn't work. Maybe there's supposed to be? Maybe this is a good sign? What does this mean?
Day two
I'm busy this morning, which makes things a little easier. I spend the afternoon using all of my willpower to not text Linda and ask about the status of her knickers. I listen to podcasts about Charlottesville and worry about the world our baby will be born into. What if it's a white supremacist? I want to google "how to make sure your baby isn't a white supremacist", but I play Candy Crush and chew the inside of my cheek to shreds instead.
Day three
I listen to a podcast about how to raise your baby to not be a white supremacist. I breathe a little easier.
Day four
We have a shoe storage crisis: we have too many shoes, and not enough places to put them. I mention that soon we might be adding a third person's worth of shoes. We both squeal imagining the tiny tiny shoes that might come with a tiny tiny person. This morning feels hopeful. It'll work sometime! And there will be TINY SHOES.
Day five
My momma comes over for dinner tonight, on her way overseas. She asks me what the due date will be if this round works, and I realise that I haven't looked it up. The timings were all messed up this month, and in all the mess I think I'd written this round off in my head. My mother's hope catches me by surprise, as though I'd never considered that this actually might work. A tiny glimmer nestles in my belly.
Day six, seven, and eight
I forgot to write on these days. I imagine they were fine.
Day nine
I finally run our conception date through the due date calculator website. May 6th. 6/5/18. The hopeful glimmer grows.
My sister's birthday is on May 10th, and I text her - we might be making you a little birthday buddy!
Day ten
Linda tells me she has pimples. I google pimples in early pregnancy. They're a thing! Linda tells me that they are also a PMS thing. She didn't get them last time, I whisper to myself.
Day eleven
Linda wakes up feeling crampy, and thinks it's bad news. I am screaming "IMPLANTATION CRAMPING" in my head, but I keep my mouth closed.
That evening, the cramps are gone. Implantationcrampingimplantationcrampingimplantationcramping oh my god it might maybe work IS SHE PREGNANT SHE MIGHT BE.
Day twelve
She is not.
We wake early to do an at-home test. This has become tradition, our chance to take some tiny sort of control and get the news on our own terms, on a day of our choosing, when nobody else knows. She pees in a cup (a different one from last time, because the last one was clearly unlucky) and we submerge the Pregnosis stick. When the alarm goes off three minutes later, it is the most negative result I have ever seen. Even with my eyes crossed and my vision blurred, there is only one line.
We are quiet, and sad. May 6th crawls away and curls up next to March 31st.
Later that morning, Linda sees cheap flights to Honolulu on grabaseat. Minutes later, we have purchased them, for a week at the end of November. We've never done that before - we usually start planning our holidays a year in advance. Perhaps we've finally realised that planning is a waste of time.
Day thirteen
Today, we are normal people. With the weight of the wait taken from us, but before the doom of tomorrow settles in, we happily exist.
Day fourteen
It takes us a long time to drag ourselves out of bed to get Linda's blood test this morning. I wish I could do it for her - the result would be the same. We go out for breakfast, then we go home and climb under the feather duvet and cry. Then we start researching our trip to Hawaii, plotting intricate details of a day in three months time, desperately trying to impose some control over our lives.
Around midday, the phone call we haven't been waiting for comes, and the news we already know is delivered gently. There's a brief discussion of what we need to do next: phone calls we need to make, medications to collect, blood tests to start. Our two week wait is over, and our next round begins.
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