Dreams and False Alarms

Do smurfs have blue blood?

Yesterday morning I freaked myself out, nearly completely. I saw a tiny speck of light brown material on the TP, and I thought "This could just be a fiber in the TP, or it could be blood!!!!!!!!!!!!!).  I used a q-tip to get a deeper sense of the problem, if you know what I mean, and saw a few more of these flecks. Really, they were flecks.  I got very worried, investigated a few more times, googled until my fingers were bleeding, and then waved a q-tip in my husbands face demanding that he investigate whether or not it was blood. He could hardly see what I was talking about.

Nonetheless I called the IVF nurse who was very reassuring and told me that if I had cramping and bright blood, then I was allowed to get worried, until then I needed to sit tight. I asked for a third Beta, but she said it wasn't necessary. 

I'd really like to have one every other day for the next two weeks.

I am frantic to have some sort of definitive pregnancy symptom.  However, I'm only 4 weeks pregnant, and it is totally possible, according to both Google and every woman I've asked, to not have any significant symptoms until 6 weeks.  My breasts are sore, but because I wear a bra to sleep in, they aren't excruciatingly sore. I also have a really supportive daytime bra that is totally adequate to accommodate my burgeoning (and already generous) bosom.  So if I want to Munchausen myself by wearing small bras, sniffing disgusting odors and eating vast qualities of greasy food, I could give myself a non stop parade of pregnancy symptoms.

As it is, I do get heartburn quite easily, my schnozz is very full, but I'm feeling not particualrly allergic (not itchy or sleepy), I get tired around 3 and the yawning is quite voluptuous. And don't keep me from my dinner!   My breasts are sore, but not a sore as they were after the HCG shot (youch), and they are definitely bigger. My nipples are already rather large and dark, and my breasts are quite veiny (I'm pretty fair), so that symptom is no help.  OJ is the nectar of the gods, actually anything orange sounds divine. 

My mom realzed she was pregnant with me when she was about 6 weeks along because she thought that her morning coffee smelled disgusting.  She had implantation bleeding and thought it was her period (albeit, a light one. She thought it was a peri-menopause symptom! HA!) So there is some precedence for symptoms arising at 6 weeks. My chiropractor also felt great for the first two weeks and thought she was in for an easy pregnancy, and then at 6 weeks she got out of the car and felt dizzy and realized she felt dreadful.  So I should probably just mellow my shit out.

I just want this pregnancy to work out so badly, and I want some sort of indication that it is working.  But getting worried and freaking out is not the environment I want for my Bitsy. My own gestation was so tumultuous, and even thought it won't mean anything to the baby, it is important for me. So today I'm going to acupuncture, and I have a bod.y sc.an cd that I'm going to listen to. And I'm going to try to not tie my mood to how my breasts feel when I pummel them.

Oh, and the most reliable thing coming out of my ho-ha is baby blue.  I've been putting the estra.ce tablets there for the last 3 weeks (the lining was a bit thin so they had me start them before the retrieval). So either I'm pregnant with a Smurf and things aren't going too well, or a human, and the progress remains to be seen.

Trash Pickin'

When I was a kid, my father was a contractor, so he was often out and about in his truck. When he saw  something good, perhaps put out for free, or just trashed, he'd pick it up. I had at least 3 or 4 rusty batons with dry and cracked end pieces. But as grubby as these things often were, I actually enjoyed having been thought of, and usually I didn't really care that it was rusty and crusty.  I too  have the trash pickin' gene: when I lived in Cambridge MA I got a lot of my furniture on Tuesday evenings. Instead of having large item pick ups, you could just put out anything. I remember one of my roommates needed a bike, so she went hunting around on trash day and found one that was quite serviceable. 

Fast forward 25 years or so, and my mother asks me "Do you know what this is?  It looks like a backpack, but it seems to be missing a piece. Your father found it out in front of the house, and no one claimed it, so we brought it in."  I couldn't believe my luck! I was an Ergo Carrier !  I checked to make sure they'd really given someone sufficient time to reclaim it, and once satisfied, I took possession of the ergo carrier and modeled how it worked. It seemed fitting that my father's first baby gift to me was found on the street.

Today I was driving home and I saw a semi-disassembled crib in a neighbors driveway. Before I even brought it up with my husband I internally debated whether or not I could bear to have a disassembled crib in the garage.  It felt like a  choice between withdrawal and disconnection and hope, and  I realized that  I needed to  give myself a symbol of hopefulness for the upcoming IVF.  Heck, I felt affronted by our Highlander because it was supposed to be a baby car--in the right state of mind I can be a raving lunatic no matter what the stimuli--at least a crib is directly related! So I drug it home, disassembled it further, and tomorrow were going to stash it under a sheet.  Of course I'll know it's there, but I'm hoping that the mere knowledge of it won't feel humiliating or like too much of an investment of hope. And if it does, I can give it away.  But it feels good to have been hopeful enough to make this step.