Not the eloquent post I've been planning for years

When you've been trying to conceive for a while, you have this image in your mind of how it's going to be when you get that positive HPT. I imagined whooping and general celebrating, of immediately phoning my aunt. Of being sure. And happy. You know, how I would have been before infertility robbed me of my innocence in all matters HPT and pregnancy related.

Instead, yesterday I was fairly sure it didn't work, as you know. I mean, I didn't tell you that I did get a faint faint evaporation line type thing. After a few hours. That nobody without super-TTC-exacto-xray vision would ever be able to see. So it wasn't worth mentioning really. I'd planned an afternoon of chick flicks and ice cream with Stephanie, my local multiple-IVFer buddy. We have a support group of 2. And sometimes 3 when her husband comes too. Unfortunately, we've had far too many occasions where we need to get the support group out to commiserate for someone's bad news. Yesterday was supposed to be helping to cheer up Stephanie, who was supposed to have had an FET transfer this week but instead found out that all 4 frozen embryos didn't make it through the thaw. It's going to take them a year to save up again for another shot at IVF. Effing miserable bad luck and I am heartbroken for them.

And I started off being fairly good at commiserating, I think. Maybe. Except Stepanie looked at my super faint evaporation line thing and pronounced that she too could see something. See, she too has super-TTC-exacto-xray vision. Even though we needed the light of a thousand suns to see the damn thing. So she wanted me to pee on a stick while she was there. And I didn't want to. And she said she'd got her best results in the afternoons so I might as well give it a shot. And I didn't want to. Eventually she wore me down. Well, OK, it didn't take that much work, but I did wait until we'd seen one movie and were part way through another.

So I went to pee on a stick. And then refused to look at it because I was quietly confident of the result. So she went into the bathroom at the 10-minute mark, and came back to the living room saying that she couldn't quite believe she was carrying someone else's used peestick. But she saw a line. And I have to be honest, so did I.

And then my stomach dropped to roughly the level of my knees. And my brain went on strike. And all the ice cream I'd just eaten during the first chick flick started to make its prescence known in my stomach. And I couldn't quite comprehend what might be happening.

Stephanie wanted me to take a digital test. It was the only other type of test I had in the house. But I'd just pee'd. It was the afternoon. I was VERY confident that, even if I could squeeze a few drops out, it would be very negative. Stephanie threatened, er sorry, offered to push my stomach in to force my bladder to work. I reluctantly went back to the bathroom and managed to squeeze out a few drops.

The digitial said the p-word.

Oh my!

So I lost all track of the movie, dragged Stephanie to Wal-mart against her better judgement and we went on an HPT-buying spree. I called my bestest blogger pal Cali on the way. I was in complete disbelief and still couldn't get my brain around the idea. And then we went to CVS , and bought more. We went home, I pee'd in a cup and dipped a couple more tests. The Equate was negative. The Accuclear was not negative.

So this morning I woke up at 4am because I was hot and my back hurt and I figured I may as well do the pee tests. I dipped four of them. The digital said "not pregnant". Oh, I thought. Not so good then. But the other three all came up with second lines. Within 10 minutes. An Equate, an Accuclear and a Fact Plus. Here's the prettiest one:



Oh, OK, if you insist, here are all this morning's positives:



Ummm, it might have worked, people. It might just have worked. They're a bit faint but that's not really surprising as yesterday's test was negative. Hopefully tomorrow will be better, and hopefully I'll get a positive digital again. But I'm cautiously optimistic for now. Which for a bitter infertile is as close to celebrating as I'm going to get.