We have been telling.  I break out in a cold sweat once in a while about it.  I'm 8 1/2 weeks right about now, and waiting until the official end of the first trimester is starting to seem like an artificial amount of time to wait.  On one hand, it seems like the longer we wait to tell, the "safer" we would be.  But now that we've seen the heartbeat twice, there doesn't seem to be any developmental milestone around the end of the first trimester that wou…[more]

Like countless skittish pregnant women before me, I idiotically wished for more nausea, and a benificent God has granted my wish.  Sigh.  No digestive events have occurred.  Yet.  I am fighting back.  Dr. Lee showed me the pressure point for nausea - inside of the wrist, three fingers down, and told me to get the Bioband.  I have seen the Bioband before, on the wrist of a pregnant woman who swore by it and on the wrist of a fellow passenger on…[more]

As usual I was a bit of a wreck for today's ultrasound.  My nausea lifted considerably yesterday.  I was grateful, since I was able to get some important things done without 1) wondering when I would puke or 2) constantly putting some kind of ginger product into my face.  But, naturally, I was also very worried about What That Could Mean. But there it was, today, blinking away: the heartbeat.  It was too blurry to count the heartrate (especially what with the hos…[more]

I'm in a bit of a pattern: big doctor's appointment Monday.  Last week: the first ultrasound looked good - "looked good" for me meant the impossibly good fortune of it NOT BEING ECTOPIC - followed by euphoria, or something like it, followed by a week of diminishing confidence.  Now that it's Saturday, my next appointment on Monday looms.  We're supposed to see the heartbeat.  I'm nervous again.  Even though I have every reason to hope.  Not to get my …[more]

I'm writing from an odd oasis of calm.  Well, not exactly calm but I am taking a break from doom and worry over the pregnancy. The whole thing is bizarre.  So many failures and losses have happened that I was ready for negative #6, and suddenly everything is different. Everything. It is a huge gift that so far the numbers and the ultrasound have been unequivocally good.  Nothing borderline.  I am very grateful for that.  I am noticing that my level of tr…[more]

I was so dreading this ultrasound.  I had to hold back tears just getting on the table.  It's so hard to believe that this thing I've done six times now, the transfer, the blood draws, and now the ultrasound, could have anything but a heartbreaking result.  The last time I was pregnant enough (after two strong betas) to need an ultrasound, the baby showed up in my fallopian tube.  I had surgery to remove the tube, which of course also removed my first and only viab…[more]

One of the reasons why I started taking pregnancy tests way last Wednesday (after I swore i wouldn't) was that I had started to feel a little bit of nausea.  Not really nausea, more like a loss of appetite.  That's never happened during a cycle before, positive or negative.This was nice, because I have had every pregnancy symptom there is and then a negative result.  Weird cramping, weird sex dreams, pulling pains in the groin, tiredness, dizziness, that rubber-chicken …[more]

Today was my beta.  I was a wreck.  I ended up having a whole lot of positive tests over the weekend, every day since last wednesday, in fact.But I've had that happen before.  My first pregnancy (IVF #2, my first donor egg cycle) happened with home test positives, and by the time the blood test day came, my beta was falling.  I'll never forget the phone call from the clinic saying "Uh, your beta level is 10."10.10 is very, very close to not being pregnant a…[more]

on a stick, that is.  POAS to the infertility online community, take a home pregnancy test to the rest of the world.  I have had my ups and downs with the dreaded peesticks.  My first donor egg IVF, the first one where i had a snowball's chance of success, I had a home pregnancy test come up positive and it was the thrill of my life.  My first positive, right there on my 44th birthday.  I felt very confident going in to my beta blood test on Friday and fo…[more]

I had my transfer today.  We transferred two thawed embryos that had been frozen at blast stage and were, according to my doctor, "looking great."  It has been a ho-hum cycle this far, since it's my sixth IVF and my 3rd FET.  But somewhere in the last five days I've acquired a big black cloud.  Part of it is the progesterone.One advantage of having done so many IVF cycles is I'm pretty familiar with what the various hormones do to me.  Very low estrog…[more]