Pregnant adj.
1.Carrying developing offspring within the body.
4. Having a profusion of ideas.

For a while I was both.

Fuck I thought, as the first suspicion grew. Fuck fuck fuckety fuck when the pee stick instantly showed two bright pink lines. Seriously, was the universe playing some gigantic joke?

Joke #1: Not long before, in a conversation about third children with friends, I had said I was done, and for the first time ever, I meant it.

Universe: Ho ho, a definitive statement.

Joke #2: I had honestly thought there was no chance of this. No chance, because we weren't methodically trying to conceive, like we had to for Téo, Lukan and the embryo in between that didn't make it. No chance, because of my age.

Universe: Tee hee, by someone who seems to have forgotten her sex education!

Joke #3: In the last six months or so, we've passed on pretty much all our baby stuff.

Universe: Chortle, chortle, it just gets better.

Joke #4: In our end-of-year letter, I made a quip about our new au pair that could have been interpreted to mean we were having a baby.

Universe: Chuckle, chuckle, let's see her field questions about 5th household members while actually pregnant!

Joke #5: In February, I am stepping in as a maternity replacement for 7 months for one of my best clients.

Universe: Ha ha ha, a maternity replacement who, ha ha ha, is pregnant! Won't the client be thrilled!

Yeah.

But then, even knowing the hurdles to cross before a baby was in our arms, as the days and then weeks passed and physical manifestations of pregnancy became apparent, I couldn't help but skip ahead. To practical issues: cars, bedrooms. The speed of the birth. To unimportant, but irresistible, imaginings: hair colour, gender. Names.

All that ended at the first doctor's appointment. No heartbeat. A streak of tissue the size of a 5-week embryo, instead of a 9-week fetus with arms and legs and a head.

It still seems like a cosmic joke, only crueler now.

Cruel joke #1: The embryo died pretty much at the same time I discovered I was pregnant.

Cruel joke #2: I was fine, truly fine, with only having two kids. Now I'm back to wondering.

Cruel joke #3: The extra doctor's appointments and hospital visits, on top of all the other appointments I'd already scheduled to get out of the way before I start my new full-time job, and on top of the several other projects I need to finish for other clients before then.

Cruel joke #4: Even the term for this kind of miscarriage, "missed abortion", which seems to imply that I missed something, that I should have known this past month that the beginnings of our baby had died, instead of seeing every bloodless day as a sign of hope.

So. Here I am now, no longer pregnant in any sense, blindsided by post-D&C hormones, mourning the idea of a new baby, wishing this one was still alive, struggling to accept the end this miscarriage means to my reproductive years, an end that somehow seems more awfully final, more finally final, than simply believing I was too old.

Sad, in other words, and a bit weepy. OK, but sad and a bit weepy.