US woman Megan Lynne Ferrero has shared the pain of a negative pregnancy test, in a now viral Facebook post.
Following a series of failed pregnancy tests, the mum-of-one wrote about the disappointment and stress of the process, and since sharing her post on October 31, her words have garnered 55,000 likes, 8,300 comments and over 67,000 shares.
“Everyone talks about the positive results, but we rarely hear about the struggles of the negatives,” she wrote.
“We rarely talk about waiting for the screen to fill up and noticing it skipped right over the first line that should’ve been there and goes right to that solo second ‘not pregnant’ line.”
In her post, Ferrero shared her routine of checking her test multiple times for the second confirmation line, just in case the test took a little longer to process.
“We check the test three minutes later, and then 10 minutes later, and then just for sh*ts and giggles 30 minutes later to see if that magic second line made an appearance,” she wrote.
“If you’re like me, you might even check it days later as you pass by the trash bin in your bathroom because maybe somehow it just took a little bit longer for the test to process.”
Ferrero said she and her husband have been trying to conceive since June with each failed test resulting in more stress that she knows, ironically, won’t help their future attempts.
“They tell you stressing over it just makes it even harder for it to happen, so you try to pretend you’re not stressing (let’s all get a good laugh out of that one) because apparently that makes your whole reproductive system turn on you,” she wrote.
However, as any woman who has struggled with getting pregnant knows, this doesn’t help the stress.
“You can’t help but panic a little when the months keep going by and you don’t have a brother or sister in there for your current child and the idea of having them close in age becomes more and more of an unrealistic fantasy,” she wrote.