NOLA Notes

Looking back, the signs were there.  But when you aren’t looking, how can you see them?

So today when my period turned angry and stopped me in my tracks, I assumed it was what I’m told about ALL my new ailments: It’s yet another sign of aging.

Then the flow got really heavy.  No worries, just a desire for good meds.  Then clots appeared.  Doubt crept in. Could I have been…?  Am I now…?

My mother-in-law is staying with us, and we canceled our afternoon plans so I could wear sweat pants and suffer at home.  She also got me to call my doctor.  He asked if I was sure I wasn’t pregnant.  And then the math hit me.  I mean, it was possible, albeit improbable.  So he asked that I take a pregnancy test and if positive go to his office tomorrow to be sure “nothing’s left behind.”

I called CS at work and explained things and asked him to bring me home a pregnancy test.  And that damn thing showed “Pregnant” faster than I had time to even come close to bracing for such a result.  Stunned, I walked out of the bathroom.  My mother-in-law was walking past the door.  I tossed the stick to her.  She read it and said, “NO WAY.”  Then she brought it to CS, who was running Sun’s bath.

I then went into the bathroom where CS was (and Sun wasn’t yet).  We stared at each other.  Stunned.  Then we talked a bit.  And I realized that CS was under the mistaken impression that I was carrying a viable pregnancy.  I clarified there was NO WAY I wasn’t losing it — hadn’t already lost it.

Then I went to the den and sat down.

Stunned.

Dazed.

Relieved.

I know I’ve posted about our decision to have no more children.  To do no more fertility treatment.  We were coasting along on a “if it happens” mentality.  But when you KNOW it won’t, can’t, happen, you accept it.  And although we felt that we DID have the ability to have another child, and it WAS our decision not to, there was a nagging hint of doubt.  What if we could easily get pregnant?   Have we just decided we don’t want another because of the stress/cost/etc. of fertility treatment?  Were we just “deciding” what was already a foregone conclusion without intervention?

And before I took that pregnancy test I thought, it doesn’t matter what it reads.  Either way, I am NOT having a baby now.  It won’t MEAN anything.  We have no attachment, no expectation.

And then I saw the one word. “Pregnant.”  And my hand shook a bit.  And my nerves shook a lot.

And I sat on the sofa.  Marveling at my own girly parts.  Our fertility doctor had said that if we’d wanted another baby, we’d maybe not even have to do fertility again because my hormonal dysfunction could sort of “re-set” itself after a healthy pregnancy and delivery.

And then I realized that for the past 3 or so years that I thought, no matter what that fertility doctor may have said to me, that I’ve ALWAYS been infertile and could NOT have another child without intervention, that I’d been wrong.  That yet again I’d underestimated myself, my body, and assumed the worst.  That I was just temporarily infertile!  That we really DO have a choice to have another child.  That our decision NOT to have another child is real.  And that decision is mutual.  And right for us.  So instead of tears, there was a small smile.

Tonight, I was liberated.

I CAN, DID, get pregnant without a doctor in the room!  And we really, truly, choose for me not to get pregnant, for us not to have a baby, again.  That nagging doubt?  It too flowed out of me today.  Once and for all.