At any rate, I got pregnant, again, a month or so after a miscarriage at nine weeks that shook me badly.
I'd never been pregnant before the pregnancy that miscarried. And I was not entirely convinced that I was going to get pregnant, not at thirty-eight, not for the first time. I obsessively pored over websites explaining how your fertility dropped off a cliff in your thirties. I reckoned the odds. I worried.
I hadn't worried much before then. All through my twenties, and into my early thirties, I told people confidently that if by the time I had my financial and emotional act together I was no longer fertile, I would adopt. By thirty-eight, however, I had realized that my financial act might never be together to an extent that would allow for adoption. If I wanted to raise children, giving birth to them might be my only option.
And so, at thirty-eight, I put my foot down. I wanted children, and I could see the end of my eggs from where I was standing. There was no more time to give to hoping for a better job situation, or paycheck. There was no more wiggle room. We were going to do this thing.
The day I took the pregnancy test and learned about my first pregnancy, I was almost manic. I had realized that I was at least two or three weeks past when my period should have begun. And I had gone to get a pregnancy test from the drugstore, while firmly convinced that I would not be pregnant. On the way home, I had a vicious imaginary argument with a doctor who was telling me that I had waited too long to have children. I marched home with the CVS bag, bawling her out in my mind, surged upstairs on a wave of pure righteous anger, and peed on the brush end of the test.
And the two lines that indicated a positive came up, so fast that I didn't even have to wait the prescribed minute.
I assumed I had done it wrong, so I waited an hour and tried again. Two lines, strong and blue.
The biology, it seemed, worked.
I'd never been pregnant before the pregnancy that miscarried. And I was not entirely convinced that I was going to get pregnant, not at thirty-eight, not for the first time. I obsessively pored over websites explaining how your fertility dropped off a cliff in your thirties. I reckoned the odds. I worried.
I hadn't worried much before then. All through my twenties, and into my early thirties, I told people confidently that if by the time I had my financial and emotional act together I was no longer fertile, I would adopt. By thirty-eight, however, I had realized that my financial act might never be together to an extent that would allow for adoption. If I wanted to raise children, giving birth to them might be my only option.
And so, at thirty-eight, I put my foot down. I wanted children, and I could see the end of my eggs from where I was standing. There was no more time to give to hoping for a better job situation, or paycheck. There was no more wiggle room. We were going to do this thing.
The day I took the pregnancy test and learned about my first pregnancy, I was almost manic. I had realized that I was at least two or three weeks past when my period should have begun. And I had gone to get a pregnancy test from the drugstore, while firmly convinced that I would not be pregnant. On the way home, I had a vicious imaginary argument with a doctor who was telling me that I had waited too long to have children. I marched home with the CVS bag, bawling her out in my mind, surged upstairs on a wave of pure righteous anger, and peed on the brush end of the test.
And the two lines that indicated a positive came up, so fast that I didn't even have to wait the prescribed minute.
I assumed I had done it wrong, so I waited an hour and tried again. Two lines, strong and blue.
The biology, it seemed, worked.
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