Always carry clean underwear

Yesterday was 18 weeks.  Yay!  This is the hold your breath week, and then we get into completely new territory.  Lots of random thoughts from the last 2 days so this might wander a little bit.

**************************

I had a video shoot yesterday morning.  And I gotta say, I was a hot mess while doing my job.

Here's what I think happened.  I'm normally such a dietary garbage can that no matter what I eat, it doesn't really affect me.  I think those days are over, at least for the moment.  On my way to the shoot, I had my normal latte (good mix of a little bit of sugar, a little bit of caffeine and some protein from the milk to hold me over) and I also had one of those pieces of lemon loaf.  I think that particular breakfast spiked and then completely crashed my blood sugar.

About halfway into the shoot (they take about 90 minutes), I suddenly had to sit down, had some trouble catching my breath, I was shaking, and nearly vomited.  I tried to soldier on a few times, but finally had to take a real break, like 15 solid minutes, eat some fruit chewy things that I keep in my purse and down some water.  After the break, I barely pushed on enough to get the footage necessary to do my job and got out of there.  Called my bosses and told them that I probably did not make the best impression.

**************************

Found out this morning that I've put on 5lbs in the last 2 weeks.  Well, that would explain why I'm a little more huffy puffy lately.  And why I've felt like my belly has popped a bit.

My belly seems to be bulging out, and then deflating.  For a day, I'll feel like I'm huge, and the line around my waist will soften from being pushed out, getting towards round instead of a cut off line between fat rolls.  But then another day it will seem like I'm back where I was a couple of weeks ago.  Still 2 confirmed fat rolls that just read as fat and gross rather than cute baby belly.

At the ultrasound this morning, I was told that they had shifted positions a little bit.  So what I've probably been experiencing is that sometimes they are side by side (on my smaller, but just fat days) and sometimes they are one in front of the other (on my popped out baby belly days).

Either way, it's been a few weeks, so it's belly pic time!  Again, my original 10 week photo versus my now 18 week photo.

10 Weeks

18 Weeks

 Still no dramatic difference.  Oh well.

**************************

After my dropped blood sugar fiasco, I had a lovely lunch with Bleeding Tulip.  I don't think she recognizes it, but she's moved forward a lot in the last year.  She's been losing weight (looking good!), and has not only gone back to work, but was able to get a different job when the first one was, ahem, unpleasant.  In the last year, I've hardly been employed at all.  How she's managed to secure herself 2 jobs in this economy, that's pretty impressive!

When fighting the infertile fight, it's really difficult to acknowledge any life progress that isn't baby related.  So while she may not recognize that she's been moving forward in life, she has.

And again, I feel like a jerk.  The only thing I have to talk about is being pregnant and birthing plans, and blah blah blah.  All that stuff that I don't want anyone talking to me about when in the middle of the fertility fight.  And yet here I was, being that very person that infertiles want to avoid.  Sorry about that.

I was a bit overwhelmed with the shocking physical crash I was still kind of experiencing, and the fact that I'm so exhausted just walking 2 blocks to get cheesecake.  I was surprised by my own body failings and really preoccupied by them.

**************************

Wondering about the title of this post?  I'm getting to that.

**************************

I am proud of the fact that I did actually accomplish something yesterday.  After years of having free accounts at Bank of America, they've started charging me a $25 a month fee of some sort.  Guess what BofA?  I have 2 other bank accounts and simply don't need you!

But.....BofA had 2 things going for them that the other banks didn't have.  I had a business account there so on the rare occasion that someone writes a check out to the name of my business, I can cash the check, and they would also allow me to deposit checks made out to Alex which is how everyone knows me, but was not legally a part of my name until last year.

So I went to one of my other banks, and filled out all sorts of new paperwork.  I had to show them all sorts of identification and the court document acknowledging my name change last year, and write out signatures for both versions of my name.  Yay!  Now they will acknowledge that I'm Alex!  And just for fun, I opened a business account, even though I'm not going to be doing much business in the next year, so I can also deposit checks made out to my business name.  Woot!

This week, I go through every account that does an automatic deposit or withdrawal and point those to my other account, and then I close BofA for good.


**************************


Oh yeah!  Ok, really, I try not take what happens on forums as real life, but I've got to report on this.

Folks, the 4th grader in me that used to cry every day because she was unpopular and the other kids picked on her, she learned how to smile this week.

On the primary pregnancy forum that I visit, there are currently about 11,500 people there.  And they have recently begun elections to assign 4 new group owners (aka moderators) to the group.  A bunch of people expressed interest in the job (including myself), the owners of the website reviewed those people, and then came up with a list of nominees eligible for the job.  Well, I was weeded out.  No explanation, just that I was deemed to be not a good fit.  So I'm not nominated.

And to my absolute shock, people are voicing how much they disagree with this decision!  They are calling for people to vote for me even though I'm not on the nomination list because they want me as a group owner!  I'm getting private emails from people who are trying to contact the website owners for some sort of explanation as to why I'm not eligible.  There are threads happening about how much people wanted to vote for me and are just going to anyway.

Out of over 11k people, I'M FUCKING NOTICED!  And some of those people who noticed me, ACTUALLY LIKE ME!!!!  This is just incredible to me.  I'm someone that when I graduated high school, and they did a photo montage of every graduating senior, they forgot to add my picture.

Since this started, my face has been alternating between these two extremes:

  


**************************


Had my ultrasound and doctors appointment today.  I'll post pictures tomorrow, I haven't scanned stuff yet.

This appointment was meant to take up the hour between drinking the glucose crap and getting my blood drawn again, but due to massive amounts of puking up the crap, the second part of that test was cancelled, and I was just feeling like crap when I went in.

But the ultrasound went great!  Both are still evenly sized, and I'm starting to see specific body parts like a little rib cage, and hands full of fingers.  I think Baby B was sucking her(?) thumb.  She was also kind of buried in there and we still couldn't get a good look at her bits to confirm once and for all that she's a girl, but ya know, still about 80% sure from the last look we got a couple of weeks ago.

The hematoma is holding steady, potentially even shrinking.  So that's a good thing!  The kiddos are getting heavy enough that they are flattening it out.  It's now more of a thick string in there rather than a bubble.  Still trace amounts of bleeding, but overall it's diminishing.

Now that the girls are getting bigger, we had to get reacquainted with Wanda to properly check my cervix length.  Still at 4cm.  YES!!!  The book I'm reading about twins/multiples pregnancy says that if your cervix is 2cm or longer at your 20 week check up, that's an indicator that you're likely to go to term.  Since I don't think my cervix is going to cut in half over the next 2 weeks, I'm feeling really good about that!

Back when I first started having bleeding on a fairly regular basis, well over a month ago, I started carrying a clean pair of underwear in my purse in case I overbled a pantyliner.  While I was at it, I tossed in a pair of socks since I tend to wear non water proof shoes and I live in Seattle.

Oh by the way, this is my giant purse.  I can carry two 2 liters of soda in this thing without having to rearrange stuff to make room.  More pockets than I know what to do with.  So carrying around some extra clothing is no big deal.

So when I went to get dressed after my date with Wanda, I noticed that my underwear was damp.  Ewwwwww!!!  I must have had a little leakage while I was upstairs hurling my guts out.  And I'm not looking forward to putting them back on when it occurs to me, I have another pair in my purse!  Woot!  I pull out my clean fresh undies, get myself dressed, roll up my damp undies into a latex glove at the nurses station and I'm good as new!

And THAT pregnant ladies, is why you should carry around a clean pair of underwear in your purse!

I did stuff today! Now I need a nap

Pregnancy status - 11w4d and all's well.  It's been 2 weeks since my last bleed, a new record.

Ok, seriously now, when I do I get some energy back?  When I say I can't do anything, I mean I can't do ANYTHING.  I'm just too friggin tired!

I slept through most of yesterday, went to bed at a decent hour, got a full nights sleep (though not as deeply as when not pregnant), and I haven't been asked to expend any energy of any kind.  So I should be fully prepared to actually get off my butt.

K spent a good deal of time cleaning the kitchen today.  We have a huge kitchen counter that tends to become the junk platform of the house. It's conveniently located near the front door so everything we walk in with ends up on that counter.  Groceries, toiletries that made it into the house but not yet into the bathroom, my purse, random things that we use on a daily basis and just set down there for lack of anywhere else to put it.  K did a fabulous job of clearing it, finding a place for all of that stuff to go and then actually wiping it down.

My job was to go through the pile of accumulated snacks that he put into a corner and throw out anything I won't actually end up eating.  So I did that, and extended my work to a kitchen cabinet that tends to end up packed with crap.  I weeded out everything that was past it's "best by" date (which was the vast majority of the stuff) and threw out anything that I tried for a snack but didn't end up liking.  That cabinet is practically empty now.

So in this burst of accomplishing something energy, I decided to glaze a few more test cups to go in my next kiln firing.  That basically means just standing at a sink, painting cups.

That's it guys.  That's all I've done.  On my feet for maybe 45 minutes to an hour.  And when I decided that I needed to sit down again, I had to eat something right away because I was almost shaking from feeling weak and like I had over exerted myself.  I can only guess that I hadn't eaten much protein yet in the day and it was that absence that I was feeling and kind of reeling from.  I've since had some leftover ham and cheesy potatoes from Christmas Eve dinner at my parents and am now feeling like my normal, fat, lazy, sitting self.  I keep intending to spend a few hours out in the pottery studio, and I keep just not doing it.  And that's a fun activity.

Ya know, I'm pretty lazy in real life as it is.  Honestly, I didn't think a person could get much lazier than me.  But this feeling of hardly being able to move from my seat and getting tired after functioning on my feet for 30 minutes is just obnoxious!  At least I've gotten enough energy that I'm capable of staying awake for a full day, so that's an improvement.  But wow, I could really use another energy boost in general, cuz being both this tired and yet awake for this many hours per day = boredom central!

Still standing

Not much to report but you've all shown so much concern (thank you!) that I feel I should give everyone an update.

For the last 24 hours or so, I would describe any discharge or blood when I wipe to be of the "residue" category.  Brown, not much there, but it's consistently there.

I'm still doing the endometrin so I CONSTANTLY feel like I'm leaking.  I'm trying to limit myself to 1 wiping check per hour because any more than that and I'm going to wipe myself raw and that's a whole other category of discomfort.

Told one of my bosses today that I'm not going to be working for a while.  The doctors said it was fine to do pottery, but I also noticed that on the days I did nothing, no bleeding.  On the days I spent a lot of time at the wheel, bleeding.  So doctors be damned, I'm not doing it until I feel somewhat secure again.

However, my video work is picking up.  I currently have 2 video shoots scheduled for this week and the company that I get the gigs through called me to see if they could book another one on Thursday for me.  That's fine, but they need to call the clients and make the schedules work, I don't want to deal with that.  I know that sounds like work, but really, it's not that strenuous.  I interview someone on camera for a half hour and then I film them doing what they do for 45 minutes or so.  The rest is spent sitting at my computer putting it together.  I'm kind of looking forward to the one on Friday, it's a go-kart racing place.  So there should actually be some fun stuff to shoot.

In pregnancy symptom news, most of it has faded away.  Currently 7 weeks 4 days.

• My digestion always has a general "not right" feeling to it.  A little on the hungry side, a little on the full side, a little on the queasy side, it can't really decide what side it wants to be on so it's on all of them at once.  But only a little.  
• When I get hungry, I become starving all of a sudden.  
• Oh!  Spent about 5 minutes last night sitting in front of the toilet wondering if I was going to have a repeat performance of Thanksgiving morning.  We really need to sweep the bathroom floor.  
• I don't really get cramps anymore, but rather the occasional odd gurgle.  
• Shoulders and upper back burn most of the time.  Don't know if that's a pregnancy thing or not.  
• I seem to be low grade tired all the time, but never solidly sleep.  I seem to be up peeing all the time, or just on the verge of being awake at any given moment.  I don't feel like I'm really soundly sleeping.
• It still has no dawned on me that there's a chance I'll make it past 10 weeks.  I'm not sure why.  On the other hand, I can't fully picture going through a miscarriage either.  So I have no hunches as to what's going to happen with this pregnancy.  For once, I simply can't figure out the future.

For the most part, I sit here, just kind of holding still because I'm afraid to jostle anything loose, playing cards on the computer, feeling like I'm leaking, and waiting until the hour goes by so I can see if it's endometrin goo or blood flowing into my underwear.  Real exciting life I've got going on here.

Question about bleeding while pregnant - if the cervix is closed, how does the blood escape?  Isn't that like trying to pour water out of a bottle with the lid screwed on?

Ultrasound tomorrow.

Gestational Diabetes?

So I went to the specialist yesterday and got all sorts of advice about diet, learned how to use the glucose test meter, etc etc etc.  And just to make it more unpleasant, I cried the whole time.  Diet is a very emotional subject for me and the pregnancy hormones kicked in full gear and before I was even called in, I started crying and couldn't stop.

But here's the thing.  Other than the results of that one glucose test, all evidence is pointing to me not having an issue with my sugar levels.

The diet advice she gave?  Stuff I'm already doing.  She said if I eat fruit, cut it with protein.  Well, I already do that.  Cut down the carbs.  My pregnancy taste buds have already done that.  I should probably do it more, but yeah, already doing it.  Eat a little bit throughout the day instead of a few big meals.  I've never been able to tolerate eating a lot in one sitting.  I have to snack all day so, not a problem!

I have never been able to just eat an apple off the core.  It makes me sick.  But I can eat the same amount of apple if I have it with peanut butter.  Apparently, this wasn't my imagination all my life!  An apple makes your blood sugar spike, but if you cut it with a protein, the protein slows down the dose of sugar your body is getting so it's more even and long lasting.  That sick feeling I always got was a blood sugar spike.  Who knew?

I spent all of yesterday collecting little drops of blood and measuring my blood sugar.  Every single test came back where it was supposed to be.  1 hour after eating, it's supposed to be under 130.  Well, I measured exactly one hour after everything I ate and throughout the day it slowly climbed from 90 to 117.

And I got my test results back today.  They measured my hemoglobin (?) which is kind of a picture of my sugar levels over the last 3 months.  Kind of the long term test to see if I've been spiking and dipping or if things have been where they should be whereas the glucose test that started this whole thing is a specific set of circumstances designed to stress your sugar levels and see how your body deals with it.  Well, the hemoglobin number is supposed to be between 4-6.  My number was 5.  In other words, perfect.   Other than a little lack of Vitamin D, all my tests came back great.

So I talked to the nurse who called me about the test results today.  I asked if it's possible the first test was affected by the fact that I hardly ate anything that day before the test.  I had my usual decaf (well now that's normal for me) latte and bagel and then other than about 3 bites of granola, didn't eat anything for the next 4 hours before drinking the glucose and going in for the testing.  I was at work that day.  That always throws off my eating norms.  She said that it might have had an effect.  So we left a message with the nurse assigned to me and I expect to talk to her about this tomorrow.  If not tomorrow, we have a follow up appointment on Monday (the 20th).

I also checked with K to see if I'm reacting to wishful thinking or if this is a rational interpretation of the evidence.  He thinks it's a rational conclusion and we need to talk to the doctors about it.


I think the best thing to do is to continue testing my levels for the next week to get that data.  If we don't see any spikes, then I think I should do the glucose test again on a more average day.  If that comes back normal, then I think I should spend 1 day a week tracking food and testing glucose levels for the rest of my pregnancy.  That way, if there's an issue, we'll see it appear, but if there's not an issue, I'm not sitting here stressing myself out for no reason. 

Diet plans and food tracking are extremely stressful to me.  If I don't have to do that, I don't think I should.  But now I am more educated on how to keep my sugar levels stable and I can certainly keep them in mind.  Like adding protein to my morning carbs.  That's easy enough.  And if I am worried about it, I now know how to calculate how much sugar I'm getting so I can read labels and do a little bit better than I'm currently doing.

Plus Sized Maternity Clothes

It's really, REALLY hard to shop when you are plus sized, petite (as in short), and pregnant.  This is a combination that retailers just don't believe exists.

So I'm going for 2 outta 3 and it seems the only combo I can find is plus + pregnant. 

I found Motherhood Maternity on my own and bought a couple of items.  But even though I've only gained a couple of pounds so far, all of my weight is moving to my front so I don't think I'm going to be able to get away with just wearing my fatter clothes as much as I thought I was. 

So I asked the women in the birthing class if they knew of any plus sized maternity retailers.  They told me Old Navy.  Boy, I really did not believe them.  I have never found a plus sized anything there and gave up on them years ago.  But I was wrong!  They have not only a plus sized section, but a plus sized maternity section online!  Gonna send a few things to my amazon wishlist right now!

Musings

K and I were watching TV and a commercial came on for the latest Disney princess movie.  K decides to tease me about my distaste for pink and overly girly things.  Script format:

K:  We're going to have 2 girls and they're both going to want to be princesses!

ME:  No honey, we're going to have 2 boys and THEY'RE both going to want to be princesses!

K:  It could be worse.  They could be obsessed with football and force us to have the games on the TV all the time.

ME:  I don't want to play anymore.

My new doctor

I have an issue with doctors.  And I know not all doctors deserve me to have issue with them, I've just had a few bad experiences.

It started with my gyno when I was a teenager.  We tested and tried for years to get that woman to diagnose why I had very few or no periods at all.  We would insist that a lack of or erratic periods were the symptom, and she would say that they weren't the symptom, they just were.  So the cause of my not having periods was that I just didn't have periods.  I desperately tried to get a reason out of her.  A hormone imbalance?  Did I just not ovulate very often?  WHY were my periods so few?  She just refused to come up with a cause and insisted that the symptom itself was the cause.

And being a fat woman, I'm often dismissed.  My problems are because of my weight.  While I agree to some extent, I can tell the difference between a fat problem and some other problem thank you very much.  I don't bother a doctor for a fat induced problem because I figure it's just my own damned fault and I kind of deserve whatever is bugging me.  So I get really irritated when a doctor barely looks at me, doesn't listen, and goes straight into the diet and nutrition routine.

I now have a really awesome GP by the way.  So I'm not completely prejudiced.  I do recognize a good doctor when I find one.

And after my appointment today with my new OB, I'm not sure what I think.  It's clear he's very qualified.  He used to specialize in extremely problematic pregnancies (from crack addicts and the like) and he's cared for and delivered more twins than he can count, so someone as simple as me will be a walk in the park for him.

But I dunno.  Just kinda seemed, like he was listening for keywords in my questions so he could access his database for the answers.  I mean, on the outside, he was listening and was addressing my concerns very specifically, but yeah, I dunno.  He wasn't exactly in a rush to get out the door, but I didn't get that warm, fuzzy, I really want to get to know my new patient feeling from him either.

It's possible that I have a handsome prejudice.  He's rather good looking, slick black hair.  I saw him pass by a few times when I was in the waiting room, and I was kind of hoping that wasn't him because he had that slick lawyer look to him.  Not that I dislike lawyers, my dad was a lawyer and now a judge and he's awesome, but I'm stereotyping here so just go with it.

I tend to associate handsome with conceited, arrogant jerk.  And the last thing I want my doctor to have is an ego.  If any professional has an ego, they are limited by their own knowledge.  If they don't have an ego, they have access to the knowledge of everyone around them and every resource available because they will immediately consult and ask.  So I'd rather have a new guy with no ego than an old pro with a big ego.

So even though the doctor didn't display any of these negative qualities, my prejudices are preventing me from feeling 100% happy with him after my appointment today.

K disagrees.  He got all of the answers to questions that he wanted and felt that the doctor was just great.  I'm hoping I feel that way after my next appointment in a couple of weeks but we'll see.

Boredom

I haven't been doing pottery because I didn't feel like sitting all crunched up in the stomach and because I thought watching the wheel spin might make me sick.

But now I've got a hankering and I want to get back into the studio.  I think I've squeezed about as much fun out of the internet as I can during this time of laziness and I'm ready to DO something again.

So I sent out a message to a pottery mailing list asking for comfort advice and seeing if there were precautions I should take that I hadn't thought about.  Well, about half of the respondents advised that I simply take a break until after the babies are born.

*sigh*

But don't wannnnnaaaaaaaa!!!!!

I've got my big doctors appointment tomorrow so I'll check with him and see what he advises.  But I'm gonna be a real unhappy camper if I can't engage in my one major hobby for the next year or two.

So I'll just reminisce for the moment.  Plug my other blog and my shop just in case you want to see what I'm usually doing when I'm not cooking up little ones.

Buster, my pottery pal

Casserole dish lid still on the wheel

Pagan platter still on the wheel

Finished blue agateware mug

Sex

I'll be honest with you everyone, this post is the reason I started this blog.  I had an upsetting experience and couldn't find anyone else reporting anything similar.  So I'm reporting it myself.  It's a big topic so I'm going to cover it all at once.  You might prefer to read this at home as I can't promise it will be safe for work.

In terms of sex, I think my marriage is pretty average.  We count times per week (as opposed to times per day or times per year), the husband has a stronger libido than the wife, ya know, pretty average.

The last 2 months have not been average.  We are experience the longest dry spell we've experienced since we've met.  Here's the history:

Before egg retrieval, my hubby K had to abstain for 3-5 days.  After the retrieval, my cramps were so bad that it just wasn't going to happen.  After the transfer, I had to abstain for 5 days.

We finally get the medical green light to give it a go and make a discovery.  Orgasms trigger cramps.  So at the end of sex, my response went "Yay!.....Owwww!!!"

So not only am I exhausted from the pregnancy, but now I associate orgasm with pain.  Swell.  We hold off for a little bit again.  I test the orgasm = cramps theory on my own to see if it's just a fluke, and nope, it's not a fluke.  Damnit!!!  My libido drops to practically nothing.  Wouldn't yours?  When you no longer want to get to the end goal because it's painful, it kind of puts a damper on the whole process!

Around this time, my husband gets the cold from hell.  He's miserable and could not be less interested in sex if he tried.  My husband has some stomach issues and whenever anything disrupts his body, his body responds by vomiting.  So for the first weeks of my pregnancy, he had the morning sickness misery instead of me!  *Insert evil laughter here!*

So just as he's starting to feel a little bit better and now I'm starting the cold from hell.  I start the bitching of "you did this to me you bastard!" about 7 months before that's usually shouted.  There will be no touching me for some time.

I finally start to feel decent and we get back on that horse.  Ok, we don't actually get on the horse, we get a foot in the first stirrup, but never actually get fully mounted.  Wanna know why?  Because it hurts.  It really hurts.  Even though we've made sure that everything should be ready to go in female arousal land, actual penetration hurts like hell.  And then I remember, this hurts just like a few years ago when I had a yeast infection.

Oh come on!!!  It's been weeks and now I probably have an infection making it hurt?  What deity hates us?  Oh well.  We've got the 8 week check up in a few days and we'll just wait and ask the doctor at that time.

We discover that a fertility clinic doesn't necessarily have all of the testing equipment that a standard gynecologist has.  I ask him to swab and test for a yeast infection but he isn't able to do that.  However, he does take a peek, says yes there appears to be some yeast here.  He tells me to just get an over the counter medication and all should be fine.  We stop by the store on the way home and ready to start treatment.

And again, whatever deity is playing jokes on us strikes again.  The package on the medication says to abstain from sex while on it.  And just to really fuck with me, I drop the final dose into the toilet while trying to insert it.  The toilet that I have urinated in and not yet flushed.  I sure as hell wasn't going in after it.  Since the box also says to check with a medical professional before using this product when pregnant, and since my medical professional was advising rather than prescribing, I decide to just hope I've taken enough doses to feel better and I'll double-check the status of the infection when I see my new doctor around the 11 week mark.

If you're counting along, you'll notice that we've had about 1 1/2 unpleasant sexual encounters in the last approximately 2 months.

It then comes time to get back on that horse.  And this time, we get fully mounted and get a nice ride through the countryside and a standard dismount.

This is when I had the experience that prompted me to start this blog.

I inexplicably got upset.  Really upset.  And I didn't want the hubby to know.  This is the first chance he's had to have sex in about 2 months, it's after 2am and he's going to fall asleep any minute, the last thing I want to do is spoil his afterglow with irrationally crying wife.  I head into the bathroom for the usual post coital clean up and I'm crying.  I don't know why.  He didn't do anything wrong, the experience was perfectly fine, but for some unknown reason I was really upset.  It was like my body objected to being messed with so it was triggering a raw emotional reaction.

The next day I google "sex upsetting during pregnancy" and get nothing.  I tell myself that everyone's hormones do different things to them both physically and emotionally and this has probably happened to other pregnant women, I just can't find evidence of that.

I sit K down for a frank discussion and tell him what happened.  Right now, I just don't want to have sex.  And I don't know when that's going to change.  I mean, it's my understanding that the hormones flip around in the second trimester so hopefully I'll be getting really horny at that time, but for right now, I just don't want to.  I talked to him about my fear of a year long abstinence.  I mean, it's entirely possible.  We pretty much started it about 2 months ago, and if I don't get a horny streak during trimester 2, we might be out of luck for a while.  Trimester 3, I might be told to abstain to prevent the start of premature contractions, and if I do a vaginal delivery of twins, well, let's just say my friend who delivered one child is still having some pain issues 5 months later.

And I'm sure you're thinking "but gee, just because you don't want to doesn't mean you can't perform other wifely duties so your husband doesn't have to fully abstain just because you want to.  There are other satisfying options that don't really mess with your body."

Yes, that's very true.  But there's also a resentment factor.  You see, I can't have orgasms for a while.  They hurt.  And it's not fair.  And while it's not fair to him that he should have to suffer because my body is uncooperative, it's also not fair that he get to have a good time when I can't.  So unless I get to punch him in the balls right after every orgasm so that we're even, I kind of resent the idea of providing one for him.

Yes, my goal in life is to provide my husband as much happiness as I can.  That's not a duty, that's my desire.  So I have to balance his immediate happiness, with the consequences of having a resentful wife.

And I truly have married a saint.  The last thing he ever wants to do is upset me or impose upon me.  He said that if we abstain for a year, we abstain for a year.  And I actually trust him when he tells me that.

I really hope that's not what happens.  Seriously, I don't want that to happen.  The control is now in my hands.  If I want to give it a go, I will control the pace at which we go.  And if I don't want to give it a go, he's not going to pressure me.

I'm meeting my new doctor in about 10 days.  This will definitely be one of the topics we discuss with him.

How far along am I?

One of the questions I had about all of this was how far along was I?  I know that makes no sense considering I knew the date and time of both fertilization and the date and time that the embryos were in my uterus.

But when doing research online, all of the pregnancy calendars actually start about 2 or 3 weeks prior to the actual conception.  Week 1 starts at the end of your previous period.  And they guess that the actual conception is during week 2 or 3.  So where did that put me?

When the nurse called to schedule my 6 week check-up, we got that all figured out.  My check up was going to be about 3 and a half weeks after the transfer or just over 4 weeks after the egg was fertilized and the embryo was created.

So, medically, I'm currently 9 weeks and 2 days pregnant.  Yet I've only had actual embryos in my body for 6 weeks and 4 days.

I post this in case anyone else has that same question.