egg scramble: the best secret in the world

the best secret in the world

I'd debated it back-and-forth for days. Was I going to wait it out till the official Friday morning blood test or cheat with the pee stick? Twelve days isn't that long to wait, I kept telling myself; twelve days of being able to keep hoping, I knew, might be all I would get. But the more I thought about it and the longer each day seemed to get, the louder that pee stick sang its siren call. Every other step of this trying-to-get-pregnant process had involved so many other people; this one thing, I reasoned, was the one thing I could do all by myself.

So Tuesday afternoon, day 9 for those of us keeping track, I snuck out to the drugstore. Looked both ways out of the corners of my eyes, grabbed a pink hpt box, brought it up to the cash register feeling all furtive. Back home, though, I tucked it deep deep into the underwear drawer out of sight. I was still waffling; hope is a good thing; and no matter how many times I told myself it might still be too early to tell, I knew a big fat negative was going to be crushing, no way around it, no rationalizing would help. Tuesday night went by, and I said nothing about those pee sticks to the boy. I didn't know if I was ready; I wasn't sure what I'd do.

But Wednesday morning I wake up early for the first time since the progesterone shots began. (It's a cruel cruel trick: the progesterone makes me sleep terribly, but when I'm awake I'm just dead tired zonked-out.) The sun is low. The house is quiet. I have to pee.

In a rare brave moment, I pull the pink box out from my drawer, shuffle over to the bathroom. (No looking back now, kids.) Cold hands, jittery heart: I sit on the toilet tearing open the foil, popping off the pink cap, holding the white tip down. Let it go, let it go, let the bladder go: five-one-thousand, four-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, one-one-thousand. Done.

In the end, it doesn't even take the three minutes the box insert tells me to expect. Two lines. Two strong pink lines. And this, the handy key printed on the stick itself told me, is good.

You're so sneaky! the boy faux-chides when I show him not long after. Sneaky girl! I love you so much!

And from now until test day, the two of us have the best secret in the world. By the time the nurse rings up Friday afternoon with the good news -- test positive! hCG numbers great! -- the secret's out; it's no longer just ours alone. But still, the confirmation is good. And while the next few weeks there'll be more tests and more waiting and more hoping that things just keep going the way they're supposed to go, for now, at least, I guess it's official. I'm, um, pregnant.

# posted by y @ 2:19 PM