Tony bought me a pregnancy test today. Yes, I know how silly that sounds. I plan on taking it tomorrow, even though it's probably a waste of time and money. The thing is, Aaron is 13 months old and I still haven't had a cycle yet. I've cut way down on breastfeeding (sometimes just twice a day) and I'm pretty certain I should have had some sort of hormone shift by now. Maybe I'm crazy? But I keep having this feeling like I'm about to start a new cycle, and then... nothing! I get all of the AF symptoms (which coincidentally are also pregnancy symptoms) and then she doesn't show. I keep telling poor Tony that he smells funny, and I've asked him what he's done differently in the past month or two. But what if it's me? I keep freaking out like his smells are changing because he's got a brain tumor or something, but what if my sense of smell is just more sensitive?
I know... insane. I mean we're dealing with a situation where Tony has had a vasectomy. You would think that we would know better, right? Well, here's the kicker... we're real idiots. You see, when we decided that three kids were it, it was for good reason. We were 20, flat broke, and dealing with a horrific injury. Notice that "flat broke" part? Let me tell you why that's significant. We saved for months to have the vasectomy. We didn't have insurance because at the time, neither of us was working. So we had to pay out of pocket. And being that money wasn't exactly coming into our household in buckets, we couldn't pay for the follow up visit. You know... the visit where they test the plumbing to make sure there aren't any leaks? We had to just assume that it worked. Yes, our birth control plan at that time was half blind trust, and half denial.
When we went ahead with TTC Aaron, we figured we didn't need to test Tony's count because we hadn't gotten pregnant up to that point, so why spend the extra money? We didn't even consider the fact that a perfectly fertile couple only has a 15%-20% chance of getting pregnant per cycle, so if he's got a slow leak, pregnancy is going to be terribly improbable, but not impossible. So we moved ahead with the samples we had in storage and didn't give it a second thought.
But here I am. In 3 weeks I will be 14 months post partum. When I had Andie, I started cycling again when she was 5 months old. So what gives? Maybe it's just a hormonal imbalance. The plan is still in place to head to the RE in February. But in the meantime, it would be foolish not to consider the possibility, and at least be sure. What if the vasectomy failed? I mean, I would feel terrible to find out too late that I was expecting and not have gotten the prenatal care I needed. It's worth a $4 pregnancy test, just to have it come back negative (as it should) just for peace of mind. By all rights, I should wake up to a single lonely line on that test in the morning. I'm not giving in to wishful thinking here. I'm really not. I fully expect a negative test in the morning. A positive test would be amazing, mostly because it would be a miracle.
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