Mr. December, cruising de Nile.

Mr. December is on the Egyptian River Cruise, big-time. He's insisted on repeating the home pregnancy tests every other day, sometimes twice a day. Yes, the test line still pops up immediately (and oddly, the control line takes a few minutes). But was he satisfied? Nuh-uh.

"This test is pretty sensitive," he said thoughtfully. "Let's dilute the pee by a factor of ten and try it again." Um, okay, so now we know that it's detecting an HCG level of at least 250. Given my estimate that I'm in the ninth or tenth week here, 250 is nothing. Frankly, neither is 2500.

At this point I just roll my eyes, pee in the cup, hand it to him, and let him have fun with the pipette. At this point I don't think I'd be surprised if some titration equipment showed up in the bathroom.

So my sex ed teacher was right?

I don't think I ever told you about my last visit to the midwife after Nati's birth, when she said "we'd love to see you back again, but preferably not within the next year..." and then asked about birth control, to which I responded that not paying $10K for fertility treatment seems to work for me. She launched into "it could happen, blah blah blah" and I assured her that no, it probably wouldn't.

But it did.

Apparently, if you've got polycystic ovaries, require ovulation stimulation, and have an abysmally low fertilization rate with IVF (but no ICSI), you can still conceive spontaneously while you're exclusively nursing a six-month-old baby.

I'll spare you the long narrative about how I asked Mr. December to bring an HPT down with him, wherupon he sighed and reminded me that we've been through this before (we have, and the HPT is always negative). How I finally took the test a few days after Mr. D arrived, just for the heck of it, how the test line came up immediately, and how Mr. December excused himself for a moment to scream in another room before coming back, hugging me, and speaking the words I'll never forget:

"We are in so much trouble."