Sorry for the long silence. There isn't really a lot to say, other than we are still hanging in there. Our next ultrasound is two weeks away, which is a freaky thought... just two weeks ago we were averaging better than one a week.

Update

We had a surprise ultrasound today with the RE. It's hard to explain the crazy shifts of a day like today: the two hours of fear starting when JF tells me she's just scheduled an ultrasound, followed by the cool excitement of seeing the little fellow wave around his limbs on the ultrasound.

The RE did a great job of explaining that we weren't crazy to want an ultrasound, while reassuring us that things seemed to be going well.

More Good News

Today's ultrasound went well: strong heartbeat and appropriate growth. The doctor and JF said they could see limbs, though I couldn't really make them out. He also poked around a bit and found the cause of the spotting which has been driving us past our wits' end. The bad news is that it doesn't sound like it is likely to stop; the good news is that it doesn't seem to be a major problem, either.

After killing twenty minutes at the comic book store, we then had our first meeting with a nurse from the ob/gyn's office. She was very nice and reassuring in her manner, though she seemed distressingly unprepared to figure out how to make an IVF pregnancy fit into their computer system. She also was much more conservative than our RE on the subject of what JF is allowed to do activity-wise. (Sigh.)

I feel like my mood has shifted very noticeably in the last 24 hours or so. I think I may be ready for the return of hope and optimism.

Attempted Bravery

My every superstitious instinct says I shouldn't post this. But I think maybe getting over that may be the first step to starting to feel normally, so here goes.

I think it's pretty clear JF's body thinks it is pregnant. She's got morning sickness (well, mostly evening sickness, actually), despite which she is frequently ravenously hungry. Her clothes that fit two weeks ago now fit strangely or not at all, yet her weight is exactly the same. She requires extreme amounts of sleep. Her lower back aches every morning. Etc.

Now with any luck, the ultrasound in an hour will confirm that JF's body knows what it is doing.

Just to be on the safe side, I'm wearing my lucky undies.

Probably ...

... when you call a therapist and can't get through leaving the voicemail message for her without completely falling apart, calling the therapist was a good idea.

What She Said

I still remember what it felt like when JF was pregnant back in '06. We were on top of the world. We thought we'd finally beaten our reproductive issues, and everything was going to be fine and easy from then on.

We had that notion quite thoroughly stomped out of us in the ensuing eighteen months of heartbreak and struggle. And now that it really does seem like maybe we're back on the road again, it's very hard to stop thinking we should be bracing ourselves for yet another failure.

SF and I keep talking about how we want to put up a blog post, but we can't figure out how to give voice to what we're feeling. He's out skiing with the dog this morning; I've decided to give it a shot.

Despite the reassurances of our doctor, we're both finding it hard to relax and stop worrying. My body seems to be misbehaving just enough to suck the joy out of every day: the spotting stopped for about 4 days before the last appointment, but it started up again, heavier, on Thursday. Then just a spot Friday evening. Nothing so far today, but I expect it's in the mail.

Every good thought I have seems to risk bringing misfortune down upon us. I know that sounds melodramatic. I know it is melodramatic. But I can't deny the feeling is there. It's strong enough that, after going through three miscarriages and 2 1/2 years of ART without the help of a therapist, I'm considering calling the one our RE recommended to see if she can help us relax and find the joy in what we're experiencing.

It felt like a risk to request the information packet from our hospital. It felt like a risk to call the OB/GYN. It felt like a risk to stop the PIO injections.
Our doctor has given us a 3-5% chance of miscarrying at this point. We've "beaten" the odds in so many ways before, though, that SF and I are both fully aware that those numbers above the 95th percentile still represent people. Logically, I know that requesting the hospital packet doesn't cause miscarriages, nor does filling out the OB's paperwork, nor sneaking a peek at cribs online.

Emotionally, though, it's a different story. SF sat me down a couple of days ago and said, "It's all right if we pretend we think things are going okay. If we don't, we won't ever do anything to prepare, because there's never a guarantee that things will continue as you hope."

This post feels clumsy ... but so do I.