Tired...So Very Tired

Got out for a hike with these guys yesterday...not going to happen today. This is our dog Newton on the left, my parent's dog Comic, who we're dogsitting, on the right.

I know being pregnant is supposed to make you tired, especially the first trimester, but I wasn't really prepared for the kind of mind-numbing, can-barely-keep-my-eyes-open thing that's going on. And to make matters worse, I can't really sleep. I try napping, and maybe once a week I sleep. At night, I'm up very late (even though I go to bed early) and/or wake up in the middle of the night and then am up for hours at a time.

This week work has been absolutely insane, too, which doesn't help matters.

Approximately every other day I can get myself out of the house for some sort of mellow hike/walk, but the rest of the time it's just not possible.

Talking on the phone seems to be far beyond my energy level.

There's a load of laundry that's been in the dryer since last Sunday.

I don't think I've ironed since January, maybe December.

I haven't been grocery shopping yet this week. Food choices are getting pretty slim around here. Cooking dinner just sounds exhausting, anyway...and I'm pretty weird about food right now, too. For instance, I have zero interest in vegetables, which is totally unlike me.

My husband and I aren't spending enough time together doing fun stuff.

Etc...

Not complaining--so grateful to be pregnant--just telling it like it is. This is hard.

Oh, to have a full and decent night's sleep...

Nauseous and Exhausted...

...but thrilled to be feeling this way, even though that sounds ridiculous. Every symptom makes this pregnancy more real...

Pregnancy: Month 1

Wow, hard to believe today is the last day of my first month of pregnancy! I thought I'd do a little month-by-month diary here, to be able to look back and remember what happened.

So, Month 1:

• Conception involved a trip to the clinic and resting after at the Hotel Monaco in downtown Denver. Do babies really get made any other way? It’s weird, but after all we’ve been through, it’s hard to fathom that this isn’t what’s normally involved
• The transfer wasn’t particularly smooth/comfortable, and the embryos were “early," whatever that means, but I had such a lovely time with a dear friend of mine before, during and after (my husband's in school and had to head home the day after retrieval)
• And then, the two week wait. Awful. Although I was very glad to finally be home after a couple weeks out of town. And I had a lot of symptoms. (Warning: if you’re squeamish you might want to skip the rest of this bullet.) Big/sore boobs, thirsty all the time in the middle of the night (I probably got up for drinks five times a night), tired enough to take a nap in the afternoons, which I NEVER do. And I read somewhere that if you’re pregnant you can see blue veins on your boobs and sure enough, there they were. Also had some bleeding, one of the early days of the two week wait and then again the last four days before the pregnancy test. Not a lot, but enough to make me a little worried. Still, I was feeling fairly good about my chances of being pregnant. Until the day before my pregnancy test, when I was still dealing with the slight bleeding and I started to get cramps that felt like my period was about to start. I was so down the day before and the day of the test, sure it hadn’t worked. But it had.
• As I mentioned before, I am craving bean burritos like nobody’s business. And milk. And bread of pretty much any sort, which isn’t like me at all. Not really wanting meat, but I’ll eat it. Oh, and I gained 10 pounds from the IVF drugs, so I’m starting this pregnancy 10 pounds heavier than I want to be. But once this is all over, I am absolutely determined to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Hiking backpack for the baby, here we come
• Since the positive test, I’ve been feeling cautiously happy. I’m tired, especially in the afternoons. I’ve been resting for an hour or two every afternoon (sleeping more often than not). I’ve started exercising again but mellow walks, not hard hikes and hot yoga and snowboarding like I’m used to. Still, it’s good to be out in the fresh air and moving. I got a couple of pregnancy books that I’ve started to read. My husband and I have talked a little about baby names, what we’re going to want for a nursery, how we’re going to save for/afford maternity leave (I freelance so no maternity benefit; my husband’s a full-time student). We’ve told a few people, but there are many more to tell after the first trimester is over

So overall: a tough month with the two week wait. But things have been super easy in general for the week that we’ve known the news is positive.

Can’t wait to see what Month 2 brings! Knowing if it’s one baby or two, and I’m guessing morning sickness, and I have no idea what else. Looking forward to finding out. :)

Should You Get Excited After You’re Finally Pregnant?

Finally…a good pregnancy test, followed by a second. I feel happy and peaceful and like I don’t have to drag an enormous burden of sadness around with me everywhere I go anymore.

But. I’m cautious. I don’t even want to write the word “miscarriage,” but it’s a possibility, I know. I don’t want to dwell on it, but I’m feeling the need to protect myself, to stay as neutral as possible, until the first trimester is done in April. After that, I read somewhere, there’s only a 1% chance of miscarriage, so I’ll be, for the most part, safe.

What this means:

• NO baby-related purchases until then
• NO changing anything in the house (eg, getting started on a nursery)
• NO knitting baby clothes, or even looking at patterns
• NO making broad general announcements about my pregnancy (although my friends and family who read my blog know)
• NO crazy-deep attachment to the baby/ies

And I feel kind of bad about this last point. But I’ve read that it’s entirely normal to feel this way after IVF, especially if, as is usually the case, there have been many years of trying to get pregnant before the successful cycle occurs.

I know what’s going on…I’ve had so many disappointments and things go wrong…I’m just trying to emotionally guard against making something bad happen be any worse.

I’m sure as time goes on and my pregnancy becomes more viable how I feel will change, but right now I’m just trying to stay relatively unexcited and calm, while striving to do everything I need to do 100% right (take my medications, eat right, get some light exercise, rest, minimize stress, no travel, etc.)

The answer to the get excited question is different for every woman, of course. For me, I think it’s a question of feeling safe. Every week that goes by without incident I’ll feel a little safer. Every step--each ultrasound, weaning off the medications that I’m on, transitioning away from the fertility clinic to my OB--each thing that goes right I’ll let a little more of the excitement it. I don’t think it’s an either/or thing, but something that will happen gradually.

I’m happy--so happy, don’t get me wrong. Just trying to keep that jump-up-and-down excitement for the time being at bay.

Pregnancy Test Drama That Ended Well

So I waited ALL DAY by the phone yesterday to hear the results of my second pregnancy test. I was really anxious to hear, because last year, every positive pregnancy test I got was followed by news that the baby wasn't going to stick. I needed that good second test to feel like I was really and truly pregnant.

6 PM and still no call, so I called the after-hours line at my out-of-town clinic, and they said they never received the results from my local blood draw. And they had left the office for the evening. Nothing to be done. Ugh.

So I called the hospital in my small town where I had my blood drawn, and they said they HAD faxed the results, but they couldn't give the results to me because it was against their policy to give results directly to patients. Ugh. I started crying because A) I'm crazy-hormonal right now, and B) I didn't know how I was going to make it 'til Monday to find out.

Long story short, the tech on the phone hinted that if I came to the hospital they might be able to do something. They all know me...I've come in for what seems like a thousand blood draws over all my IVF cycles last and this year.

When I got there, the tech had a printout with my VERY GOOD test number on it, even thought it wasn't something she was supposed to do, and she all but hugged me, she was so happy for me...she and everyone else in the blood draw center knows how long I've beeen trying to get pregnant. God bless her.

How nice to have experienced the kindness of that tech, and to get the news from someone who is really pulling for me. In the end it worked out perfect.

Transitioning From Being an Infertility Patient to Being Pregnant

I so want to decorate a nursery already...

This is a big shift for me. Some of the stuff that's on my mind today:

• Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for my clinic to call with my second beta result, for which I had blood drawn this morning. A good result means I'm pretty solidly pregnant. A bad one means I'm probably miscarrying. There's no reason to think it'll be bad, except that things have gone wrong over and over and over again...it's hard to have faith that everything is going right
• Laying down for an hour or two in the afternoons...lovely. How much am I loving my work-from-home job right now? Haven't been sleeping well, so really need that rest. Plus, who knows what my body's doing/needing at the moment, aside from the insomnia?
• All the restrictions I was hating during the two week wait (no yoga, no hikes, no wine, no tea, no snowboarding, no baths, etc., etc., etc.) are no big deal if there's a reason for them, like it's good for an actual baby/ies
• Feeling all of a sudden like being social again. I've really isolated myself, with this cycle in particular and this past year over all the cycles I've done in general...and really the not wanting to be around people much goes all the way back to when my brother died...it's been hard for me to do things feeling like tragedy has changed me in a way that sets me apart from the world. It's a good sign I want to call and see people...that's not a place I've been for a while
• Speaking of my brother, it's progress in me getting over his death that my first thought after finding out I was pregnant was not about him. It was about my husband and our parents and a few close friends and my brother who is alive who is awesome...it's only when I called my alive brother that I got sad thinking I couldn't call my dead brother. But this is big for me...even my wedding two years ago...it ended up being an incredibly happy day, but I was hesitant to get married because my dead brother couldn't be there (my hesitation had NOTHING to do with my husband...he is wonderful), and the whole day was planned around making it so it would be OK if I lost it (very small, reception at our home, etc.) That feeling of not wanting to do something because my dead brother can't be a part of it--it's not here with this. Which is as is should be. I have to let my dead brother go, or I'm not going to ever have any chance of being happy
• I know a lot about what to do with infertility, almost nothing about being pregnant. Some baby books or some such may be in order
• My husband has already picked out boy and girl names. Too cute
• Overall, there is such a feeling of lightness that's coming along with all this...like I don't have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders anymore
• I promised myself no matter how sick/uncomfortable I am during this pregnancy, I'm not going to complain. Not one word. (Well, I might talk about some things on this blog, but not one negative word to my husband. I'm just so incredibly grateful to be in this position)
• Pretty much all I want to eat right now is bean burritos
• Still waiting, waiting, waiting for that call from the clinic. It's 5:30 PM...geeze. My clinic's great but this is ridiculous...

Photo credit: Conor Keller.

And at the End of The Two Week Wait We Have...

...a positive pregnancy test!!!!!!

I am beyond thrilled. And a little shell-shocked. I've had, I don't know, about 50 months in a row where the news has been bad, not good. The first 25 or so of those months it was no big deal, the last 25 it was increasingly gut-wrenchingly awful. Wow. I'm pregnant. And I know it's early, and a lot can go wrong still, but I don't know, I just feel in my gut that this is it, this is going to work out for us, there is going to be a huge shift in my world where for once I'm the bearer of happy, not awful news. It's been so incredibly long since that was the case.

Happy, very happy. And grateful. Things can go right in my world. :)