Do you still call it a scare, impotent if you’re not scared?

We had a pregnancy ‘alert’ this weekend. The whole late thing, allergy the-past-that-time-of-the-month-thing, you know, the sort of thing that once upon a time had you kneeling on the cold white bathroom floor late at night, praying hard that the cramps would come and that your panties would stain and that you would know that everything was going to be okay.

The sort of thing that, last year, would have had you pacing in anticipation, if you had ever gotten to the missed-period stage. Which you did not, because you obsessively took First Response tests from the first opportunity (how many days-past-ovulation? How many days before expected period? When when when can I test?) The sort of thing that was cause for hope sweet hope. The sort of thing that ended in a WonderBaby.

This time, however… this time, you don’t pray. You don’t know what you want. You count the days off on your fingers in the dark, pricking your palms with your fingernails so that you don’t lose count and wonder how you really feel about this, about this being-late thing.

You know – you think that you know – that you want a Number Two. You just don’t know when, or how. Should siblings be close in age? Should you wait for your body to recover more fully from WonderBaby’s incubation? Can you handle pregnancy with a turbo-charged WonderBaby? Is waiting worth the increased risks that attend thirty-something pregnancies?

Is it possible to love any other being in the universe as much as you love your WonderBaby?

You take a test. Nothing. No line. Negative. You wish that you knew how to read the patter of your heart. Is that a twinge of relief, or of disappointment?

You wait. No period. Three days, four days. Five.

You test again. You wait. You stare into the clean white window of the stick, of your future. You notice that you are staring, hard. You notice that you are looking for it, that slash of pink, the faintest hint of a line that will tell you that, yes, WonderBaby’s sibling is on the way. The empty space of the test window stares back at you, the persistence of its stark whiteness taunting you. Where is the pink? Where is the pink?

A day later, today, the waiting ends with a streak of blood. A different kind of pink. And the sigh, yes, this time, the sigh is deep.

Because you know, now. You’re ready.

(GRATUITOUS WONDERBABY PHOTO will go here, with heart-tugging caption, whenever %*@^*# Blogger gets its photo-upload shit together)

(The good news? Unfettered drinking at BlogHer. Someone’s gotta pick up Kristen’s slack, right?)