You've never been anything but regular, so when you're a week late, your stomach starts to churn. But you haven't been eating well and the stress at the firm has been acute.

But then it's two weeks and you cross your legs under the table at breakfast with the girls, and order your coffee black.

By three weeks, you know. But there's always a possibility, because your sex life hasn't been very alive lately. And you do have that lazy ovary. Maybe this is a sign of ovarian cancer, or some strange tumor in your uterus. You almost think that it would be a relief.

Carrie calls as you're standing in the aisle. "So, Stanford wants to go to SEA tonight?"

"Just what I need, a night under the sea."

"Miranda, you haven't been out in forever! Come on, pleeeease? It will be fun. And you can leave early, I promise." You're fingering boxes, hoping no one you know is near. But you're on the Upper East Side, since you planned this a week ago, because you didn't want to run into the regulars at the Food Emporium.

"Will they have those Philadelphia roll things?"

"I promise."

"Fine." Sometimes you get tired of this game, where you're always the homebody and she's the socialite that drags you out of your sweats and into the city. Then again, that's a pretty accurate description of your life.

You grab a few boxes and march to counter, feeling even more conspicuous than the first time you bought condoms. But the Korean woman doesn't even look at you as you pay. She shoves them in a small brown paper bag, and you think about saying thank you, but instead just leave.

After dinner at SEA, which was everything it promised, you put yourself into a cab and head back to your pre-war apartment, to the bathroom and sit on the toilet with the brown paper bag beside you. There are three tests, you're not one to leave anything to chance.

The next thing you know you're peeing onto these small strips. Each test says to wait at least three minutes and they are the longest three minutes of your life, and at the end there are three little blue plus signs staring at you from the counter.

"Fuck," you say, because it's all you can think. You, Miranda Hobbes with the lazy ovary, are pregnant thanks to mercy sex with a man with one ball.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." You grab the tests and throw them in the paper bag. You pick up the phone to schedule an appointment with your gynecologist and all you can think is that there is this thing growing inside you, this parasitic thing, that ends up purple and ugly and screaming for help, cells multiplying.

You just won't have it. It isn't in the plan. You've consulted your day planner and there's definitely no room for a baby. So you just won't have it.

It's as easy as that.