So, I Tested

During last year's FET, I tested at this point. It was a Monday night, and the first offical beta was on Thursday morning. There was no line on Monday night. Not even a hint of one. And it wasn't until Wednesday night - 12 hours before beta - that if I held that night's test literally right next to a lightbulb and squinted really, really hard, that I could barely see what had to be the faintest line ever.

Here we are again at that same point - Tuesday night, with the first beta scheduled for Friday. I was really, really tempted to test last night, but R talked me out of it.

Tonight, I decided to just rip the band-aid off. I told myself that I would stop looking at the test as "positive" or "negative" because, well, "negative" just has such a negative connotation to it, and making it so black-or-white was just adding to the stress.

So I told R I would look at it differently - the result will just be a road sign giving us an indication of our path, nothing more. Nothing super final. One line = the road sign is pointing toward adoption, two lines = the road sign is pointing toward seeing where my uterus takes us in this process.

I tested. I set it on the floor in the water closet. I opened the door to check on it twice within the first 30 seconds.

I didn't see a second line.

I decided to forget patience and just picked the thing up and stuck it on the sink counter. And then I looked again. A full minute hadn't even passed yet.

And there is a second line.

And I don't have to hold it directly next to a light bulb to see it. I don't even have to squint. It's there.

It was a FRED. I have a couple of EPTs, which have never, ever been kind to me. They always show up with "not" before "pregnant", even when I had a beta of 45.

So tonight (if my bladder is full enough) or tomorrow morning, I'm going to try an EPT and see what it says. And if the darn thing finally leaves off the word "not", I will take a picture and post it.

I took a picture of tonight's test with my cell phone, but it didn't turn out well enough. I'm going to go grab the regular digital camera; maybe that will work better. Because I think for once it's a line that might actually show up in a photo.

We're not overly excited. At all. In fact, we looked at the test, said "Okay," and then left to go grocery shopping.

But I am going to enjoy this (apparently in a very unexcited way) for every moment, regardless of how many (or how few) moments it lasts. And be a little, little bit happy that at least in one tiny part of the process, it seems I can actually count on my body to work correctly, at least for a little while - this is the 5th treatment cycle in a row where we've gotten a positive. Now if only we can get it to stick for another 8 months this time...