I wasn’t sure if there was truly a faint line on the small, white stick I was holding in my hand or if my brain was playing a trick on me. I tilted it, looked at it through sunlight, under bathroom lighting and I even put it over my head and looked at it from below: there’s something small. Faded. It’s light, but it’s there. A little greyish tint next to a bright pink line that could be its shadow, or nothing at all. I knew what a negative result looked like as I had gotten several. I could recognize the empty, blank, white space on this little test trip if you flashed it before me for a second. I had seen it and studied it several times. I even had gotten familiar with my brain making fake lines appear. Isn’t it crazy how you can want something so bad your brain will show it to you? This time was different. There was now a pinkish vertical mark. Ok. I took a deep breath and decided I was going to run to the pharmacy and get a more accurate, early-response test. As I drove to the store, I had a million thoughts in my head. Is this it? Is this real? I felt excited. I chugged water on the way there to make sure I’d have to pee as soon as I got back home. I scurried around the aisles to find the tests. I found myself in a family section where the sight of baby stuff stopped me in my steps. I touched the bottles, the pacifiers, the swaddles, the diapers and the little pyjamas. A wave of nausea washed over me, and I felt unlike myself again. I felt dizzy and was carrying around this headache that just wouldn’t go away. Even sitting still, I could feel the pounding in my skull. That’s what got me to take a quick-strip test in the first place.
I was sitting at my desk at work dispatching police officers to calls around the city when the entire room started spinning. I’ve fainted many times before, but never felt like fainting from sitting down. What the hell? I stepped away, had a sugary drink, threw cold water over my face in the washroom, but something was still out of place in my body. Being very in tune with my physical self, I could tell there was new work going on. Something was off. I decided I’d stop at the pharmacy on the way home.
I looked at the wall of baby things and my eyes watered. I felt a warmth come over me. I thought to myself: “I’m so ready.” I grabbed a digital test. Know as early as 6 days before your period. It was 5 days before my expected period, which was still very early to detect anything at all, but I felt something. I walked over to the register and a young girl scanned my test. I remembered being 20 years old and having to buy one of these tests. I bought a bunch of other things with it hoping it would disappear in all the stuff. I asked for an opaque bag to hide it. I was scared, ashamed and worried. I speed-walked to my car with a bag full of stuff I didn’t need and one test, terrified and alone. Seven years later, the only item I bought was a pregnancy test. I was confident. I was excited. I had no shame. I gave the girl a big smile, “I don’t need a bag.”
I ran into my house with the box half opened already. Ten minutes later, in the master bathroom, I stood and waited impatiently. I was nervous. I thought about the result and knew deep in my heart that it was going to be positive. I stood there holding onto the moment. The last moment. The last few minutes before my life changed forever. The last minute of me being only me. I held myself. I took deep breaths and poured so much love over me. This is potentially the last minute where I sit with myself as a young woman who is not a mother, who has no responsibilities other than herself, who has spent the last four years preparing for this. I looked around at what I built for myself: a life I never thought I’d have. I looked in the mirror. This is what it all comes down to. I’ve known in my heart since I was a little girl I was meant to be a mother. I was born for this. But I’m gonna miss the person looking back. I’ll grieve her. Her time has come to evolve into something entirely new. I saw myself as the young child I was. I saw little me, the dancer, the creative, the athletic and competitive little girl. I saw myself as a teenager — the black sheep. I saw all my healing and self-development work. I visualized my skin all white, dry and falling off. I shed my old skin and walked out of it leaving an empty shell behind. My thoughts then moved to my husband. I knew this was going to be the day his life would change forever. But then, I was overcome with fear. I had felt the excitement before and was left completely disappointed seeing a negative result on a stick I could’ve sworn would have been positive. I had felt it before, this certainty that I had life growing in me. But it turned out to just be my body preparing for my period. I had excitedly waited for a result I anticipated to be positive only to be left alone with a little blank space asking myself why I did this to myself again. Why did I get so excited? Why am I so sad? Why am I so disappointed in myself? I felt fear that this was one of these times. That I would flip this test and be left alone with the blank space and all the doubt that comes with it. Enough minutes had gone by that I knew the result was in. It was time. I took a deep breath. I trust the Universe. My Divine Mama. I trust our baby’s timing. When it’s our time, it will happen. I flipped the test over. POSITIVE.
I fell to the floor and started to cry. Oh my God, I’m pregnant! I felt the happy tears flow. My dog ran over to see what I was doing. She licked my legs and wagged her tail as she picked up on my energy — the highest frequency that ever buzzed from my body. It filled the room. I scratched her back and said: “I’m pregnant! You’re gonna be a big sister!” She kept licking my leg as she normally does. I laughed and cried. My cheeks hurt from smiling. It was a euphoric feeling I never felt before. Nothing could’ve ruined this moment. And then, I got really quiet. The house was quiet. The calm before the storm. It started building up and came over me like a wave in the middle of a hurricane. Holy shit. Brace yourself. Here it comes. I inhaled and felt the air dig into my lungs filling every inch and inflating them like balloons, and out came a gust of wind, emptying my chest of air and my body of water through my eyes: a cry like never before. A paralyzing sob. An ancestral weep. A collective cry on behalf of every woman in my lineage before me who did not get to feel this happy and excited. A grief, so heavy, for all the women who did not get to experience this kind of joy upon finding out they were pregnant. A sadness, so deep, for every woman who felt more fear than hope, more worry than happiness, more despair than joy. I could visualize all the women before me in my ancestry, kneeling in my bathroom and putting a hand on my shoulder. The room was filled with mothers who share blood with me and this child surrounding me, holding me, and pouring their love, strength and gratitude into me. I cried for every woman before me who found out she was pregnant with a man she did not love, she did not feel safe with and she would not have chosen to be the father of her kids. I cried for every woman before me who felt like she was to bring a child into a world she felt unwelcomed in, and in a body that felt unsafe. I cried for every woman before me who felt stuck, like she had no choice, like she had to go through with this even though she was not ready or didn’t want to. I cried for every woman before me who got pregnant from assault rather than love. I felt every woman around me who never got to feel this kind of happiness when finding out she was growing new life. I wept. The storm passed. I sat in my happiness and decided that now, I would just be happy. I would let myself feel all the happiness. I put a hand on my belly, the other on my heart, and I breathed. I breathed love into my womb. I breathed safety into my womb. I breathed repair around me. I exhaled that love in my bathroom hoping to free the ghosts of women who love me. I sat there and just stayed in that moment. I sat and did nothing but feel. The calm after the storm. The sunlight came in through the bathroom door and lit up the floor before me. The house was completely quiet, still. From this moment on, I was not just me, I was pregnant. This was the moment I had been working towards since the day I got myself off the bathroom floor seven years ago and decided to take my life back. Since the day the Divine Mother told me I was a transitional character. Since the day I was called to change all intergenerational patterns of abuse and trauma in my family and be the first branch of my lineage that didn’t perpetuate the same pain and suffering downstream.
March 27 2023, at 17:33, I found out I was pregnant, and it was one of the most powerful and exciting moments of my life. I pulled out the Baby Security bandanas I bought years before and put them around my dogs’ necks. The longest three hours of my life went by as I waited for my husband to come home from work. They say everything is better when shared, and just when I thought I couldn’t feel happier, I had to share this news with the man I love — this baby’s dad. If I made only one good decision in my life, it was choosing this man as my husband. If I only ever give one good thing to my child, it’s this man as their father. And a million butterflies filled my belly as I heard his car pull into the driveway…
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