Kate is still struggling with her sleep a bit, but it’s gotten better. I finally started sleeping in her room on the futon, starting halfway through the night. She normally won’t sleep next to me anymore (she prefers to get up and run around instead of sleeping), but she’s been so tired and she seems to just want my touch. Once I figured that out it all got a lot better. When she nurses back to sleep if I try putting her in her crib she just wakes up and cries and cries and gets hysterical, so I stopped moving her. I leave my arm on her for a while, then when she’s more asleep I move back to my side of the bed and get comfortable. She whimpers once in a while and needs me to rub her back and nuzzle her head, she’ll settle right back down. Once she’s comfortable she seems to be fine, she’ll flop to her belly to her preferred position (which freaked me out the first time she did it, normally flipping over means she’s going to get to her feet and run off!), wiggle around, and sigh happily. She doesn’t even normally need my touch all night, just needs me nearby.

The start of the night, however, is harder. We’re still doing the DVD thing, which still involves crying for a couple minutes when I leave, but is far preferable to her screaming for an hour in the dark. Her bedtime is all kinds of messed up, often not going to sleep until midnight. To make up for this she’s taking a late afternoon/evening nap. Which does NOT make me happy, however if I keep her up and put her down at her normal time (8pm) she wakes up after 2 hours and wants to be up all night. Again, I’m not really thrilled about this new schedule, but it’s temporary and we’ll change it when she feels better. Naps I’m usually just driving her around until she falls asleep in the car and then transferring her to the crib – that’s the easiest way. Else I have to do the DVD/cry for a little bit thing. But at least she is taking decent 2+ hour naps, which she wasn’t when the molars were first coming in.

Now that we’re both getting actual sleep at night we’re both doing MUCH better during the day, though. Man we were both miserable… she was so tired she was a mess during the day, and I was pretty bitchy running on such little sleep. It’s quite nice knowing that when I crawl into her bed at 2am or whenever it is she wakes up we’ll both sleep until 9am.

I’d write more but the child is apparently not going to go to bed by herself tonight so apparently I need to go lay down with her. Sigh.

Right off the top: everything is fine.

Tuesday I had my first appointment with a nurse. She was very nice and chit chatted with me as she asked questions and filled out my medical history. I always forget to bring in my typed list of IVFs and surgeries. When she asked what my last menstrual period was I told her the date and then told her that I’m positive I ovulated a week or two late, so I won’t be as far along as they think I am. With my history of a prior ectopic she agreed it was a good idea to get an ultrasound done ASAP.

Now I was thinking that they would do something next week, I’d get to see the heartbeat and they would date the pregnancy and we’d all be happy. But to check for an ectopic she scheduled it that evening. And since it was a “check for ectopic” she said the normal pregnancy ultrasound group in the hospital won’t do it, I had to go to Radiology. I didn’t think too hard about what that meant.

I dropped Kate off with a friend for my appointment (Den was working late), and drove in to the hospital. I found Radiology (not easy) and got myself checked in. I was calm. Well, mostly – I hate ultrasounds. My palms get all sweaty and I get flashbacks. But I felt good about this pregnancy and wasn’t concerned. The tech called my name – a male. He checked to make sure I was okay with a male tech and explained that when he did the vaginal ultrasound a female would be sitting in the room with us. Okay, fine, I’m not picky. He was very polite, very nice. I explained to him that I know by LMP I should be 7 weeks along, but I ovulated late and am about 5 weeks, so I don’t expect him to see much.

It was when he started with the abdominal ultrasound that I realized that this was going to be very different than what I was expecting or hoping for. I could see the screen at first as he measured my ovaries and my uterus and other random shapes I couldn’t identify. He was very detailed, it seemed. And very, very quiet. I belatedly remembered stories of friends getting ultrasounds where the tech told them they weren’t allowed to say anything or show them anything. I was trying hard to see anything recognizable in my uterus, but I am honestly not used to early abdominal ultrasounds and figured at 5 weeks I probably wouldn’t even see a sac abdominally anyways.

When he had me sit up and wipe the goop off to prepare for the vaginal ultrasound I asked him if he could tell me anything at all. He told me that, no, they weren’t allowed to, he gives the results to a doctor, they give it all to my doctor, who would then call me with any information. Holy fuck. Are you kidding me? That is not acceptable. I didn’t say that, but I sure as hell thought it. He understood what I meant he said he’d check with the doctor on staff afterward to see if there was any information he could give me.

The vaginal ultrasound seemed to take forever. It was probably 10 or 15 minutes. He had moved down along with the screen so I couldn’t see anything at all. I could hear him clicking, feel the slight pressure from the ultrasound wand, and I layed there trying to imagine what he was seeing. Was he taking an awful long time on my left side that has a tube? It couldn’t possibly actually be ectopic. I’d have felt something. And the odds of that are ridiculous. But then again, me with odds. Or maybe it’s triplets or something – maybe the soy did something crazy. He’s going to go get the doctor and they’re going to come in for another look and sit me down for a discussion. Or maybe there’s nothing at all in there and he just doesn’t want me to cry.

It was an excruciatingly long time spent staring at the butterflies on the ceiling tile, wondering what the hell was going on. I tried to mentally remove myself but I kept thinking about Devin and the ectopic and ultrasounds and bad news. My hands shook. I didn’t use my phone – I thought that might look weird, me surfing the internet on my droid while getting a vaginal ultrasound – but I clutched it in my hands, ready to shoot off a panicked text message to my friend.

When he was done he got me towels and told me he’d be back. He left the room for a good 5 or 10 minutes. More bad thoughts in my head. I sent that text, and a few others. I tried to breathe to calm myself.

Finally he comes back and says, “Well, everything looks good. There’s a small sac located in the uterus, which is what we would expect to see with someone about 5 weeks. A little bit of free fluid, but that’s not significant.”

And that was that. He said goodbye and I left Radiology. And then I walked to my car and sat in it, shaking, on the verge of tears – of relief, and of frustration at having to endure that. I will never go to Radiology for another pregnancy ultrasound unless it’s a life or death situation. If there is ever a next time I will not be getting checked for an ectopic – I will wait until I have pain or not.

Oh, and the machine wasn’t able to measure accurately since it’s so small and early, so I still don’t have a due date, though at least I have confirmation that I am as far along as I think I am. So next week they may want to do another ultrasound for dating, and I would get to hopefully see a heartbeat then too. But that would be at the pregnancy ultrasound office, where they talk to me and give me pictures.

So in the end everything is fine. There is one sac (not three), and it’s in my uterus where it should be. That is a huge relief.

I am up late. I am up late eating salmon cream cheese at my computer. It feels like I may starve to death if I don’t eat right before bed. I run out of chips, but instead of putting the cream cheese away like I should, I go get more chips. It’s good cream cheese.

Finally I feel done, full. I put it away and go let the dog in. I’m tired, I’m looking forward to bed.

As I tip-toe through the kitchen and turn off the light a box of cheerios catches my eye. Cheerios sound good. I should have some in the morning. I continue to the bathroom to get ready for bed, but all I can think about are the damn cheerios.

It is now 12:34am and I am sitting at my computer eating a bowl of cheerios. (Of course this means I’m going to have to pee again in an hour. Damnit.)

I’m still trying to mentally calculate the crazy odds of this pregnancy. My eggs suck, no one knows why, and while doing IVF I get crappy eggs that aren’t mature enough to use. And even then when we do actually put back a real embryo my implantation rate seems to be between 33-50%. So then I lost one tube to the ectopic so that right there cuts my crappy odds of getting pregnant naturally in half again. Oh, and I’m still breastfeeding, which you’re not supposed to do during IVF because it could lower your chances of success. (No actual data on this one, though, but the hormones in breastfeeding kind of work against the hormones of a normal cycle.)

I swear the soy did something, though. I know people are wondering, so here’s what it was: I heard friends online talking about soy isoflavones having a similar effect on eggs as clomid. Soy isoflavones is sold in pill form on the shelf as a treatment for menopause. Now I did clomid for a few cycles and got a bunch of eggs but no pregnancy. So I didn’t really have any high hopes for the soy, but I was in a “I’ll try whatever” kind of mind space. I took 150mg/day, days 5-9. Apparently you can take it days 3-7, but I went with 5-9 in the hopes that it would mature my eggs more instead of making more of them.

Unfortunately from the time I started taking the pills all the way through my cycle I felt HORRIBLE. I was bloated, my ovaries hurt, I was bitchy as HELL. I was not a happy person. My ovulation was no earlier or different (except I certainly felt it!). And then? I got my period. I didn’t quite throw the pills in the trash, but I definitely did say, “Fuck this, I’m not feeling that shitty every month until we do IVF!”

So in August – this last cycle – I didn’t take anything at all. I was still feeling kind of gross from the soy, and still grouchy about it too. I tried not to pay attention to my cycle, but by week 3 I realized I was still getting fertile signals from my body and no ovulation signals. My estrogen was definitely up, but no egg. For the first time in a long time I actually cannot pinpoint when I ovulated, but I know it happened around the end of August (around cycle day 23) because come September my body went back to normal no-longer-fertile.

In the second week after ovulating I started feeling slightly nauseated every day, which made me wonder, and it was cycle day 34 when I took the first pregnancy test (the one that I thought was an evap).

It seems bizarre to me that taking soy the prior cycle would have gotten me pregnant, but it’s very clear that I had estrogen running amok this month with a good two week fertile period and delayed ovulation. Looking back at my IVF cycles that at least does make sense, as the cycles when I stimmed slowly were the ones where I had better egg maturity. They just need more time to soak, I guess.

Pretty sure she has an ear infection. I’m resorting to pulling out the DVD player again to get her to sleep – at this point I’ll take anything that gives me a few hours of sleep. She still cries when I put her in her crib, but not very long until she gets distracted by the DVD. Any kind of silence is a good thing.

Kate woke me up, as expected, and I went in to try getting her back to sleep. She was soaked so I had to change her, then nursing her down failed. Also she chucked her paci under the crib. She’s gotten really good at that particular angle that causes it to fly to the very back. I need a stash of spare pacis in there because I’m very tired of fishing under the crib in the dark. So the paci was gone and she decided she didn’t really want to sleep anyways. I figured oh well, it’s almost 6am anyways, and brought her out to the living room. Where I then discovered it was not 6am, it was in fact 3:45am. Shit.

I’m not too unhappy about being woken up this time, as apparently the pregnancy dreams have started. This time I was on some sort of retreat with a friend, but a stranger outside claimed I killed his wife so I had to run. I was hidden by a lady who watched over people at the retreat, but it turned out she was the bad guy who was after me. I ended up in some big cavern, the lady frozen, while I ran around the pathways and found a large Thor-like hammer to use. That’s when Kate woke me up. Explain THAT one. I won’t even get into the large water-filled buildings.

Today marks 1 week that I have known that I am pregnant. I’m not feeling much of anything, except for a mild general nausea when my stomach is empty or over-full. Over eating is not in my best interest right now. I have yet to throw up, however, just gagging and burping.

I’m very glad to report that my achy left ovary has subsided, which reassures me that this is not in fact an ectopic. Well, that and the fact that I’m not spotting in the slightest. I’m definitely a TP checker, though, just being slightly paranoid.

Last Wednesday we went to a spaghetti dinner and the salad had two dressing choices: italian and thousand island. Since i hate italian I chose the thousand island, which I haven’t eaten in years. It was the best stuff EVER. Now I’m totally craving it and I don’t even have any in the house. I apparently have pregnancy dressing cravings – with Devin it was ranch. I am also craving cream cheese, specifically cream cheese on graham crackers. I have the crackers, but it’s just not right without the cream cheese. Clearly a trip to the grocery store is in my near future.

Now if this child would get sleepy I might actually get some more rest tonight…

These have been some of the worst nights in 6 months, I think. I know she’s still teething those molars but now I’m wondering if her last cold left her with yet another ear infection, it’s that bad. She’s now refusing to nap, refusing to go to bed, and the last two nights when waking in the middle of the night is NOT going back to sleep. Or rather, she does fall back asleep nursing, but wakes up screaming when I put her in her crib. I’m at a total loss here. She and I are running on very little sleep, and I really don’t know how she’s not an utter mess.

Two nights ago it went like this: I tried for hours to get her to fall asleep and she resisted. I just let it slide (I’ve learned if I push her she tends to throw a bigger fit… so I wait until she’s really tired). So that was midnight I FINALLY got her to fall asleep on me, I tiptoed in and gently put her in her crib. She did not wake up crying. SCORE! I figured I’d have at least a good stretch after that.

WRONG! At 2am we were woken up by a horrific, strange sound. We both sat up and looked around in confusion and found the damn dog throwing up all over. WTF? He was coughing and retching. Den cleaned up the puke but the dog still clearly wasn’t settled so we let him outside. Waited a while, let him back in. Nope, back out. Wait longer while I listlessly read stuff on the internet. Okay, back in and he lays down. Except… oh god, what is that smell? I hear a “pffft” – the telltale sound of a dog fart. Another wave of stench hits me. This went on for over an hour, me gagging and unable to sleep. Of course this happened right after the temperature took a nose dive so when I opened the window I froze to death.

Just as I was finally drifting off to sleep the baby cries. I got up, nursed her, put her back in her crib…. she flips over, lurches to her feet, screams. Okay. So I pick her up, her head flops onto my chest. I sing to her, dance with her, rub her back. Every time I thought she’d finally fallen asleep she kicks me again… weak little twitchy kicks. Just to let me know that she is in fact still awake and if I dare put her down we’ll be back at square one.

An hour later she is STILL not asleep enough for me to put down and we go through several iterations and attempts of different methods, all of which fail. I lay on the futon mattress with her, hoping that she’ll be okay if she’s cuddled up with me. she runs to the bedroom door and stands there screaming for 15 minutes – ignores all my soft words, my pleading with her to come cuddle with mama. No. She screams.

It’s now after 5am and I’ve slept a total of 2 hours – I’m tired, I’m frustrated, I’m done. I put her – still screaming! – in her crib and go flop on my own bed, crying. At that point den gets up to try calming her down and I fall asleep. He was going to wake me up when he left for work in an hour, but I don’t wake until I hear Kate calling at 9am. Apparently he’d pulled out the DVD player again, set it up with her next to her crib when he went to work. We assume she must have fallen asleep for a few hours.

She refused to nap yesterday, despite me trying. I really wanted her to nap because we were going to the fair, but no. I almost didn’t go, but Den pointed out that getting out of the house was probably best for both of us. She fell asleep in the stroller at some point, slept for about 45 minutes.

Last night my memory is fuzzy. I believe I got her to fall asleep in her crib at about 11pm. I went to bed grateful and expecting some sleep… but no, she woke up at midnight. I believe I got her back to sleep at some point, and went back to bed myself. She woke up at 6:30 and did the nurse-asleep-crib-cry thing. So I got up with her but she clearly was exhausted and wanted to sleep… but wouldn’t sleep. I managed to very carefully nurse her to sleep on the futon and I stayed there, frozen, for a long time. Not very comfortable. I waited long enough to wiggle away slightly and fall asleep myself. When she woke up I thought it was about 9, but apparently it was 11:30. Wow, okay, so we actually got some sleep – maybe I do need to push the cosleeping thing again.

Tried it for her nap… I really thought she was falling asleep. She wiggled away against a pillow and curled on her side the way she does when she’s tired. She stayed there for several minutes. But then she sat up and crawled off to bang on the door. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So basically, all of that is to illustrate that I am so freakin’ exhausted and this no sleep thing is BULLSHIT. I want to stomp my feet and throw a tantrum and yell, “But I’m pregnant! I need my sleep!” Alas Denis is working tons of overtime and has no time off for another week so it is what it is.

If this continues I’ll be taking her to the dr on Monday to check her ears. If that’s not it…. then I HATE molars. HATE.

My dear Kate is wearing my patience thin. I realize she’s getting molars. I am trying to keep that in mind, I know that’s affecting her mood and her sleep patterns. But after two weeks of “molar teething” I am just getting outright frustrated by her stubborn refusal to go the fuck to sleep. She’s trying to skip her nap, which is HORRIBLE because she needs a good 3 hour nap to function. I used to take her in her bedroom and wind her down in there, but no more… I take her in the bedroom, turn off the light, and she turns into a wiggle worm – a very vocal wiggle worm – who fights with everything she has. So I’ve found what works to wind her down in the living room: music videos on my computer. I turn them on and hold her and sing to her. It takes a little bit, but if she’s tired she’ll slowly give in and relax on my shoulder. When I deem her “far enough” I can then take her into her bedroom and deposit her in her crib. She doesn’t have to be fully asleep, but it’s a very fine line… if she’s not quite drowsy enough she immediately shoots up and starts kicking and fighting when I go into her bedroom. Frustration abounds.

Right now what works is a very specific sequence: Adele’s Someone Like You, then Dixie Chicks’ Lullabye. I don’t think she likes those any more than anything else, but I like them so much that I would play them over and over to sing to her when I was desperate and they have thus become her triggers. I’m not complaining, even though I’m getting slightly sick of singing the same thing over and over. (It’s better than Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 10 times in a row… trust me on that.)

On one very desperate night I was exhausted and just DONE and I sent Den in. He had the brilliant idea to turn on our portable DVD player with Signing Time – which she is addicted to – and was able to get her to watch quietly until she just laid down and fell asleep. Just like that. After me fighting with her for HOURS. This seemed brilliant! BRILLIANT! I got her to nap that way a few times too – again, instead of fighting with her for an hour or more. Seemed like a great idea!

Except…. it turned into a full-fledged addiction. She would wake up and yell because the DVD was off and she wanted it back on. I’d turn it on for nap and leave her… and find her still watching it an hour later, refusing to nap. then she started banging on her bedroom door, yelling and tantruming because she wanted me to go in and turn the DVD on for her. She’d pick up the DVD player and bring it out to me. If I said no she’d tantrum. Lots and lots of tantrums.

So I am DONE with the DVD player. It was a great thing in a desperate moment, but I do NOT like how this has progressed and the attitude is just not acceptable. I am not letting her watch it for hours upon hours each day, which is apparently what she wants to do. I’m done with the tantrums when I let her watch for a little bit then turn it off. So we’re just done cold-turkey. Soon she’ll forget about it and hopefully get back into better habits.

This sleep thing is going to be exceedingly frustrating until these molars come all the way in. (If in fact that is what the problem is… I sure hope so, because if it’s “just her age” or a phase and there is no end in sight, then I will cry. Heartily.) But somehow I will figure out other ways to get her to sleep.

Thankfully once she actually falls asleep she tends to sleep well. She’s been taking 2 1/2 – 3 hour naps during the day (one day it was an astonishing 4 hours!), and at night… well she’s fighting bedtime until much later in the evening, but again she’s sleeping until 8am without an issue. Sometimes wakes up to nurse in there, but goes straight back down. (I only get pissy whens he wakes up and refuses to go back to sleep… NOT okay. But thankfully rare.) Which is actually kind of ironic, when you think it. She was always super easy to get to go to bed, but woke frequently all night long. Now I have the opposite problem!

Toddlers certainly keep you on your toes.

::

Regarding the pregnancy – and it still feels all shifty to say that, like I need to look over my shoulder and whisper the word – I’ve moved from the shock and excitement stage into the nervous stage. I no longer want to tell people IRL at all yet. I continued taking pregnancy tests and they’re not really getting darker, which freaks me out after my experience with the ectopic. My pregnancy symptoms come and go and consist mostly of excessive burping and a crazy amount of bloating. The rest of the time I feel normal (except for an inability to fasten my jeans button – I always thought that was related to the IVF retrieval, but apparently no, it’s just my early pregnancy symptom). It’s so weird to know that I am pregnant but not really feel it at all.

I know I could phone and beg for a beta, but I really don’t have the desire to. I have a pretty fatalistic view of this pregnancy: either it will work out, or it won’t. Getting a beta won’t change that. It will, however, probably make me obsess and worry more. I found with Kate’s pregnancy that all those tests that were supposed to reassure me really only gave me more to fret over. I’d really like to do this the “normal” way this time… no numbers, no tests, no data. I do want an early ultrasound to see the heartbeat to prove there really is a baby (and that it’s in the right spot), and obviously I want to hear the heartbeat frequently after that. But that’s all. No extra ultrasounds or BPPs or NSTs. For right now there is absolutely nothing that can really tell me anything that I don’t already know. If it’s ectopic I’ll know within a week or two. If it’s going to miscarry it will happen regardless of good or bad betas.

I just saw an article about how a study showed that reading the ending of a book first actually increases your enjoyment of the book, presumably because you are not anxious about what happens later. If only I could read the ending of this pregnancy so I could sit back and enjoy the ride a little more. I have a feeling I’m going to be pretty reserved for a while.

Most of that last blog post was written yesterday. So here’s today, after I’ve been sitting on this knowledge for two days now.

My mind is a crazy place right now. I’m excited, I’m relieved, I’m scared, I’m bewildered.

One moment I want to tell everyone, because that’s just what I do, and the next I think, oh gosh, maybe we should just keep it to ourselves for a little while. I’ve never even been in a position to make that decision, as friends and family always knew when we were doing IVF and would politely and hopefully inquire how it was going. It was always such a struggle to get that positive pregnancy test that I would shout it to the world with joy! This time no one knows. I called my mom to tell her and she was so shocked she dropped the phone and screamed! Okay, so that part’s kind of fun. Except I’m feeling just as shocked as anyone else – possibly moreso. So we could keep it to ourselves. But do we want to? We never have before. Also there’s that pesky little problem of me already feeling sick…

I have a strong feeling this pregnancy is healthy because I am already feeling nauseated. That was what tipped me off in the first place, and it’s getting stronger. Den remarked that if I hadn’t taken a pregnancy test it wouldn’t have been long before I knew something was up. If I hadn’t had two pregnancies already I probably would have thought I was sick, but it is just too familiar. I keep burping and then breathing through little fingers of nausea. I’m willing to bet that in a week I’ll be heaving over a toilet. Joy! (I mean that both honestly and sarcastically. Feeling sick is great, but also just so yucky.)

I missed out on all the preamble to pregnancy. I know this is how it normally works for people, but I always had a huge lead-up, all this other stuff going on. It’s like I got a “skip three squares” card without anyone telling me. I should feel overwhelmingly grateful for that, but I think I’m a little disappointed. I know that’s nuts. IVF is hard on your mind and hard on your body. I always skate the edge of over-stimming and the two week wait is hell. I know that. But… it was always part of the experience. It just feels so strange to have that completely missing.

On the other hand I’m already starting to remember how hard the first trimester was last time and wishing I could have just not known for another month or so. Yay, I’m pregnant! Now sit and wait for a week to see a nurse for intake, and then another week or two for an ultrasound. No betas this time around, I’m not under the care of anyone. There’s no way to check on what’s going on, no real feeling (other than the nausea – thank goodness for that). And I realize too clearly how common miscarriage is. Not to mention that I’m a tiny bit scared of another ectopic. I’ll feel a lot better once I get an ultrasound and know everything is there, in the right place. But then I’ll have to just wait around until my next ultrasound at first trimester screening at 12 weeks. I remember how hard the first trimester was with Kate, and I know this isn’t going to be easy.

But I have Kate. For one she’s an excellent diversion, especially since she had a low fever this morning and was absolutely miserable. She wants me to hold her, read books to her, and watch TV with her. Or she just wants to cry and yell at me and she’s not quite sure why. (It was a rough morning.) But also she’s this living reminder that things CAN go right. That first trimester was so so hard and every time I had spotting I thought I was losing her but here she is, running around my house shoving books into my hands and petting the kitties. It’s a lot easier to have trust in this process now that it’s actually been successful for us.

I definitely don’t have that immediate attachment to this little embryo like I did with Devin and Kate. Shock may have something to do with that. But also, Kate is my whole world and it’s really hard to picture me being pregnant, growing another baby, having another baby. My brain isn’t processing that yet. My love for Kate is so huge, how can anything else stand up to that? It will, of course, it will just take time.

I am feeling so incredibly blessed… by friends and the incredible outpouring of joy and excitement… by my family… and this statistical anomaly that makes us feel like we seriously just won the lottery. This is craziness in the most amazing way.

I really hate that feeling when I’m nearing the end of a cycle and my mind starts getting a little out of control. As many times as I have done this I still sometimes find myself thinking about what it would be like to get a positive pregnancy test, to tell people, to be surprised. It irritates the hell out of me that I can’t turn that part of my brain off. This month was a giant mess, anyways; I have no idea when I ovulated, if I even did. Normally I can pinpoint it to the day, if not the hour – without any fancy tests. My body tells me. This time, not so much. I know I had a long fertile period, that’s all I know. Last month I took soy isoflavone pills. It’s supposed to act on your estrogen levels, kind of like clomid. I took it days 5-9 last month and felt like SHIT from day 5 until my period arrived. I was bloated, I was cranky, I was just not a happy person. I didn’t take them again this month but I still was feeling my ovaries and I was worrying that I’d gotten some cysts or something. Which would be just awesome.

Now Kate’s sick, I’m feeling slightly queasy, and my mind is going places I’d really rather it not. So just to shut it up I pulled out one of my old boxes of pregnancy tests. They’re expired, but whatever. So it’s negative, of course, although if I cross my eyes and squint I can sort of see an indent where the line should be. In the trash it goes. At least I can let it go.

I have a habit of pulling them back out of the trash, which I did about 15 minutes later. And there’s something there. A faint, faint shadow. Oh fucking hell, an evap? Really? I berated myself for using an expired test and looking at it again well after the 10 minute mark. There’s a reason they say not to do that, and clearly this is it. But my mind is working all night and I couldn’t sleep.

I bought a new box of tests to use to set my mind at ease. First thing in the morning I use one and wait for it to come up negative. Except there’s a faint fucking line. I just stood there, tilting it in the light. I’m not crazy. There’s something there. It’s so so faint. But I’ve had a lot of negative tests in my life… and this was not negative.

I shot an email to my best friend describing the situation and a big “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

I still don’t even know what to say or think or do. It’s been all day and I’ve just been walking around with that thing in my purse. I feel entirely unprepared for this. I was all set for my FET in December, IVF in January if that didn’t work. I was excited about it. I liked the timing of a fall baby. It was all good. This? This is entirely outside of my realm of understanding. Of all the things in the world to expect, I would expect our house to get hit by LIGHTNING before I expected to get pregnant. I take tests just to prove I’m not pregnant so I can go back to sleep. I am gobsmacked.

I have to admit, there is a part of me that did not WANT to ever get pregnant on my own simply because oh I know what people will say. “I told you to just relax!” I don’t know how I’m going to avoid shouting at people. I said over and over and over again how big our problems were, how IVF was needed, how I’d never get pregnant. “I knew a person who had a baby and got pregnant right away!” I do NOT want to be that person… I don’t want people to think that infertility isn’t very much real.

I think this is a case of the incredibly small odds finally landing in our favor. The soy probably helped, too.

I don’t want it to sound like I’m not happy – I am. This is insanely amazing. If this actually develops and becomes a healthy pregnancy with a healthy baby I will be absolutely thrilled. But right now I’m still working on picking my jaw up off the floor.

::

Monday morning: another test, another – darker – line.

Hooolllyyy shiiiiiit.

Judging by when I might have ovulated and how light the tests are I think I’m only about 4 weeks right now, which would put my due date right on Kate’s birthday, May 22. I’ll have to convince them to do a dating ultrasound though because I most definitely ovulated like a week or two late. I’ve never not known exactly when I ovulated… it’s so bizarre. I feel so unprepared for this!

Bedtime Limbo: that time between putting the child in her crib and going to bed yourself. If you lay down straight away the child will cry for you seconds after dozing off. If you force yourself to stay awake the child will quietly play in her crib for 20 minutes before falling peacefully asleep.

Sick AND teething child – time for confetti! Still waiting for those molars to come all the way through, they are definitely making progress. But boy does she teeth hard; the poor girl spends hours each day shoving fingers in her mouth and crying/whining. She comes to me for hugs, love and nursing, but when she realizes I am not fixing it she pushes me away to go scream in a corner. She get SO frustrated.

The cold isn’t getting worse, it’s just been a very runny nose all week – so gross. I am constantly wiping it, and I am quite thankful that she now seems to understand the concept and sometimes even comes to me for nose wiping. Now the nose is not as runny but she’s coughing as it drains. Sigh. I can hear her coughing at night and during naps, but she doesn’t usually wake from it.

The sleep has just been a nightmare. She gets a bad sleep association every time she is sick or teething and starts freaking out at the sight of her crib. She goes from happily going in her crib when sleepy and falling asleep on her own to struggling in my arms, crying, throwing her paci, and running for the door soon as she gets free. This happens even when she is falling down exhausted. So we had to switch to getting her to fall asleep in the living room and carrying her in to put her down after the fact. So frustrating, especially at 3am!

She does seem to be doing a bit better the last two days though… I can put her in the crib very drowsy and she’ll only whine once or twice and fall asleep. I do have to get her very drowsy before taking her in her room, though, else she sits up with a jolt and panics, causing me to have to start all over again. But at least she seems willing to get sleepy now, instead of fighting tooth and nail. It was a very rough few days.

Only problem is that now she thinks bedtime is after midnight. She’s been sleeping good after that, but before midnight it’s either a huge fight to get her drowsy or she falls asleep willingly only to wake up an hour later ready to play. She’s been trying to fall asleep in the early evening, like 6pm – especially in the car! This leads to a very late bedtimr. We successfully avoided it while driving home today… only to have her sleep 9:00-10:30 and be up until 1am. Agghhh! Thank goodness I don’t have to work, as I am getting sleep whenever she does, even if that is all morning. At this point I’m not going to bother trying to change the messed up schedule until she’s over the cold at least.

And that is why I’m not posting this week. And now bedtime limbo is now over so I am getting to bed!