And so, as you might reasonably have expected, and as I might have slightly given away in my last post, given how contrarily these things go, the fact that I was so convinced it wasn’t going to work meant that when, on the morning we were going away for the weekend, and I did a precautionary First Response test, it showed the faintest of faint – but still very definitely there – lines.

Or, as I put it to B when I walked back into the bedroom “Well I’m not ‘Not Pregnant’.” But I wasn’t going to get too excited. It was early. It could be a chemical pregnancy. It wasn’t a thing until it was a thing.

But then, when I did another test 48 hours later, that line was definitely darker. And 48 hours after that, the blood test confirmed that, that day at least, I was pregnant. Because that was how I thought of it. That’s how I’ve continued to think about it. On those fertility forums I despise, I’ve seen women talk about being “PUPO” – Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise, but after the miscarriage, after everything we’ve been through, I feel quite the opposite. I feel like “that day I know I was definitely pregnant but until the next blood test / scan, I can’t assume I still am.”

Jennie Agg, who writes about her recurrent miscarriages, has written beautifully about this. About how miscarriages and fertility issues rob you of any possibility of ever “enjoying” a pregnancy, of ever taking it for granted that it will all be fine. It’s why that while, increasingly, I’ve felt ok about telling friends who knew what was going on (basically the same friends who I told I was convinced it wouldn’t work) that actually, last Monday, I was definitely pregnant, but there’s no guarantees that I am today, I’ve avoided telling anyone who I know just won’t understand that.

I’ve recently been seeing the term “fertility privilege” being bandied around and while at first I rather baulked at the wokeness, it does seem a beautifully concise shorthand for anyone who has never struggled to get or stay pregnant. Someone who has never had to question that blissful assumption that a line on a pregnancy test now means a healthy baby in nine months time. I am not that person, I never will be. I am the person who, on waking, whether it’s the middle of the night or first thing in the morning, goes through a mental checklist to see if I’m still pregnant – even though I know it’s utterly futile…

* Do my boobs hurt? (Yes? Well that’s irrelevant as you’re on progesterone that’s making your boobs hurt.)

* Have I got strange stomach pains? (Yes? Well it could be that you’re still pregnant – I remember my friend Q saying “what nobody tells you about pregnancy is that it’s basically like having stomach ache for nine months” – or they could be miscarriage cramps)

* Do I feel slightly nauseous? (Yes? Are you sure? Could you be imagining it? Or hoping that’s the case?)

* Are you bleeding? (No? Well you didn’t bleed last time and you still managed to miscarry.)

As my friend Q reminded me when I was freaking out “Nothing means anything, you taught me that.” And so we lurch from one milestone to the next. Me feeling perverse pleasure whenever the slightest exertion exhausts me, or when I feel my stomach turn in response to a strong smell, yet all the while not wanting to presume anything until that next scan, that next blood test, that next marker that says “yes, today you’re still pregnant and everything is as it should be.”

That’s why this isn’t a “Hurrah, I’m pregnant!” post. It’s a “I have documentary evidence that I was pregnant 10 days ago and in a few days I’ll find out whether or not I’m still pregnant and things look ok” post. Because it could never be anything else.