I have to confess something. After I shared my last post, I felt like I had this transparency thing down, this wasn’t so scary after all, I got this, and then God decided to turn my world upside down.

You see, after my test was negative last week,  I still had some weird symptoms I couldn’t explain, so just to be sure, and knowing it would absolutely still be negative, I took another test Sunday evening.

It was positive. I took another digital test. It said pregnant. The three other times I’ve taken a test I hated the walk out of the bathroom, knowing I had to tell my husband the bad news, but this time I practically ran out, test in hand, “are you seeing what I am??” We both stared at the tests, then poured over the instruction sheets, stared, laughed, and in shock hugged each other, how could this be real??

Joy. cautious and hesitant, but joy nevertheless.

We decided we’d call our doctor first thing in the morning to go in for a blood test and wait to say anything to friends or family until it was confirmed. They called me Monday afternoon, my HCG was 174, the nurse said, “you’re definitely pregnant.” More joy.

But they needed me to come back in Wednesday to make sure my HCG (pregnancy hormone) was rising properly. So we decided to wait till then just to make sure everything was great before sharing. I started looking for larger houses to rent on craigslist, and was researching the best pregnancy books on amazon. We were still trying to be cautious and hold it loosely, but hope and excitement would not be completely contained.

Then came Wednesday afternoon, they didn’t call me right at 3pm like they had Monday. Instead at 4:30pm I picked up the phone to hear “Your HCG only rose by 3.”I knew that it should have doubled. She mentioned the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy and told me to stop taking progesterone. They told me to come back in Friday for another test.

I was stunned and devastated, and burst into tears on the drive home as the realization that I was probably losing this pregnancy sunk in. But once home I consoled myself with lots of google searches and stories of women whose HCG didn’t rise as normal but went on to have healthy pregnancies.

This news however meant we had to give up something precious.

We so wanted to announce to friends and family that we were pregnant in a happy and definitive way, and now I had to share the news tinged with worry and doubt, because I needed the prayers to get through the next two days.

So we shared with family and friends and their support sustained me. It sustained me through the agonizing wait. And it sustained me when the nurse called me Friday afternoon and told me that unfortunately my HCG had dropped to 82.

She told me they were sorry. That I was definitely pregnant, but something wasn’t right, so the cells had stopped dividing.

She also said they were encouraged by the fact that I did get pregnant, so they most likely would want to do a similar IUI cycle again once we were ready.

But that’s a way off. Right now, I have emotional whiplash from the past week.

First from the lows of a negative test, to the highs of such a huge first, a positive test! Confirmed by the doctor! To the cautious waiting to make sure everything was okay, still trying to hold on to hope even when we received the first bad news, to today, where strangely, even in my grief, I have peace.

I was singing “It is Well” in the car on the way back from the doctor. (I sing in the car a lot, it may be a problem) But I was just dwelling on the words as I sang them, and weighting them in the knowledge of the situation in which the song was written.

I’m sure many of us know that the author of the song, Horatio G. Spafford, tragically, suffered the loss of his four daughters at sea, and that prompted him to write It Is Well. But maybe you didn’t know that before that fated voyage, He lost a son to pneumonia, and his business burned down. And after they resettled in Europe they lost another child only 4 yrs old to pneumonia. This was not a life rocked with one tragedy, but many, and over his whole life. I think sometimes I like to like to think I’ve endured my hard times, and now I am owed some good things, but that’s not up to us. God never promised that once we made it through one hard season it would be smooth sailing. So I’m looking at Spafford for encouragement right now, as he endured tragedy over and over again.

Yet, through it all he proclaimed:

When peace like a river attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll,

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.