It happened quite by accident, even if it was on purpose. After the miscarriage many months before, my body was not cooperating. My cycle was wonky, my temperature (which I was charting) was all over the map, and well, I had little hope of conceiving again. My husband living out of town limited our window anyway and by ‘the numbers’, we missed the window. Canada Day rolled around, we hosted the neighbours, she was pregnant, so three of us enjoyed the celebrating the nation’s birthday wee into the early hours and we raced towards my thirty-third birthday.

I went to work out in Vegreville one day and my co-worker had the sweetest smelling strawberries on the planet. I could smell them as soon as I walked in the office! I commented on them, she looked at me quizzically, “Are you pregnant?” she asked, “my daughter-in-law smelled strawberries so much more intensely when she was pregnant with my grandson.” When I’d been pregnant before, peanut butter stunk to high heaven to me.

If I were late, it was only a couple of days, but things weren’t really behaving normally for me anyway, so I couldn’t tell. I laughed off her comment but decided to pick up a test on the way home from work. Nervously, I did what one must with a test. Me and the dog waited the time, covering the test up so I wouldn’t peek.

Nothing. I tossed it the garbage, laughing at myself. Of course we weren’t pregnant. We’d put the call in a month or two before to the fertility clinic, while it wasn’t what my husband wanted, I wanted to at least discuss what we could think about. I leashed up the dog and good old Max and I went for our evening walk. When we got back, I tossed a frozen pizza in the oven, hopped in the shower, and checked the discarded pregnancy test, just for fun.

Two blue lines.

I grabbed the box. Two blue lines meant pregnant. But this was more than half an hour later? Did that matter? Was I pregnant? This was, again, in the days before smart phones, but I did have a laptop and we had search engines. What did I do? Googled it (or whatever engine I used; I don’t remember now). False positives were possible for lots of reasons, a couple of them didn’t fit (medications, expired tests), a couple were bad (ectopic pregnancies, miscarriage), but those all seemed improbable.

These were two really blue lines. I decided I was going to retest in the morning. The box said that was when it was best to test. I told Max we were pregnant. It was hard to not be excited. But I swore I wasn’t going to tell anyone else.

Until the phone rang at 9pm, when my husband called, as he did every night when he was away. I swear I tried to not say anything. I lasted all of about 47 seconds.

“I think I might be pregnant.” I said.

There was a really long pause.

“How did that happen?” he asked.

I started laughing. What else could I do but start to explain how the birds and the bees worked? I told him I wasn’t sure, but that I’d retest in the morning, and I’d call him and let him know. I had a mostly sleepless night, unsure what would happen when I woke up.

I was always up at 5am to walk the dog, I think I let myself sleep until 5:30am, deciding I was not going to walk him. Approaching the test casually, and trying to not worry about the outcome, I took it, and waited a full 10 minutes before looking at it.

Two very dark, very blue lines.

There was no question. Now, seventeen years later, some of the details are a little muddy. See, I was terrified. After losing the first pregnancy, and bonding quickly with that first little one, I was afraid that if I got attached to this baby, that I’d have too much difficulty dealing with the loss of another baby. So, I approached it with caution. But I was excited, but cautious. I’m sure I called my husband and shared the news, but when I did, I do not recall.

I remember being cold, as where I was usually always hot. In fact, the following week, we were camping with my parents in the mountains, and it was 37 degrees Celsius out, and I was under a light blanket, because I could not warm up! I also couldn’t drink the margaritas we had planned… So my Dad and step Mom found out we were pregnant, though we had decided to not tell anyone until we were twelve weeks along. Un-telling people the first time was terribly difficult, I never wanted to have to do that again.

It didn’t take long for things to start going a little wonky. I started spotting at 7 weeks. Back to the doctor we went and off for an ultrasound. Now, something I didn’t share with the miscarriage story was they wouldn’t let my husband in with me. I found out, on my own, our baby had died and had no heartbeat. When they took me in this time, I made it clear to the tech she was to examine me but give me absolutely NO results until my husband was brought in. I could not do that again on my own. She did her tests and measurements and stood to go get him, she leaned and whispered,

“Your baby has a strong and healthy heartbeat. I thought you’d want to know.”