Preparation, Schmeparation

It's Sunday morning, three days before your two week wait is officially up. You decide, against the recommendation of your infertility clinic nurse, your husband and a nagging, vaguely Pollyanna-ish voice in your head that yearns for three more days of sweet hope, to break out the First Response and have a go at peeing on a stick. You tell yourself you're trying to prepare yourself, to take out some of the sting of shock that would otherwise rush through you when the nurse told you the bad news on Wednesday. And yet, there it is: the same sting as you stare at the dark pink single line.

The hope that each cycle carries is like a funnel. It starts a mile wide. You just finished an IUI. Millions of sperm were right in the ballpark of that ripe egg. There's no way it could not work! The week progresses. You're not as bloated as you were a few days ago. That breast tenderness is gone. Hope narrows. But maybe I'm in the x percentage of women who don't have any symptoms at all! You take the test -- it's negative. Hope narrows again. But it's only 93 percent accurate the day before your missed period. I could definitely be in the seven percent! Someone has to be, don't they? Don't they?

Soon, your rational mind, violently opposed to all things Pollyanna, sweeps in. You're not pregnant, it says. And thank goodness I'm here. All that optimism isn't good for you. It leaves you so unprepared for the bad news that seems to come, time after time after time.

Still, I will go through the motions, will go on Wednesday for the blood test. I suppose that, in the end, the home test eased me into the bad news, but it's done nothing to show me how to survive yet another disappointment.