Coming up on 17 weeks

I hit 17 weeks tomorrow.

I had a moment of click where it dawned on me that it's real that there are babies with me where ever I go.  I'm still fighting off that final click when this all becomes real.  I'm simply not ready to jump over that emotional cliff, but it's becoming a little harder to fight every day.  Did the official announcement on Facebook and that just feels like it's inviting disaster.

I did go back and read my blog from this point in my first pregnancy.  There are some very reassuring differences.

When I was approaching 16 weeks, I was complaining of incontinence and a persistent nagging cough I had developed.  I was talking about the doctor having me come in to test for a UTI and stuff to make sure the incontinence was baby based and not illness based.  This time, I'm still pretty leak free and I don't have any kind of cough.  So those first potential symptoms just aren't there this time.

A lot of times, I'm almost feeling like my crotch is pushing itself out, which of course totally freaks me out.  I'm running my finger across my crotch more often than I'd like to admit to make sure there's no sac trying to make its escape.  In reading other people complaining of this, it's pretty common and it's likely because a baby is lying low across the cervix putting pressure there.  In my case, we're actually hoping for that.  The subchorionic hematoma is located very near the cervix and we're kind of waiting for the babies to get heavy enough to sit on it, and put some pressure there to hopefully help stop the wound from bleeding anymore.

But the sensation is still rather terrifying given my history.  I keep having to remind myself that I was feeling contractions and trying push out a BM pretty darned hard for 2 or 3 hours before the sac began to emerge.  It didn't just randomly fall out of my body last time, and it's certainly not going to this time.

Ok, 17 week symptom break-down:

• Abdomen is still sore and generally heavy.  Feels like I've got a gallon of water swinging around in my belly.
• Still have a decent sense of smell but it doesn't seem as bad as it was before.
• Nose still stuffed up.
• Today is day 19 of consistent, but small amounts of dark brown bleeding.  Just fabulous.
• Still not sure I'm feeling movement.  I can tell that there's something going on, but then I'll feel the same gurgle elsewhere so it can't be baby.  Can't tell if I'm feeling my own pulse around the uterus, dinner moving along its digestion course, or babies twisting around.  Until I can be sure, I'm gonna say I don't think I feel any movement yet.
• Not sleeping real well.  Getting up to pee a lot, and just generally uncomfortable.
• I get tired really fast.  The few times I've gone out to the pottery studio, I get completely exhausted and have to give up somewhere around hour 2.
• I'm hungry every 2 hours.  
• Occasional heartburn and headaches.

In other news, we've learned that what K was suffering from 2 weeks ago was Salmonella poisoning!  OMG!  A few of our GP's patients all got it at the same time so various health departments are in contact with K trying to narrow down the source.  

We've determined that it can't be anything from our fridge because there's nothing that's been in there that I haven't eaten and I didn't get sick.  So that narrows it down to a fast food place he ate at without me, and potentially the buffet we went to.  Our plates were similar, but maybe he ate something that I didn't.  We're a bit freaked because we've been so careful about proper food prep, keeping raw meats separate from other foods, etc, and yet I still only narrowly escaped while he got hit.

And that's how things are going as I approach 17 weeks!

Illogical fear

I'm very aware of the fact that most of my fear during this pregnancy is completely illogical.  And I'm starting to realize why.

What happened to me, how I lost my girls, defies all logic.  What happened simply doesn't make any sense.

Basically, I thought I had eaten something that made me gassy and when I went to try to take a crap, I discovered that my body was trying to eject my pregnancy.  That makes NO sense.  I wasn't really in any pain, just uncomfortable.  The same uncomfortable that a person usually is when they eat something that makes them gassy.

And here's the main thing - there was no fluid of any kind before the sac started coming out.  There was no blood.  There was no liquid or discharge.  My body didn't break my water before trying to push out the first baby.  My body tried to eject my pregnancy fully intact.  That's not really supposed to be possible.

Had it been earlier in my pregnancy, had the babies been smaller, I could have very easily have dropped the whole thing right there in the toilet without really any effort.  The whole sac would have simply slid out of my body in one big blob.  It's only because they were big enough to kind of get wedged in there that I continued into labor (which eventually did become very painful).

So at 7 weeks (this pregnancy), when I felt a big clot just slide right out of me, and I looked in the toilet and saw an intact clot about the size of an egg sitting in there, well, of course that's what I thought had happened.  It's not supposed to be able to happen that way, except for me, in my first pregnancy, that's practically what happened.

I had some gas issues last night.  And as I sat there on the couch, being uncomfortable from gas, I watched the clock.  I was paying attention to see if the gas aches came in scheduled waves or if they were just random.  Fortunately, there was no pattern to them.  But this is how I'm spending every day right now.  Every abdomen ache has me watching the clock to make sure there's no pattern, that my body isn't doing a very subtle labor.  Every time I go to the bathroom, I wipe good and close so my fingers can make sure there's nothing trying to push itself out of me.

I know I should be grateful to be pregnant, and I AM grateful to be on the right track to finally bringing my children home, but this pregnancy is not fun.  I've never heard anyone accuse an infertile of not being grateful enough for being in the process of IVF so please don't accuse me of not being grateful enough to be pregnant.  Yes, I am, but that doesn't mean I have my children yet.  It simply means that I successfully got through the IVF struggle and have moved on to Struggle 2.0.

My attitude sucks right now.  Probably because next week is the anniversary of losing my girls and I'm terrified of history repeating itself.  If I get through this, then I'll start approaching the point in the pregnancy at which I lost the girls, and I'll again be terrified of history repeating itself.  What I'm really hoping is that once I get beyond that, once I'm at a point in the pregnancy where I'm experiencing things for the first time instead of just repeating my last pregnancy, my attitude will change and I won't be so scared all the time.  I'm hoping that there will come a time when I can enjoy this fully.

I am trying.  I really am.  But no, I haven't purchased the maternity bra that I need for sleeping because I'm too afraid I won't need it by the time it arrives.  And no, I haven't started rereading my pregnancy books.  And no, I haven't started following mommy blogs and parenting blogs because I'm still not confident that I'll be joining that community any time soon.

It was taken away from me suddenly, with no warning, and in a way that defies all logic the last time.  Intellectually, I'm realizing that what happened to me is really a one in a million chance occurrence.  It should not have been possible.  But that's the only life experience I have on the subject, so all the intelligence in the world can't convince me that it's not happening again at any given moment.