So this one time when I was 17, my period was two weeks late. I was on birth control, but the condom broke and this was before Plan B was easily accessible. I was convinced I was pregnant. I mean, I thought my boobs hurt, I thought I had to pee a lot more often. In my head, I was totally pregnant.

I told my best friend, who tried to assure me that I wasn’t pregnant, but I didn’t believe her. I don’t even think she believed herself. I knew I had to take a pregnancy test.

I drove to a drug store near my house that I never went to because I didn’t want someone from my neighborhood to see me. Rumors fly pretty quickly where I’m from. But of course, as I was walking to the cash register with a pregnancy test in hand, I saw a girl I used to be friends with. I’m not sure if she gave me a look of pity or amusement.

I went home and holed myself up in my bathroom. I peed on the stick and waited the three minutes, which felt like hours. I didn’t want to look at it, but I had to.

And it was positive.

I took a pregnancy test, and it came up positive. I wanted to cry and throw up, but I couldn’t do either. I just stood there in my bathroom holding a positive pregnancy test and tried to think of what to do and who to call and OMG HOW DO I TELL MY PARENTS?!

Would I have the baby and be a teen mom? Would the dad even be supportive? Would I get married? Would I still go to college? Would I put it up for adoption? Would I have an abortion? I had no idea how to answer these questions because even though I had thought about it before I started having sex, that positive test changed everything. Everything I thought I knew went out the window. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

I called my BFF and we agreed that I obviously needed to go to the doctor to be sure. I cried my eyes out that night, thinking that my life was over. I decided to wait until I was absolutely sure to tell the guy.

I went to the doctor and to my complete and utter relief, I was not pregnant. NOT PREGNANT. Not even remotely pregnant.

It was homecoming season, midterms and I was applying for college. As a cheerleader I had longer practices, sometimes twice a day. To say I was stressed would be total understatement. My doctor told me that my insane stress level was the reason for my late period and that once I calmed down, it would come back.

As for the false positive test, she wasn’t sure. There are several ways a false positive can happen. You can use the test wrong. The test can be defective. You can have a chemical pregnancy, which is basically a miscarriage before a fetus can even develop. Your medication can affect the test.

I don’t know why my test came up positive, but it did and it was the scariest moment of my life at the time. I didn’t have sex for a long time after that, and it made me more careful than ever.
 
Have you ever taken a pregnancy test? Have you ever tested positive when you weren’t pregnant? Tell us in the comments!
 

Jessica had a phone baby with DoSomething’s pregnancy text campaign

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