I grabbed the test stick, ready to throw it Always, and glanced at it almost as an afterthought… and my world exploded.

Inexplicably, there next to the static line, was a very faint (but visible) second line. I shook the test, as if there was some kind of mistake that shaking it would fix, and stared at it again. I looked from every angle, as close to the light in the bathroom as I could, and no matter how I squinted or moved, or closed my eyes and opened them again, the line was still there.

Still in disbelief, I stumbled through the house to wake up my mom. All that I could get out was a “Mom,” and the shaky, wavering sound in my voice woke her, and from a dead sleep she had the sense to say,

“Are you pregnant?”

“I’m not sure. Help. Look at this. Look at it.”

She put her glasses on, we looked, and she agreed there was a line there. My dad gave up on going back to sleep at this point, and when he, in all of his steadfast, levelheadedness, agreed that there were two lines, I finally allowed myself to believe it.

I was in disbelief all day. Floating on a cloud of am I, aren’t I, and if I am, for how long? I was convinced it was a fluke, that some of those terrifying words I’d read about in TTC groups were going to come true – chemical pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage. I knew that 25% (or 1 in 4) pregnancies end in miscarriage, and I found myself already bargaining within that expectation. I could get pregnant. That was the first hurdle, but could I stay pregnant?

I shared the news with some of my closest friends, people that knew I had been planning an insemination, that had listened to me groan about the wait. I originally thought I would tell no one, but I’m a terrible liar, especially when I’m excited, and I didn’t have a partner to share secrets and excitement with in those early days, so my friends and my parents played the part.

I took a pregnancy test every morning until the official date that was to end my two week wait – September 24th, the day after my birthday. I splurged for a fancy digital test that day, because I wanted to see it in writing, as if the seeing the word “YES” on a digital test stick would solidify the fact that it was true.

I called my fertility specialist with shaking hands, because while we had planned out what I would do when the test was inevitably negative, we hadn’t talked about this. When she answered on her day off, I barely let her say hello before I was practically shouting into the phone.

“I took a test. I took a lot of tests. They’re all positive. Now what?”

She laughed at me, said one positive test was enough, and told me I’d come in for blood work the following day. And then she said congratulations.

Could it really be this easy?

It was too good to be true, but I didn’t know that then.