Finding yourself pregnant again after infertility and miscarriages is terrifying, sad, joyful, and every in-between.
I am not quite having an identity crisis at the moment, but definitely feel out of sorts. You get used to life being a certain way. Even if you are not exactly thrilled with your lot, you make do.
And then something happens that throws your entire existence and self preservation into a tailspin.
While I will never be delighted to go through infertility, I had reached a comfortable acceptance. Being reproductively challenged was my thing. Some people have hangups about their weight or skin, some have major family issues, some have awful personalities, and some have so many problems you wonder how they get through the day. Some have infertility.
It becomes a part of you. It partly defines us. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but it does.
This week I awoke in a body not my own. A body that does things I don’t do.
The feeling was there. It hung like a saturated rain cloud, looming over us for days. I woke up and knew. Mr.JAC said he had known it too. There were no physical signs, no well-timed certainty, no hopeful sighs. But we knew.
I went digging through a drawer and pulled out a cheap internet HPT. They are not yet expired. Those suckers last forever. I tested on a ridiculously early day just to see the white. Stark white, perfectly negative, as it should be at that point. That was last Friday. When I was still me. Why did I test? I was out walking with my mom and a bird pooped on my head. She said it was a good omen.
I waited.
On Monday, I nearly forgot. I bounded out of bed without a care in the world and went along my way. Stopped short. And literally ran to the drawer for a strip.
I watched the two lines develop on what was still a ridiculously early day. In fact it was a full five days sooner than the last time two lines appeared. I like to think that means this one is five days stronger. I repeated my actions all week, watching the lines darken each day.
I couldn’t bring myself to voice the words to Mr.JAC. Instead I waited until last night and retrieved a digital test leftover from the last bomb drop. I handed him the finished test and sat silently on the sofa. He paused his movie.
“I had a feeling.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Hit play on the controller.
This sort of non-reaction is normal from him. He would react the same way if I told him we won the lottery or got evicted. It can be both a frustration and a relief.
I don’t know who this body belongs to. I am on my first official cycle since the D&C and am pregnant again? Twice in a row?
This does not happen to people like me. Last time was a fluke. A chance in Hell.
Or so I thought.
I spent quite a bit of time these past few days staring at lines and then staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. Infertile to fertile. I crossed my eyes and watched my image split in two.
And it is irrational, I know, but I can’t help but wonder when I have to give the body back. Because it simply cannot be mine. It has my scars. My birthmarks. My flaws and highlights. The same droops and swells ravaged by gravity and time.
But something is very, very different.