My pregnancy was nine weeks along on the day that I began bleeding, according to the date of my last period. Though it was seven according to the measurements taken by an ultrasound technician two weeks prior, who had pointed to an empty black hole on the screen and told me that I appeared to have mixed up my dates. A yolk sac had formed, but there was no free-floating embryo in sight. “Have you had any bleeding?” he’d asked me, adjusting the always unwelcome transvaginal wand in an attempt to view another angle of my uterus. Despite the implications of his question, I hadn’t been too worried, because the same scenario had played out early on in my first pregnancy. In the case of my son, a second scan soon after had revealed an adorably alien-esque fetus and a strong fetal heartbeat. So, I had scheduled a second ultrasound and cried only when I was alone back in my car.