Constant hangover

That’s how I feel these days. Nausea (no throwing up yet), dizziness, constant hunger and headache accompany me throughout the days but I’m not complaining, having symptoms make me feel more trusty that there is someone actually on board. I’m about 6w5days and I’m going to call our local midwife today to make my first appointment for the maternity counseling. I told my sister on the phone last weekend and to my big surprise mom hadn’t blurted the news out to her yet. Sis started to cry but I hope it was happy tears, at least it felt like it and she told me how amazing this is and that she’s really really happy.

Still I know that if this pregnancy continues normally (and I surely hope it will!) and I get to have that big belly in the end I will surely cause bad feelings for someone. Because I felt so devastated seeing  those bellies around me during this struggle and thinking that they must have gotten knocked up at their first try. And I know there are a lot of us out there who struggle to get pregnant, face the disappointments month by month, swallow our tears and bite our lip watching others build their families. I still can’t understand totally that I’m pregnant after all the desperation I felt this spring. And I’m still really scared that something bad can happen.

Tomorrow is the entrance exam for the Master’s programme I applied to. I have no idea how the test is going to be like so I can’t really stress about it in advance. Also tomorrow evening I’m picking up our good friend H from the airport, she is coming back to Finland after spending over a year around Africa, can’t wait to see her!

Summer is here, everything is green and it’s +20C! I hope this summer we’ll have LOTS of sunshine and only a few gray, rainy days. But knowing the capriciousness of Finnish summer, we’ll surely get bucketloads of water.

They are fixing the plumbing of our building for a few days and we have to go to bathroom outside, like the bathrooms you have in rockfestivals. AWESOME. And can’t use water either.

Btw non-alcoholic red wine tastes like shit. Don’t bother. Non alcoholic cider on the other hand was good, almost like the real stuff.

Never-ending rollercoaster ride

I had terrible, terrible continous cramps from Wednesday afternoon all the way to the following night. Felt really like AF showing up any minute and had to even leave my Russian class in advance because I was so devastated about how I was feeling and couldn’t concentrate on anything. Symptoms have disappeared completely and I don’t feel preggo at all + I had some light brownish discharge and I know these put together isn’t very promising.

I just couldn’t bear the anxiety anymore and phoned the clinic this morning (yesterday was a public holiday) and requested an u/s. My own RE was super busy so they arranged me to see another doctor. My heart rate was maybe a million when she inserted the dildocam.

There was the gestational sac. The tiny fetus.
And the tiniest flickering heartbeat.

I can’t describe the relief I felt. I was so SURE that it was all over since the pain had been so intense and the symptoms had vanished.

Now I’m going to ban any googling/ttc boards from myself during the rest of my pregnancy. I’m not gonna think about the odds, I’m not going to compare how my fetus measures to others, I’m not gonna stress about my low beta levels or the lack of symptoms.

The fact is I AM pregnant right now whether I feel it or not. And for fuck’s sake I think I’ve earned the right to be happy about it even for a second and put the stressing aside. I am 6 weeks (+ maybe some days) pregnant today and I’m gonna enjoy now every second of this.

Anxiety

I’m really really scared that we are going to lose this baby. Since Monday I’ve been cramping a lot and my symptoms have been gradually vanishing to zero. I know neither of those is a good sign. I don’t feel preggo at all at this moment, I only feel pretty much like before AF.

I almost called RE for a new u/s for Friday but in the end, what good would it do. There’s no way they could prevent an early miscarriage if it’s about to happen. I just hope it won’t.

I always thought that if I’d ever would get pregnant that would be it, no more worries and we would end up with a healthy baby. Now I know that the true anxiety only begins with the BFP; the nervousness waiting for beta numbers, u/s visuals and watching your symptoms come and go. And nothing is for sure.

Please, baby stay with us.
I so want this to work.

Could it be…

…that we are actually going to be parents after all? We saw our little grain of rice in the u/s today! No heartbeat was visible yet but apparently it’s still very early for that, since the fetus was measuring only 2.7mm. There’s no way of knowing how this is going to end but at this moment I AM ACTUALLY PREGNANT!!!

RE suspected that either the implantation has happened later than usual or then I’ve gotten preggo the normal way during this cycle. Ha-ha, that would be so ironic but somehow  a bit too amazing to believe. After paying the amount of money of few paradise island holidays for treatments without success I don’t believe in the chance of natural conception on our part anymore.

But who cares how she/he was conceived. The important thing is that’s there’s someone hanging in my uterus at the moment and we feel blessed about that. Next u/s is on Thursday 28th and then we are hoping to see the heartbeat too.

I am so happy. Thank you everyone who have been there for support.

And now I’m gonna post this under “pregnancy” for the first time in my life

And continues…

I called RE today and she told me to come in for u/s on Monday and continue taking Prednisone and progesterone. She said that the figure is still low but on Monday we’ll know more and no additional betas are needed before that. HOW IN EARTH WILL I SURVIVE UNTIL MONDAY?!!!

Luckily I have much to do this week to keep me away from the evil internets. I started the Russian course yesterday and WOOah what a language; they have 7 different phonemes for the letter s (all written differentely of course). My brains are melting. Yesterday and this evening is only about the alphabet (those strange Greek looking characters) and on Wednesday we’ll start the actual course. Many words are loans from English and Finnish has loaned again from Russian so that makes learning a bit easier.

On Saturday we’ll have a 90’s theme party ! Of course beforehand I had planned to drink all the nostalgic yucky sweet booze brands I used to enjoy (in excess) in my teens but  I guess that’s now out of the question. And how in hell me not drinking is going to go unnoticed (this is Finland and it’s compulsory to drink)? I guess I’ll just have to tell everyone where we stand now even though the future of this still remains very uncertain and I’d like to save the news for later. I’m probably not going to believe I’m pregnant before going in for labor. I wish we get so far. I wish so many things. Like a heartbeat on Monday for starters.

I booked the flights for Spain on 30th June to 7th July. According to the internets Andalucia looks just perfect!

Suspense continues…

My beta #2 was 418 this morning (19dpt). That’s a decent doubling time, but still a low figure. The nurse didn’t know what we should do and told me to call RE tomorrow. She did say this could be a normal pregnancy and the embryo has just implanted a little late. I’m on pins and needles. Am I preggo for real or not?!!!

My symptoms say yes; the nausea has crept back and my breasts started to hurt on Saturday. I also fell asleep on the couch just before making the call for the results even though I was scared and anxious out of my mind and I’ve woken up at 6AM for most mornings since Thursday. Also the hpts I’ve been obsessively poasing on started to get darker around Thursday.

Please, let us have a happy ending.

Some sunshine in the middle of this shit

I’m almost 100% sure this was a chemical, I’ve been cramping a lot and have very minimal symptoms otherwise. No spotting or bleeding though. I keep getting a faint line on the hpts but I know you can get it long after the embryo has stopped living. I haven’t given up all hope that a miracle would happen and the numbers would be magical on Monday, but I know the minimal odds for that.

But something else miraculous happened! I got a call a minute ago from a strange number. Of course my first thought was “fuck those telemarketers”, but it wasn’t someone trying to sell a gossip magazine this time. It was from the Finnish airlines, Finnair. On the day of the embryo transfer as I walked to the subway through mall I stopped and filled out a coupon for a travel tickets lottery. Now they called and said I’ve won flights to Andalucia, Spain, for 2 persons!!! I’m so freaking happy!!! Because of our financial situation there was not going to be any trips for us this summer. But now we get to travel! YAY! I don’t speak a word of Spanish but I’m sure we’ll manage Sunshine, here I come!

I knew it was too good to be true. How could something so magical really happen to us? I did have symptoms even; on Sunday and yesterday I felt a wave of nausea several times and I was dead tired in the afternoon. I also felt pinching pain in my uterus and I knew it was the embryo. However, since yesteraday evening the symptoms have almost vanished. And the line on the hpt remains faint. RE told me to continue with Predinsone and progesterone until next Monday’s beta#2 but even she admitted that the number was extremely low. I know our chance of actually having a baby out of this are like the chance of winning the jackpot in the lottery.

I feel so sad, so disappointment. To have that happiness and hope for a second, then have it snatched away. How many times can you fix a broken heart?

torture

our internet connection is broken and I’m posting this with my cell so I have to make it short. My beta was 24 at 12dp3dt. It’s fucking low. I’ll have another next Monday. keep your fingers crossed still.

On the rollercoaster

Last week was horrible. Just plain awful. I was feeling like shit, crying all the time and feeling very crampy & bloated, my 2 most reliable af-symptoms. DH was working away from home and I had no work to do, so I basically just sat in front of the computer feeling miserable over yet another failure. There were honestly moments I thought I’m gonna lose my mind over this. I decided I can’t continue just staying at home, I need to have something to do. So out of the blue I applied for a school that’s starting next autumn It’s a Master’s programme about user-friendly interfaces in webshops etc, so perfect combined with our business. Which, btw, takes a new step on Monday as we are moving on to a more organized webshop platform. Go check it out (on Monday) at http://www.koruharakka.com

We celebrated the first of May festivites very peacefully this year, no parties or boozing since DH had to work and I didn’t want to go on my own and I’ve always hated crowded Helsinki center. I made mead (basically sugar, raisins and lemons brewed together), which is a traditionall 1st of the May drink in Finland, ate frankfurters (the official 1st of the May food) and visited my cousin who just moved near to us with her family. Yesterday morning we went geocaching with no luck, and I was again feeling awful and miserable.

I had bought some HPTs even though I knew the result beforehand, but I thought where’s the fun in all this if I can’t even poas at the end of the cycle! So I did poas this morning (10dp 3dt) just to get it out of my system. I didn’t even bother to look at the test, but just as I was ready to toss it in the trash can something caught my eye.

It looked different.

Like there was an extra line.

But sure as hell that can’t be.

The test must be broken somehow.

There’s no way I could be preggo.

I have no eps symptoms.

I feel JUST like AF-coming. Endo cramps, back pain, all that shit.

This has to be some kind of a joke the universe is including me in.

Who has peed on my stick?!!

I woke DH up, my hands and voice trembiling, and he saw the + sign too. I waited 3 more hours and did another. It looked the same. I made DH go to the pharmacy and buy me 2 more, and I’m gonna test tomorrow morning again.

It’s not sinking in. I can’t fathom this. On Monday I’ll have my beta but until then I’m not believing it to be true.

My cousin and her son came over this morning like we had made plans before. When she entered our appartment I said I have something to show her and held the HPT so she could see it. We were both crying as we hugged each other.

No gongratulations yet, please, it’s way too early. After failed cycles and lost hopes I just can’t start to celebrate yet.

But I can’t believe we actually got this far.

I honestly thought I’d never see a BFP in my life.