It's Harder When It's Deliberate

Tom and I are trying to get pregnant. This is made more difficult by the fact that he's not home all the time and also by the fact that I'm not the most regularly scheduled person in the world. I used to be, before I had Ryan. My period was clockwork regular; if it came the fifth this month it would come the fifteenth next month, give or take a day depending on whether the month had thirty or thirty-one days. But it was always forty days after the last one. Now, well I don't know. I haven't been paying attention to it all that much, up until a few months ago. When it's just an inconvenience, my period doesn't seem to warrant being kept track of. But it's been coming thirty days apart since I've started writing it down in July. And by this very limited schedule, I am due today. So before I got out of bed this morning, I took a few minutes to decide what to do with my suddenly-valuable first morning's urine. I had a stick to pee on, but did I want to waste it when I was not even late yet? On the other hand, it's not like the sticks are expensive, and the stress of not knowing could make me late anyway and screw up the necessary predictability of my cycle. I decided to waste the pee by depositing it directly into the toilet bowl without ever passing it over a stick at all. It had such potential, and I threw it away.

I remember my first pregnancy test. It was a couple weeks after I lost my virginity, after I had spent those two weeks panicking and had finally confided in my mother what I'd done. The test was a bizarre lab experiment she conducted on the back of the toilet tank before school one morning, forcing my little brother to pee in the yard and brush his teeth in the kitchen sink with no explanation. It had tiny test tubes and an eye dropper and various colored solutions to be mixed with my teenage pee. In the end the result my mother deciphered was something along the lines of, "Hey Stupid, your hippy ass put the kid on the pill when she got her first period so no, she's not pregnant." Back then I was happy about the negative result.

Today, I am wondering why I wasted that pee! I am looking at maternity clothes on Amazon (why so many scarves?) and lathering my post-shower lotion onto my stomach as well as my legs, in case stretch mark prevention should prove to be necessary (as though at the first sign of a tiny blue +, my abdomen should decide to instantly expand, Hulk-like). I am wondering how I would tell Tom. Would I call him all excited and screaming? Or maybe I would be all casual and nonchalant about it, like by turning down a waiter's offer of wine with the explanation that I can't drink because I'm expecting. Maybe I could give him the pee-stick in his anniversary card. Would that be gross or not? I mean, it is a stick dipped in human urine, but they do come with the little plastic cap to protect you from the pee.

I should probably go take the test now. They're sensitive enough that you don't really have to use them first thing in the morning, but I'm not sure I want to face the disappointment of a negative result. Being proven not pregnant will hurt anyway, so why not put it off while I can? So now I'm back where I was when I got out of bed this morning; if I don't have my period by the fifth, I'll take the test. Until then, I will just live in this Hellish limbo I have created for myself, and which I will continue to visit every month until I finally either pop up pregnant or give up.

This was so much easier last time when it just involved being a deep sleeper and then waking up ill one day a month later.