Baby #2: Finding Out & My Experience With a False Negative Test

First, thank you so very much for all of your kinds words of congratulations and well wishes! Jamie & I are really, really stoked to be on this journey again and thankfully feel a great sense of peace about handling another pregnancy apart.

If you’re interested, I want to rewind a bit and share the story of how we found out I’m pregnant. 🙂

The week of August 17th I started getting very nervous that I could be pregnant based on being late.  I was convinced there was no way I could be though, so instead of taking a pregnancy test to rule out my nervousness, I just talked about my concerns with Jamie and a girlfriend, too nervous to actually take a test. By day four I’d decided that there was a very good chance I was actually pregnant, so I ran to the store at 10 p.m. to buy a test since I couldn’t sleep. Jamie offered to go for me, but I needed to get out and do some praying (I was having major deja vu to the moments before finding out I was pregnant with Hadley).

I scooped up a cheap pair of tests and took one as soon as I got home. Jamie and I sat at the kitchen table and quickly started seeing an incredibly faint line show up that indicated I was pregnant. I took the second one, and though the line couldn’t have been more faint, it was there. Just to be sure we were reading things correctly, Jamie ran out this time to grab a digital test (I should have picked one up myself instead of the cheap-os!). In the 15 minutes he was gone I guzzled water so that I could take my third test of the night, all over the course of 30 minutes.

I took the digital test the second he walked in the door, and we sat there nervously giggling because we knew the word “pregnant” was about to pop up.

Two minutes later, our mouths hit the floor when “not pregnant” popped up instead.

Our emotions were kind of all over the place and neither of us knew how to feel, so we both said something like “well that was weird” and went to bed. I was in bed all of two minutes before I started wondering if the test had given me a false negative, so I googled when a test would be negative when it actually should be positive.

The first thing that popped up in my search was that a test could give a false negative if a woman’s urine sample is diluted from drinking water too quickly. At that moment I knew I was in fact probably pregnant. Jamie and I agreed that I would take another test at 5 a.m. before he went to work when my hCG levels were highest.

Fast forward to 4 a.m. and I was wide awake. I decided to take the test quietly alone to let Jamie sleep a bit. Sure enough the test was positive like I had a gut feeling it would be. I climbed back in bed with the pregnancy test in hand and woke Jamie up. I told him to look at the test, and though he was sleepy, he let out a big “yes!” and had the biggest smile on his face as he rolled over next to me. He was so happy.

Needless to say I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I went to sit in the living room and browse the internet for a few minutes before Jamie joined me. I was immediately consumed with anxiousness about doing the pregnancy alone again, but Jamie’s confidence in me and his genuine excitement made me feel much more excited and grateful about what was actually happening.

The timing of all of this is so funny that I can’t even get over it. When Jamie and I started talking last summer about when we wanted to try for another baby, we decided that late summer/early fall 2015 would be perfect. Our plans were quickly crushed upon news of the deployment, and accepting that we would have to wait much, much longer than we hoped was really hard for me to accept. In fact, I never really fully accepted it and felt bitter that the Army was determining our family planning. Now we’re just so grateful that the decision was made for us and that another little one is on the way. We have our fair share of struggles to juggle in the coming months, but I know we’ll get through them like we always do.

Thanks for sharing in this journey with us!

Jamie’s army gear closet is going to have to find a new home because baby gear will soon be invading our upstairs spare bedroom. (Thanks Jess for baby’s first onesie!)