I Still Have Those Sticks

I was cleaning out a bathroom drawer when I found them again—folded into a ziplock bag, tucked behind some expired Tylenol and a broken hair tie. Four plastic pregnancy tests. Two faded, two still with lines as bold as the day they appeared.

I sat on the edge of the tub, bag in hand, staring.

It’s been years. We’ve since adopted two beautiful children and they are my entire heart in human form. My world, my joy. I don’t look at them and wish for anything different.

But I still couldn’t bring myself to throw the tests away.

Is that weird?

What a Line Can Hold

Those tests... let’s be honest, they're urine-soaked plastic. Not sentimental in the traditional sense. But in a way that only people who’ve struggled to conceive can fully understand, they represent something far bigger than their form.

They represent the moment I knew.

The moment I let myself hope. The moment I saw two lines instead of one and felt that electric jolt of possibility shoot through my body. The tears, the shaky hands, the way I stared and stared, disbelieving.

After months, nay years, of injections, early morning blood draws, transvaginal ultrasounds, retrievals, transfers, and crushing negatives, I finally had something that said, “Yes.”

Yes, this might work.
Yes, you might be a mother.
Yes, your body might finally be doing what it was supposed to.

Those lines carried all that.

When It Didn’t End the Way I Dreamed

But it didn’t last.

That pregnancy ended in loss. So did the next one. And the one after that. I barely remember the clinical terms they gave me, something about missed miscarriage, or incomplete loss, or whatever soft medical phrase they use to make grief sound manageable.

What I do remember is the empty silence where there used to be heartbeat. The drive home from the ultrasounds where I didn’t cry. I just stared out the window, hollow. The bleeding that came in waves. The pain, but more than that, the knowing.

The knowing that it was over.

And yet, the tests remained.

Why I Still Have Them

There are a thousand ways to grieve a pregnancy loss. Some people hold onto baby clothes or ultrasound pictures or the little onesie they bought too early, too hopefully. Others have nothing tangible, just memories and ache.

I have these tests.

They remind me that I was pregnant. That it happened. That I loved something small and invisible more than I ever thought I could love anything.

That I held a beautiful, precious life.

They remind me that I tried. That I endured. That I let myself believe, even when belief had cost me so much before.

They are physical proof of an invisible chapter, a person who was here, however briefly. I hold onto them not because I want to stay stuck in that grief, but because I want to honor it. To honor those babies.

Am I the Only One?

I’ve asked around, quietly, in whispered threads and online groups. And every time, the answers flood in:

“I have mine too.”
“I couldn’t throw them away after my miscarriage.”
“I saved them even after full-term pregnancies because they meant something to me.”
“They’re not just tests—they’re a record of hope.”

Some people keep notebooks full of LH and HCG strips. Some have whole boxes of pee sticks they never meant to save. Some moved across the country and still couldn’t bring themselves to toss them in the trash.

We keep them because grief doesn’t always look like tears and funerals. Sometimes it looks like holding onto a little plastic stick with a faint pink line. Because it was real. Because it mattered. Because that’s all we have left of a tiny life that never made it to the outside world.

My Family, Now

Today, my family looks different than I once imagined. It’s built on strength, and love, and choices made in grief and in hope. My children—the ones who came to me through adoption—are miracles in their own right. They don’t replace anything; they expand everything.

And yet, I still have the tests.

Not because I’m sad all the time. Not because I haven’t healed. But because healing doesn’t always mean letting go. Sometimes it means making space for the parts of your story that shaped you—even the painful ones.

Sometimes it means opening a drawer, seeing those tests, and simply saying:
“I remember them. I honor them. I love those babies”