On the 5th time I was positive

12/10/13

There's still a pregnancy test sitting on my counter.  It's been sitting there for over a week, which is probably totally gross given that I peed on it.  What else in the world would I put in a stream of urine and then - without having been washed - allow to sit near a place where food is prepared?!  YUCK!  I've kept it because I keep thinking that maybe I read it wrong.  Maybe somehow those two lines don't mean what I know they mean and all this isn't really happening.  I've just jumped to a really drastic conclusion 'cause I'm a spoiled little dreamer.

Plausible, right?

It's fair to say that I did everything wrong for one who's trying to get pregnant.  {Ah, the irony!}  I drank wine, I took medicine, I ate soft cheese, I had deli meat without heating it to steaming.  I wasn't going to start my prenatals again until the first of the year.  Somewhere, the getting pregnant gods are having a good laugh when they should be docking my file.

I wasn't trying to get pregnant, after all...

So, here's the thing about natural family planning.  I completely believe in it.  I'm sure it works.  I know of many success stories.   Also related: my body sucks.  It does all sorts of whatever it wants, whenever it wants to with no nod to any kind of predictability at all.

Wanna hear the really, really great big irony about my two lines?  {I'm gonna warn you - it's a total overshare!  Feel free to skip ahead to the less revealing paragraphs.}

I didn't ovulate the month I conceived.  

I mean, obviously I did somewhere along the line, what with all the getting pregnant.  But for all intensive purposes, the kinds that matter when you're trying to do the natural family planning gig, I didn't ovulate. It's not the first time my body has pulled that fun little trick: it happened when we were trying for Logan and I was using ovulation testers, it also happened in one of the first few months I was trying out NFP.  Both times previously I chalked it up to user error; could have been I used the test wrong; could have been I didn't know what I was checking for and I made a mistake.  Surely it was my fault. 

This time?  There was no mistake.  And now, frankly, I have my doubts about the other times, too.  My body simply didn't do what it has done during the other months when I know I'm ovulating.  I was really, really paying attention this time.  I SWEAR!!!  {I hear you calling me a liar!  I know!!!  I wouldn't believe me either if it hadn't happened to me!}

The last time it happened, my cycle turned out to be 32 days long instead of the 22-28 it typically is.  I thought I was pregnant that time, but took two tests and both were negative.  Stay with me - you need to know all of that to understand why, when I didn't ovulate, I wasn't altogether surprised when I got to day 28 and my monthly friend hadn't showed.

I had a cold, and since I'd been coughing through the night I finally caved and took medicine for the first time in two years.  I was pretty happy about it, too.  So at day 28, thinking I might possibly maybe be somewhere between a few days and a week late, I decided to take a test, reasoning that when it was negative I could go back to guzzling NyQuil by the gallon without a care. So I grabbed a stick and peed in the name of medicine - just to be sure.  

After trying for Logan, I still hate watching a single line appear, even though I was fully expecting that would happen.  So I came downstairs. I moved the toys from the floor to their baskets, only to have it undone moments later.  I helped Leah color.  Ten minutes or so later, I walked back upstairs.

My brain was ready for: hooray, thank goodness I can take my medicine!  

Instead?  There were two little pink lines.  Two little pink lines.  

I put my hand over my mouth.  It was one of those completely cliche moments where you feel your heart stop.  I started to laugh.  To shake.  Then, as the gravity of those lines hit me, to cry.  Not out of sadness or despair; I cried tears of sheer disbelief and joy.  Two lines means pregnant.  I'm carrying a baby.  And I sat there, half laughing, half crying, full of gratitude and terrifying uncertainty for a really long time.  

Casey was at work and unreachable, but news like this I couldn't keep to myself.  I stumbled down the stairs and called her.  She picked up the phone and I couldn't even speak.  "Are you okay?" were her first words to me.  "I'm..... pregnant?"  I mumbled.  It wasn't a statement.  "Don't get excited, I'm going to lose it."  

In that moment, I was sure it would be true.  The doctor even told me I should be prepared to lose again, maybe even several times.  That's what happens, and I've come to grips with it.  Jess talked me off the ledge where I wasn't even sure I was going to tell Casey.  No reason to get everybody all in a dither only to have me lose it three days later.  

But I haven't lost it.  Very quickly, I have begun to be confident that I won't.  With two wonderful, beautiful and happy children, and the fact that we weren't going to try again until at least the summer, I can hardly say I've been waiting and longing for this baby.  And still...

...Somehow, in all the craziness, this baby was meant to be ours.  I feel it, that deep-down-in-my-bones certainty I felt with Leah and again with Logan.  The kind of certain you think in your head but rarely utter out loud since, after all, there's really no guarantee.  In my already over-large belly lies the next great love of my life.  A little bundle that God always knew was part our family, even before Casey or I did.  It's overwhelming, the depth of this love.  

I may never get over it... the just getting pregnant without any help or angst or pain.  How did I get that lucky?  How did I just get pregnant?  

So, once again I tell you: I suck at planning.  I'll try not to be too obnoxious about being pregnant in the deep dark heat of summer.  Thankfully, we have AC this time.  And, oh yeah, don't have to make any crazy major life decisions, so that's working for me.  Let's all just say a prayer for a perfectly average, non-record breaking summer, kay?  

And that's that.  I'm going to be the mommy of 3.  You couldn't see it, but I just got tears in my eyes as I typed those words.  

They're tears of very, very great joy, in case that was in question.