Tired to the Bone

The quiet shock of early pregnancy after infertility

I am tired.
Bone-deep tired.

I feel nauseous.
I feel anxious.

The list goes on.

After many years of unexplained infertility, I am finally pregnant.

I think I am still in shock.

As a self-proclaimed realist, I had long worked on the assumption that I would never have another baby.

Yet here is a test with a positive line.

I have taken hundreds of these tests before, always with the same result — negative.

This time it was different.

I cried.
I held my husband tight.

And now I feel… numb.

Is that normal?
Am I in shock?
Or am I simply waiting for something to go wrong?

I am hormonal, emotional, drained, and feeling extremely sick. Yet I wonder if my main feeling should be elation.

Shouldn’t it?

“Wobbly” might be the best word to describe how I feel.

Perhaps it is the first trimester — the hormones, the sickness, the anxiety — robbing me of the ability to believe that this is real. That it might actually happen.

There is still a very real chance it might not.

Perhaps after our scan, after the confirmation of a heartbeat, I will begin to process it. Perhaps then I will start to believe that this baby might really be ours.

Until then, I will cling to that hope.

And perhaps some of you reading this know exactly what that feels like.