Well, I finally broke down and took a pregnancy test last night. The suspense was killing me: I kept feeling all these pregnancy symptoms and wondering and wondering and hoping and wondering and imagining -- is it my period about to start? or is it my period disappearing for nine months?
I decided I wanted to know. I was at work when I decided this, so I didn't have a pregnancy test handy. I also didn't have any more first-morning's-urine coming to me that day.
But end-of-twelve-hour-shift-urine is actually pretty darn concentrated, unless you make a concerted effort to hydrate, which it is easy not to do, especially if you don't have a break nurse (which you don't if, like yesterday, you only have 8 patients on the floor). That is, if you don't have a break nurse, you're not getting many breaks (even with so few patients, it's easy to be busy nonstop, especially if the other nurses on the floor are new and you are helping them), which means you're not getting many chances to eat, drink, and pee (We're not allowed to have drinks at the nurses' station anymore, not even water. We can use little water cones, or paper cups to drink water in the pantry, or we can put a drink in the break room or manager's office, but still, hydrating is hard.), so your urine is pretty concentrated by the end of the day.
So when I got home, I put what little urine I had inside me into a cup.
Then I dipped the test strip in for exactly 5 seconds, just as the box instructed (T timed it).
I saw the control line appear right away, but the instructions said wait 3 minutes. The control line was so dark and the rest of the result window so white, I could tell right away it was negative.
We waited the full 3 minutes anyway. I hosed dog poop off my shoe while I waited. To distract myself. And because it needed to be done. And because it would make a funny story if the test ended up being positive. I could hear myself telling the story to our first kid, "Mommy was so excited to get pregnant with you. Waiting for the test result was so nervewracking..." I can hear myself telling our kids a lot of things, actually, and spend a lot of consciousness-time listening to myself doing this.
Three minutes passed in no time.
Negative.
*sigh*
*cry*
*more cry*
I did cry quite a bit. I didn't mean to, but I just couldn't help it. I had gotten my hopes up. And I'm just so excited. This baby represents so much...
Also, I had just worked 12 hours on 4 hours' sleep, and, though not pregnant, I had raging PMS. That's a cruel one, isn't it? That you're in the throes of PMS just as you're getting your negative pregnancy test result.
T wasn't as bummed out as I was. He hadn't gotten his hopes up as much as I had. And he's just much more pragmatic and even-tempered than I am.
I told myself that it wasn't meant to be this month and that, better yet, this was for the best. Hadn't the midwife at Planned Parenthood told us we needed to wait a cycle or two? Didn't she have a reason for saying that? Doesn't my uterus need a month or two to rest and recover and restore itself after having a foreign object in there for so long?
Yes. Yes yes.
And isn't this an expected finding? Didn't the doctor say he would be very surprised if I got pregnant the very same cycle that I had my IUD removed during? Didn't he tell us not to stress about it? Didn't one of my patients, an old woman with 8 children, tell me not to "Try"?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
And don't you have enough Pisces in your family??
Tee hee. Yes. Even though I don't believe in astrology, yes.
All of that did make me feel better. There really is something to Pollyanna's "Glad Game." That's the game where you try to find something to be glad or grateful about in every situation. I play it a lot and find that it can improve my mood quite a bit. So much so that I fancy myself a bit of a Pollyanna at heart. That, deep down, I always have a core of bright, hopeful optimism, no matter how rough a time I'm having or how depressed I feel. A bit of a contradiction, I know.
So I just need to be ok with not getting pregnant on the very first try. To trust that my body knows what it's doing. That when the time is right, it will happen. To let go and let God.
Besides, the longer we have to wait, the more we'll appreciate Baby when s/he finally arrives. Already I appreciate how much I'm able to empathize with those who struggle with infertility or with long waits before pregnancies.
Really, it's kind of funny how heartbroken I was. Of all the times I've done home pregnancy tests over the years, this was the first time I'd ever been sad to have it come back negative. In the past, I'd always felt much more like this kid:
I decided I wanted to know. I was at work when I decided this, so I didn't have a pregnancy test handy. I also didn't have any more first-morning's-urine coming to me that day.
But end-of-twelve-hour-shift-urine is actually pretty darn concentrated, unless you make a concerted effort to hydrate, which it is easy not to do, especially if you don't have a break nurse (which you don't if, like yesterday, you only have 8 patients on the floor). That is, if you don't have a break nurse, you're not getting many breaks (even with so few patients, it's easy to be busy nonstop, especially if the other nurses on the floor are new and you are helping them), which means you're not getting many chances to eat, drink, and pee (We're not allowed to have drinks at the nurses' station anymore, not even water. We can use little water cones, or paper cups to drink water in the pantry, or we can put a drink in the break room or manager's office, but still, hydrating is hard.), so your urine is pretty concentrated by the end of the day.
So when I got home, I put what little urine I had inside me into a cup.
Then I dipped the test strip in for exactly 5 seconds, just as the box instructed (T timed it).
I saw the control line appear right away, but the instructions said wait 3 minutes. The control line was so dark and the rest of the result window so white, I could tell right away it was negative.
Three minutes passed in no time.
It was negative.
Negative.*sigh*
*cry*
*more cry*
I did cry quite a bit. I didn't mean to, but I just couldn't help it. I had gotten my hopes up. And I'm just so excited. This baby represents so much...
Also, I had just worked 12 hours on 4 hours' sleep, and, though not pregnant, I had raging PMS. That's a cruel one, isn't it? That you're in the throes of PMS just as you're getting your negative pregnancy test result.
T wasn't as bummed out as I was. He hadn't gotten his hopes up as much as I had. And he's just much more pragmatic and even-tempered than I am.
I told myself that it wasn't meant to be this month and that, better yet, this was for the best. Hadn't the midwife at Planned Parenthood told us we needed to wait a cycle or two? Didn't she have a reason for saying that? Doesn't my uterus need a month or two to rest and recover and restore itself after having a foreign object in there for so long?
Yes. Yes yes.
And isn't this an expected finding? Didn't the doctor say he would be very surprised if I got pregnant the very same cycle that I had my IUD removed during? Didn't he tell us not to stress about it? Didn't one of my patients, an old woman with 8 children, tell me not to "Try"?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes.And don't you have enough Pisces in your family??
Tee hee. Yes. Even though I don't believe in astrology, yes.
All of that did make me feel better. There really is something to Pollyanna's "Glad Game." That's the game where you try to find something to be glad or grateful about in every situation. I play it a lot and find that it can improve my mood quite a bit. So much so that I fancy myself a bit of a Pollyanna at heart. That, deep down, I always have a core of bright, hopeful optimism, no matter how rough a time I'm having or how depressed I feel. A bit of a contradiction, I know.
So I just need to be ok with not getting pregnant on the very first try. To trust that my body knows what it's doing. That when the time is right, it will happen. To let go and let God.
Besides, the longer we have to wait, the more we'll appreciate Baby when s/he finally arrives. Already I appreciate how much I'm able to empathize with those who struggle with infertility or with long waits before pregnancies.
Really, it's kind of funny how heartbroken I was. Of all the times I've done home pregnancy tests over the years, this was the first time I'd ever been sad to have it come back negative. In the past, I'd always felt much more like this kid:
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