Ten Minutes in the Bathroom

Once Punky finally got to sleep on Halloween night, I headed to the bathroom to get ready for bed myself and had a startling revelation.

My period was late.

Before I had Punky, my cycles were anywhere from 25 to 33 days.  But, I could always feel ovulation and it would start exactly two weeks after, like clockwork.  Since Punky's birth, my body has been running a classic, textbook cycle, 28 days on the nose.  Maybe once or twice it was 29, but hardly a reason to panic.

By my calculations, it was already two days late at that point.  Normally I wouldn't think much of it since we tend to have dry spells that last for months, but the last few weeks were far outside that norm.  My heart started to race.

When there was still no sign of anything on Tuesday, I gave Punky's dad the stats.  I could see the panic in his eyes as the color drained from his face.  Needless to say, it was the topic of conversation for the next forty-eight hours.  We talked about our fears, the impact it would have on our lives, and how physically hard it would be on both of us.  But we also talked about how beautiful Punky is, how fast she has grown up, and how likely it is that, given our ages, she will be all alone in the world by the time she's my age.

By Thursday, we needed to know.  One way or another, we needed a definitive answer.  He grabbed a test at the store, and proceeded to ask me fifteen times over the course of the next two hours if I had to pee yet.  Truth is, I had to, but I didn't want to.  I knew the rest of my life hinged on that pee, and I held it in as long as I could.

When Punky was occupied with her crayons at the kitchen counter, and he was distracted on the internet, and my both my courage and bladder were as full as they could be, I slipped into the bathroom to face the music.  I could hear my heart pounding in my chest as I read the instructions.  I started to sweat.  I felt dizzy.  I wanted to throw up.

I peed.

I put the test on the floor and sat there for a few seconds to catch my breath.  Within thirty seconds, I knew what the result would be, but I gave it the full two minutes as instructed before calling him in to see for himself.

He was white as a ghost when he walked in the room.  He looked at the test, looked at me, looked at the test again, and burst out laughing.  We both did.  We giggled a bit, sighed at the relief of finally knowing, and then we cried a bit.  Real tears.  Not for us; for Punky. 

The test was negative.  

And I knew what the results would be because my period started at the very moment I took the test.

But we learned a lot in those ten minutes in the bathroom.  While we would both prefer not to have another child, it wouldn't be the end of the world if we did.  We were equally relieved and disappointed by the test result, both happy and sad at the same time. 

We returned to the kitchen to find green crayon scribbles all over the counter, and vowed to be more careful in the future.