It never ceases to amaze me how long two weeks can feel. Everyone in the infertile word knows that the two week wait is pure torture. My last two week wait wonderfully and thankfully ended with a BFP, but it marked the beginning of an even scarier two week wait. A wait that is finally ending tomorrow with the dreaded ultrasound.*
Wondering what is happening inside your body is a strange feeling, so I can't help but compare this pregnancy with the feelings I had before. My brain wants it to be like baby #1 (lots of symptoms) but minus the unhappy ending. So I end up having mental conversations with myself like this: Well, with baby #1, I had heartburn and constipation but this time I don't. But with baby #2, I had no symptoms and this time I have constant uterus-expanding feelings and sore boobs. With baby #1, I had insomnia and crazy dreams but this time I just have exhaustion. It's enough to drive me mad.
Before tomorrow, I've got to get the bad ultrasound vibes out of my head, so I'm going to vanquish those demons here. Baby #1 ended with a missed miscarriage. I had an ultrasound around 5w5d, and my doctor didn't see a fetal pole, or she said that she maybe saw the beginning of one but it was too small to tell. She was so positive and upbeat and told me repeatedly that it was still early, so I didn't realize the significance. I also have no idea what my beta results were for that pregnancy. I think she suspected something was wrong, but I was blissfully unaware. We went into a high resolution ultrasound place around 7w4d, and the tech couldn't see anything through my abdomen so I got intimate with wandy. She didn't talk at all or show us anything, which I slowly began to realize was a bad sign. The doctor came in and told me that I'd had a miscarriage and explained that she should see a heartbeat and there wasn't one. She also told me that there appared to be two sacs, which confused the heck out of me in the following weeks because there had only been one sac before. Later, after the dreaded "insert three tablets" episode, I started to be heartsick and paranoid that I had killed a viable ninja baby or two. But a follow-up visit to my doctor cleared that up. The two sacs were misshapen and were really just one that had already broken apart. Something (sac, pole - I don't know?) had stopped growing at 6w3d. It's amazing how little I know about that pregnancy.
Baby #2 ended earlier. I had a BFP but wasn't having any symptoms at all. At about 5w4d, I had a little brown discharge. I called the doctor's office and said that I knew it could be normal "old blood," but after my previous miscarriage, I was worried. They saw me the following day. My doctor inserted wandy, and voila! An empty uterus. Nothing. Then she told me that the office POAS was really light. I went for a beta, but before I got the results back, I started having some pains in my side. Really mild pains, but my doctor ordered me to the ER. That time, the ultrasound was high res, so they found a teeny-tiny sac in my uterus where it belonged. Couldn't see anything in it. Had another beta at the ER, which was 29. The next day, I miscarried naturally (Thank God, because I couldn't stand the idea of inserting 3 tablets again).
So here we are. Terrified of the ultrasound tomorrow. I'm sometimes feeling optimistic because my betas have been so good and the constantly crampy uterus is reassuring. But mostly I'm scared and pretty sure that I'll be crying long before they tell me anything. Hopefully getting these bad-ultrasound stories out of my system will help me be calm and ready to handle whatever news we get.
*Yes, I know after tomorrow I'll just have a new wait to deal with.
