“What?”
“Oh no. Please God, no.”
“What, boo? What’s happening?”
I quickly navigated to my period tracking app. “The coffee tasted weird going down. Then I felt like I might puke. The last time I felt like that . . .” I let my thoughts trail off as I pulled up the last time I had a period versus when I expected one.
“You can’t be pregnant, Wyn. It’s been like, two months since you messed around with Preston. And you just messed around with Kaynaan a few days ago. He could have super sperm, but it ain’t that super.”
I didn’t laugh at her joke, because my brain was screaming at me with alarm bells. “It’s been almost nine weeks since I last had my period.”
“How did you not know this?” she yelled.
“I knew,” I admitted. “But I’ve been under a lot of stress about the money I spent on Preston’s party and how I would make it back up. Whenever I’m under stress, two things happen: My period checks out, and my hair starts breaking. You know this.”
She nodded, because she did know that. Before I suffered a miscarriage, my periods were as regular as clockwork. Once I lost the baby, my periods had never returned to normal.
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t panic. The nausea passed, right? Maybe somethingiswrong with your coffee.”
I wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know, Lo. I’ve felt that feeling before. And the last time I felt it, I was pregnant.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, and I could see that she was trying to stay calm. “Let’s go get some pregnancy tests.”
At-home pregnancy tests were triggering for me. They never were at first. When I was with my ex, Channing, I bought and took them a couple of times after irresponsible slipups. I was always thankful when they came back negative, because we were young and weren’t ready for parenthood.
As teenage love grew into mature love, Channing and I looked around, and we weren’t in our early twenties anymore.We loved each other deeply. We had history. We’d grown up together. The thought of a pregnancy stopped being so scary.
A couple of years after we’d graduated college, once we were both established in our careers—him as a project manager for a huge banking conglomerate, and me as an art teacher—we decided that we were it for each other. It was time to do the inevitable, prepare for marriage. I got the ring and the proposal, then we both got the gift of a positive pregnancy test.
I couldn’t believe that I was pregnant and engaged. The pieces of my life were falling into place, and I was the happiest I had probably ever been. Channing and I dreamed together—imagining our wedding, our custom-built house, and our new little bundle of joy. It didn’t seem real. I was constantly pinching myself.
It was real, though. Wedding planning kept moving along. We kept house hunting every weekend. And I kept peeing on those little sticks to convince myself that I was still pregnant. A couple of times a week, I peed on a stick and silently celebrated when the two lines showed up.
Everything was sunshine and butterflies until Channing and I went to our twelve-week appointment. The ultrasound tech didn’t seem concerned at all when she pulled the little miracle up on the screen. But when the baby measured at nine weeks and five days, I knew something was wrong. I was twelve weeks pregnant. How could the baby measure at nine weeks?
My doctor called it a “missed miscarriage.” The baby had stopped developing, but my body didn’t recognize the loss. My body thought the baby was fine and that the pregnancy was still progressing. All along, I was carrying around a baby that would never come to fruition.
I shook my head at LoLo. “You know I don’t trust at-home pregnancy test. I’ll make an appointment with my doctor.”
The next day, I was the last appointment on Dr. Butler’s schedule. LoLo stood on the side, holding my hand as my ob-gyn did the initial examination. “Okay. Something is definitely happening here. Let’s get the tech in here to do some actual measurements.”
“Okay.” I agreed.
“Get dressed. Let me catch her before she leaves for the day.
About twenty minutes later, the tech drenched my stomach in gel and began to get the pictures that Dr. Butler would need. About twenty minutes after that, I was back in the exam room waiting to hear what my doctor had to say.
“First of all, I want to say congratulations, Wyndsor. You’re definitely pregnant.”
I held my breath.
Dr. Butler rested her hands on top of LoLo’s, so the three of us were all touching hands. “And I’m ecstatic to tell you that the images match up with when you last had a period. The images show a fetus at eight weeks and six days. You’ll be nine weeks tomorrow. The images showed a beating heart, so let’s listen to it and get you some pictures before I send you home tonight.”
“Okay,” I managed to say.
She quickly set up the doppler, and before I knew what was happening, the quick pitter-patter of my baby’s heartbeat filled the room. That was when the tears that had been threatening to fall finally fell.
LoLo wanted to hang out once we left the doctor, but I had too many thoughts racing through my mind. The last time I was pregnant, I was in a committed relationship with a man who was willing to pledge his love to me. This time, I was pregnant by a jump-off. I needed to come to terms, like really come to terms with what this pregnancy meant. I opted to go home.
