Instant gratification

January 10, 2007


I am not a patient person. I’m all for instant gratification. At my house, we tevo all of our favorite shows so that we don’t have to wait through the commercials. We order our pizza already-cooked and buy our wine already-chilled. I often shop on the internet, but I also often upgrade to one-day shipping as I simply cannot wait any longer for my shipment to arrive. I like things fast. I like things now. I hate to wait. With this said, this whole waiting game is driving me nuts. Am I pregnant? Am I not? I just want to know. Sure, my period is due in a little more than a week and I’ll know for sure then, but a week sounds like an awful long time to wait.

January 14th, 2007

I’ve been scouring the internet to find out when is really the absolute, tip-top, utmost, without-a-doubt earliest that a pregnancy test can come back positive. Of course, sources vary. While I did find a few articles that said I could take a home pregnancy test as many as 7 days before my period, the general consensus on-line was that it’s best to wait at least until the day that your period should start. Naturally, being a hate-to-wait-and-see type of person, I didn’t like (or heed) this advice. Instead, I went to the drugstore and bought a pregnancy test. The box said “Positive results sooner than any other test!” across the front. Inside, the package directions said that if taken four days before a missed period, a woman who is actually pregnant has a 53% chance of getting a positive result. Those odds are good enough for me.

My period is due in five days. I explained to my husband over dinner tonight that if I take a pregnancy test tomorrow morning, I have a 53% chance of getting a positive result if I’m truly pregnant. For some reason, my husband (who used to be a math teacher) didn’t like those odds. He rationally pointed out that if I just waited until Friday, the day my period is actually due, I’ll have a 98% chance of getting a positive result if I’m truly pregnant. According to Mr. Rational (and I must say, Mr. Frugal), it would be a waste of money to use a pregnancy test on a day with only 50-50 odds of a correct result.

I’ve been stewing all night. The pregnancy test sits on my bathroom counter, tempting me, while my husband has decided to play the lets-be-smart-about-money-and-not-take-unecessary-pregnancy-tests game. I’m not going for that. I’ve resorted to begging and pleading. What if… what IF…I do get a positive result? We could tell our parents early and start planning and get all happy and excited a week before we otherwise would know. Come on, sweetie. It’ll be fun. It’s just one pregnancy test, just one. I got it on sale, anyway. And, for real, there’s even a free test in the box. I’m sure that the manufacturers did that for just this reason.

He finally gave into my pleading. He’s a sucker for my smile (or maybe the memories of a pregnant and crying wife are too fresh in his mind). Anyway, tomorrow morning, I take a test first thing in the morning. I’ll let you know how it goes.