6 Weeks

So here's my 6 week belly shot:

Of course, there's no difference from last week. Any "bump" you might see is from the tea and crackers I had this morning (which I promptly threw up after taking this photo). I don't expect to see a difference any time soon. So why am I taking pictures? I dunno. Maybe to pass the time and celebrate being another week closer to being OUT of the danger zone (aka, the first trimester). Week 6 feels great, because I'm half way there. So I take a picture, do a little dance, and then hurl and go lay down for the next 6 hours because these little aliens are sucking the life out of me.

In a good way.

But am I really only at week 6? The "aging" of this pregnancy has been a thorn in my side, only because most pregnancies are dated from the last known menstrual cycle. The explanation is that there's no way to actually know when conception actually happened, because everyone ovulates differently. And I'm all, uuuhhh, I know EXACTLY when it happened. Half the staff of my fertility clinic witnessed it.

bow-chicka-bow-wow

But when I type in my due date into these pregnancy calendars and such, they tell me I'm at 7 weeks today... Which sounds even better than 6 weeks, so I'm all for it.

Will it matter when I'm at 30/31 weeks? Not at all. But in the early stages, a week makes a BIG difference, so it's kind of confusing.

Regardless...

Today, according to my doctor, I'm 6 weeks pregnant. I'm half way through the first trimester!

HOORAY!

Heartbeat x 2

2 heartbeats were shown on the monitor today. 2 lovely, beautiful, amazing heartbeats.

At 5 weeks and 5 days, I though it would probably be too early to see a heartbeat. Especially with twins, who apparently tend to grow a bit slower.

So you can imagine how off-guard I was caught when the ultrasound tech pointed out the rapidly fluctuating dot on the screen. "There's one heartbeat," she said. And before I could even absorb what that meant, she went on..."And there's the other"

Amazing.

I am beyond grateful, and I am beyond humbled at the miracle of life. 10 days ago, I had a lima bean and a blob. 10 days later, I have two little people - complete with working hearts - growing inside me.

We're not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. But today, I saw 2 heartbeats on the monitor. Today, I saw life within me.

If that's not a miracle...I don't know what is.

*Note: This post was meant for Monday the 28th, but blogger was having editing issues. Today was not nearly as exciting as yesterday, when I wrote this post. I mostly napped.

Pregnancy symptoms and Blob Pictures

I would like to state for the record that I'm STILL crying at everything. For example, the video of the wedding procession dancing to Forever by Chris Brown (which I've seen at least half a dozen times before) just made me cry. For realz.

I would also like to officially rescind the "hooray, life is great, I'm not nauseus at all" statements. While life is still great, that greatness is now coming with a side of morning sickness. This is the third day in a row that I woke up queasy. Luckily, so far, it's nothing a little crackers and mint tea can't handle. But I'm only at 5 weeks and 2 days (or 5w2d, as the acronym-obsessed women on my November 2011 babies chat board would say), which suggests that the nausea will get worse before it gets better.

In other news, I have another ultrasound coming up on Monday. So I figured I'd better post my other blob pics before I get ahold of this new one. Unfortunately, I had to do it all ghetto-style and takes pics of the pics rather than scan them because I live in 1867. Regardless, observe:

3 days

I love this picture (as you can see by the well-worn fold marks in the paper. I am seriously about to love this picture in half if I don't get it in a scrap book asap). I mean - how many parents can say they have pictures of their chitlins when they were 3 days old. That's crazy, man! Crazy!

4 weeks

I also love this picture because its the first ultrasound of our kids. However, I'm not entirely convinced that the blob on the right isn't an lima bean that I swallowed whole and somehow made its way to my uterus. Still, I can only assume that the ultrasound technician knows what she's doing. If she says its a baby and not a legume, then I guess I'll have to take her word for it.

So other than the nausea, we're still truckin' along. Monday's bloodwork was fine, and I'm hoping for an equally uneventful lab report from today's sample.

And now it's back to the couch for me. I'm kind of burpy and green around the gills. Not to mention tired, because I've been up for a whopping 2.5 hours.

Man, it's a tough life.

5 Weeks

So it occurred to me that I need to document a critical aspect of any pregnancy:

The belly.

I've always been a pretty slim person, so the development of a belly large enough for not one but TWO little meatloaves will probably be pretty significant. Plus, after having twins, I'll need proof that at some point I had a nice figure, because that nice figure will probably be gone for good.

Thus, I present to you the week 5 belly picture:

I have no idea when I'll start to show. From my scientific interwebz research, it would appear that I could start showing any time between week 6 and week 14 (give or take). But either way, the flat tummy is going by the wayside, so I guess I should just enjoy it before it disappears forever.

However..
There is part of me that is wishing for that bump. At only (only!) week 5, I am fully aware of how tenuous this pregnancy still is. I know I should be celebrating my figure and lack of pregnancy symptoms while I can, but all I can think about is how EARLY in the pregnancy I really am, and how MUCH could go wrong. It's terrifying. I count down each agonizingly slow day, getting one day closer to the NEXT week of pregnancy, where my chances of miscarriage go down a teeny bit more.

But I suppose worrying is what motherhood is all about. In a way, the worries of pregnancy prepare us for the ceaseless worrying of being a parent.

It's okay. I'm fully capable of managing my worry, and I'm fully capable of being patient as these two little beans grow into (hopefully) two little people.
Still...
A time machine would be AWESOME right about now.

Lessons Learned Over Week 4

There are a lot of things you shouldn't do when you're pregnant. You shouldn't drink coffee or eat too much seafood. You shouldn't touch pesticides or breathe too much air freshener. You should avoid gas stations and wash your hands thoroughly after gardening. And the lunchmeat, people. For the love of god, don't forget to microwave your lunchmeat.

This should not come as much of a surprise to anyone who has been pregnant (although my mother confesses that when she was pregnant with my sister, the only thing her doctor told her to do was "take it easy" on the alcohol. My how times have changed). However, there are some things a pregnant woman shouldn't do that won't be found on any internet page or in any pregnancy book.

For example, one should not watch Little Women while pregnant. Nobody warned me of the uncontrollable, hysterical sobbing that would occur when Beth died, causing my husband to come running to the bedroom to figure out what was wrong. I was completely inconsolable for a good 10 minutes, causing my husband and myself to both wonder if I had indeed lost my mind. In fact, it would appear that pregnant women should avoid television alltogether, lest one put herself at risk of instant waterworks at the first sappy Hallmark commerical.

A pregnant woman should also not plan on having a life, at least in the first trimester (I'll get back to you on the other two trimesters). Being nearly at week 5, I happily confess that the only real symptom of pregnancy that I've experienced thus far is fatigue. But the fatigue has hit fast and hard, causing the most trivial task to feel like a marathon event. This week, I have done little that has not involved the couch and the television (exposing me to the aforementioned risk of emotional instability at the hands of the Lifetime channel). I went to the grocery store yesterday and returned so utterly exhausted that I spent the next 45 minutes prone on my back, listlessly watching my husband play some sort of Wii baseball-type thingie. And although the classic nausea has not yet reared its ugly head, I have been assured that twins typically bring twice the morning sickness, and I should plan on spending a significant amount of quality time with the toilet bowel around weeks 6 through 12 (one week left 'till that gem of a symptom starts). If my life was minimal this week, it will be nonexistant shortly. Awesome.

It is also important that pregnant women avoid board games at all costs, especially if they are poor losers with a history of tantrums involving "Chutes and Ladders." I am not exactly a good sport when it comes to board games, but the emotional rollercoaster of pregnancy has removed any patience and good nature I might have had left when it comes to these types of activities. I have been banned from all board games in our house. It's probably for the best.

Other than that, week 4 has been nice. Full of napping and fruit and putting my feet up. I am continuously grateful that I don't have a 9-5-type office job, where my weeks would probably be spent in a state of utter exhaustion with no respite save a lunch-hour nap. To be honest, I have no idea how women do this with jobs and - god forbid - other young children to manage.
Indeed, my hat goes off to them.

Fortunately, my situation is different, and I can rest when and for as long as I want.
People have asked me, are you fatigued at all?
And to them I have replied, well, not really, because I'm sleeping all the time.

It's a good thing :-)

Secrecy, or Lack Thereof

It's hard to keep an IVF pregnancy a secret, because it's hard to keep IVF a secret.

When you're undergoing IVF, or any other artificial-type baby-making process, it totally and utterly consumes you. The emotional and physical battles you're facing are tremendous. You eat, drink, sleep, and breathe conception. You feel like shit from the hormones, which leave you not only emotionally unstable (which was to be exptected), but also fatigued, achy, and generally run-down (which was less expected and even less well recieved). While prepping for IVF, you're giving yourself multiple injections a day, making you feel less like a person and more like a walking, talking pincushion. You're in the office constantly for vaginal ultrasounds and bloodwork. The procedure severely limits your activity (sexual or otherwise) for weeks on end. In other words, people want to know why you can't lift that gallon of milk.

So when anyone inquires about your general well-being during this time, it is the hardest thing in the world to slap a smile on your face and say, "oh, fine, how about you?" It's the elephant in the room. Given your emotional and physical fatigue, you're a lot more likely to just simply tell the truth. "Well, not so great. I'm undergoing IVF and I feel like my life is over."

Or, at least, it was like that for me.
I'm not a secretive person. I find that it's absolutey exhausting to keep a secret about myself, partially because I'm just too lazy to come up with a plausable lie, but mostly because I just don't care who knows about my problems. Despite the stigma that comes along with infertility (we just don't talk about it), I'm an open book. I'm tired, I'm emotionally charged, and if someone wants to know how I'm feeling, I'll tell them. It's just that simple.

The problem is that everyone who knows about your IVF also knows that you'll be getting news (good or bad) shortly thereafter. And anyone who knows about your IVF will also be expecting an answer at some point. "I'd rather not talk about it" is just not going to cut it.

So you have your family, a close circle of friends, and a less close circle of individuals who know about your IVF (the latter likely due to a slip of the tongue and a little gossip). Thus, they know that you know the outcome of this procedure in the next two weeks. Those with self-restraint won't ask, but most are dying to know. They mean well - they genuinely care about you and are hoping for the best - but their curiosity is there, nonetheless.

So although I'm only in my 4th week of pregnancy, more people know about it than you would expect. Again, this is okay, because I'm not a secretive person. But in the back of my mind, there is that horrible, terrible potential for having to "un-tell" all these people if something goes wrong.

If I could do it all over, would I keep the whole process of IVF a secret? Well, now I know it actually worked, I'd probably try.

But on the other hand...this is a wonderful, wonderful problem to have :-)

4 Weeks

Today, I'm 4 weeks pregnant.
And as of today, I'm having twins.

But let me back up...

2 years ago to this month, my husband and I started trying for a baby. Granted, he wasn't my husband at the time, but hey, it's 2011, yanno?!?

At first we giggled. I mean, who in their right mind plans a shotgun wedding?

And then, we pondered. Hmmm. 6 months later...married...still no bun in the oven.

Next? We worried. 11 months of dedicated "trying". Extremely satisfying but still...no bambino.

After that we were diagnosed. Idiopathic infertility. A poor seamen sample here. A slightly "weird" glucose response there. Despite the fact that we've always been healthy. Despite the fact that I was far from "old" in terms of baby making. Despite the fact that we've always eaten right and exercised while the gluttons around us were downing wings and french fries by the truck-load. (Strangely, those "gluttons" were all getting pregnant around this time - a cruel irony to say the least)

The following months were worse. 2 failed IUIs (intra-uterine insemination for those who aren't fluent in infertility-talk, and yes, it's as romantic as it sounds). A failed IVF cycle, in which the words "poor egg quality" were repeated over and over again in my mind as I tried to sleep, heartbroken and facing a life of childlessness.

The holidays came and went. Our second since trying to conceive. Adoption was researched and to my horror, required more money, time, and effort than completing graduate school. A nightmare, to say the least.

And then...

A second round of IVF. We won't get our hopes up, we decided. After all, it had failed once. Why would it work now?

But it worked.
Weird cramps.
A sudden disinterest in coffee.
Ginormous breasts (which I think everyone in this house agrees is a rockin' symptom of pregnancy).
A home pregnancy test (Cheating, according to my reproductive endocrinologist, who had scheduled me for bloodwork the following day).
A blue line. That simple, beautiful, wonderous blue line that eluded me 24 times in a row.

And today, I'm 4 weeks pregnant, with twins, and quite possibily the most blissful mom-to-be in the world (or at least, the tri-state area).

And so I'm blogging through this journey. Because blogging is what I do. I have other blogs. Funny blogs. Zany blogs. But this blog? Is just for me. No entertaining the masses, this time. No cracking jokes to gain readers. Just pure, simple, pregnancy and the pure, simple joy that comes with it.

Today, I am 4 weeks pregnant.
Today, I am a new woman.