Waiting for a positive pregnancy test: the longest two weeks

It is just after five in the morning. The box has been sitting in the bathroom cupboard for three days, behind the towels, so you do not have to see it all the time. You know it is really too early. You take it out anyway.

If you know that moment, you also know the days before it. The time between ovulation and the test is short when you count it on a calendar. From the inside it feels like half a year.

Why these particular days are so hard

In the weeks before, there is something you can do. Keep appointments, observe, plan. After ovulation that is over. Whatever happens now lies outside your hands.

That is what makes the waiting so wearing. Not the length, but the helplessness. Many women sleep worse during these days, are more irritable, find it harder to concentrate. That is not weakness. It is the natural response to a question that cannot be hurried.

The body as an oracle

A pulling low in your belly. Tender breasts. Tiredness in the afternoon. Suddenly every sensation is a possible sign, and you read your body like a horoscope.

The tricky part: many of the sensations that count as early hints of pregnancy can just as easily turn up before a perfectly ordinary period. Your body gives no reliable information during these days, however much you wish it would. And still you keep searching, late at night, in lists of signs you already know by heart.

Reading the signs promises control. In truth it makes the waiting longer, because it turns every single day into an exam.

Early tests: hope in a box

Early tests are tempting because they seem to cut the waiting short. Often they stretch it out. A test taken too early can come back negative although nothing has been decided yet. So you test again the next day. And the day after. One moment of truth turns into five moments of uncertainty.

When a test becomes meaningful is written in the leaflet, and your gynaecologist or fertility clinic knows more precisely than any forum. If you are in treatment, there is usually a fixed date for the blood test. It can help to hold on to that date, even when the box in the cupboard keeps calling.

What can make the waiting easier

Set a test day before the waiting begins. Not decided the night before, but ahead of time, calmly. Write the date down. Then you do not have to make the decision again every morning.

Fill the days on purpose. Plans that have nothing to do with trying to conceive. A film, a day out, work that keeps your hands busy. So that waiting is not the only thing the day contains.

Close the search engine for a while. Or give yourself a rule: not after nine in the evening, not in bed. The questions grow bigger at night, the answers do not.

Decide in advance who should hear first. For a positive result and for a negative one. A plan for both cases takes a little of the force out of the moment.

Tell your partner what you need. Some people want to talk during this time, others really do not. Both are fine, as long as the other person knows.

What I do during this time

I cannot tell you how the test will turn out, and I do not interpret symptoms. Nobody can, and anyone who promises to is not making it easier for you.

What I can do is walk through these days with you. A conversation in the middle of the wait, when it is loudest in your head. A message on the morning of the test. And, if it is negative again, someone you do not have to explain to why a single line throws you so far off course.

If the disappointment barely eases over many months, or the waiting keeps you from sleeping, then a psychotherapist or a fertility counselling service is the right place to go. I say that openly, because it belongs here.

What the weight feels like in everyday life between the waiting periods, I have described in a separate post.

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If you are waiting right now and the days are getting too long: write to me. A conversation costs nothing, and you do not have to know in advance what you want to say.