Fourteen days in which time stopped making sense

I kept a diary during the two-week wait. I did not plan to. I started because I needed somewhere to put the thoughts that were happening too fast to manage, and I kept going because stopping felt like it might jinx something.

Here is some of what I wrote.

Day 3

Every twinge feels significant. I know it's the progesterone. I know. And yet. I've already googled "implantation cramps day 3" four times. The results are not consistent.

Day 6

I put my phone in a drawer. I took it out again. I put it in a different drawer. I went for a walk. A woman walked past me with a newborn and I burst into tears on a public pavement, which I think was disproportionate, but also probably not.

"I googled my symptoms 47 times. I counted. Every result told me something different. I put my phone in a drawer on day 9. I lasted four hours."

Day 10

I tested. I had told myself I wouldn't. I had genuinely intended not to. The line was very, very faint. I took seven more photos of it in different lights and sent them all to my sister asking if she could see what I could see. She could.

Day 14

Official test day. The line was not faint. I called the clinic and cried on the phone to a nurse who said, very kindly, that she heard this a lot and it never got old.

If you're in the wait right now: it is exactly as hard as it feels. You're not being dramatic. Fourteen days when everything you want is riding on something invisible is genuinely one of the stranger experiences a human being can have. You're doing well just by getting through it.