I never thought I would post one of these pics. Not just because I honestly thought I’d never get here. And only slightly because I don’t want strangers on the internet to see where I just peed. But mostly because pee sticks haven’t really worked for me. Both of my previous pregnancies took FOREVER to show up on a pee stick, if at all. So I just assumed that I must be in the 0.1% of people who don’t metabolize HCG.

Turns out, I metabolize it just fine, as of this morning at least. My beta isn’t until tomorrow. And I had sworn up and down left and right that I would not test at home until the beta. Mainly because of the anxiety I knew it would cause.

And then last night I had another almost sleepless night, crippled with fear over a tiny pink smudge on some toilet paper that I just knew signaled the end of everything. And I needed to know.

My husband woke up extra early this morning. And I, of course, was already up, googling my eyeballs out. And as soon as he left the house at 5:45am, I was like a junky needing a fix, looking up every 24-hour drugstore in my neighborhood. Turns out, there aren’t too many here in suburbia. So I had to settle for a 24-hour grocery store. And that’s how I became the crazy lady in pajamas running into a Hy-Vee at 6am asking for directions to the pregnancy test aisle. Pretty sure I was the only customer the sole checkout guy had in hours. And pretty sure he knew what I was planning to do next.

I was completely emotionally prepared for it to be negative like all the hundreds of others in the last two+ years. So when that second line started to show, I thought I was hallucinating. I called the husband to confess my junky ways. And, turns out, he wasn’t too mad about it 🙂

My beta isn’t until tomorrow. And given my history and all my issues, this could go a lot of different ways. But for right now, I know that I am pregnant. And after all this time, I finally have the proof.

Tomorrow, our only hope gets transferred into my uterus. And I can’t sleep. For the second night in a row. It’s 3am, and my internal search engine keeps running without any answers.

Will lack of sleep affect implantation? Am I destining myself for failure? Am I making my heart beat that fast? Or is it the prednisone? Or the giant shots in the ass we’ve been giving me every night? How long can one person go without more than 2 hours sleep? If this affects my chances, how do women with infants get pregnant? Better yet, how does anyone ever get pregnant at all? Am I working too much? Have I taken on too much? Am I not working enough? Do I need more of a distraction? Am I going to look back and wish I hadn’t been working so hard at all? Did I fuck everything up with that piece of dark chocolate? Is everyone going to freak out about me not drinking this weekend? Will I be able to handle the assumptions they make? Will I even make it to the weekend, or will time stand still like this forever? Will the embryo fall out into my underpants? Into the toilet? Is it even safe to go number 2? Safe to move? Safe to cough? Safe to breathe? Will the doctor call me tomorrow and tell me there is no embryo? That they lost it? That they messed it up? That this was all a misunderstanding? Can I handle 9 more days and nights like this? 12 whole weeks? 9 whole months? Can I handle not having to handle 12 whole weeks? 9 whole months? Will it wreck me forever?

Tomorrow, our only hope gets transferred into my uterus. And I can’t help but think that it’s the most dangerous place it could be.