Pregnancy Test

26th November 2019 - Bicester

Buying the pregnancy test had been a strange experience. It felt like I was buying condoms. I tried to avoid eye contact with the cashier. I didn’t want to see that look in his eyes of “I know what you’ve been doing”. Why did it feel like this?!

But I thought '…oh no... Mate…. oh no you can’t possibly guess what I’ve been doing.'

That evening in a pub in Bicester...

I’m not sure who was more nervous but when Faye came back from the toilet with the stick, my vision clouded. Not tears, just anxiety. Here was when my hopes would be dashed. This was the end. Of EVERYTHING. The null result, the truth revealed. Pregnancy: not this time. Nothing for me. Perhaps I had been a bad boy at some point. Transgressed. Broken a rule. And now the negative result would be my punishment. I held the stick in my hand and suddenly I worried that I would forget how to read. How would I read the result? How would I recognise the numbers? I looked at the readout. It was upside down. I didn’t know what to do. I froze. I needed to…turn the paddle round the right way. I needed to…look at the readout and read the result.It was like I’d had a lobotomy.

And when I read it. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

Afterwards I felt, well-loved up. We all did.

When Faye sent me another stick result a few days later I think I fully accepted that this was it. That this was going to be (at least) the start of a pregnancy.

The clinic confirmed the results in a blood test. The progesterone levels were well good. We were all so bloody chuffed!