I know we all try to manage our own expectations but I think it was the point when I was writing about embryo grading that I convinced myself that I wasn’t pregnant. It just seemed so hugely, utterly improbable when I was writing it down in black and white. And I know the odds mean nothing if you’re the one it happens to but still…

I’d already decided that I was going to do a home pregnancy test before the blood test. There’s something so horrifically impersonal about a nurse you don’t know calling you to tell you this hugely important news. I wanted to take some sort of control over the situation, find out in my own time, on my own terms, in my own bathroom.

It wasn’t like last time, when I’d had bleeding which made me think that I was definitely not pregnant. This time around, I’d had no symptoms, bar a bit of spotting that didn’t really worry me. I stuck by my nothing-means-anything mantra and idly daydreamed about how lovely and appropriate for me it would be to have “conceived” my little snow baby (who would obviously be skiing from about 18 months) during the ski season. I also, obviously, thought about how utterly sod’s law / poetic it would be to get pregnant right at the moment where I’d just met someone. And so at the same time as being convinced I wasn’t pregnant, I was just as open to the possibility that I was.

But I wasn’t. The First Response test was pretty categorical about that the morning of my blood test. And the nurse was pretty categorical about it when she rang to tell me that afternoon that it was negative.

And at the same time as thinking “FUCK.” And all the other associated thoughts about why not? why me? what next? how can I make it work next time? There was also a part of me that thought “Well a) you’ve still got a frozen blastocyst as your backup plan and b) that’s going to make it slightly easier to go on this date, eat sushi and see if things could actually work out with this guy.” Silver linings.

And, as you might have guessed, these posts, while in chronological order, haven’t been in real time — for the same reasons I talked about here. And as that’s the case, if you’re wondering, as I would be if I were you, how that date went, I can tell you it was good. There was no double whammy.

Who knows what’s going to happen next? I sure as hell don’t. We’re spending time together. He got on a flight to see me just for 24 hours, which might just be the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me. It’s all very whirlwind, and both lovely and discombobulating. After all, how do you tell a guy that you’ve just started seeing that you’re planning to try to get pregnant using a frozen embryo fertilised by someone you’ve never met? I might let you know when I’ve worked that one out. I’ve got a few weeks. One day at a time, right?