Trying to catch my breath

While idly following links this morning, I ran across this page. If you're reading this at a later date, and the link doesn't work, the page is a review of pregnancy tests and the results of a casual experiment in the possibility of false positives. She's got several pictures of the pregnancy tests she tried out, showing how they looked at various times after being peed on. All of them are negative; she didn't get any false positives.

Looking at those tests I had a kind of flashback. My heartbeat sped up, my breathing got shallow, and I had all those old feelings of grief and despair sweep over me, just like bach when I was looking at my own negative results.

I can hardly believe I reacted like that. I have been thinking of my infertility as a past thing. I have two beautiful daughters. We're not going to try for another child. My family is complete, and while it isn't what I dreamed about when I was a girl, I feel peaceful about where I am now. I still have to deal with the health issues about the underlying causes of my infertility, but that's about it. Over. Done with. In the past.

But I guess the stomach twisting death of hope that accompanied each negative pregnancy test was too powerful a thing to just gracefully fade away. I don't know how I feel about that. It wasn't pleasant reliving that feeling. A part of me is glad I haven't entirely forgotten, thought. It was too important a time to just file it away and never think of it again.

But I think I won't go out of my way to look at negative pregnancy tests again.