Dear Pregnancy Test: I Wish You'd Grade On A Curve

I took a pregnancy test on Friday.

I didn’t pass.

I wasn’t really surprised to fail but I was disappointed, and that surprised me. Mike and I talk about our future-babies quite often because we’re both excited to meet them and teach them things, like how long you should dunk your Oreo cookie under milk before it completely disintegrates into a soggy, crumbly mess at the bottom of your cup. Important things like that. We agreed to wait awhile before trying to have babies for grown-up, responsible reasons.  So I was very surprised when my friend suggested that the culprit behind my menstrual cycle mystery might be something far less sinister than I'd imagined:

A baby.

When someone says "baby", I don't think of baby powder and dimpled hands and feet and wet, gummy smiles.  I mean, I do but the mental picture doesn't stop there.  I also think of college tuition, teen angst, diaper rash, chaffed nipples, sleepless nights, mucus plugs, emotional outbursts, emotional breakdowns, insurance, teenage drivers, diapers and bottles galore, etc.  I know there's nothing glamorous about ear infections and soaked breast feeding pads.  And yet when I think about babies, I feel

love.

Call me crazy but I'm excited to be a mom.  This has a lot to do with my relationship with my mom but I'll save that for later. 

I thought about my future-babies as I scanned the aisles for the perfect pregnancy test. I knew there was one out there that was perfect for me and my urine. Unfortunately, there were many options.  To an indecisive person, selecting one out of many feels like a trick or some sort of test.  I'm sure shoppers wondered why I was crouched in the middle of the aisle holding three or four different pregnancy tests.  What if I picked the wrong one?  What if one brand really was more accurant than another?  I was drawn to the pink box because the silhouette of the woman on it just screamed fertility, like it would really read my urine sample more accurately than the others. But the pink box, though alluring, was pricey.  I ended up picking the purple box because I like purple. And because I had used it once before, only that time I was so nervous I forgot to remove the cap that covers the actual test strip. I peed all over it (and my hand).

I drank a lot of water and waited. I drank more water and thought about my future-babies. I skimmed the instructions without absorbing anything. I kept telling myself, don’t forget to remove the plastic cap. Don’t forget to remove the plastic cap. This time I remembered.

I put the cap back on the test and waited, still on the toilet, because I was afraid that if I moved or left the bathroom I would mess up the results. I wiggled my toes, scratched my calf and wiped up the excess pee.  Slowly, a single blue line appeared. Just one, not two. I waited a little longer. Perhaps the second line just took a little longer to appear.

Nope.

I know I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. But the thought of meeting our future-babies sooner than we’d expected flooded every cell in my body with sheer

Happiness.

Excitement.

Joy.

Wonder.

One day, I will pass the test. Today's just not the day.

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