They say that when you’re pregnant you intuitively know. I didn’t. Maybe it was because I had an unreasonably easy pregnancy. Outside of the growing stomach, the only symptom I had was the occasional nausea from going too long without eating.

At my 6 week postpartum checkup I decided to get another IUD, knowing the immediate success we had when I’d gotten it removed before. Plus the almost 100% chance of preventing pregnancy was a high selling point for me. I had a lot of bleeding afterwards, which hadn’t happened to me before, but after talking to my neighbor about her very similar experience I decided it was probably normal combined with postpartum.

Around this time my KISA started asking me how long I wanted to wait until baby #2. Stressed out and sleep deprived I kept avoiding the conversation and told him I didn’t want to talk about it. One day he told me I couldn’t avoid it forever. I thought to myself, “Yeah, we’ll see.”

I’d always thought I wanted four kids, no doubt. Having met my KISA, who was a two kid guy, I compromised on two, knowing in the back of my head I’d be able to convince him on number three when the time came and maybe then God’s good graces would give us twins. (Mind you this was before I’d had kids and naively thought that would be cool.)

I started a new job a month ago. I really like the job and am very happy I made the move. It gives me new challenges and I welcome the distraction from feeling like I abandoned my son at daycare. However, I’ve noticed every night I feel wiped. I started going to bed between 8 – 8:30 every night and then get up to feed my son between midnight and 1 pm, again around 4 pm, and then he’s typically up between 6:30 and 7 am. I still feel sluggish every afternoon and am concerned that I may have to welcome caffeine back into my life.

Four weeks ago I had to get surgery on my mouth. I’ve had three root canals on a tooth that just doesn’t seem to take. This was a last-ditch effort to try and save the tooth instead of having it removed and getting a transplant. The surgery caused a lot of pain and I was on pain killers for eight days and penicillin for ten days. I found I was nauseous some afternoons and would have headaches, which was unusual for me, but I chalked it up to either lack of sugar in the afternoons or else due to the meds.

Recently I’ve found that I’ll feel movement in my stomach. It’s eerie because it’s a similar fluttery feeling to when I was pregnant with my son. Tonight as I was thinking about it I thought to myself, “Am I pregnant?” I recalled how my instincts failed me the first time and how I’ve been having these crazy pregnancy symptoms. Maybe all the bleeding was a sign that the IUD had pulled out? I started calculating how far along I could potentially be. 16 weeks. Fuck. I started feeling my son really move at 18 weeks, and that was mostly because I didn’t know what I was feeling until then. My mind flashed to a picture I’d seen on Facebook last week of an 11 month old girl with her newborn brother/sister. I specifically remember it because I’d told my KISA that would be my worst nightmare. I don’t even care to create a timeline on #2 until my son sleeps through the night. Until then how are you expected to think clearly?

I realized that my limited amount of sleep was going to be considerably less tonight if I didn’t just take a pregnancy test. My KISA, having apparently failed 7th grade Health class, asked how it would even be possible. I kept telling myself I probably wasn’t, but had an adrenaline rush as I rummaged around in the closet looking for the leftover pregnancy test I knew as in there. Naturally, as I was taking the test my son woke up, so I had to let it sit and decide my fate while I put him back to sleep. As I waited I was trying to understand what I would feel if I was indeed pregnant. Excitement? Dread?

Thankfully I won’t have to worry about the answer to that question. Negative. Maybe I should schedule a follow-up doctor’s appointment just to make sure the IUD is still in there…