I am six days late.
All day long, while I rush around from meeting to meeting, shuttle my daughter to preschool, wait for my mother at her doctor’s appointment, make dinner with my husband, this is all I can think about. I am six days late.
I have no idea what this means. All of the tests are negative. I have been hyperaware of changes in my body for so long that I no longer trust any of my own instincts.
Last month I was so sure. Everything smelled terrible. Coffee lost its allure. I collapsed into bed every night by 8:30, exhausted in a way that I just *knew* could only be that first trimester haze descending on me. I caught a glimpse of my breasts in the mirror after showering one night and literally laughed out loud at their swollen, discolored, bumpy nipples. This is me pregnant, I thought, smiling fondly at my reflection as I remembered what this felt like last time, the idiosyncrasies of a pregnant body, the strength and power I felt as my belly grew.
I was wrong, though. At lunchtime on a Tuesday, in the third bathroom stall on the right in the women’s restroom at the food court at the college where I work, I started bleeding. I waited there, doubled over with grief, for my entire lunch break.
And then I spent the afternoon berating myself. Grief? Grief over what? There was no baby lost. There had never been a shadow of the hoped for double pink line that month. There was no reason to think we had managed to get pregnant, no logical reason.
There is no baby, I told myself. That is all. There just is no baby this time. You need to trust in God’s timing, and wait.
I sulked for a day. And then began another cycle of testing, temping, charting, scheduling sex like some kind of deranged marital secretary. I did everything I was supposed to do, when I was supposed to do it. And then I waited.
