Details, details

*pinch*

*pinch*

*pinch*

Nope, not dreaming. I keep waiting to wake up, to shake it off, to have someone explain that I’m the butt of some cosmic joke. But so far, so good. (whispers, touching wood) I’m still pregnant.

And yes, you can expect about nine more months of this.

So I imagine there are a few of you out there who would like some details on this. Well, here’s the scoop. Beloved and I hadn’t exactly decided to try or not to try after frostie didn’t work out. Beloved wasn’t opposed to the idea of a third child per se, but he was nervous about the idea of trying again. So we didn’t exactly try, in the way we did before Tristan was conceived, but we were both rather aware of my reproductive timing during the month.

It took me a couple of weeks to get over the loss of frostie’s potential, which was the most sad and painful part of the cycle not working out. To be completely honest with you, it all seems like aeons ago, and I can’t believe it’s only been a little over a month since we found out it didn’t work out. We had our few sad days, but it was very easy to come to terms with the outcome because of my unwavering conviction that everything happens for a reason. And I had really made peace with the idea of only having two children in my life. I had even started to think about packing up my old maternity stuff, and some of my most sentimental baby things.

You might remember that the cycle ended on my birthday, August 1. So when September 1 rolled around and I still hadn’t had a visit from “Aunt Flo”, I started getting annoyed. Not curious, and not excited, because I was absolutely positive it was just my body messing with my head again. I was a full week late back in May, too, and that turned out to be nothing, so I figured this was, too.

As the weekend progressed, I started paying more and more attention to the toilet paper again, and really started to wonder. Finally, I decided Sunday night to take one of my leftover pregnancy tests on Monday morning not because I thought I was pregnant, but because I wanted to quell the swells of anxious curiousity that were starting to build. I had no indications whatsoever from my body that I might be pregnant – no sore boobs, no nausea, no aversions, nothing. And so even though I was giving in to the test, I was completely expecting a single line.

It was just a little bit before six o’clock in the morning, and Simon had already been up for an hour. When he first woke a little before five, I was surprised to be able to convince him to stay in his crib for another half hour, listening to his lullaby CD. He had been in my bed with me, kicking and turning and tossing like a landed trout when I finally gave up and let him get up. I had almost forgotten the foil pack with the test in it that I had put on the counter the night before, and almost put it back under the sink because I just didn’t feel like dealing with the negative test that early in the morning. But I couldn’t stand the niggling voice of possibility whispering in my subconscious.

I watched the pink tint race up the stick, first triggering the test line – and then the other test line. And I thought, in a rather uninspired moment, “Hey, there aren’t supposed to be two test lines.” I was gobsmacked.

By the time I made it downstairs, Beloved was putting on a Doodlebops DVD for Simon. My hand was shaking so badly he could barely see the tiny stick I was thrusting at him. We collapsed onto the couch in a daze, and Simon laughed obliviously at the TV.

The difference between a third (technically, a fourth) pregnancy and a first is that for the first, you will leap tall buildings to get a blood test for that early empirical confirmation of your pregnancy. This morning, however, I found myself asking, “Oh crap, do I have to go for a blood test? Is that required? When the heck am I going to have time to go for a blood test?” I called the fertility centre, because while I’m rather unexcited about the blood test, I really would like an early ultrasound. The nurse who took my call scolded me for not coming in for my scheduled beta test after the frostie cycle failed, saying it makes it harder to know for sure now when this pregnancy actually started. I know, I reassured her. I know. And so, having done her duty by scolding me, she told me to come on in for a test Tuesday morning, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

So if all goes according to plan, it will be a spring baby – maybe the end of April or the beginning of May. And as of today (thumping wildly on nearby wooden surfaces) I’m five weeks pregnant.

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