Can you be a little pregnant?

I know I have royally sucked at keeping this blog up over the last 2 weeks. It's not that I haven't thought about it, it's not that I don't want to blog. It's just that this whole thing is such a roller coaster and it's hard to know what the right things to be saying, are and what aren't. For one, I wish I had handled this whole thing differently. If I have it to do over again, or could have done this try over, I would have not made it so widely known that we were doing the fertilty treatments. I would have saved the news for after I had this ultrasound which is coming up on Friday at the very least. Perhaps I would have waited until I was 12 weeks along to tell our news. It has been very complicated to go through what I am going through mentally, emotionally, and physically, and to still have to field questions all the time to make other people feel better about what I am going through mentally, emotionally, and physically. It truly truly truly is something you can never understand unless you have been there.

80% of miscarriages happen in the first trimester. Having a pregnancy through IVF is a very high risk pregnancy in the first few weeks. These are real facts, not things I am making up in my own mind. There are stories of countless women who thought the first pregnancy test was all they needed to know they were pregnant, and go in to find an empty yolk sac, or a gestational sac with no fetus, a placenta with no fetus, a fetus who died somewhere between the third and sixth week, etc. etc. etc. The stuff goes on and on. It would be idiotic of me to assume that I am going to maintain this pregnancy when the chance that I wont is just as high.

I mean this in the nicest way possible, please stop acting like my concerns are not valid. I am going through this and I will go through it any way I want to. If I want to be negative sometimes I will be and I don't need to hear people saying "you need to stop" "would you quit with the negativty already" when are you going to relax?" I am a REALIST. I know what could happen at that ultrasound and I will be prepared for it and I will prepare in whatever way I feel necessary. Again, no one knows what this is like unless you have been there. It is not like any other conception or pregnancy. Between Chris and I we have had 6 kids and we agree that this in no way compares. You just don't know.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.

Now - on to updates.... Today I am 6 weeks and 2 days. I have my ultrasound on Friday morning. If all goes well, then I will be released to my regular ob to start prenatal care. I really hope we see that little heart furiously beating!!!

My symptoms so far have consisted of extreme fatigue, heartburn, irregular body temperature, emotional instability, extreme hunger, and as of Sunday a little nausea. I threw up once yesterday - pizza. I should have known - Italian food has always gotten to the pregnant version of me! I am gaining weight because I am always hungry and I am putting away meals that even Chris couldn't eat. I have been having headaches also. Some, if not all, of these could be caused by the Progesterone shots, but they are getting a little more severe as time goes on. I consider that a good sign, but not a tell tale sign. It is possible for the placenta to have attached and to be growing, releasing the HCG hormone in increasing amounts, while at the same time the fetus has died. That's why nothing, NOTHING, is certain. Nothing is certain until we see that heartbeat, and even then we still have 5 weeks of miscarriage risk. I will be so happy when I know.

If this pregnancy didn't sustain, I think we will wait a while to try again. I was all gung-ho about starting again immediatly, but now I'm not so sure. I think we will need some time to reprogram after all this. A failure at this point would be devastating, far more than a negative test from the beginning would have been.

The big news will come Friday. Stay tuned! As for now - where is the damn FOOD?????

Insomnia

It's official. I can't sleep. WTF?!? I have been wide awake since 4:30 a.m. I don't get it. I am exhausted all day long, longing for my bed to nap in, and every morning I wake up sometime between 4 and 5 and I cannot go back to sleep. We are talking wide awake and bushy tailed, coherent enough to blog for God's sake. I am a sleep-in-er, I never wake up before 9 if there is no reason to, and rarely get out of bed until 11, again if there is no reason to.

Also, I am starving all the time. This is new to me because I am not a big eater. I am the kind of person who is starving to death, and eats 3 bites and I am absolutly stuffed and couldn't eat another bite. It probably takes me all day long to actually eat what would constitue one meal to someone else. Well over the last few days, I am just hungry all the time. I wake up hungry, I go to bed hungry, and I am hungry throughout the day. I eat and never get full. This baby is smaller than a sesame seed right now. My body is definitly doing some strange things.

I want to relish in every feeling, take it in and experience it because this will be the last time I am ever pregnant. This morning when I realized I was up, I just told myself, like it, because you will never ever wake up and be 4 weeks and 3 days pregnant again.

I also can't get that Tim McGraw song "If you're reading this" out of my head. It's been stuck there for days. It's depressing - good song, hell it's a GREAT song, but enough already!

Second hurdle

Hey bloggers:

I had my second blood test yesterday - which was to make sure the little bean was growing the way he/SHE should be. ;)

My level of HCG should have doubled since Thursday. Thursday's count was 52, so we were looking for 104. My level was 107. SO - we are right on track, doing what we are supposed to be doing, and the little bean is growing and burrowing into its home for the next 9 months. Chris and I are really starting to get excited now. We have our ultrasound on the 31st - then after that we will really be excited and I will begin my 7 month shopping spree!!! YeeHAW!!

I have found such cool websites that show pictures of the baby during every week - so today I am technically 4 weeks pregnant and my due date is going to be April 20th. I know - 4/20 - what are the chances?!? Anyway, the bean is going to grow this week from being the size of the head of a pin to the size of a grain of rice. The kids are so cute - they tell me that my stomach is already starting to grow. I tell them I wont be showing for at least 3 or 4 months, but thanks. LOL. They are just excited.

Chris has indicated that I am not permitted to do anything but sit in bed or in the recliner on my heating pad for the whole pregnancy. Haha. He does not want to take any chances with this pregnancy he says. It is odd how much this means to both of us when we already have kids, and not a small amount! I have to say, having kids the natural way, where one day you wake up and feel a little queasy, and kind of tired, and you think to yourself "I think I should have started last week...." and bam, you are a few months pregnant, is A LOT different than this route where you know the date of conception, each and every stage of the baby, what is going on from before day one. It is much more stressful. I can't make a move without wondering what it is doing to the process. But I think we have a strong little gal in there. Grow baby grow!!!

Now I will just be posting more of how I am feeling and how I am growing, barring any bad news. I went out on a limb and bought a baby scrap book yesterday. I wasn't going to buy anything until after the 7 week ultrasound, but I couldn't resist. I have to start it with the embryo pictures!

The verdict is in.........................

We are......




PREGNANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, yes, yes, we are having a baby! It worked! I got my call this morning about 11:30 - much earlier than I expected. I go back on Saturday for another blood test with the hope that the HCG level doubles which will indicate a nice healthy growing embryo. Then, I make the appt. for the ultrasound 3 weeks later, and we get to see the baby and the heartbeat. After that hurdle, I am all cleared to go off to my regular obgyn for all my prenatal care. I will no longer be a high risk pregnancy at that point, no longer an infertility patient.

Yipee!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The joy is amazing!

Day 3

It's day 3 of the wait. In my wildest imaginations I never could have began to think what this would be like. There is an entire culture of women going through IVF and entire discussion boards dedicated to the 2ww. There are so many acronyms you would think it was owned and operated by the government!!

As for me: I am miserable. Yesterday I was convinced that this didn't work and that there was no way I was pregnant. Then I started researching signs that you are pregnant, and I found that I have fallen into one of the cruelest games known to man. See, all the things that give women their early pregnancy symptoms are the same things they have us injecting ourselves with. Basically every single pregnancy symptom is created by progesterone, of which I take a shot of every night. So pregnant or not - you get the signs. If the sign is not caused by progesterone, then it is caused by HCG, which again, you shoot into yourself before the retreival and it stays there for at least 10 days. So the signs are there and they do not tell you anything. Your own body is deceiving you each and every minute of each and every day.

And talk about helpless - there is nothing, NOTHING you can do to help this along. You just get the embryos put in and sit and wait and hope. No amount of rest or activity, eating certain foods, abstaining from or having sex, nothing will help those embryos stick around. IT IS HELL.

I am tired but can't sleep, bored but don't want to do anything, cold with goose bumps one second and deathly hot and sweating the next, hungry but want nothing to eat, one minute I cannot understand how my kids can just walk right over the pile of laundry in the living room and the next minute I am crying at what beautiful specimens of life they are, I am crying while watching Oprah for God's sake! I don't feel good but can't take any medicine, I really don't even want to be writing this blog right now and I was just overcome with irritation at myself for even doing it.

Bye.

Transfer Clear!

"Transfer Clear!"

The last words spoken by our embryologist today after they put our perfect little blastocysts into my belly. Now the wait has begun - I feel like a little kid in the back seat of the car on a long drive, "are we there yet? are we there yet?"

My pregnancy test is on August 9th.

My clinic made me a little crown that says "Princess Misty" - and instructed my husnand that I was a princess for the rest of the week and he had to do everything for me! LOL. It was very cute.

I will have a pic of our blast as soon as I can get up and go to the scanner. Any false movement and who knows what will happen!! Our blasts were grade "A" or grade 1 embryos. We had 2 of them that were the highest grade possible and those two now reside in the calm, dark, quiet confines of my thickened uterine lining. Grow babies, grow!

I am sure I will over post over these 8 days, trying to keep my mind off this pregnancy!