On July 29th, my mother texted me and told me to take a pregnancy test. I didn’t want to. There were many reasons I didn’t want to take a test. First, becoming pregnant requires “baby dancing” (BD). I’m serious, they call it BD in the world of trying to conceive (TTC). There are in fact many acronyms. When I first started trying to conceive, I found it hard to decode the message boards that talked about DHs, CDs, HPTs, and BFPs (dear husband, cycle day, home pregnancy test, and big fat positive). However, I’m now fluent in the language.
When my mother asked me to take a pregnancy test, I checked when Ben and I last baby danced and felt pretty confident I was not pregnant. However, when my mother asked me again if I took the test two days later, I just took one so I could say that I had. Not surprisingly, it came back negative.
The irony of this event was that the day I took this pregnancy test was the day I conceived.
Let’s go back a couple weeks. On July 13th, Ben and I went to visit my family in Georgia. My niece’s birthday is on the 15th, and we had a birthday for her at a local arcade that included Karaoke and bowling. It was a lot of fun. That day I told Ben that I thought menopause was coming to an end. I could feel changes in my mood that I had not felt in a long time. I just wanted to hold Ben’s hand or wrap my arms around him.
I just wanted to be close in a way that I knew had to be increases in estrogen.
Perhaps it sounds callous and unromantic to say that my desire to be close to my husband on that day was more an indication of changes in hormones than say my undying love for him, but I now know my body extremely well. I know when I want to be close to Ben because he’s awesome and when mother nature is just doing her thing.
I wondered how long it would be before AF (Aunt Flo) came to visit. Would it be a few days, a few weeks, a couple more months? Another week later I noticed changes in cervical mucus, which is for me, the best indication of the days I’m fertile. Ovulating was certainly I sign my period would return soon.
Around the time I thought my period was due, I began thinking about what it would mean for Ben and I to start trying to conceive again. I wasn’t, interestingly enough, super excited about the idea. I wasn’t sure that I wanted children anymore. Maybe it was the hormones of simulated menopause, or maybe it was the younger me who thought it was unnecessary to bring children out my own uterus resurfacing. I googled information about reasons to have children. I read articles about people who were “ambivalent” about having children.
In the news and media, we hear a lot about people who absolutely want to have children one day. We hear about the couples who have a difficult time trying. We hear about the people who definitely do not want to have children for a number of reasons. We rarely hear about the people who are on the fence. What about those people who wouldn’t mind children if they came along, but who didn’t feel a strong urge to make that happen?
I was reading a lot about reasons you should not have children, which included being worried that you would regret not having children later in life or because everyone else seemed to be doing it. These reasons really resonated with me. I thought that perhaps my desire to make a family was primarily because I didn’t want to disappoint Ben’s parents, who I am sure expected to be grandparents one day. Ben’s marrying a black woman was already an unconventional choice. Would they forgive another unconventional decision? The choice not to have children?
After all my reading, I was convinced that I wanted to have children for all the wrong reasons. I decided to tell the Ben the next day that even after my period came back, I would not want to have children. We both had really big dreams that would take a lot of time, effort, and sacrifice. Would we be able to achieve them if we needed to consider children as well? Of course, you hear stories of successful CEO’s who are also moms. The message is that you can in fact have it all, so why choose? The articles I was reading, however, were asking if both partners were fairly ambivalent about having children, then why not choose the road less traveled and not have children?
I don’t know why, after talking myself firmly into the view of not having children, I decided to walk into the bathroom and take a pregnancy test. I said to myself, “Of course, before we decide to pursue the path of non-momhood, we should be certain we are not pregnant.”
I took a test at around 11pm that night. They tell you to always take these things in the morning when you are likely to have urine with the strongest concentration of HCG. Anyway, I didn’t think anything about that. I was sure I wasn’t in fact pregnant anyway. So, when I looked at the results and saw a faint line, I was like, “No way.” Also, the test looked kind of odd. I decided I would take another in the morning. I wouldn’t say anything to Ben. This was probably a mistake.
But I’m not good at keeping things from Ben. So, I went immediately into the bedroom and said, “Can you come here?” He was like, “What are you pregnant?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “What?!” I was like, “Don’t get excited, just come look at this and tell me what you think.”
Ben went to look at the test and was unimpressed by the faint line. He didn’t think much of it and slept like a baby that night. I didn’t sleep nearly as well.
So, I took another test in the morning. I made sure that I got enough urine on the stick this time, and there it was. Another faint line. Even Ben agreed.
I was pregnant.
I decided to go to the hospital to get a blood test done. I figured I would go in the morning, and I would have a clear answer before lunch. If you are wondering why I was going alone, it’s because this was a Friday. It was a work day. Ben had just started working at the university where I worked the Monday that week. He wasn’t in a position to ask for a day off on his fifth day.
I went to the hospital, and they said I had to go to a different branch of the hospital to have a pregnancy test done. They pointed me to a shuttle bus that takes patients between the different branches of the hospital. I got to the hospital where I had to figure out where to get a number. Fortunately, I had gotten there early enough to get a number for the morning time slots. I then sat down and waited for my turn.
I was number 111.
They move pretty efficiently though, so by about 10:30 in the morning, it was my turn to see the doctor. I was prepared to explain my medical history to the doctor in Mandarin. I told her about the surgery, the diagnosis, the shots to simulate menopause, and the pregnancy test that morning.
Then she asked, “If you’re pregnant, do you want the baby?”
Umm…. Yes, absolutely.
So much for taking the road less traveled.
She then asked if the doctors at the hospital hadn’t told me not to get pregnant while on the drug Zoladex. I was like, “No, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that.”
Now I was worried.
You see, when you come in and say you think you’re pregnant, the doctors want to know your LMP (last menstrual period). My last period started in April, if you counted that one since it started because of the drug. The original plan was to go through 4 – 6 months of menopause, then my period would come back, and I would try to get pregnant. What I didn’t know or expect was to get pregnant beforemy period came back. No one told me that was possible. Anyway, she ordered the blood test. I went to get my blood taken, and I was told to come back at 4:00 pm for my test results. So much for having answers before lunch.
My heart rate was all over the place that day. To give you a sense, my average heart rate is normally around 85. My average heart rate that day was 113. I kept telling myself that I needed to relax, but that didn’t help. But I already knew it wouldn’t.
After the agonizing 5 hour wait, I went back to the hospital, and I got my test results. I didn’t know what the numbers meant myself. I went back to see a doctor. The doctor I had seen in the morning was no longer there, so I had to explain my medical history to a new doctor. She gave me the same line of questioning. Did I want this baby? Hadn’t they told me not to get pregnant while on this drug?Again, I answered “yes” and “no” respectively. This line of questioning was becoming increasingly worrying.
The doctor looked at my test results and said, “You’re pregnant, but it’s too early to tell for sure.”
Wait, what? Am I pregnant or not?
The doctor looked very concerned. It wasn’t at all what I had expected. I had expected the doctor to say either, “Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” or “No, you’re not pregnant.” What does it mean that it’s too early to tell?
I left feeling even more confused than I felt this morning. I not only did not have a clear answer by lunch, I wasn’t sure what I would tell Ben when I got home. Should I be excited and rejoicing or concerned?
I sent the photo of my test results to my two American doctor friends for a second opinion, and then I looked up the HCG levels that indicate pregnancy on Google. So, apparently, even in pregnancy there is a grey area. For instance, if you have an HCG lower than 5, you are almost certainly not pregnant. Above 25, you are almost certainly pregnant. Between 6 and 24 though, there is a grew area.
Of course, I was 15.
Further reading suggested that menopausal women can have an elevated HCG.
Wait, what?! Was this just a false positive caused by simulated menopause?
I would have to wait until Monday to find out. By then, my HCG levels would either have doubled or stayed the same. I may even have started bleeding. The doctor said that if I did start bleeding before Monday, I should go directly to the hospital.
On Sunday, I went to the bathroom, and I saw blood…
**The featured image is the test I took on the morning of August 10th.
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