The Rabbit Lived (and that's a good thing)

I have spent the majority of the past three weeks noting my mounting symptoms of early pregnancy. Not with joy and anticipation but more like resignation and dread. I know how these things happen. Although it would have been my fourth unplanned pregnancy. It doesn't really matter how; it happened. (In my defense though someone took my last pack of birth control pills out of my bathroom. I suspect one of my son's friends. I don't know - I only look in the stupid box once a month to pull out a new pack. And then, voila, the new pack was gone. Along with its handy dispensing device.) Damn it. It took nearly a week for the cracker jack Navy Medical system to provide me with my six month refill. So I warned PC. This one was all on him. He could choose to abstain, buy some condoms, be a selfish bastard for a whole month, it was all up to him. I've never considered any form of permanent birth control because there has never been a day I could truly say never again. Including today. PC's take on the whole thing is that we only had one accident in 16 years and are therefore unlikely to have another.

I never had a positive pregnancy test - I had several negative urine tests. And the symptoms kept mounting. Constant nausea (no vomiting as long as I ate pretty much 24 hours per day), breast tenderness, fatigue (I fell asleep every day from 2:00 until 3:15 or so - and yes I am at work then), leg cramps that made me wake up screaming in the night, constant urination, unbearable lower back pain... I had it all. Thursday, though, the bleeding started. Light at first, maybe implantation? But I knew. I am 46 years old. The Pumpkin is a miracle that is unlikely to recur. That's okay for us. We don't need (or really even want) any more kids. So heavy bleeding, dreadful stabbing pains, the end. In the olden days this happened all the time. People didn't know they were pregnant so soon. They'd suspect, and they'd bleed, and they would assume they were wrong. Lucky them.


It is strange. Many of the blogs I am semi-addicted are written by women who would have been overjoyed by the apparent pregnancy and then devastated by the end. I am neither. I usually feel a vague sense of guilt to be so ridiculously fertile when other women have to try so hard to conceive. Today I feel only relief that we don't have to deal with a pregnancy just now. It is quite difficult enough to deal with a very strong willed 2-1/2 year old. And then Friday we found out that we're in for some tough times that have nothing to do with the kids (other than continuing to raise them during said tough times) and so I am finally just relieved.