Your period is 3 days late. Tap to record your period.
This morning’s notification:
Your period is 7 days late. Please take a pregnancy test, Tilly!
I think I might throw up again, but instead I start crying.
Wyatt, getting dressed, stops midway through pulling on his pants, alarm on his face. “What’s going on?” he asks. “Are you okay?”
I’m crying so hard I can’t speak, so I hold out my watch, my other hand covering my mouth. Wyatt’s khakis pool around his ankles, and he kicks them off hurriedly. His fingers encircle my wrist as he turns my watch, reading the most recent notification.
“Son of a gun,” he says, crouching in front of me. I take my hand from my mouth. The shock on his face matches my own. “Tilly…are you pregnant?”
After more than four years of trying, I am, in fact, pregnant.
“How?” is the question, because we had sex twice last month, and only once during the “high fertility” days noted in our joint calendar. I had my notifications turned off so had no idea what my basal temperature was. No clue when I ovulated. The calendar is based on my cycle, my watch a critical partner to keep things updated in real time.
I’m happy, though full of nervous energy and deeply felt fear. After losing Poppy, I find it impossible to trust that being pregnant means staying pregnant. Wyatt, on the other hand, is ecstatic. It’s not that he didn’t grieve alongside me, or experience the disappointment every month since when my period arrived. How do you explain to someone who doesn’t have a uterus what it’s like to go through the routine of physical loss every month?
Unexplained secondary fertilitywas my official diagnosis, coming two years after Poppy was born at almost twenty-nine weeks, still like a doll, covered in soft down. Her actual arrival so much quieter than the chaos, agony, and panic that preceded it. It was unnatural to have such silence at birth, and I’ll never forget the awful stillness of thehospital room when I delivered her. Of holding her in a soft pink blanket, willing her to move even as I knew she never would. I had no risk factors, except for slightly elevated blood pressure, which we were assured was unrelated. We were never given an official reason for my early-term labor. Simply told, “Sometimes there’s no answer.” That’s the sort of thing that can make a person go mad.
—
“This is good news, Tilly,” Wyatt reminds me about an hour later, as I sit on our bed, holding the pregnancy test, which is undeniably positive (“Pregnant—5–6 weeks”). I’ve stopped crying now, am in a state of disbelief.
“Is it, though?” I ask, my voice catching. “Oh my god.We had wine the other night.”
“One glass. It’s fine.” He smiles at me, the front of his hair flopping over his forehead. He hasn’t yet put hair product in. I like shaggy Wyatt—it reminds me of when we met, back when we were in our mid-twenties. Me training under Cecil at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Wyatt in town for a job interview. His hair was even longer back then, and I remember running my hand through its silkiness the first night we made out, which also happened to be the night we met. At a hotel bar downtown that served the best chicken wings, and dill pickle ranch dip to die for. Back when wings still came from farmed chickens and not the lab, back when business travel was normal and pandemics were theoretical possibilities.
“Now you need to make a doctor’s appointment,” he says. I nod, gulping back a sob.
Wyatt glances at his watch, gives a frustrated sigh. “I have to go, babe. Are you okay?” Again, I nod. Wyatt kisses me deeply, twice, and I try to absorb his sense of optimism.
“Wait—don’t tell your mom or Clem, okay?” I clutch his hand to prevent him from pulling away. “Or anyone else. Until we get confirmation. Make sure everything is fine.”
Wyatt tilts my chin, holds my gaze. “Everythingisfine. I’ll make sure of it.”
I smile, focusing oneverything is fine. Only later do I revisit his declaration ofI’ll make sure of itand feel something akin to ire at my exclusion. In the moment, however, I’m grateful for his sense of control and decide I’ll borrow from that confidence.
Everything is fine.We’llmake sure of it.
—
I break my own request to keep the news between us, calling Maeve the next morning from a bathroom stall at GIA. I’m already crying when she picks up. When she asks, “Tilly, what’s wrong?” I cry even harder. Soon I’m a mess, hiccupping and gulping too much air, and I can’t get my breath and my ability to speak aligned. I’m mortified at the idea that someone might walk in and hope my coworkers are busy with coffee and start-of-day chitchat.
Maeve shifts into therapist mode, her voice firm but soothing. “Tilly, I want you to breathe with me. Let’s do it together. In for four…hold…” I’m trying to hold the breath but a ragged hiccup breaks through.
“Now out for a slow count of four, through your mouth. Picture the beach. It’s sunny. There’s a rainbow. You can smell the salt of the ocean and the sand is warm between your toes. You are content, and you are safe.” After another round of this I’ve stopped crying, have better control over my diaphragm. The bathroom thankfully remains empty.
“Now, tell me, what’s going on?” Maeve asks.
It’s almost nine, and she has clients soon. I get right to it. “I’m pregnant.”
There’s a brief pause, and then: “Wow, Tilly…Okay, and how do you feel about that?”
By her controlled tone and question I know I’m still talking withtherapist Maeve. I wish friend Maeve would hop on the line, with a boisterousWHAT?! Congratulations! This is the very best news!
“I’m shocked, thrilled, sad because of what had to happen forthisto happen…”My sweet Poppy.“Also, I’m terrified. All of it at once, which is overwhelming.”
