The Unmother

"Call when you get your period. Or if you don't have it fourteen days from today. We'll bring you in for a blood test." Yay. No waiting for the second pink line. No more being tricked by those evil lying tests that keep telling me I'm pregnant just before or even after my period. Day 13 comes. Day 13 goes. No period. I want to shout with excitement. I know it's too early. But I also know that if my period arrives, I'm heading for a date with a camera up my hoo. I'm not looking forward to that. In fact, I dread it. My head feels woozy just thinking about it. Day 14 comes. I might be getting it. I feel like I might. But it doesn't come. No period. Night 14 comes... still no period. Too late to call the doctor for the blood test. Stop at the store, get another round of pregnancy tests. The name brand this time, no more store brand liars for this girl. Negative. But they know I ovulated, right? They told me so. 14 days. 14 days after ovulatio...

Month three of our window came and went. No baby. "Here's your referral. These are the two clinics we recommend you call." I went home in a daze. We'd failed. We weren't even parents yet and already we were drowning in our failure. April came and went. I didn't call. May came, and we talked. We had a lot going on, work to do at the house, jobs, life. It was time for a break. I was done tracking, timing, stressing. I'd call the clinic. Eventually. We decided it was time to stop putting everything else on hold. If I wanted to do something, we were no longer not scheduling things "in case I was 8 months pregnant" or "in case we have a newborn" if those events were months in the future. We were done being in this constant, painful waiting. This stasis was crap, and we were OVER IT! We adopted two dogs. Yes, two. Because we're insane, and anything worth doing is worth over doing.  And yeah, we knew if I got pregnant right aft...