My bloated ovaries have finally gone down and I no longer have to shuffle around clutching my coat closed for fear that someone will ask me when I’m due. It’s been a couple of days now that I have been comfortable again. It was not such a good week. Anytime I ate something of some weight I immediately felt like my insides were being squashed. It actually felt more uncomfortable than being a month away from my due date. I guess the uterus is designed to expand like that… your ovaries, not so much.

So it was definitely worse this time than cycle #1. My blog entries from then indicate that I was feeling back to normal the day after transfer, and that was certainly not the case this time. I believe it was a full week after retrieval.

Monday at my casual job I wore my jeans, as usual. It did NOT go over well. I felt so sick all day, like they were about to throttle me to death. I had to undo the button, and even sometimes unzip them entirely. And these were my big jeans that haven’t fit me for a month! So Monday evening I did something I swore I wouldn’t do and pulled open my bin of maternity clothes. Most of it woudn’t fit me right now anyways, but I gleefully wore my maternity sweatpants to work on Tuesday and was so happy I did. Oh, oh so worth it.

So I’d have to say that Wednesday I was feeling better, though still feeling big. Thursday I made sure to wear a loose fitting shirt to our pig-out food party at work, so I wouldn’t feel self-concious. But the good news was that, even though I ate a ton of food all day, I never felt sick! So yes, I would say Thursday was the day I really started feeling much more like myself again. A week exactly.

As for other things going on in my body, it’s been a bit interesting. One of the changes I am most appreciative at this time of year is that I am not cold anymore! My blood runs very cold. But between the progesterone and the iron suppliment I started taking again it is doing the trick. I am, of course, a little chilly – it is the middle of a snowstorm, after all – but my hands aren’t freezing cold all day at work. I really really like this. And no, I have no clue which of the two is having this effect, since I was on both during my pregnancy (well, the progesterone was natural for most of it, but you get what I mean) and I started both at roughly the same time. I’m really hoping it’s the iron – that’s something I can maintain regardless of my cycle and pregnancy status.

Another interesting thing I’ve noticed the last week is that, despite the allure of all the chocolate and cookies and sweet treats that I have been lavished with this holiday season I am really not craving them. In fact I have a bin of cookies and a bunch of lindor and ferrero roche chocolates in my house and I have barely nibbled at them. Today we went to Applebees for dinner because I craved one of their salads. So… yeah. Progesterone apparently makes me crave healthy foods. Same as last time. My body knows what its doing.

I have felt some very minor cramping/twinging going on today, mainly from my left ovary. Things getting back to normal size after their ovarian verson of sumo wrestling. It’s not much, just little periodic reminders of the fact that I am in the middle of a cycle still. (Thanks, like I really needed the reminder!)

(And just to point out, my “symptoms” are not that of a pregnancy or not, but rather due to the copious amounts of progesterone I get to shove up my hoo-ha daily.)

I think the hardest thing for the two week wait – and the first few weeks of a pregnancy, I am sure – is the simple knowledge that you can’t make a single damn bit of difference in what’s going on inside you. My reaction is to be careful, act pregnant – which I’m sure is not a bad thing – but if jarring movements dislodged embryos there would be a hell of a lot less pregnancies in this world. And my first two cycles proved quite neatly that one’s attitude during the two week wait does not affect the outcome. It’s in there, it’s where it’s supposed to be, and it’s either going to grow or it’s not. I can’t see it, I can’t feel it, I can’t test for it, nothing. And that is just really weird. When you’re growing the eggs you can see the follicles. When they retrieve the eggs they can count them all. When they fertilize the eggs they can watch them grow under a microscope. And then they put it back in and it’s like turning out the lights for two weeks. I’m pretty sure this is what it’s going to feel like in between ultrasounds, for the first trimester of my next pregnancy… until I can feel movement, or at least hear the heartbeat by doppler.

I’ve never been a very patient person. I hate waiting around. I want to know… but at the same time the thought of another negative test makes me feel a little sick to my stomach. Maybe a state of suspended belief isn’t such a bad place to be, after all.