The 2 week wait after the transfer was torture. I started out with so much confidence but as each day passed I started to worry that it hadn't worked. We were already coming up with plans on how to pay for the next IVF cycle. It was a very long couple of weeks for me!
But finally, the day came. David and I both took off work because I didn't want to have to be sitting at my desk if I got a call with bad news and I also knew that if I got good news, I wouldn't want to be doing work! So we ran a few errands after my blood test because I didn't expect to hear anything until after lunch. But the call came shortly after 10:00 and a part of me knew it was good news before I even answered because I think they have their system figured out. They call all the positives first and save the negatives for later in the day. The nurse told me congratulations and what steps we had to do next.
We were over the moon! But it was so different from the first time we found out. I think this was more shock and it didn't really feel real. And I think the sudden fear that I was going to have a miscarriage again come over me and I just had to keep telling myself that I wasn't in the clear yet.
About a week after we got our news, I woke up with horrible cramps that wrapped around my side into my back. It hurt so bad that I was in tears. And of course this had to happen on a Saturday so we had to call the on call nurse about it. She spoke with the doctor and told me what I should take and to just rest. I took some pain medicine that was given to me for after my egg retrieval because the doctor said it's safe to take throughout the entire pregnancy. It helped and I ended up sleeping the entire day.
The doctor called back later that day to check on me and she told me it was a good sign that the medicine helped because if it hadn't she would have been worried it was an eptopic pregnancy.
I had the back pain for about another week, every time I stood up for too long. So I stayed sitting or laying down for most of the time.
Then, a week after that, I started spotting. And of course it was on a weekend again, so I call the on call nurse. She tells me spotting is normal but if it gets really heavy then I need to call back. Luckily, it stopped after a few hours.
Finally it was time for my first ultrasound. I was extremely nervous that I wasn't pregnant anymore because of the cramping and spotting and just the fear that something bad is bound to happen. But instead of bad news, this is what we saw:
(I'm not sure why it's sideways! I can't get it to rotate! Frustrating!)
Two babies! Both embryos had made it!
The doctor also checked out everything else going on in there and found that my left ovary was really swollen and that had been the cause of my back pain. The swollen ovary was caused by the IVF process. She said that she had experienced the same thing and that it would go down by my 12th week.
She also said that the spotting is normal. And I'm glad she did because I had more the following weekend.
After that appointment we had to wait 2 weeks until our next ultrasound. It was another long 2 week wait for me. I was feeling so anxious that something bad was going to happen. I never felt like that with the first pregnancy and I think that's why I was blindsided when we found out their hearts had stopped beating. So I felt like I needed to prepare myself for bad news each time. I wouldn't allow myself to think I was pregnant yet. I kept saying, "If I'm pregnant, we should do this...".
So with each appointment, I would go in holding my breathe until I saw those heartbeats and I knew they were beating normally. And each time they showed growth and perfect little heartbeats and that made us realize how much that first pregnancy was not normal from the beginning. There were tons of signs that something was wrong, but we had never been pregnant before!
I eventually asked the doctor if I could come in weekly instead of every 2 weeks because of my anxiety and she was very happy to do it. Thank goodness.
So each week, I would go in very nervous and leave very excited. And when we finally made it past that 11 week mark (I lost the other babies at 10 weeks 5 days), I was in heaven. The doctor was very relieved as well and she told us that we should be in the clear now, that we had made it past a very important step. She was so confident that we were good to go that she released me to go to my OB! But I wasn't ready. I needed that 12 week appointment to make it official. Then I would go see the OB.
And so here we are. I'll be 14 weeks tomorrow. We've met with our new OB and we're planning the nursery. My belly is poking out and I'm running out of clothes that fit. We are full on pregnant and I think I'm the happiest I've ever been. As far as we can tell, the babies are healthy and right on track with growth. They move around like maniacs with ADD each time we see them. They kick each other and show off with flips and spins. We can already tell that they will have big personalities.
Even though it's been extremely hard to get to this point, I'm happy now with how we did everything. If that makes any sense. Yes, it was a long road filled with tons of disappointments and tears and sadness. But if all of that wouldn't have happened to us, we wouldn't be having
these babies. This is all just part of our story and I can't wait to tell it to them one day.
I've picked out my bedding but just haven't ordered it yet. I'm thinking a yellow bumper, white sheets, and a steel gray bed skirt for both cribs.
