Tessa and Hardin try to conceive

Tessa and Hardin’s attempts to conceive unfold between a medical warning and a deeply shared hope for parenthood. Tessa learns that her cervix is unusually short and narrow, and that infertility may be a risk; later, after more than a year of appointments, schedules, and efforts to get pregnant, they do conceive, only to lose the baby. The experience makes fertility neither a simple matter of determination nor merely a test of their relationship: it is a source of bodily uncertainty, mutual care, and devastating loss.

Diagnosis and Fear

While seeking birth control, Tessa learns that her cervix is shorter than average and that further testing is needed. Her doctor raises infertility as a possibility, not a settled conclusion. In a later examination, Dr. West reviews the images and describes her cervix as very narrow and very short. Tessa has researched what the findings might mean and expects the conclusion; the account emphasizes the weight of an uncertain diagnosis rather than presenting infertility as confirmed at that point.

Tessa also tells Kimberly about the medical concern while describing how overwhelmed she feels by trying to save Hardin from seeing himself as a monster. The fertility news joins, rather than replaces, the strain already pressing on her. When Kimberly recounts a woman who struggled for years to become pregnant and eventually succeeded, Tessa wants to hear the story, but suspects Kimberly may be withholding or softening part of it. The anecdote offers hope without resolving Tessa’s fear.

A Shared Attempt

Tessa’s anxiety becomes explicit when she holds her hands over her stomach and says she cannot have a child. Hardin answers by shifting the emphasis from what she can manage alone to what they might face together: he insists that they can. His response does not remove the medical uncertainty, but it establishes conception as a shared hope rather than a burden Tessa must carry by herself.

Two years later, Hardin narrates that they have been trying for more than a year. They continue hoping through fertility appointments and ovulation schedules, and make love whenever they can. Tessa tries a series of wives’ tales, while Hardin drinks a thick, bittersweet mixture she believes helped a friend’s husband. These particulars show the effort becoming part of ordinary life: medical care, timing, folk remedies, and intimacy all gather around the same uncertain goal.

Hope Beside Other People’s Joy

Their efforts take place alongside the approaching birth of Landon and his wife’s daughter. Tessa and Hardin are to be the baby’s godparents; Tessa helps plan the baby shower and paint Addelyn Rose’s nursery. Hardin wipes Tessa’s tears and pretends not to feel sad for them as they prepare for their friends’ child. Their participation is affectionate, but the contrast makes their own wait visible: they can help build a nursery while privately grieving the family they have not yet been able to begin.

Pregnancy Loss

The account’s eventual turn from trying to conceive to pregnancy loss is confirmed when a doctor’s call and Tessa’s expression make Hardin fear the answer. He carries his fiancée to the car, and they drive to the hospital. Thirty minutes later, they are told that Tessa has lost the baby. The news converts a long period of cautious hope into immediate grief, but the scene also shows Hardin directing care toward Tessa: when she apologizes, he tells her she has nothing to be sorry for and repeats the reassurance. The loss is presented as shared devastation, not as Tessa’s failure, and the earlier uncertainty around her fertility gives the moment a painful context without establishing that her diagnosis caused the miscarriage.