Sort of pregnant

I learned over the past week that you can, in fact, be sort of pregnant.

It happens when you get a positive pregnancy test, but a blood test shows your hormone levels are not where they should be. So you have to get tested again. And you're still pregnant, but not enough pregnant. So back you go to get yet another test.

The adventure starts when you pee in the dark onto a stick and you actually see a second distinct pink line appearing right next to the first pink line.

You stare at the line for a bit. You let it sink in. You tell your husband. But not anyone else. It's a delicious secret, one to be savored in private.

Soon you're off to the races as you ride an amazingly rapid acceleration of the imagination.

You figure out your due date. You look at your two children and imagine a third snuggled right in with them. You wonder how it will all work out. You think boy. No, girl. Should you even find out? And NAMES! Juliet, maybe, after your aunt. Your husband loves Kingston for a boy. How can you fit your Dad's name, Gerald, into all this?

Where will you put the child can your kids share a room are you doing the right thing adding another child areyoureadyforthebabythingalloveragain

and then

Oh.

It all

comes

to a screeching

halt.

Two days later you are told that your numbers show you are only a week or two pregnant, not the almost six weeks the calendar says you should be. You spend the entire weekend wondering why your breasts are no longer tender. You poke them enough and they, you know, sort of feel sore but maybe it's from all that jabbing you're doing.

But you're not spotting anymore so this is a good sign, right? You have stopped going down the Three Kids Road and enter a nebulous zone known as Limbo.

I've always loved the limbo. Back in the day I was actually quite good at it. For some reason I could really get low under that stick. One time, in my early 20s, I was at a wedding and when I shimmied under that really low stick, my hair practically brushing the floor, I noticed my boyfriend at the time wildly waving at me.

Wow, I thought. He must be REALLY impressed with my flexibility! Not so much, as it turns out. He was trying to tell me that I was successfully flashing the entire dancefloor. So much for that short dress.

This Limbo, however? Not fun. At all. You can't be excited about a potential life because you're too terrified that it's over. But you don't know. So you go along in equal doses of optimism and devestation.

Then comes time for your next test. Which is when you find out that your numbers are rising, but they've only doubled while they should have quadrupled. So that while you are, in fact, pregnant, you are told that you should be incredibly cautious.

Who knew hope was such a grey area.

Then you start bleeding. And you know. If you're honest with yourself you knew as soon as you had that first blood test, as soon as your pregnancy symptoms vanished like they were never there.

You take a shower and mix your tears with hot, hot water. You wonder if maybe it's happening because this embaby somehow knew that you're not a great mother; that sometimes you yell or don't pay attention and who wants any part of that?

You tell it it is loved. You will it go grow.

But it doesn't.

The third test confirms it.

It's over.

You look at your two healthy children and feel incredibly lucky. You feel guilty for being so astonishingly sad.

Still, your grief colors you.

You were a little bit, gloriously pregnant.

And now you're not.

You hug your children.

Because you can.