It's called the Second Line Shuffle
If you’ve never struggled to get pregnant, you’re probably not familiar with this dance. After, well…’activating’ the home pregnancy test (HPT), shall we say, you immediately look at the test to see if the Second Line shows up right away. It does not.
So, you stash the test away for a few minutes and resign yourself to waiting. During the wait, you check Facebook, Gmail, etc. You whistle, fidget with your hands, pretend that you're not dying to bolt from your chair and look.
Time’s up! You rush back to the HPT drop off and check again…still no line. Better give it a few more minutes. You probably looked at the clock wrong.
More Facebook, Gmail, hand-wringing.
And you’re back! Still no line. OR IS THERE? If you squint your eyes and hold it up to the light, there maybe just the faintest shadow of a line.
At this point, reason just flies out the window and you may do one of several incredibly neurotic things including 1) taking the test apart to get a better look, 2) taking a photo of the HPT so you can zoom in on the faintest of faint lines on your laptop, 3) looking at the test in every possible room in the house searching for the right light. And by right…I mean the kind of light that unequivocally shows the Mythical Second Line.
Once you resign yourself to the fact that there is no second line, that’s when the HPT Googling starts.
HPT Googling is an Internet surfing episode wherein an individual looks up all the information they can about false negatives, when women typically get positives on home pregnancy test, and so on and so forth. (And don't even get me started on the websites that share the pros and cons of various HPTs...whether the ones with blue lines are less accurate than those with pink lines, etc, etc,) (I myself am a First Response kind a gal.)
The other thing you probably don’t know about HPTs if you’ve not struggled to conceive is that they are akin to heroin…in that, as long as you don’t START using them during the seemingly innocuously named Two Week Wait (the time period after you ovulate and could potentially have conceived) you’re fine. But, once you take ONE, then it’s a slippery slope and pretty soon you’re testing every eight hours and considering putting a picture of yourself up at the local Target that says “Do NOT sell Home Pregnancy Tests to this woman”.
To be completely honest, our worst case scenario for the first IVF cycle wasn't not getting pregnant at all. What we both thought was fairly likely to happen (as this happens to many people) is that we would have a chemical pregnancy. Typically, what happens with a chemical pregnancy is that the first blood test reveals a lower level of the HCG pregnancy hormone (also known as...you can be just a little bit pregnant). At the second blood test, your HCG levels drop and continue to do so. We didn't even dream that we wouldn't get pregnant at all (boundless but guarded optimism, anyone?)
I know what I'm about to say sounds completely morbid, but it's also true. We are so anxious to be pregnant and start our family that a part of me wishes that the first blood test would have been a high enough number that it was possible we were even 'just a little bit pregnant'. Why? Because then I would have been able to see that elusive Second Line on the pregnancy test...the one I'm just sure doesn't exist (at least for me). And I feel like that would have given both Nick and I hope that it was possible.
Until then, the Second Line remains enigmatic...like the Loch Ness Monster, Chupacabra, or skinny jeans that actually make you look...skinny. Here's hoping I have a Second Line Sighting soon. :)
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