The Books

BUCKLE UP BABY

CHAPTER ONE

Audrey Holtz opened the foil pouch and removed the test stick – the third one for the day, used exactly four hours apart for maximum accuracy.  She reset the kitchen timer, no longer finding its egg shape a quirky fun, eclectic design element.  Removing the cap from the stick, she latched onto the thumb grip.  A tremor ricocheted through her palm to her fingertips.

With the absorbent tip pointed down in her urine stream, Audrey peed the five seconds required...and only five seconds, per the instruction sheet.  Replacing the cap over the wet tip containing the chemical composition of her future, she laid the stick on the bathroom countertop’s flat surface, praying her own egg hadn’t also been tipped.  In two minutes, she’d know if Damian, her dream man who had no intentions of becoming a dream dad, would be tickled with relief or on his beloved tractor headed to Tijuana.

The blue line appeared in the control window indicating the test had worked.  Not that that was any sort of consolation.  All kinds of parts were working she hadn’t planned on.  To ensure her reproductive competency and sanity, she had to see the plus or minus sign one more time.  

Being irregular, in menstrual-speak, above and beyond her propensity for psychobabble eccentricities, was a definite detriment.  How the hell was she supposed to pinpoint a pregnancy when she couldn’t pinpoint her ovulation cycle?  She’d be a fertility specialist’s worst nightmare...not that that kind of expertise appeared necessary according to the results of test one and two.

With the timer revealing a minute until the fate of her fertilization would show in the stick’s result area, she went over what she did know.

Yes.  She had the urinary frequency of a prima donna of the throne.  But that could be attributed to one-too-many red eyes from her favorite coffee shop.  Yes.  She’d been a bit tired lately, but certainly not enough to get her down.  She had too much to do to cater to fatigue.  No.  She hadn’t had one episode of nausea - the most valid argument against impending pregnancy. 

If it weren’t for her discolored areolas, she wouldn’t be peeing on sticks.  They’d not only darkened around her nipples, they’d increased to an alarming diameter.  And her breasts had taken on a new level of tender achiness, pain enough to send her to the pharmacy for a home pregnancy test triple pack.

The test sticks, God love ‘em, were quick.  Just like the directions touted, they were as easy as one-two-pee, although Audrey still held out hope that hers was the three percent not accurate.  The test claimed to be more reliable the closer to P-day she was.  But she had no clue when her P-day should have been.  So she’d waited, per the testing guide, for the longest number of days she’d cycled in the last six months. 

When she’d read false-positives were much less common than false negatives, meaning her two-time positive results indicated she was more than likely pregnant, her hopes for error vanished.

So much for the fact that the two previous plus signs were faint, ultra light shades of blue.  She refused to use the term ‘baby blue’.  The only way the pluses could appear period, pun intended, was if her body contained hCG, the hormone a developing placenta produces during pregnancy.  The darker the plus sign, the higher the hCG and the further along she was.  Although her pluses had been faint, the fact they were there about caused her to faint.  She could be anywhere from six to twelve days pregnant, with an embryo already implanted in her uterus.

Did she have an intuition she was pregnant, that “feeling” that many women say they have within moments of conception?  Did she think she had a bun in her oven before her kitchen timer dinged and the first two blue pluses lit up the result screens?  Not so much.  But that changed when her areolas took on a life full of gusto.

The timer went off for the last time, and Audrey meant the last time.  She threw out the damn thing, convinced it was a fertility goddess instead of a baking aid.  She blinked, took a deep breath, remained seated on her throne then opened her eyes to reality.

Blue plus number three.  Shit! 

Damian was soooo going to wish he’d kept riding his John Deere instead of her.