On Our Way To Crazy

I had been sick all week. It started as allergies, turned in to a cold, then became kind of a stomachache/ coughing fit combo. It was glamorous, let me tell you. By Saturday, I couldn’t be up or moving for long without needing to lie down, and I slept horribly Saturday night. Coughing, nausea, restlessness. I woke up at around 6:00am with a half-baked idea and stumbled down the hall into the bathroom. It was pee-on-a-stick time.

I knew I had a pregnancy test crammed in the closet somewhere, it had been ages since I thought I might need one. I found it, got it open on the third try (I was still more asleep than awake), and followed the instructions. Horizontal line = negative, plus sign=positive.

I was looking at a plus sign.

I rubbed my eyes, turned it upside down (you know, to make sure), read the instructions again. They definitely said what I thought they said, and it turns out plus signs are still plus signs even when they’re upside down.

I got back in bed and woke up Aaron.

Me: I have two things to tell you, and I need you to listen to me.
Aaron: halfway opens his eyes
Me: Number one, I feel terrible and I’m not going to church today, and number two, I just took a pregnancy test and it’s positive.
Aaron: Okay. … wait, what?
Me: It’s okay. I’m sure it’s fake.

Because, obviously it’s fake, right? We’ve been trying for two years. I’ve had meetings with multiple adoption counselors. I’m reading books about adoption ethics. We’ve moved on from this. (This is where I put the first of what I’m sure will be many warnings – anyone who says anything along the lines of this happening because we’d moved on gets bamboo shoots up the fingernails. NOT HELPFUL.)

So I’m sure it’s not real. I’ve been taking some combination of Benadryl and Nyquil and who knows what else for over a week. Clearly those drugs are messing with the results. I decide to sleep for a while and test again later. Aaron goes to church, I meet him for lunch, we go to an open house that is three times what we can afford and is also the most perfect house I have ever seen. We swing by Target. I test again.

Positive.

I start googling things like ‘what causes a false positive pregnancy test?’ and ‘does Nyquil affect pregnancy test results?’ Turns out false positives only happen less than 1% of the time, and it is almost always due to factors that weren’t present in my case. But I still knew it was happening to me.

We decide to err on the side of ‘cautiously optimistic’ and test again on Monday. If we got a third plus sign, I call the doctor.

Test three. Definitely positive. Go to the doctor. Still positive.

We’re having a baby, y’all. What the heck.