My stomach seemed to have calmed down considerably today – plus I wore my over-belly maternity pants, which took some of the pressure off. So I felt pretty decent today.

Sometimes I feel bad for complaining – even if I’m not necessarily complaining, just commenting on how I feel. But I think focusing on how miserable I feel physically is keeping me from focusing on how absolutely terrified I am mentally and emotionally. This feeling sick to my stomach I can handle, it’s just one more obstacle to deal with, just something that needs to be waited out… like the shots, the bloating, the meds-induced hormone surges. It’s all the same, but different.

I know with Devin as soon as I got pregnant it felt like I was there. I had fought the battle and won. I spent the entire time celebrating the victory and being “on the other side.” This time I most certainly do not feel like I am on the other side. Oh I’m a good step towards it, one foot in and one foot out, but there is no part of me that can believe that the fight is over. It’s not over until I hear this baby cry. It’s not over until it is born alive. We’ve won one battle but stepped into another… from fighting infertility to fighting stillbirth and loss.

I do feel myself relaxing a little bit, though, now that I’m 9 weeks along. Not that this is any kind of milestone, but the baby was big enough at the last ultrasound that we know it won’t just disappear. Weeks 4-6 were horrible because I just kept feeling like I would go in and there’d be nothing there at all, or maybe an empty sac, that this whole idea of a baby growing would just… poof. Like the ectopic. No baby was there, just the idea of one. Now we know it’s there, and it’s growing. I still worry that it will die, but that seems… different. Different than it just disappearing. It helps me feel a little more grounded, gives me a little more breathing room. I don’t worry that a little bit of spotting means that it’s all gone and washed away – a miscarriage at this point would be a significant event. So every day I can say, well, it’s definitely still in there.

I’ll say it again: I didn’t realize how hard this was going to be. I mean, I didn’t really stop and think about it, because being in the midst of IVF treatments you really don’t want to think that you’re stepping from one hard thing to another. But, like many things in life, it’s a lot harder once you’re in the midst of it.

But I love staring at my baby registry. It doesn’t have a lot on it, because most of what we need we already had for Devin. I just feel like maybe this time it’ll be completed. Maybe this time there will be a baby coming home to use it. We have another chance… and that is just… wonderful.