Ok, so that’s obviously overstating the fact, but I am feeling pretty confident that all is still moving right along in there.  Symptoms continue unabated, with a hint of tummy unease to up the stakes a bit.

Tomorrow’s what I’m looking forward to.  Looking for a good, super-strong singleton in there, pumping out tons of hCG, but not, you know, dividing into quadruplets or anything.

As far as today goes, it’s another day of trying to get something ‘productive’ done, in between visiting too many baby-gear, baby-care, and pregnancy websites.  I might try to go for a walk, if I can get my butt in gear, though then again, I might just take it easy and do some writing.  I started a new knitting project – amigurumi sea creatures.  I bought this book years ago, just because the patterns were so adorable.  I’m currently in between patterns, and thought it might be fun to knit starfish and snails.  It is.  I’m having a blast with the wee, complicated patterns, and hope to move up to prawns very very soon.  Because I’m a geek and you can never have too many knitted prawns in your house, right?  *rolls eyes*

(Already I am a boring pregnant lady.  While I can’t promise to raise the drama levels – at least not on purpose – I will promise to try to do better, but for the moment, my brain’s still in fuzzy “pregnant, pregnant, pregnant, pregnant, pregnant, pregnant!” land, and it’s making it hard to think of anything else, over the drone and din of that word.)

I spent yesterday in a blur: poring over cloth diapering vs. disposable online debates, grinning like a fool, and – of course – reading all the lovely comments people left.  Let me repeat that one – reading all the lovely comments that lovely people left.

Thank you.

Thank you from the bottom of my bitter, infertile heart.  Having you all to celebrate this hurdle with – as I hope to celebrate many more of my own and of your hurdles – made yesterday absolutely perfect.  The Boy is keeping his emotional distance just yet - can’t really blame him – but I’m full-on in love with this sprog already, and with the potential of this pregnancy.  And having so many wonderful women to dance with in little joyful circles, while making squeeee!!!! noises, made yesterday the very happiest of happy days for me.

Thank you.

(Plus I found a whole BUNCH of blogs I need to start reading!)

***

In Symptom Watch news, The Thirst is still the major motivating factor in my life, second only to The Peeing and The Salivating.  Talking about gross (which, of course, I love to do), drinking water like a fiend while you’re having to swallow spit so often that you notice it?  Let’s just say “Blech” & be done with it.  Give me Greens Now is pushing for ascendency in the appetite department.  The Girls have decided to strike out on their own, just as soon as they can unhook the underwire bra I’ve strapped them into (and the way they’re growing I expect them to sprout fingers any day now); and Mah Fabulous Uterus has noticed that there’s a stowaway and is rearranging her bits & pieces accordingly (cramping for me is a GOOD sign).  All in all, even without that very reassuring HPT this morning, I’m feeling pregnant, which is to say: I’m feeling happy.

As far as other things going on are going on, I should learn more about my fate at work next week at the meeting my old manager called.  I’m going to go in for my first beta on Monday instead of Tuesday, so that my second one will be Wednesday instead of Thursday so that I can make said meeting.

And, um, also because I’m impatient like that and want to go in today but I’m not because I’m a good patient & try not to push my clinic’s buttons too much by revealing that I tested a full 6 days early.  (Hahah.  Which I did.  Suckas.)

I downloaded the pregnancy meditation tape that I bought & never opened because it arrived from Amazon the day I learned I lost Sprog #4.  I downloaded it & listened to it on repeat all the way home from work.  This routine actually does seem to help me, I’ve been listening to IVF meditation tapes the same way, and it helps me get a handle on my overwhelming anxiety.  Haven’t yet figured out how to pick it up and toss it out the door, but I’m working on it.

And my attitude is completely different this time around.  I went into this hoping – no, nearly assuming – that this would work.  Despite the Thanksgiving cyst, the cycle went darned near perfectly.  Ms DonorFantastica had such a fantastic response, and my poor confused body was so happy not to be on stims that it rose to the challenge by producing a lovely fluffy lining, and getting pregnant has never been my main challenge anyway.  So I’ve felt confident this time around, not fatalistic.  And I can’t begin to say what a great gift that is.  If it lasts another few weeks I will consider myself the luckiest person around, because, damn, I’ve been dreading the crippling, free-floating anxiety and it just hasn’t shown up yet.  Hoping that it got lost in all this snow…

I have all sorts of plans for this blog space  in the next few months, and I warn you now – I’m going to be giddy and I’m going to be goofy and I totally understand if you don’t actually want to watch my giddy & goofy on display.  I’m going to be posting my excel charts – you know you do this too, Traci! – and I’m going to be posting tickers and US pictures and new headers and week-by-week stats.   I’ve had enough of fatalism and am going to consciously embrace The Giddy.  Beats the hell out of WaitingForTheOtherShoeToDrop, which is the place I’ve been operating from for the last 2 years.

Ready to move on.  Ready for my blogging name to become a reality.  Blogging about my sprog.  I like the sound of that.

And I’m still feeling all zen-like and dreamy, because this has been the mellowest cycle for me so far.  Removing the pressure of relying on my less-than-ok eggs has meant that I feel, well, confidant about this whole reproduction process.  I’m pregnant.  With a baby.  Chances are very damned good that I’m going to walk out of here in September with a real, live baby.

A baby.

I’m going to have a baby.

And, some heartfelt pleading here – if you’d like to make today even happier than it already is for me, delurk & say hello.  I’m as bad as the next person about always saying ‘hey’, especially when I’m reading from my GoogleReader, but it would mean the world to me today, to hear from folks I’ve never ‘met’ before.  (I’d also love to hear from my wonderful always-there-for-me readers, obviously!!!)

Going to go practice flying, now.  And grinning like a maniac.  And laughing for no very good reason at all.  Going to go wear something the color of hope.  Going to officially put the coffee maker away.   Going to buy pregnancy apps and pregnancy meditation tapes and maybe something adorable and pastel and frivolous.  And when (if) I come down from over the moon?  I’ll let you know.  Don’t wait up.

Not really, I mean, I don’t feel as crampy as I’d like to, and my boobs don’t yet have the shiny, “ouch, don’t look at me!” level of tenderness I’ve come to associate with being sprogged-up.  But I’m thirsty like Death Valley in summertime thirsty.  I’m thirsty like this while I’m drinking my 13th glass of water for the day.  Seriously.  It’s a weird, weird feeling.  Especially since I know it mostly means I’m going to be up all night, because my bladder apparently accommodates this whole “drink water like it’s going out of fashion” fashion when in its upright, librarian position, but when it’s in prone or supine sleeping-Sprogblogger position?  Eeek.  Must.  Pee.  it out.  NOW.

Which is encouraging, if a bit maddening after the 4th or 5th bathroom trip since midnight.

And due to the crazy-making-ness of last time around’s HPTs that barely ever registered an almost-visible-to-the-naked-eye line even when my numbers were in the hundreds, I will be doing my damnedest not to POAS before 9dpt.  I may not make it that long (well, I might need a control test, you know?)  But I’m going to try not to feed the crazy.

Believe me, it’s growing by leaps & bounds all on its own.

Speaking of feeding, I fed the baby bok choy for lunch yesterday, even though delicious fatty meat- &/or deep fried dough products presented themselves. And the bok choy, it tasted good.

I’d like to claim that my superior palate prefers steamed bok choy to golden roasted dumplings, but it just aint so.  Deepfried usually wins hands down.

So my current infatuation with steamed veggies might have been pregnancy hormones, or it might have been the influence of MSG.  I was at “House of Andy”, after all, and I can’t tell for sure.  But Internets?

I’m feeling hopeful.

Now give me another glass of water.

And that sucks.

Early days, I know, but I’m rather, um, impatient anyway, and have had my hopes up so very high for such a long time that it’s really going to, well, suck, if this comes to nothing.

But we’re not thinking about that.  No, we’re not.  Really.  Not at all.

We’re thinking about baby names and nursery themes.  We’re thinking about how much easier the Lovenox shots have gotten since they aren’t bruising the hell out of me anymore.  We’re thinking about putting up a new & improved Lovenox tutorial, in fact, because the ones I found when I was first trying to figure the damned things out just scared me instead of empowering me.  And since I’m going to be taking this stuff for another 7 months or so, I owe it to the Internets to repay some of the help I’ve found therein.  Or so says my must-stay-busy brain.  We’re thinking about new apps for my new iPod toy.  We’re thinking about interviewing OBs and we’re thinking about making up a new excell chart for the iPod.  Hell, we’re having silly little thoughts about learning to write apps.

We’re not thinking about sore breasts.  We’re not obsessively checking the size, shape, and texture of nipples in the mirror every time the bathroom door locks the world outside.  We’re not perfectly happy to wake up with a growling stomach.  We’re not delighted to be constipated.  We’re not smiling at every belly cramp.  No, not at all.  Really.  Not even a little bit.

Really.

Really.

Ahem.  And then I snap back to reality and blink really hard and start obsessing about my sniffly nose.  Sniffles = pregnancy, right?  (And neveryoumind that I’ve had this headcold for about a week now…)

Anyway.  Yesterday, I felt definite cramps.  In the same places.  Over and over again.  But not nicely centered in the middle of my receptive (and oh-so-fabulous) uterus, mind you.  No, these were more ovarian-ishly located.  Or, to coin an even stupider term, fallopian-tubeishly located.  Not on the right or the left side, but both.  At once.  Twingeing at different times, but repeatedly in the same places. Yes folks, as of yesterday I’m convinced:  An embryo is currently implanting in each tube.  Because that’s the only way this could get more soap-opera-y.

(Well, ok, maybe not the only way, but I reserve the right to wait until Sprog’s about to be born before I learn that my cryogenically frozen twin sister – from whom I was separated at birth when I was stolen by pirates who coveted my psychic abilities [and the diamond-encrusted nappy I was wearing when the baroness found and adopted me] – just underwent a sex-change operation and is actually the father of my child.)

Actually, I like that ending more than my double-ectopic story, come to think about it.

The dreams have ramped up, the thirstiness – oh god, the thirstiness! – is present & accounted for, and as a result, the nighttime peeing has gotten out of hand.  At least it’s nicely coinciding with the complete exhaustion, but still, every time I woke from my bizarro dreams to pee, I lay there, wondering if the relief from easing my overfilled bladder would actually be worth getting out of bed, or if I should just tough it out, prone, for the next, oh four or five hours.

I don’t think I’m pregnant, Internets.  (or rather, if I am, I don’t think I can know that yet.)  But I’m pretty sure I’m absolutely batshit crazy.

I mean, granted, I take estradiol via two different delivery methods, and only one stains my underpants, but why-oh-why when you KNOW (as I hope the drug makers must) that not all patients will be swallowing your wares, would you add so very much coloring agent to them?  I suppose it’s reassuring that I know if/how much of the pills get absorbed by me, vs. simply, er, dissipating, but really, it’s messy enough that I’m thinking I’d be able to tell even if the run-off were clear as the purest rain.

And I’ll bet this is just what you came here for: hoping to read about colorful vaginal discharge, eh?

I just don’t have all that much.  A few twinges, but nothing I can point to with a big “Aha!” finger and say, “Totally pregnant!”  Totally PIO, yes.  Pregnant?  Not so much.  If I were truly obsessive, I’d be going back to every other pregnancy to see on which day I actually started whining about the cramping.  It’s been the one unignorable, totally noticeable symptom I’ve consistently gotten – even in my spontaneous pregnancy, I was anticipating one hell of a period, due to the knock-em-sock-em uterine cramps that turned out to be anything but.  But since I’m not compulsive that way, no, not even a little, I’ll wait til, oh, say, tomorrow, to start combing through my archives to see if I can pinpoint a day to be on the lookout for cramping.  Because, really, a week from today before I can start to test?

I’m going to lose my mind.

Let me count the ways in which I do not love thee.

Thou art equipped with a “safety syringe needle cap” that dost refuse to come off the first time I grab it, irritating me each and every blasted time I try to give myself an injection.

Thy makers hath ground down the needle’s point itself – lo! unto the very epitome of roundness! – forcing me to jab repeatedly at the tender flesh of mine belly in order to scarify and mortify my most resplendent tummy and take thine potions and mixtures into myself.

Thine “intentional air bubble” scares the crap out of me, for as an innocent child I viewed too many episodes of Marcus Welby wherein air bubbles in IV lines smote both the high and the low, regardless of the Lord High Google’s protestations of impossibility, otherwise.

Thou hast a punch to thine dosages that makes me to feel as if a mule hast kicked me in my gut.   Repeatedly.  Angrily.  And that mule doth continue to kick, long after the draught has been distributed.

And at last, thy loathsome poisons do mangle and bruise me, causing the pale flesh of my underbelly to become purple and ripe as the swelling of grapes upon the hills of Judea.

For these things – and more – do I curse and revile thee.  But since thou also offerest me the best chance which hath yet been provided, which might yet allow me to begat and bear a child, I shall submit to thy whims and prostate myself before thee, humbly.  Bowing my head and accepting the pain as my due.

Thou great big nasty shot of anti-coagulant, you.

**

(Two injections down, two-hundred twenty seven – more or less – to go.)

24 follicles retrieved.  We’ll get a maturity & fertilization report tomorrow.

Woohoo!!!

So while I’m lying around, abstaining from fun things, my boss is likely going to assume I’m partying.

Not only that, but I’m scheduled to go to another branch for one of those days, so I’ll have to try to rearrange THAT schedule as well.

Annoying, but not the end of the world, or anything.  More annoying is that I’ll likely have to do all this from another branch via email or phone, since I suspect I’m going to get all the way out to work only to be shipped off, somewhere else.

But then I have many days off.  And a retrieval to obsess about.  And a few parties to attend.  And cookies to bake.  And one more scarf to block (and then I promise I’ll post pictures!) And gifts to finish wrapping.  And Christmas cards to send.  And a pie to bake.  And all sorts of new baby knitting projects to plan.  And socks to knit.  And donor letters to deliver.  And husbands to love on.  And Broadway shows to go to (Billy Elliott on Monday with all three of the stepdaughters.  Wish me luck!) and all in all?  I think the time will pass quickly between now and Tuesday.