The Woman Who Called Pregnant
2007
I noticed nausea and full breasts on a Sunday at the end of March in 2007. That Monday I ran to the Dollar Tree for a pregnancy test. I took the test and found it to be positive, albeit faintly though. I decided to go to the doctor as soon as possible to confirm. I went to my ob-gyn on Tuesday. They also did a test and it was positive as well! It was faint they said, but dark enough for them to be confident in the results. They set up appointment in April for me to begin my pregnancy care.
I came home smiling, but Jason told me I wasn’t pregnant. We’ve had too many false alarms and so he was skeptical. I believed I was pregnant though. I feel pregnant. I prayed that it just didn’t end early. The next couple of months will be crucial. I knew that if I make it to my 8 week doctor appointment, I will breathe a sigh of relief.
Apparently all my false alarms cause a general disbelief among family members besides Jason as well. They seemed to think it was an April fool’s joke or something. In any case, I was frustrated at the lacked of joy surrounding my joyous news. I understood that telling everyone early is risky if I turned out to be misreading the test or have a miscarriage. I probably should have waited until after my 1st Doctors Appointment to spread the news, but I couldn’t help it. I was excited. I am happy and I couldn’t contain something so important.
My mother kept saying, “If you are really pregnant” and both my grandma and mother-in-law asked if I’d had a blood test yet. I hadn’t gotten a blood test, so they weren’t ready to accept the news as truth. They may be skeptical, but I am not. I know I am pregnant. Rather I carry the baby to term or not I couldn’t have said for sure.
My mother-in-law went as far as to suggest that I was prone to false positives. Hormones have nothing to do with it. Generally false positives only occur when there is an early miscarriage or a misread evaporation line. And something like 30% of fertilized eggs self-abort due to some genetic defect. Before hyper-vigilant women armed with supersensitive Home Pregnancy Tests, these “chemical” pregnancies often went unnoticed or un-mourned.
For many year I was sexually inactive. Then I was irregular. And then on the pill. As far as I can tell, I never got pregnant before Jason and I tried to conceive. In October of 2002, the doctor’s office tested me and got a positive result. Three days passed and I began bleeding. The Women’s Hospital doctor declared it wrong and left it at that. It was the nurse who took my medical history when I got pregnant with Ana who suggested it was a “chemical” pregnancy. So, I decided it was a miscarriage, not a false result. It felt like a miscarriage and it helped to label it that rather than believe it was a mistake. Then Jason and I had Ana. I had a positive home test and a positive Planned Parenthood test with her.
Then after Ana, I didn’t have a cycle for a year and a half or so. When it returned and then didn’t come back on time, I was worried. Perhaps it was paranoia that led me to test back in 2005. I received a faint line as a result. TO this day I do not know if it was a chemical pregnancy or an evaporation line. I do not count it as a pregnancy, but some days I still wonder if I should.
Then in November of 2006, I had another positive pregnancy test. I had some symptoms for several days and then they lessened. I passed a clot and then retested. It was negative. I am fairly certain that it was an early miscarriage. So that means, two miscarriages and 1 possible miscarriage in addition. The good news, however, was that we had actually had Ana and that I was probably going to have another in 8 months!
carilynn27 