7 weeks today!

Today I am 7 weeks pregnant. I definitely feel different – I sleep all the time, I’m now nauseas for at least part of the day everyday, and I vomited last week one night. I’m learning that pregnancy is constant adjustment. You learn what to expect and how to deal with what you are feeling, and then a new symptom starts and you learn and adjust again.

This week the baby is about the size of a raspberry, and finally looks more human than tadpole.

On Friday we have our first ultrasound and prenatal appointment, and we can’t wait!

Changing symptoms and anxiety

I’ve been pregnant about a month now; I’ll be “6 weeks” tomorrow by standard counting, which includes the 2 weeks between your last menstrual period and conception.

It’s been just 15 days since the positive pregnancy test, and in that time I’ve already learned a lot and found my mindset and focus adjusting from myself and Husband to the amazing thins happening in me and what I can do to create the best womb and future home for my child-to-be.

For most if that first month of pregnancy, I felt cramping almost daily. It felt a lot like I feel when my period is coming, but the cause was different – implantation and then the uterus growing and adjusting.

For several days now those cramping feelings have been gone. On some of those days I’ve felt something I can only attempt to describe as a tight feeling in my tummy – like it’s being stretched but it doesn’t have the give to stretch further. My (already large) breasts have grown some and are tender but not as tender as they were a week ago. And I’m eating more frequent smaller meals and snacks, which has helped keep the queasiness to a minimum.

All of that combined to me feeling “less pregnant” than I did the week before. On Thursday and Friday this was actually to the degree that I worried that maybe I’d miscarried, perhaps this “blighted ovum” or “missed miscarriage” thing I’d recently heard about. I told myself it was unlikely and that really the odds were everything was fine. I’d read though that symptoms coming and going was normal. But then, I’d also read that morning sickness would probably be getting worse, not better, at this point. So I couldn’t completely quiet that nagging worry in my head.

On Saturday morning I took the remaining pregnancy test I had and one each of the two brands of OPK I still had on hand, as I’d heard that those could double as pregnancy tests. The lines on the OPK’s showed up super fast and dark, before even the control lines showed. That was reassuring that there is a lot of HCG in my system, so the little pea is very likely to be still growing strong inside of me!

One thing is clear though – the hormones and idea of impending motherhood have turned my worry meter up a notch! I’ll be laying in bed trying to get rest and start thinking about all the things I need to do – like check if that acne cream is safe, or the safety of the herbal teas I drink, or get our finances in shape, or start learning about pros and cons of prenatal testing, natural labor, cloth diapers, breast feeding, brands of baby slings/carriers, car seats, and co-sleepers.

Only a few weeks in to knowing I’m pregnant and my mind is on overdrive!

5 weeks today!

Our little seed is somewhere between a sesame seed and an apple seed, depending on the source. It can get a little confusing because some places tell you what will happen over the next week while others tell you what happened last week.

One thing I know for sure is the baby’s heart starts beating right around now. Isn’t that amazing?

Yesterday was Mother’s Day.

My husband went to his dad’s first to help him out, and he told his dad then. His father, ever the ornery curmudgeon, said “That’s the worst news you could possibly tell me. How are you going to afford it?”

What a jerk!

After that we went to visit my mother-in-law. She’s been in a nursing home over a year now. So we went to visit her together and told her the happy news. She was so excited!

“Ai, que lindo!”

She kept trying to get out of her chair to hug me! We had to remind her she cannot stand. So I said just ask me when you want a hug, I’ll come over and bring it to you! She was so happy about it couldn’t talk about anything else for our whole visit. That was a much better way to end our Mother’s Day.

2WW episode 5: Definitely pregnant!

Saturday after my super faint line, I went and bought some First Response Early Result and e.p.t. Digital tests. Took them yesterday morning with my first morning urine, and now I really know for sure – I’m pregnant!

The First Signal is the faintest. It’s definitely true that First Response Early Result is more sensitive! The digital one makes it super clear – I’m Pregnant!

Pretty clear result in the First Response Early Result test!

I tried to go back to sleep after but couldn’t. My mind was just racing!

I feel so lucky that this happened so quickly. This is only our 2nd cycle actively trying, and 3rd cycle since I went off BCP.

I am going to call the dr today to set up my first prenatal appointment! I’m a little bit worried as I’ve been having cramping very focused on one side which can be a sign of ectopic pregnancy, but I think it’s probably within normal limits.

I’m convinced I know where the little seed is living, on the left side.

Husband and I decided to call it Blasty the blastocyst for now. It will probably be an embryo in a few days, but for now its a rapidly dividing and differentiating little poppy seed-sized blastocyst. I am scared it will be one of the 10-30% of pregnancies to miscarry and don’t want to get too attached until we’ve made it a little further together.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. We’re maybe/kinda/hopefully going to have a baby in January 2014!

2WW episode 4: The Internets think I am pregnant…

Last night I fell asleep really early – couldn’t keep my eyes open while watching tv around 8 pm. I moved to the bed at 9ish for a “nap” and then never got up until this morning. Took my temp at 7:30 and 8:30 and it was still holding steady at 98 (after a minor dip yesterday, though I’d had to get up early so it wasn’t at the same time).

I don’t dream that often, but this past week I’d been having dreams that I remembered. Last night’s was particularly memorable. I dreamed that I took a pregnancy test, and got a very faint line. And then I told my husband, and a whole excited conversation ensued about how “a line is a line”.

I don’t believe dreams are anything more than random stories from neurons firing in your brain, but I did have this dream on my mind when I groggily fed the cats and then went to the bathroom to take a test with my first morning urine.

I had ordered some cheap First Signal home pregnancy tests on Amazon, so I peed in a cup and dropped 3 droplets of pee into the sample area, thinking how I missed chemistry. Then I looked at my clock and proceeded to weigh myself and do other things rather than stare at it. I looked at it at 4 minutes, saw a strong control line and some dye streaks, and thought “nope”.

So I marked negative in my chart and washed my hands or something. Then I looked at the test again, about 8 minutes from when it started, and there was a super faint line. The test said don’t look after 10 minutes, so this was still in the window. I thought, well, now, what is that. It’s so faint. Not wanting to get my hopes up, I said, this must be an evap line. I even wrote it in my chart notes.

Taken around 10 minutes.
Click on image to vote on whether it’s a positive at countdowntopregnancy.com

I took some pictures. I put them on Fertility Friend and a handful of people came by to say it looked positive. A squinter. But a BFP. Then more people said the same. Within 10 minutes, they asked? Then it’s not an evap, they said. A few said “hard to tell, test again tomorrow”.

Then I went to the bathroom, and looked at the test again. About 3 hours had passed since I took it. Now it looked like this:

Around 3 hours after testing. Click on image to vote on whether it’s a positive at countdowntopregnancy.com

It got darker, and there was more color to the line! It’s faint, but I thought it might be real. My heart started beating fast as Hubby had just woken up and I decided what to say.

I went and gave him a big hug and a kiss. He laid back down in the better. So I went and sat on it. “I’m not sure what to say,” I started, a huge grin on my face. I think I might have gotten a positive pregnancy test this morning! It’s very faint, but there’s a line.” He started grinning like crazy, and I asked if he wanted to see it. He said yes, so I brought the test over and we looked at it together, commenting how it now had some color to it and there was definitely a line there. I explained about evaps, indents, and “a line is a line”. We both agreed it seemed likely it was really a line.

Then I put the updated photos on the polling service at countdowntopregnancy.com, and asked people there as well. Now in all the places I’ve posted, I’m up to about 50 responses, with 48 saying it’s a positive, and 2 saying, not sure! So, those more experienced at reading faint lines than I seem to agree it’s a BFP. One even said that’s exactly what hers looked like with this brand at 11 DPO.

A few minutes later, Hubby started happily laughing. “I just opened this game I was playing – The Simpsons Tapped Out, and guess what I saw? Something I’d told it to do in the game was completed and it gave me this message,” he said. And he handed me his phone, where I saw this:

I can’t believe it! We may have done it! I can’t wait for tomorrow to test again.

What do you guys think?

Your votes welcome:

10 minute pic

3 hour pic

2WW episode 3: In which I obsess over symptoms

I am doing better this month with taking it easy and just letting time pass, focusing on my days and what I can control.

But I am still me, and therefore I am still thinking frequently about what I am feeling in my body and what it might mean and how the physiological events of a hypothetical conception might manifest and be observed in one who is watching closely.

It started with alternating mild and sharp cyst like pains the day of and after positive opk that then faded and seemed like ovulation, and then around my temp drop during LP I had three days of cramps in the evening, on the same side as the cyst-like pain, that in my crazy wishful head could have been implantation, shortly followed by my first case of lots of watery CM during LP, and now a temp jump which has sustained for 4 days. I’ve been emotional and am crying when watching tv or movies, at embarrassingly mild things like The Croods. Yup, I bawled at The Croods last week.

Yesterday, somewhere between 8 and 11 DPO, I was feeling mild nausea, cramps, backaches, and headaches. I slept poorly, waking up often, and I felt fatigued.

Stupidly, I took a preg test, on the off chance that I was both really 11 DPO and also would get an early positive. Of course, it was negative. Somehow, it still calmed me a bit as I was getting anxious that I was getting my hopes up just to be crushed (almost like getting anxious about being too anxious!), and the BFN helped me moderate my hopes. I’m more successfully telling myself now that these symptoms are probably all just PMS.

This morning I actually feel better. No cramps or nausea. Very mild backache. And I slept well. I hope to stay more relaxed for this second week!

PMS off BCP = General Malaise

Cramps.

Backaches.

Nausea.

Headaches.

Fatigue.

Mood swings.

Crying.

I want to curl up in bed now. Now!

And I’m not expecting my period for another week.

It was like this last cycle too. I hate PMS since I’ve been off the pill!