13 weeks 6 Days

I've continued spotting since last Monday. Friday morning was a little bit more, so i stayed home for a few hours and went back to bed for morning napping and water drinking. When I woke up I was incredibly thirsty, so I wasn't sure if that was part of the problem? In any case as I was drifting back to sleep around 8:15 I got a text from my husband asking me to let him know when I got to work and how I was feeling. Then I drifted off to sleep for real UNTIL I had a crazy dream and woke up confused and completely disoriented. In my dream I woke up from my nap and it was almost 1:00 pm. I had never intended to sleep that long, so I was upset with myself and kind of stumbling around. Then I was looking for our dog and finally found her tied up outside with a plastic bag stuck in her mouth. She was fine, but she would have been out there since 7:00 am. And I noticed a potted plant from our front step was now on our back step, which made me even more irritated with my husband. Things like that kept happening until I managed to wake myself up. It was so real and so completely the order I would be doing things that I was super confused when I found I was actually in bed. I fumbled for my cell phone and saw it was only 9:00 am. Not wanting to go back into bizarro dream world I decided to just get up and go to work.
Okay, so I never did a follow-up from last Monday's worried post. Both babies looked good on the ultrasound and doc noticed a clot located away from the placentas and not too big. I'm going back next Monday for them to check the clot and heart rates of the babies. Although I still fall prey to negative thoughts at some point I just have to accept what the doctors say sometimes. What I'm clinging to now is that the doctor said it would be extremely rare to lose babies that looked as good as ours did last Monday. So unfortunately they couldn't do the first trimester screening, because I was bleeding. Apparently active bleeding messes up the hormone levels in the blood samples the take. But they didn't see anything that concerned them on the ultrasounds, so they weren't that worried about the screening and they said that if something seemed suspicious later they could always order the MaterniT21 test. I was so glad he didn't suggest amnio.
Also last week our dog Maggie had her teeth cleaned and ended up getting one of her top incisors removed. She seems much perkier (could be the pain meds) and has been really excited about the mandatory canned food for the week. The vet originally thought the tooth would come out pretty easily, but because she's Maggie it took some cutting and stitching so her mouth's a little more sensitive. The vet said her incisor was the size of most dogs' canines. That's my girl.

10 weeks, 5 days

Last week was our first without an ultrasound. It was a fairly uneventful week for my uterus and surrounding area with nothing more notable than light spotting. Is it weird that I'm bothered by that? My mind is so messed up from all this infertility and related nonsense that no matter what happens I read it as a bad sign. Bleeding? Bad. Not bleeding? Possibly bad, because I've been bleeding the entire time and everything's been fine so why did I stop now? I guess we'll find out this Friday.
Another thing that's giving me pause is that two of the four of us in my online group who started with twins are now down to singletons. They're both pretty devastated and understandably so. (I think they both might have been IVF). While I've considered the possibility of losing one of my little pups, I haven't really considered my emotional response to such a thing. I've considered the absolute soul crushing grief of losing both, but when I was in the ER the thought that maybe one could still be okay was reassuring. But again IVF is a different animal. And since so far both little pups have been okay I haven't really been put in the position they have.
Okay now I'm going to indulge my vanity. I am absolutely back in my "fat" clothes and it pains me. I know I'm gaining weight and that's good for the pups, but I worked so hard to lose those almost 30 pounds and dropping 2 sizes was an amazing feeling. Last summer I felt the best I've ever felt, so psychologically going back to these clothes is difficult. Let me just say that I would much rather be pregnant than thinner and I hope I get much much bigger with my two little pups growing as big as possible, but this is a struggle that I don't feel I can really communicate. And maybe it's because with my infertility brain I'm having such a hard time accepting that this pregnancy is really happening to me.
In other news . . . we now have names for every contingency. We've been set for years with a boy name and a girl name we like. It was just a matter of what if we have two boys or two girls? Now we're ready with 3 options for a 2nd boy and 3 options for a 2nd girl. I feel weird about being so prepared this early . . . like we're just asking for something bad to happen. But I'm also glad to have some options we both agree on especially since Josh's brother and his wife are still trying to agree on a name for their boy who could be born any second now.

9 weeks 1 Day

Well, tomorrow's another ultrasound. I stayed home from work yesterday, because my bleeding in the morning graduated from spotting to period-level bleeding. So I spent much of the day sleeping and the rest of it watching the rest of the first season of Downton Abbey, reading, eating, and a quick trip to library. The night before I was also in a lot of pain and barely slept. It was on my right side from my mid-back down to my upper thigh. I wound up taking some extra strength tylenol every 4 hours and that helped a little. By morning the pain was much less and by the end of the day it was gone completely.
I'm back at work today, but I fear I may have overdone it with unpacking some boxes in my office. Hopefully not. I'm still just spotting, but I had some abdominal discomfort so I stopped and got back to sedentary computer based activities.

8 weeks 6 Days

Right now I am pregnant. I can't speak for tomorrow or next week or even this afternoon, but at this very moment I am pregnant. Today I am worried, because this morning was a bit beyond spotting. And for the first time in about a week there is red and not just brown. And I can't decide if there are cramps or not, so if there are they are not severe. I let myself go without eating long enough to get some morning nausea, because sometimes I just want to feel that to remind myself that I'm presently pregnant. And the worst part for me is being nervous about something happening today and not wanting to say anything to my husband. He starts a new job today, so I didn't even tell him I was worried about the change in bleeding this morning. I don't want him worrying about me all day. So I'm asking all the powers in the Universe to make today okay. Please please please make today and tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that okay.

Mother's Day

It really does suck in its own special way. Facebook is HELL as everyone is posting trite tributes to moms in general. People who post specifically about the very specific moms in their life? No biggie. People who post sweeping generalizations about motherhood and the women who become mothers? How fortunate for you that you don't know what some people are going through.
Last week I thought it would be awful to find out I was losing a pregnancy the Thursday before Mother's Day--oh the cruelty. At the time I did not know I would wake up early Mother's Day to bleeding. I spent 2.5 days thinking the Universe wasn't awful and cruel then came yesterday. I'm hoping everything's okay since the actual bleeding didn't last very long and I've been back to spotting since yesterday morning. But there was some gray material I wiped away last night, so that's potentially not good. My doctor is working me in today at 11:45. Fingers crossed for good news. A little over 2 hours until I leave for the doctor.

That thing where you keep doing the same thing and you expect different results

So almost 2 weeks ago I had another positive pregnancy test. My first beta was over 1,000 and my 2nd was over 5,000. My first ultrasound was supposed to be this Friday. You know, the Friday before Mother's Day. Maybe it was because I had such high numbers, but despite my natural pessimism (and let's be honest I've earned this pessimism), once again I let myself experience hope. Fuck hope. I pictured putting a freshly printed ultrasound pic in my mom's Mother's Day card. Despite my non-belief in higher powers and fate and all that malarkey I let myself believe having my IUI on my recently deceased grandmother's birthday would mean something to the universe. So here we are 2 days before ultrasound (where I imagined I would see 2 perfect embryos) and I'm spotting with cramps. Since I've also been fighting a particularly nasty cold I've granted myself a sick day. I've decided to try that time honored home remedy of lying in a dark room feeling sorry for myself as I wait for my doc's office to call me back. Will it make everything (or anything) better? Probably not, but since nothing else will either I'm willing to give this a try.

Still Waiting

Cramping and light spotting Friday and Saturday mornings. Other than that? Zilch.

I had bllod work to check my HCG level this morning. Hopefully I'll get a call this afternoon with the results.I know it's stupid to still have hope, but I can't help it. There's definitely a glimmer there. Ugh.

The Bitch of Living

Today is my husband's birthday and my dad's birthday. My dad's 67 and my husband is 32.

Also, this morning I felt sure today would be the day of my physical miscarriage. I started feeling moderately crampy first thing and there was also some spotting. But so far . . . just light spotting. Hopefully everything holds off until the weekend. I'll be interested to see where the HCG level is on Monday. I was thinking it would be 0 by then since I dropped from 921 to 607 from Friday to this past Monday. I also thought (and it was heavily implied by my doctor) that things would probably move pretty quickly once I stopped my progesterone. Well, tick tock . . .

Waiting for a Phone Call

So I'm at work listening to a sad song play list that I have titled Wallow Away. Sometimes I try to reverse my moods with something more upbeat (Climbing out of the Mire), but sometimes I just want to give in. So there we are.
I woke up around 2:00 am with some light red bleeding and cramping. I put on a pad and went back to bed until 5:00 when the alarm went off. The blood was red and constant, but not heavy. Around 7 am it turned into light brown spotting. On my way to work I called and left a message with the nurses. At 10:50 am the red blood came back. Again, it's not heavy. I'm not filling a pad. But I do have cramping.
So I sit here drinking copious amounts of water and waiting for a phone call. And indulging my sadness with my play list.
If this pregnancy isn't going to work out I'd really like for it to not work out soon, so we can get things moving along for our next attempt.

let's be honest . . .

I really am waiting for bad news. Last night I had some bright red bleeding. It wasn't heavy, but it was BRIGHT RED. And I know that's no good. Since then I've just had occasional brown spotting. The nurse said they're probably just going to wait until Thursday's regularly scheduled ultrasound unless I have more problems, but she'll catch the doc between appointments to make sure. I'll get a call if anything changes.

New Year Miracle?

Friday morning I woke up to severe cramps and bleeding. The blood was brown though, so that was better than it being red. I went for bloodwork and was hoping to hear back that afternoon, but it didn't happen. Saturday there was more spotting and cramps, but Sunday was better. So far today nothing.
The results of my bloodwork: beta level was 807 and progesterone was 32. One of those levels is really good and one is not so much. Last Wednesday my beta level was 577, so by Friday it should have been over 1000. So there's some "concern" about what's going on. Google searches suggest eventual miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. Doc's office refuses to say this is over, but I'm thinking this is over. This Thursday I'm going to have an early ultrasound to see if they can see anything in my uterus or if there's something visible in my tubes. Then there will probably be more bloodwork.
In pharmacy news I tried to refill my progesterone today, but because the original rx is for once a day I'm not due for a refill yet. So I had to call the doc's office again today, because I need this for tonight. So hopefully they'll call it in soon, so I can pick it up and then take it tonight to continue with the good progesterone values.