Dreams and False Alarms

News Flash: Hope does not cause miscarriage!

Today is the day for the exam where we must see a heartbeat. I've had some bad days this week, feeling convinced it wouldn't be there, and composing sad text alerts.  But Thursday I talked to the IVF nurse who reminded me that my numbers were good on my betas (101, 270 1163) and that it was only 5 weeks 6 days on Monday.  I also talked to my my big sister ( a champion gestator), and she remembered having the brown discharge with her pregnancies (often not trying, so she was always thinking her period was coming late, but then wouldn't' show up).  Somehow, yesterday I just turned a corner.  It finally was meaningful to me that being hopeless would not protect me from miscarriage, or magically make a non-viable heart begin beating.
Soooooooooooooo.....
-I got up at 7, started laundry, and now at about 11:30, I'm on the last few loads.
-I cleaned off the kitchen table (mail purgatory)
-drank my tea cold
-drank my first 32 oz's of mineral water with grapefruit juice (less cramps with hydration!)
-cleaned off my desk (filing and the like)
-did some non ancient level shredding (I tend to let it build up)
Now I'm going to shower so that I don't have to blow dry my hair in the hottest part of the day.

It's gonna be what its gonna be. I'll update tonight.

I wish I was a horse

When I took off my bra last night I was struck with fear. My breasts weren't very sore.  All day I'd been worrying that they weren't sore enough.  My heart started to beat fast in that way that makes it hard to lay down.  I had a horrible nights sleep, and when I woke up at 3:30 to pee, I was wound so tight I didn't think I'd get back to sleep.  My husband tried to hold me, but I feel un-holdable.

I'm composing the sad text I'll send to friends on Monday when we get the news that there is no heartbeat. I'm trying to compose a triumphant message when we do, but I can't shake this horrible feeling that it isn't going to turn out well.

My poor husband just wants me to be happy, and I do to, but some part of me is frantic to know if there is a real baby in there with a working heart.

I was talking to a friend on Monday and she said that during her pregnancies (maybe just her first?) she would get anxious about the baby, and wish that she was either living in a log cabin with no knowledge of everything that could go wrong, or she wished she was a horse, and just didn't have a fore brain to torment her with the knowledge of being pregnant and all the loss that is possible.

I wish I was horse.

This is going to a long weekend. 

Glorious negative LH surge

So, dear readers, after fretfully worrying that my LH surge was never going to come, I had about 3 hours on a nice plateau of calm after my ultrasound on Friday, and then I began some low grade worrying that it would come to soon. I know. Yeesh.  But, bear with me, I'm not merely a worry wart with no target.

One of the questions throughout this whole process has been, is my follicular phase too short?  In a 24 to 26 day cycle I would typically get my LH surge on day 10, have a clear cramp about 30 hours later (late afternoon of the following day), and then do the deed (we timed it better than this implies), wait too weeks (never a question of too short on that side of the slope) and drown my sorrows in an expensive evening of sushi and sake (with extra bad tuna thrown in for spite).  So when I had my ultrasound on Friday and was told that my bigger follicles were around 10m, and that I'd need until at least Monday to get to 18m, I got worried that I'd have an LH surge yesterday or today. I've had some signs that things are heating up in that direction (like, uh, the CM is a bit thin to the point of ookieness), but I had a nice digital negative (backed up, of course, by a simple pink lines negative).  So, I'm not allowed to get worried until Thursday (per Dr Calm, who also reminded me that a watched pot never boils).  I figure since I've made it through Sunday, I may have actually made normal sized eggs all on my own. 

Cha-ching!  Add one to the not completely defective column.

Enquiring Minds Want to Know...

So how the heck am I?  Honestly, I'm not sure. I've had a cold since last Wednesday, and it has been quite engrossing (emphasis on the gross).  I'm gearing up to remember to pee on OPK sticks for the next few days so as to find my LH surge and then take Estra.ce to prime my ovaries. 

Mostly I'm ok.  Just ok.  I'd rather be pregnant, that much is true, but I'm holding steady here in limbo-land, trying not to put on too much weight, or think about Hend.ricks Gin too much.  Holy crap that stuff is good. Until I tasted it I was a confirmed gin hater, but my whiskey loving friend introduced me too it, and I'm hooked. So it's bad to not be pregnant, but it's good to commune with Hend.ricks Gin... pathetic? Maybe so.

Everything is sort of a mess. My desk is piled with various piece of opened mail, my closet has that end of winter funk, my kitchen is reasonably tidy, but the garage is getting too full of things we're going to deal with later.  I'd really like to refinish our kitchen table, that seems like a project, something beautiful (or ugly if we screw it up), something to do.

On another note, I've been stalled on a project for work,and I found a buddy with a similar work style, and a similar stalledness, so we're meeting every Mon and Wed morning to support each other in 'getting-on-with-it' already.

So that is my very disjointed update.