My period is (was) a week and one day late. A week ago, I had some on-cue spotting and thought I’d really started, but then voip! It stopped. And then I had a little bit of hope, even though I didn’t want to hope. I felt cautiously optimistic. What is strange to me is that the day when I thought I’d started my period I was more than okay with it. It meant that in a week, we’d try again and that this month, I’d try clomid again. I had a glass of wine and a steak. And then….nothing except sore breasts and elevated temperatures.

This morning, my phone app informed me that I should take a pregnancy test because I had 18 days of sustained high temperatures, surely a sign that I was likely pregnant. I didn’t want to believe it, but I did. My phone app! Telling me that there is a real chance!

And then today while I was talking about literary theory, right in the middle of a discussion about Marxist theory and cultural production and how the internet has changed the means of cultural production, about how a blog might even be considered literature-in-action, produced by and for the proles, I felt the unmistakeable twinges of period cramping. And then I felt what was probably flow. And after my lecture, I was about to go to the bathroom to confirm that I really was starting to bleed, my co-worker, J came in. He just got married in August. He and his new wife (who is 27) were going to start trying in the spring. But surprise! She’s accidentally pregnant! They’re due in May!

I know you’ve been trying, he said. My sister is 38 and due in January, he said. They tried for a year, he said. We’ve been trying for four years. This is only the third cycle on metformin, but still.

Mother. fucker.

I congratulated him– I really am happy for him, but I couldn’t help but be bitter about the timing. I’m bleeding through my underwear while I’m telling him what a great parent he’ll be. Fuck.