The Wait is Over/Just Beginning!! Now on with the Weight.

Hello Friends!
I apologize for being out of touch for the past few weeks.  When last we spoke I told you that it would be 2 weeks before I knew anything and that was sort of true.   However, pregnancy with IVF is sort of a slow and steady up hill climb of hope mixed with anxiety and nausea.  In fact most people say that with IVF you don't know you're pregnant until you are out of the first trimester.   And that's because so much can go wrong.   But, today is not about things that could go wrong because today we had our 6 week ultrasound and confirmed after 4 home pregnancy tests and two blood tests that we really are pregnant with a baby in my uterus!!  Pause for smiles.

    Now, it is still extremely early and no woman in her right mind should be sharing this news publicly but I think it's pretty clear by now that I am not a woman in my right mind.  I never have been.  Anyway, as much as the process of going through IVF is sort of mind and body altering, early IVF pregnancy is even more so.   That's because every symptom I have felt can as easily be attributed to pregnancy or to side effects from the drugs I am taking.   The week before my blood test,  I started having menstrual cramps and they really freaked me out.  I am on Progesterone injections so even if I was supposed to get my period, I wouldn't.  I was totally convinced that my period was circling though and so disappointed.   With that in mind, I decided that waiting until the date of the blood test would be too much for me and I took a pregnancy test.  Now I have taken A LOT of pregnancy tests over the past year and I am very familiar with what a negative test looks like.  However, this test had a very thin line in the positive window.

 Normally I would say "Wahoo, any line means positive because when it's negative there is nothing there."  However, I had taken an HCG trigger shot before my egg retrieval and that can take between 10-14 days to get out of your system depending on your metabolism.  This can give a false positive.  I started doing a ton of math to see exactly by the hour when the test would be out and it looked like it should be gone.   This made me hopeful but I decided to take another test the next day.  This was a less sensitive test and the line was even more faint on this one, but it was there.  I called UCSF the nurse told me that this was pretty good news and most likely meant I was pregnant but I still had to wait until the end of the week to do the blood test.  At this point, the internet scared me.  I started reading stories about women who tested too early and it was only the HCG trigger shot.  So, then I took a regular digital test the next day because that is the least sensitive test and that actually said the word pregnant.   Well, it doesn't get more clear then that.  I knew at that point that this test was not sensitive enough to give a false positive based on leftover HCG.  I had to be pregnant.  By the time I went in for my blood test, I was pretty confident.   When the nurse called to tell me the results which were positive, I was so excited but still cautious because she warned me that the risk of ectopic during this time period was so high.  At that point they said to behave like I am pregnant but that I should not tell a lot of people because until the ultrasound, it's just a chemical pregnancy.  I of course wanted to tell every person I have ever met and even those in passing on the street but hubs asked me to keep it on the DL for a few weeks until after the ultrasound confirmed that things were as they should be.  So, I passed the time by going to Vegas with my mom and cousin and had a great sober time!  I was in bed by about 10:00 both nights.  Good times, indeed!

       I have had a lot of symptoms which are in part due to the pregnancy and also the injections.  My stomach is bloated so I already look pregnant which is fine now that I actually am.   I have only had a little bit of morning sickness so hopefully that will stick.  Maybe now that my body has been on a constant cocktail of hormones for almost a year, pregnancy won't cause as much of a shock.  Just a thought;-)  I guess the one thing that I really notice though is that I often feel crampy.  It feels like I am about to start my period and every time I go to the bathroom (which is quite a bit more then usual) I have a moment of panic.   Then I freak myself out by researching symptoms on the internet and convince myself that it's over.   It's not, though.  It's just beginning.  I feel like everything is just beginning.  My entire life from this point on will never be the same.  What a truly radical thought.

That big black blob is the yolk sack.
The jelly bean at the top is our little "Alpha."

     We had some friends visiting from Sweden for the past few weeks and it was actually really great to have what felt like witnesses to the entire process.  They arrived the day of the egg retrieval and left a few days after the second blood test.  They got to see all the fun stuff.  One particular moment comes to mind though.  Cindy, said friend, and I went to Beverly's fabrics to pick up props for her sister's wedding.  We were standing in the yarn aisle the day after the first blood test and I was looking at this baby yarn that I have seen a thousand times before.  I picked up the yarn and something inside me just burst and I started crying.  I mean heavy crying into this ball of soft creamy white yarn.  Cindy, being the excellent friend that she is, joined in and cried with me.  It was such a special moment.  I feel like it was the absolute first moment I really let myself believe that it might be true.    She commented on how excited she was for me that I was getting to have something that I wanted this badly for so long.  At the time, I had too many emotions going through me to really receive that so I just bought the snotty yarn and went home, but this morning when the doctor said "132 beats per minute" and we saw that little jittery heartbeat, I felt it again.  I felt that gasp of reality and awesome hope.   My body is growing a human with a heart that is beating.  This is really happening.  Yes, it is still really early and anything can happen but this is further then we have been before.    Normal pregnancies have high risks, though.   Children are risky once they're here too.  I am pretty sure I will be filled with a new worry for the rest of my life now.  There are so many risks but I guess all I can do is keep hoping and praying that things will work out.  Between science and faith, there is a pretty good chance.  But get ready folks, he's (or she's) coming!  He (or she) is on the train and in 7 months and 20 days, he or she will be here.  Oh I am so excited.  I can hardly wait.

Baby Heartbeat = 132 BPM
Maks and MK =  Roughly 700 BPM