I get it now.

Pregnancy test commercials. I used to watch them with different expectations, different assumptions. There’s the anxious-looking yet youthfully beautiful woman, glowing without the slightest air of suffering from morning sickness, painful breasts, or strange cravings, delicately unwrapping the stick from its package. There’s the camera cutting away while she gets down to business. There’s the smile of joy and relief on her face. And there’s the close-up of the result … positive?!

And that’s where I would realize how different my hopes would have been to hers. Until recently, until Gilles, only a negative result would have brought that smile to my own face.

Regrets, and pregnancy tests, I’ve had a few. Of the latter, some were to rule out reasons for inexplicably late periods, others to rule out unwanted consequences of acts of pure stupidity.

Each time the result was negative, I thought that luck was on my side.

I took six tests in December. One too soon before the expected testing window that, even so, produced a faint pink line over the course of several hours, a line that I couldn't really trust but that filled me with hope for the days ahead; three the morning I first thought I really could be pregnant, each positive more thrilling than the last; one more the day after to be sure, because oh my God I can’t believe we got so lucky; and another a week later just to see those two lines pop up again.

Each time, then too, I thought that luck was on my side.