Positive
On October 26, 2022, a year ago today, I stood in the bathroom, sobbing, as I held a positive pregnancy test at almost 6 weeks along, barely daring to hope again. The bruises from the blood draws from my weekly hormone monitoring tests had barely faded. We’d only been medically cleared to begin trying to conceive again during my previous cycle. This was the miracle I was afraid to believe in but longed for with every fiber of my being.
For the record, I hate pregnancy tests. When we first started trying to start a family back in 2021 I routinely took one every month as my cycle tried to normalize after over a decade of birth control and I was always inevitably late. But each time was negative. I grew to loathe the experience. By testing, I was opening myself up to the hope, the possibility that a new life was growing inside me. With every negative result, that hope was dashed. Eventually, I stopped using them. Either my cycle would start and we’d know, or eventually, it would be so late that we’d be pretty sure of the results, I rationalized. Last October I put off testing because I believed my body was still regulating following our loss three months previously. When my cycle seemed to start 4 days late and then mysteriously stopped a day and a half later, I was sure this was the case. And then we had that positive test.
That test wasn’t the end of our turmoil. From my own experience, I knew that a positive test doesn’t always mean a happy ending. So did the nurse I talked to later that day. Assuming I was miscarrying, she ordered two hormone tests 48 hours apart. When the tests clearly showed appropriately doubling hormone levels, she ordered an early ultrasound, to rule out an ectopic pregnancy. A few days later, by the dim light of the exam room, we had our first glimpse of our son.
It was too small to confirm heartbeat and viability, but it still showed so much more life than we saw the last time we sat in an ultrasound room. This time instead of a grey tumor spread across a large swath of my uterus, there was an egg sack. This time we saw life. A couple of weeks later, the monitor picked up his tiny heartbeat and we truly could start to believe that our little miracle was on the way. Or at least I could try.
There are so many things I wish I could go back in time and tell myself. Most of all, I wish I could tell myself that loss would not be my story. At the time, I did not believe that I would ever bring a healthy baby into this world, that I would ever hold my child in my arms, or watch my child grow big and strong. The positive test felt like tempting fate; believing in that life meant it was doomed to fail. I couldn’t bring myself to imagine what my child would be like, as I tried to shield my heart from what felt like the inevitable pain of his life being ripped away from me again.
On the other side of pregnancy, I find myself wishing I’d done the things that I was afraid to do — little things like take a bump picture every week in the same clothes and the same spot or even take a picture of that pesky positive pregnancy test. At the same time, knowing how haunted I was by loss, I am proud of myself for getting through those nine months and celebrating Baby J’s life amid my fear. It was something I could only do through the support of my husband, encouragement from friends and family, and by the grace of God.
My experience with pregnancy and loss is proof enough that we live in a fallen world. Loss is the inversion of everything pregnancy promises. In that positive test is a world of possibility and with loss of any kind that world is dashed. But death is not the end, not in what I believe. I believe in a world redeemed and in my son’s life I found a taste of that redemption.
But that’s not always how it goes. I don’t know why one friend was expecting again two months after their loss and why for another it took a year and a half. I don’t know why another friend never had that rainbow baby. But I do believe in a world reborn, a world where there is no pain or grief but life eternal, a world where every positive test leads to a fulfillment of that life’s promise. And in my baby boy’s perfect, joyous smile, I see a reflection of that world yet to come.
My prayer for my future pregnancies is that a positive test will bring fewer complicated emotions. Next time, I hope my faith in that new little life will be stronger. I’ll know with absolute certainty that loss is not the end of my story.
