Before we got married my wife and I lived together for four years. So when we discussed marriage, Beth kind of had a, “What-the–hell-are-you-waiting-for?” attitude which I’m sure you can imagine was super fun for me. Nothing like someone subtly pressuring you into one of the most important decisions of your life, but I submitted and popped the question. In hindsight, of course she was right, and I wish I had done it sooner.
Until recently, when we discussed having children, this time we were both indecisive. We love kids and babysit Beth’s sister’s two girls frequently, but we were always happy to give them back and go home to the sanctity and peace of our child-free house. But the truth is, my wife and I aren’t getting any younger and her biological clock was ticking faster than a jackrabbit so we decided to “pull-the-goalie” and see what happened.
Once my wife gets something in her head however, there’s no turning back. Simply pulling the goalie wasn’t going to cut it and she soon became an expert on fertility and all things concerning women’s reproductive health. Well it turns out that to get good and pregnant is truly a miracle and it’s a wonder that people get pregnant at all. It’s not just about having sex and sperm meeting egg and “boom” you’re pregnant. No sir. The timing has to be just about perfect for this amazingly complicated thing to happen. It’s all about ovulation and cervical fluid consistency and temperature and… well…timing. Charting your temperature is crucial to know when you’re ovulating at maximum capacity so each morning at about 4:30 my wife would take her temperature with this little thermometer. She would stick it under her tongue and it would beep at a slow, consistent pace for a while until the temperature registered and then it would beep really fast for a few seconds letting her know that it was done. It kind of sounded like a tiny, annoying alarm clock. Because I’m a light sleeper, I would wake up to this persistent noise every morning for about four months straight. But, it was for a good cause, so I didn’t complain.
Well, as my wife likes to say, “We nailed it”, and our miracle happened--but it didn’t come easy. I could tell something was up when, after a long day of work, she didn’t feel like a glass of wine. The next day was the same—no wine. Now, to most people, not feeling like a glass of wine for a couple of days is no big deal but I was ready to hit the panic button. “Who is this person?” I thought. Beth’s cycle is like clockwork and after being “late” she took a pregnancy test and the results were inconclusive. If you’ve never seen one of these tests it’s a small plastic stick that has this circle thingy which shows a visible vertical line that you pee on. In a few minutes, and if you’re pregnant, there will appear a horizontal line cutting directly through the middle of the existing vertical line making the plus (+) symbol. Easy right? Well what they don’t tell you in the directions is that there’s already a very faint horizontal line showing before you pee on it and, in our case, after the peeing, the horizontal line registered but barely much darker than what was showing initially. The next day she tried again with the same result. I even considered peeing on one so at least we’d have a control example.
Not ones to be discouraged, we went to the hospital and had her take a pregnancy test there. Beth was sure the results would be positive so we were surprised when the nurse called and told us that she was not pregnant. We were disheartened but not convinced, so Beth went and bought a few more tests. One shows a color if you’re pregnant and the other has a vertical line and another one right next to it will appear if you’re pregnant. She would bring the stick out of the bathroom and show it to me or take a picture of it and text it to me while I was at work and each time and I was never convinced. The stupid line just seemed too faint. In total, Beth took seven at home tests plus two hospital visits before we figured out the truth. She was DEFINITELY pregnant.
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