Fertality

June 21, 2013.  Your period is three days overdue!

"Yeah yeah," I grumble at my app.  "I know, I know.  Shut up."

My period is not actually three days overdue.  It is day thirty-two of my cycle, and although the calendar stubbornly insists that my cycle is twenty-nine days long, it's actually closer to thirty-one.  So, theoretically my period will be showing up today.  It hasn't, which as far as I'm concerned is relatively convenient, since I'm even now sitting in the waiting courtyard of my accupuncturist's office.

(Yes, she has a waiting courtyard.  It's awesome.)

Of course, in all fairness the reason I've been letting this woman stick needles into me for the last six weeks is entirely to do with my wacky menstrual cycle.  And the fact that it keeps insisting on showing up, sort of whenever the hell it feels like it.  And being painful as hell when it does.  Thanks to her I no longer have mid-cycle blood and pain, and my cramps weren't as bad last cycle.  I may not be pregnant yet, but hey- I'm happy enough that my lady parts are back to toeing the line.

She ushers me into my room and gives me a speculative look.

"Has your period showed up?"

"Nope," I say, matter-of-fact.

Her face immediately lights up.  "Have you taken a test yet?"

"Nah," I wave the suggestion off airily.  "My husband and I had to implement a rule that I can't take a pregnancy test until I'm at least a week late, because otherwise I get too excited and then disappoint myself.  I'll take one on Tuesday."

"Hmm," she says, speculatively.  "Do you have any breast tenderness?"

"No."  I am emphatic.  "I definitely do not have any pregnancy symptoms."  Not that it would matter if I did.  I've had every pregnancy symptom in the book- nausea, fatigue, breast tenderness, metallic-taste-in-the-mouth- and never once has it actually been related to pregnancy.

"What about PMS?" she asks.

"I-" I stop suddenly.  "Huh.  You know, come to think of it, I haven't been bitchy lately."

This makes her laugh, but it makes me very thoughtful.  Because... I'm always bitchy right before my period starts.

She lays me out on the table and feels my abdomen, which she says is feeling nice and warm, then places a smaller amount of needles than normal, and leaves me to my epically satisfying nap.

I decide to stop for a strawberry milkshake on the way home, a major indulgence for me.  All that dairy and sugar?  Yeah.  I chuckle to myself.

"Well if I am pregnant, I'm totally giving you the wrong foods."

***

June 22, 2013.  Your period is four days overdue!

I'm laying in bed and I'm thinking.  I'm thinking, I am totally not pregnant.  This is silly.  But...

"But" I really haven't been bitchy.

"But" I believe in a Universe with a sense of humor about me and pregnancy symptoms.

"But" (and this is the one that finally gets me out of bed and into the bathroom) I have friends coming over for a barbeque later, and I'd feel a lot better about drinking if I had a definite Not Pregnant staring up at me from a pee stick.  Gods know I've seen it enough times over the past three years.

It's a new brand- a weird, digital brand that I got on sale two months ago and involves actually constructing the damn thing.  Yes, awesome, definitely I am so glad I'm figuring out how to engineer a damn pee stick while attempting to ignore my overfull bladder.

Not even a minute later I'm staring at the results.

"Holy shit," I whisper yell, my voice high-pitched and strangled.  "Holy shit holy shit!" I am dancing around the bathroom like an agitated cricket.

I have, over the years, put in the requisite number of hours daydreaming about how I would tell my partner if/when I got pregnant.  It's probably a pretty good thing that I never came up with a really fabulous method, because all thoughts of presentation flee my mind as I scramble back into bed.

"Nate!  Wake up!  Wake up!  Guess what!"

I shove the test into his hand and he looks at it blearily, then at me.  He is squinting and I suddenly remember that there's a very good chance he can't even read the results without his glasses on.

But let's be real- there's only one reason I'd make him look at a pregnancy test at seven in the morning, and my man is nothing if not quick.