Hope

I want to carry the pregnancy test around with me; a talisman for what my body still can't be convinced is true.

Never mind the unrelenting nausea. The overwhelming odor of salmon in a co-worker's lunch box sending me straight to the restroom.

No, it isn't enough. That could be something simple; the mere stomach flu.

This thin plastic wand bearing a second painted pink line, faint as a whisper, is something solid in my hands. I can put it in my back pocket and pull it out again anytime doubt creeps in, determined to steal my hope.

Kris already told me 6 names he hates, and I can't believe it; can't believe he is already imagining that this zygote—this fragile clump of cells—might one day need a name. Frivolous reveries have never been something we shared. Not this early, at least.

The last 3 times I handed him a positive pregnancy test, he handed it back and implored me not to get my hopes up. For fear of losing it. Again.

--

Samantha didn't get to keep her baby.

We connected in an online IVF support group; our transfer dates the exact same. Her son is the same age as my Scarlett, born only 2 days apart. Samantha wanted him to have a sibling. And this was her last embryo—a girl. Vanished before she even got a chance to know her; to feel her growing.

I'll never understand it, why some babies don't stay. The hope feels indulgent in my hands now; gluttonous somehow. I wish that I could share it; wish that our paths had not diverged.

To try to make sense of it is an exercise in madness, so I won't. It didn't happen for a reason, it just happened. And it is brutal. Lasting.

All I can do now is sit with her for as long as she'll allow me. Holding hope in one hand and solace heavy in the other.