It sucks. But I'm dealing with it. I haven't "felt" very pregnant all week. No sore breasts. Not much cramping. No fatigue. So I decided to take a home pregnancy test yesterday morning. Jeff had gone for some tests at the hospital which gave me a perfect opportunity to either 1) surprise him when he came home or 2) wallow in my self-pity. I peed on a stick, and within seconds knew it was going to be negative. I brought the stick with me to bed and laid it on my nightstand. Every minute or so I would roll over to look at it again, hoping I just didn't see a small shadow of a line the time before. And as each minute passed I cried a little harder. After about 20 minutes I gave up and stopped crying. Not too bad, huh? I told you before that I felt emotionally more stable this time around. I had to applaud myself.
Then Jeff called. Literally about 5 minutes after I stopped crying (and applauding myself). Quickly I had to determine if I was going to tell him over the phone or wait until he came home. He easily figured somethin' was wrong and asked immediately. I felt horrible telling him over the phone, and then the crying started again. It was hard enough wallowing in my self-pity but now I was letting down my husband, my best friend, the father of my son! I know, I know. This is a two-person job to get pregnant but why do I feel all the pressure? Ugh! Then you have to throw in oodles of hormones to make the woman even more sensitive!
Anyway, I resigned myself to the fact we weren't pregnant and got on with my day. I had to wake up Sean finally at 9:20am. The little sleepyhead was still out cold. But he still gave me a big smile and I smothered him with kisses and hugs. Thank goodness for this cute little guy otherwise mamma would be miserably sad.
I took another pregnancy test before going to bed. Again, nada. In fact, the spot where the line was meant to be actually looked whiter than the rest of the strip. Almost as if to say, "duh, I told you you're not pregnant!".
Today was the real bloodtest at the fertility center. There's no second-guessing that number. They measure the HCG in your blood, which is the hormone your body starts producing when you're pregnant. It's the hormone home pregnancy tests measure in your urine, but they don't detect the hormone until 40 so I was holding out a little bit of hope. Then my acupuncturist told me last week she detected I was pregnant in the feel of my pulse, but today not so much - maybe a little bit. So I headed home with a very small glimmer of hope. And was shot down by 2:30pm when the nurse called to tell me it was negative. The measurement was less than 1... so I'm not even a little bit pregnant. Bummer. I cried just a little bit more.
The worst part of all of this is I feel like I sabotaged the whole process by not getting myself in better shape. In my heart of hearts I felt that played a HUGE role in our success with Sean. But I never had the raw motivation to do anything about it this time. The embryos we transferred were genetically tested and known to be chromosomally normal. It was our best shot of getting pregnant, but I wasn't in the best physical state I could have been. I blew it. I'm sorry. Really sorry. I have two choices -- beat myself up over it, or forgive myself and move on. I've sent an email to a personal trainer. No more excuses. We'll try again in February or March. Plenty of time to get myself in the best physical shape I can without losing too much time. I have to forgive myself.
Oh, and we're going to Disney World in January. Plan B is in action.
