I am often guilty on my blogs of backposting to when I meant to write something rather than when I actually did the writing. I’m even more guilty of building up posts in my head and never actually getting the writing done because it gets harder and harder to recall exactly what was in my head. So the lesser of two evils, a giant sum-up of the last week in one night.
First I’m going to jump to the end and say I’m not pregnant. I don’t want to build up any unnecessary suspense accidentally, but there’s still a story.
Last Thursday (marked the date) I saw bright red when I woke up. A trickle of blood in the toilet and I confirmed with a piece of toilet paper. Breakthrough bleeding/spotting isn’t terribly uncommon on my pill – it probably happens once or twice a cycle, but it always throws me off. What threw me off more was the crampy and generally ‘off’ feeling I had throughout the morning.
On a hunch I did some research and found out there’s such thing as ‘implantation bleeding’. I’m not going to rehash my calendar math because it was probably flawed, but it seemed plausible at the time. I started thinking a little more seriously about grabbing that dollar store test.
Then over the weekend I went looking further and saw I had a handful of symptoms from Early Pregnancy Symptoms – The earliest pregnancy signs before you miss a period! I know some of these are so generic anyone would probably have a few but…
1 – Cramping
Many women think that cramping is a sign that Aunt Flo (your menstrual period) is surely on her way but it’s actually one early sign of pregnancy[…]
That crampy feeling mentioned above.
3 – Fatigue
Fatigue is one of the first pregnancy symptoms. Increased progesterone levels can make you feel exhausted.[…]
Suddenly I’ve turned into someone who goes to bed by midnight, and found myself sleeping through my Saturday even though I don’t have bad drugs to blame that on anymore.
4 – Nausea
Nausea can be an early pregnancy symptom. Some women will start feeling queasy days before they even have a missed period. Blame the nausea on hormones again! For most women morning sickness doesn’t set in until around six weeks of pregnancy but some women will start feeling queasy really early on.
Started up with the cramping and keeps hitting randomly after I eat. Not causing any food aversions (#18) but it is an annoyance regardless.
6 – Constipation or diarrhea
[…]While most women will have issues with constipation during early pregnancy, some will have diarrhea instead.
Hardly worth noting when I have a disease that accounts for any and all stomach trouble, but I feel like I’ve been wobbling around either side of normal lately as my body tries to settle back to whatever ‘normal’ is.
7 – Headaches
Not every woman has problems with headaches during pregnancy, but for some this is the very first tell-tale sign of pregnancy.[…]
Even more statistically irrelevant, but I’m not normally a headachey person and remember popping the Tylenol a few days last week.
9 – Spotting
While some women think that implantation spotting is a common early pregnancy symptom, it doesn’t occur in most pregnancies.[…]
Started this whole obsession!
14 – Frequent trips to the bathroom
Frequent urination is a big complaint amongst pregnant women. Some women don’t have problems with this until later in pregnancy, but for many, frequent urination becomes a problem right away.[…]
This might actually be a negative point because I’ve been getting up in the night every night for at least a month straight, until a week or so ago.
15 – Heightened sense of smell
Skipping the description, that day I had written:
Speaking of pregnancy symptoms, I wonder if phantom smelling is one. In the early morning when it’s now light out these days but still too absurdly early to be awake, I thought I could smell cat pee. Well actually pee in general, since cat urine has a strong, specific smell when you’re close enough, but the conclusion I came to is that Merlin defiled my laundry baskets again. I mentally groaned and decided I would be doing loads of laundry tonight, and went back to sleep. (It’s something I can only get mad at him to a point – when I don’t put my clothes away for extended periods of time I figure I’m asking for it.)
In the morning, the smell was gone. I picked through handfuls of clothes and they were clean (still).
(Now I’m pretty sure I’m tempting fate for tonight.)
Thanks to this list I was fully committed to buying a pregnancy test for real. I wanted to sneak out and grab one while Andrew was at band practice so I didn’t have to admit to this whole silly thing but I was slow leaving the apartment and he wanted to walk to the store with me. When the drug store ended up being closed, I told my story and we went to Target because I wanted it in hand for Sunday morning.
Luckily we’re at a point where admitting (frivolous or not) that I might be pregnant doesn’t meet with a response of panic or horror.
The first thing I’ve learned about pregnancy tests is, technically they can be used at any time of day now but first thing is the morning is still going to be the most accurate.
The second thing I’ve learned is, while it’s often referred to as ‘peeing on a stick’, that’s actually harder than it sounds. Actually I’m too afraid to try and miss and waste a test, so I’m going with the collection method (using one of my littlest disposable plastic containers) and even then it’s difficult. I think as preparation for the actual baby, taking a pregnancy test is just going to involve peeing on your hands somehow. Or maybe I just fail at this part?
After a minute a strong pink control line appeared. With reasons for wanting and not wanting both results I think my mind defaulted to wanting to see something happen. A second line appear.
Nothing happened.
So nothing happened. We didn’t plan for anything to happen in the first place. So why do I find myself disappointed? Besides having a bunch of stupid symptoms with no real reason behind them… And looking forward to going into work on Monday with a secret. And not worrying anymore about whether I can actually get pregnant in the first place because there it would have happened.
There is still the chance that I am and it’s just too soon to tell – the test came in a three pack and I planned to try again in a week or so – but even as the last week’s passed that feeling that I just might be pregnant has faded.
This wasn’t the kind of crazy I expected.