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In April I thought I was pregnant.

I expected my period on the 8th of April, the day before Jacob's sister arrived. Initially when it was late I didn't notice but after a week I began to feel afraid. I googled "pregnancy symptoms" and "basal body temperature high pregnant" and "how do you know if you are pregnant" and "week five pregnancy baby". Apparently it is the size of an orange seed. I cried easily, afraid of yet another change to this life that I love and grieving the life I imagined for us, which didn't include a baby for a while. 

I kept the secret inside me until I couldn't bear it and told Jacob on Easter Sunday. Just a few weeks before that he'd told me he was dreaming of being a father and listening to music with our child. But that night when I told him we both felt afraid: so young, so beginning, and overwhelmingly unprepared for parenthood. He stroked my stomach and I wondered if it felt different, and felt strange that I couldn't judge that.

And yet while I felt horror I also felt an amazement and awe that within my body something could grow - an orange seed! You can see that. It has form and body. Another website talked about 'bud limbs' and in my mind's eye I saw a human tadpole, with little toes protruding out from its soft, tadpole body. I wondered what it would feel like to hold the baby. What would it smell like? What colour would its hair be - dark like mine or blonde like Jacob? Oh, it would be so beautiful and I felt heartbroken because I wanted it so much and didn't want it so much.

Before this in my mind there had been two kinds of pregnancies - wanted, and unwanted. I imagined the wanted pregnancies in homes where a woman was married and stable and in love, and the unwanted ones in women that were unmarried or unhappy or unloved. That binary broke in April. Was I selfish, I wondered, for not wanting a child when I could provide a good home for it? Was it a sign our love isn't strong enough, or doesn't have room for another? The answers to those questions were 'no', and yet. I couldn't fathom it. 

On Tuesday a packet of pregnancy tests arrived in the post and Jacob and I had a last supper and pretended they weren't there. The next morning I woke up and shakily took the test and waited. When it was negative I didn't believe it and took another - negative too. Oh, I was so relieved. The days after felt so normal. I smiled at everyone because I was not pregnant and also because I knew, inexplicably, that next time if I was it would be alright. It was as if I had to grope through the terror and know that feeling afraid was alright; that fear always cling to love but love outshines it and casts it away.