waiting, waiting, waiting

On Sunday I had decided that I’d had enough rest and decided to get back to my normal routine. Bad idea. By Sunday evening I was cramping, a lot, which carried over into Monday.

Monday was a bad day. I received an email that the security team would be here “November 9, Tuesday” ?? to check the alarm. First of all, I was really looking forward to a day alone, possibly a day to rest. Also, last time the security team was here to check the alarm, the phone system was down for four months. Numerous appointments later with the security team, phone company, and electricians, the phones are working again, but I was not looking forward to a repeat. I think I was most frustrated with the email, were they coming Monday November 9 or Tuesday November 10.

On top of that, the dishwasher stopped working, again. I tried running it three times, three different settings, nothing. By dinner time I had yet to hear anything from the security team, had an entire dishwasher of dishes to wash by hand, but was still cramping. Oh, and did I mention there is ANOTHER leak under the kitchen sink and in the powder room?

Then my husband came home from work and informed me that our local grocery stores would not be receiving turkeys until the first week of December. Fine unless you are American wanting to celebrate Thanksgiving the end of November. Apparently turkeys can be ordered through local butchers; yeah, like that won’t cost a small fortune. And so the cramping continued.

As we sat down to dinner, my husband noticed that Guinness was not in his usual spot, begging for people food. Sure enough, the cat was in the foyer getting violently ill on the new door mat. Fabulous. Cleaned up the cat and the foyer, more cramps.

I finally crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep. I knew it was over. I decided to test Tuesday morning just to prove it to myself. It had been 15 days since the HCG trigger shot, no chance it was still in my system, therefore no chance of a false positive.

Tuesday morning I was up early (not that I had slept) and tested.

Much to my surprise


Yeah, pregnant. I showed the test to my husband and unlike the reaction that most couples have to such news, we just gave each other a look of “well, here we go again”, and that was that. Infertility and a previous miscarriage steal the joy that a positive pregnancy test means that you’ll actually still be pregnant the following week, the following month, or even that you might eventually have a live baby. And the cramps continued.

This morning I decided I was done. I had to know one way or the other so I called the clinic to schedule a beta (not routinely done here, a rant for another post). The nurse I spoke to was less than enthusiastic about me coming in so early, though agreed that it was definitely not leftover HCG in my system from the trigger shot.

The receptionist was very nice and agreed to get me in ASAP even though they were “double booked” today. She said to expect a long wait. I held it together until we were sitting on the couch in the waiting area upstairs. I saw my doctor come in to get another couple and lost it. Fortunately within two minutes a nurse called my name. (Crying patients in the waiting area can’t be good for business). The nurse was lovely, talked to us for a few minutes, then insisted she find someone to speak with us after the blood draw, which I told her wasn’t necessary.

She took the blood, flipped through my chart, and asked about my history. I told her about the triplets and the failed FET. She was awesome, completely awesome. She didn’t make me feel like a complete loon for being as scared and nervous as I was. She also said the cramps could be implantation cramps. WHAT? This feels more like, ‘my period is going to start any second’ type of cramps. Through the tears I told her that I never had cramping with the triplets and I lost them, so I can only imagine what cramps mean. Nope, she insisted, it was likely implantation cramps.

Another nurse will call this afternoon with the beta result and I have a second appointment on Friday. I was sent home with strict orders of “couch rest, tv, and chocolate”.

So now, I’m waiting, waiting, waiting……

PS- I’m not sure what to think of it, but every time I’ve been on the couch since the transfer, Guinness is sprawled across my stomach. Maybe he knows something is going on in there. Keep snuggling little buddy.