Negative.

Today baby is exactly three months old. Which is both true, and not. She was created exactly one year ago from today, not that we knew that at the time. And even if we had, we could not have imagined the sheer joy that we would feel these twelve months later.

***

I peed on a stick the other day, for no reason other than that I saw my just-about-to-expire stash of them while rummaging around in a drawer. I'd done that several times during the months before baby's birth, afterwards thrusting the two pink lines, the second of which would pop up almost before the pee hit the stick, under Gilles's nose, crowing, "Look! I'm pregnant!" (Response: eyeroll.)

This stick was negative, which was exactly what I'd expected. But for the first time ever, there was no emotion in seeing just one single line. In the past I had always felt something, whether relief (looking back on those days of thunder ...) or a point somewhere along the spectrum of disappointment to despair.

Just a negative. Not pregnant. But everything else is so beautifully positive that the one single line, the negative, neutralized and dissolved into nothing. I threw the stick into the trash and went to cuddle our girl.