Does the House Always Win?

You'd think I'd have learned that I'm a really bad gambler when, the first time I was in Vegas, a dealer tried to help me while I was playing Blackjack. That's right - I had 16, and said "Hit me!" (mostly because I'd learned the hand signal for "hit me" and having had at least 123 free drinks, thought I was cool knowing the hand signal). The dealer said, "You have 16." And I said, "Hit me." And he said, "You have SIXTEEN." And I said, "Oh - stay."

Uh huh. And frankly, my luck hasn't really improved since that summer in 1990. When I buy scratch tickets, I never even win the price of the ticket back. The people scratching on either side of me are winning left and right. My husband got me a lottery season ticket - think we even won a free ticket? Nope - not even after a whole YEAR.

Plus, I'm bad with numbers. Math just isn't my thing.

But yet, like a gambling addict, I couldn't resist playing the numbers. I thought, "This time it'll be different - this time I'll win my money back, I just know it!" Uh huh.

The game this time was a little different - definitely no free drinks, no good music, no fun cards to handle, levers to pull or numbers to pick. Instead, I decided that if 69% of pregnant women get a positive pregnancy sign four days before their expected period, I'd be in that 69%. I mean, I'm four days from day 28, and I've had the worst ovarian pain torturing me since day 16. It was so bad on day 23 in fact, that I thought I was losing my appendix. They couldn't really find anything on an ultrasound - just a follicle that hadn't collapsed (who knew they did that? Who knew you had follices? Sex Ed in high school was really a Cliff Notes version, wasn't it??).

So of course I thought, gee, must be pregnant.

Well, unless I'm in the 31% (is that math right?) I guess I'm not.

Which is sort of terrifying, because until now, I've been able to blame it on bad timing. But this month we did IUI + Clomid, and my husband's "counts" were "excellent" and "well beyond what we look for!"

So, I sat down at the $6 First Response Early Pregnancy Test table (apparently the government did a study in 1999, and that was the brand that was the most reliable and actually had accurate results early - which of course I'd researched for three hours - after reading blogs where women said that when they got pregnant, they'd had bad ovarian pain...) and rolled the dice (or peed on them, as the case may be).

And....one pink line.

If I ever do have a baby, I think I am going to paint two giant pink lines around the top of the nursery in celebration.

For now, it looks like I'm going to have to stay in gambler's purgatory. Because hey, tomorrow, 83% of pregnant women get a positive test. And the day after that, 93% of women do!

Clearly, I'm not an addict.

Really, I'm not.

I don't have a problem.

Maybe I'll just buy a different brand of test - move to a different table, with a luckier dealer. Yeah, that's the ticket!

- L.