This is a blog about trying to have a baby.

I haven't had a baby yet. I've had one miscarriage and two cycles of trying but failing to conceive again. This is not an infertility blog - I know that we haven't been trying for nearly long enough to claim that title. We are relatively young, healthy more or less - I suspect our time will come sooner rather than later.

This is a story about being totally fucking impatient, and about wading through grief, and how those two things come together.

I'll start from the beginning.

I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome in my early twenties, after reading a magazine article that felt more like someone had written my biography. Irregular periods? Check. Overweight, and an apple shape with that sort of "is she or isn't she pregnant" belly? Yep, folks have been offering me their subway seats for years now. A touch of cystic acne and stray chin hairs? All present and accounted for! So I headed to the endocrinologist, who pretty much took one look at me - and my ovaries - and confirmed what I suspected.

"You will probably have a difficult time getting pregnant," she said, "Stay on birth control, start taking this Metformin and come back to see me when you're ready to conceive."

I wasn't too worried about it, since I'd always planned on being a barren spinster anyway. (Yes, fellas... chunky, hirsute and pessimistic! Can you believe she's still single?) So for years, it was just another sad thing I'd resigned myself to. I am probably infertile. I should just get used to it. And then it turned into: forget probably. I'm totally infertile. I just know it in my heart.

But then, nearly a decade later, I met my husband. We fell in love and got engaged and talked about "starting our family," and then it was time to get back to an endocrinologist. The doctor prescribed some things, ran some tests and decided that we should try a cycle or two without medication so they could test my ovarian response. "But I want Clomid NOW!" I thought. "Doesn't he know I'm INFERTILE?!" 

Impatient was more like it. In October of last year, my husband and I took a trip to New Orleans. We went on a six-day bender full of raw oysters and cocktails and debauchery. Then we came back home, pulled the goalie, and - in a blissfully hungover post-Nawlins haze, and despite my pessimistic conviction that it was totally never going to work - we made a baby.

Spoiler alert: It didn't work out.

I had a bad feeling about it from the beginning. My progesterone was low at 7 days post ovulation, and I was getting negative pregnancy tests at 10, 11 and 12 dpo. The packaging insert promised the tests were 99% accurate by that point, so I was like, "Yep, I knew it! Not pregnant. Probably because I'm totally fucking infertile. Obviously."  Based on my progesterone level, the doctor prescribed me 50 milligrams of Clomid for our next try. I went to the drugstore to fill the script and pick up a giant box of tampons. Clearly, I'd be needing them soon.

But then day 13 came and went, and day 14 and finally I figured I should probably take a test again. And this time the second line was there. It was faint, but there.

I was pregnant. Holy shit, I was pregnant! In that moment, my biggest, longest held fear about myself was shattered: I wasn't infertile after all. I ran out to buy a cute little onesie and then rushed home to tell my husband. "See? I told you it would be easy," he said.

I spent the next three weeks in a state of total bliss. "Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant!" my brain cried, "We're SO FUCKING PREGNANT, can you BELIEVE it?!"

And then, at seven weeks on the nose, it was time to see the doctor.