Hope or a Tease?

Faint lines on the latest pee sticks. They run in the picture from the earliest at top right to the latest at bottom left. Click the picture for a larger view.

We stopped at my sister in law's house this evening to check on her report of faint lines on the pregnancy tests she's been taking. We were honestly expecting them to be merely evaporation lines - greyish lines sometimes visible on such tests after they dry, even if the result is negative. This is what we saw.

The fourth down was from this morning. The next was from this evening. The last was from late tonight, and was done about an hour after my sister in law last used the bathroom. We were not expecting to see anything at all on that one, but the fact that we saw a faint line on that one leads up to believe there is something happening. We know it's not an evaporation line since it started to show while the strip was still wet, and they are definitely pink/purple colored.

False positives are very rare, but we are trying to be only cautiously optimistic. Even so, it's difficult to restrain ourselves. Only our past disappointments keep us from being more positive about our chances. Realistically, though, a pregnancy can fail at any time. Our previous attempts failed before this point, so hopefully the one problem was that my wife's uterus was somehow inhospitable, but these are from forty year old eggs so we're not free and clear yet. On our first attempt we got a single test with a faint line - probably what's known as a "chemical" pregnancy, when an embryo starts to implant but doesn't quite. This has gone on longer, so we're hoping for better but still worried.

Wish us luck. We'll still need it!