Where do I begin? With so many possibilities, I kept thinking about this question for days, but I think the most logical answer is to talk about everything that goes through the mind of a woman trying to conceive, from the moment the decision to get pregnant is made until the moment that positive test result arrives. So, what was this journey like for me?
Well, I have always been very anxious, the type who wants things yesterday! I got married very young; at 18 I was already seriously dating the shy guy who won me over with just a glance. I knew he was the one I would start my family with, and my heart was sure.
After almost two years of dating, the news: I was pregnant! The positive came from a pharmacy test at five in the morning, alone in my bathroom. I remember shaking so much, so much that when I tried to dip the test strip into the urine, I almost spilled the little cup. I never imagined that five minutes, as stated in the test instructions, could feel like ten years—it was literally the longest five minutes of my life.
The two lines were there—a positive result! A diagnosis was written plain as day on my face, one I only expected to get years down the road, maybe. After all, I still had college and needed to settle married life after finishing my studies. Yes, it truly wasn’t planned, but you know that feeling of fear, joy, panic—all mixed together? I felt that and four times more!
I felt scared by this new condition. Although we knew it was possible to get pregnant, you never actually think it will happen to you, because it always happens to your friends, neighbors, or someone else’s daughter—never to you. When you’re young, you feel invincible, and an unplanned, early pregnancy landed on my lap like a bomb.
I honestly think the happiness of feeling a baby growing inside me was numbed by the fear of how my family would take the news. I was the youngest child, daddy’s girl, and he, the only son in his family. My parents and his parents, honestly, they were the ones I cared about most. I wasn’t that young anymore, and I knew that our reckless action at that time could lead to some headaches, since we didn’t even have a concrete future with marriage or plans to live together.
But we told everyone and it was easier than I imagined; among those hurt by the situation, we were all okay. Soon, we decided to make everything ready so we could be together for good, since we loved each other a lot, and it was truly the best thing to do at that moment. We set a wedding date and started planning everything. Just nine days before the wedding and, at eleven weeks pregnant, I started feeling bad, really bad. I felt a burning in my lower abdomen, a strange malaise. That day, I commented to my mother:
“Mom, I feel weird. I feel hot, it seems like I have a fever, not to mention the pains I’m feeling.”
She, very patiently, told me to take a shower and lie down. After that came one of those moments when my world stopped. I felt something come down and, finally, when I got up, blood ran down my legs. I was losing the baby. I was hospitalized for three days, had a curettage, ultrasound, and everything else I needed; it was now real. I lost the baby at eleven weeks. My world collapsed.
Trying to regain hope and move on, we got married in the midst of sad events: first the miscarriage and then the death of my husband’s grandmother. Forty-five days after all of that, we had our civil wedding. Exactly one year into our marriage, I became pregnant again, naturally. We had sex regularly, and the new pregnancy was an expected outcome, but I was afraid of another miscarriage. However, this time everything went well, and Joana was born on April 20, 2002, weighing 2.930 kg and measuring 45 cm, as our firstborn, now the eldest of three siblings.
I was a totally fumbled first-time mom! I was so confused that I actually put a dirty diaper in the fridge and the baby bottle in the trash! All confusion aside, and even though I was still young, I wanted another life growing inside me. We still had so much love to give. Even with all the struggles I had after Joana was born, the feeling of wanting another baby surfaced. That was when the world of trying-to-conceive women was introduced to me for the first time.
Both of my previous pregnancies had happened very quickly, since we never counted the days or were actively trying, and we had no idea when the next positive would come. So, we never expected to have trouble the next time. I also knew nothing about cervical mucus or fertile days, I only knew that my periods were completely irregular. Sometimes I would have 30-day cycles, others 36, and sometimes even 40. It was a real “menstrual circus”—so I decided to study fertility.
For more than three years we tried to conceive our second child. It was a complicated time in our lives because the positive test just wouldn’t come. From then on, we started doing tests to find out what was happening and began using methods to identify the fertile period. It was a time of great learning.
