The first time I cried because I got my period was at my parents-in-law’s house.
It’s November, and my husband and I have been trying to get pregnant since July. I say July loosely — that was the month we stopped trying not to get pregnant. In August, we tried more intentionally. September, October... and in November, I thought: this must’ve taken.
When you're young, you’re always told, “Don’t get pregnant,” so you assume it’s easy — until you start trying.
When we first started dating, I told my husband I didn’t want kids. He said he did. I told him I might not change my mind — and yet, we kept dating. The more we dated, the more he understood why I hesitated to have biological children. There’s mental illness in my family, and I was — and still am — terrified of passing that on. He didn’t pressure me to change my mind, but he challenged me to dig a little deeper to understand why.
One day, in the middle of winter, the year of our engagement, I read my old journals — the ones full of dreams, untouched by the heaviness of life. I read those entries and realized that 19-year-old Liza wanted to be a mama someday. It took months to reconnect with her.
Now we are married, and this July — on the coast of California, with a glass of wine and the ocean in front of us — my husband and I decide to try. Really try. I thought it would be easy.
I got my first period at the end of July and felt a tug of sadness. I tucked that emotion away, but it was a clue: something had shifted in me.
August, September, October — and now here we are, at his parents’ house in Montana, thinking, How exciting would it be to find out I’m pregnant here?
I had even packed a pregnancy test. On Friday, I peed on it. My husband and I went on a walk, dreaming of this child. The test was negative, but we still hoped we’d taken it too early.
Saturday morning comes. I wake at 6 a.m., cramping. I walk into the bathroom and just know. Maybe subconsciously — or not — I left my menstruation cup at home. I really thought I was pregnant this time.
I text my husband that we’ll need to go to the store to pick up some tampons, as I make a makeshift pad with toilet paper.
As I wait for him to wake up, I sit in the living room with his mama. We talk and listen to the crackling fire as the sun starts to peek through the trees and spill through the tall windows. I try not to think about the ache in my body.
He wakes up and comes to sit with us. Then he texts: Do you want to go to the store with me to get some tampons?
Let me just take a shower, I text back.
I excuse myself and head to the bathroom. I’m alone. I shower, and the emotions begin to bubble up. I get dressed and go into our room to grab something — and I see panty liners and my phone on the bed. A message from my husband: he found them, hoped they’d work — and he loves me.
Then his mama gently peeks into the room and says,
“I left something for you in the bathroom.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I go into the bathroom — it’s tampons. I close the door, sit on the floor, and cry.
It takes me a moment to pull myself together.
It was the first time I cried because my period came.
“It is wild to think that something you were once so afraid of is now something you so badly desire.”
I wrote that later that same day, as I locked myself in the bathroom again and felt this verve — this urgent need — to get the emotion onto paper.
I don’t know what the future holds. But if we do have a child, they will know they were deeply longed for — and so very wanted.
Written By: Liza Giles