Hellobee

The next two weeks were kind of crazy-making. Okay, not kind of. There were straight up nutty. I was really thrown off and stressed out experiencing my first two week wait. The lack of control and my lack of patience really wasn’t a great combination. That one little time seemed unlikely to result in a pregnancy, but as the end of my wait neared I felt all of these things that had me wondering whether I actually was.

I took a test before leaving to visit my in-laws out of town. Negative. I was surprised. We went away, and my period was officially late (three days). My boobs ached, I was exhausted. I had to be pregnant. We ended up leaving a night earlier than planned, and got a hotel on our way home (it’s a 15-hour drive). That next morning, I crawled out of bed finally ready to use my other pregnancy test. As I waited the couple of minutes pacing the bathroom, I looked down and saw a very faint, yet obvious second line.

I was pregnant. I woke up Mr. Marshmallow and told him, and he looked and agreed – the line was there. We spent the rest of the long drive home talking about that little poppy seed inside of me. My mind was spinning.

That night I started spotting. I immediately started to panic and wondered what that meant. I had more spotting in the morning so I called my doctor. Negative test. It wasn’t looking good. And that evening the blood turned red and it was all over. Chemical pregnancy.

I can’t really describe the feeling, but the next few months were a blur of anxiety, stress, and impatience around trying to quickly replace the loss I didn’t want to deal with.

Something shifted after a particularly cathartic cry in December when another two cycles had passed since our chemical pregnancy. I finally acknowledged the loss instead of trying to replace it with another pregnancy to make it all okay. That impatience, lack of control, and anxiety around trying and timing and just wanting and willing it to happen wasn’t working… and I knew I really needed to change the way I was looking at it for my own sanity.

Another two cycles later I had a new attitude and a new-found level of patience and humility in the process. I worked really hard to find the joy in waiting and the excitement of this period in our marriage. And at the end of February, those two little lines appeared much sooner than they had before, and they kept getting darker day after day.

Those first few weeks and months were celebrated with held breath, and we had to work hard to find the excitement in those early days. But the days and weeks kept progressing, and after two positive ultrasounds I finally started to believe this was actually happening.

Our journey wasn’t particularly long, but it was filled with many life lessons we’re grateful for. I learned so much about myself, our relationship and marriage in those five months of trying.