Skip to main content

10 weeks! And other thoughts

10567489_10152215148899149_481082782_n

I am 10 weeks, 2 days today. My baby is the size of a prune. My belly is much larger than that.

I'm still living in the week. I've had people ask me where I will be delivering (a normal question), and I can not wrap my mind around that. That feels like an eternity away, after so many hurdles, and I can only wrap my mind around this moment. 10 weeks pregnant, more pregnant than I've ever been. I'm here in this week, slowly climbing toward the next one.

I've had doubts about us making our announcement at 9 weeks. I know that the smart folks wait until 12 weeks or later. In some ways, I am jealous of those people who just get pregnant and are able to hide it for that long. We can't really do that, since we have chosen to be very vulnerable and honest about our fertility struggle. A lot of people ask, because a lot of people care, and I have refused from the beginning to lie about it. The best we could do was wait until our second beta to tell our familes. Last pregnancy, I told a lot of people before we even had that, and I regretted it when we got the mediocre news that my hcg had not doubled.

Then there is the fact that, last time, I told a handful of people, and that handful kept growing, and when it came time to give the really bad news, I had to search through my texts and Facebook messages and emails to make sure everyone was updated. That part was awful. In this way, a public announcement makes things much easier. If things go wrong, I just have to announce it again. It will be awful, but it will not be as bad as updating people over and over and over again.

Not that I'm dooming things to go wrong. I've just seen it all. I have a dear friend who lost a baby at 15 weeks. Two who lost at 19 weeks. One who lost at 8 months. I will never feel safe, never feel as though it is the perfect time to announce. Our chance of failure is 1% right now, but I have seen the flesh and blood of that 1%, and it is scary. But when will it NOT be scary?

So, all that said, I'm glad we announced when we did. It was fun to see just how many people have been rooting for us. I'm so thankful for that. I've said before that while it's scary to be vulnerable, it's even scarier to feel alone. And I don't feel alone. The support is worth the inconveniences of vulnerability.

Our baby seems to be growing strong. I'm still pretty sick. My stomach has grown a lot in the last two weeks, despite the fact that the books say I won't show until the second trimester. I'm already in some maternity clothes, mainly because I've discovered that maternity leggings are the most comfortable things ever ever. And I'm happy, so happy, that things seem to be going well.

During the last few months of treatment, I started reading fertility blogs, and I read so many stories. I love stories, so I got sucked into a lot of them. Some gave me hope, some broke my heart, all gave me new people to pray for. One thing I loved about the blogs I found was the "TTC (trying to conceive) timeline" most have on their pages. I really like data, so I loved reading about other journeys with all the data. This made me decide that it was time to include our journey on the blog. I tried to keep the fertility lingo out of it, but it will still probably only make sense to those who know the lingo. But for those who have wondered all the ins and outs of what we've been through, feel free to read about our infertility journey here.

In other news, I have been teaching a chemistry course for the summer quarter at Harrison College. I taught this course last year, and it was a lot of work but worth it. I get rusty in my chemistry if I don't teach it every year. It means driving from Zionsville to Anderson ever Wednesday evening and it keeps me up past my bedtime, but I'm enjoying it. Last year when I taught the course, we had just started doing medicated IUI cycles, and so whenever I feel like it is hard to teach this class while pregnant, I remind myself how hard it was during clomid cycles. I'd much rather be pregnant.

And, that's all I've got. Seems like my brain can only do a lot of rambling on here these days, but I'll do my best to keep it updated :)

 

 

 

Comments

  1. HollyAugust 1, 2014 at 5:59 AM

    "When will it not be scary?" Never. My oldest is 23, middle dude is 16, and youngest is 11. So far, it's never been *not* scary.

    And that's parenthood. We think that "once we get past ____ point" it will be less scary. Past the threat of miscarriage, past the threat of birth and he's in my protective arms, past the threat of SIDS, past the threat of being diagnosed with developmental delays . . . or autism, past the threat of ...

    bullying
    learning disabilities
    puberty
    girls/boys/friends no good for them
    social pressures
    falling into drinking/drugs
    first broken heart
    driving
    first love
    I could go on and on and on ...

    You are never past the threat of the worry and fear over something. That is the absolute terror and pure joy of being a mother and trusting in God's faith in *you* to do this.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Olivia Marilyn Rich

Hi friends! Looks like I blogged in 2018 a total of...zero times. I did start a lot of drafts, but none made it to publishing. I'm hoping to maybe get back into blogging (like, at least more than zero times in 2019), but I realized that until I can give any life updates, I need to post SOMETHING about baby #2's arrival. According to my blog, I'm still 9 weeks pregnant with her, but she is now 15 months old. So here is the completed version of her birth story that I attempted to write last year. In order to tell Livvie's birth story, I need to record her pregnancy. It was hard to write about during it, harder to write about it after it. I'm feeling less connected to it now- it is a hazy memory of misery in my mind. I know it was awful, but I can't quite remember just how awful. I guess this is how people have more babies, as the memories are slowly swallowed up by the heavenliness of the baby outside of the womb. The most difficult part of my pregnancies is...
Post a Comment
Read more

'Til We Finally Meet

When we awoke you were not to be You never swam in our blue sea Now you’ve gone to different oceans Than the one we floated our hopes in When we lost our baby, I did not know how to grieve. So I didn't. I treated it like a failed cycle and put my hand to the plow, pulling my heart and body toward the next thing. We will get pregnant again, I told myself. That will make it all better. Lets pretend this never happened. You were a breaking in the clouds We barely said these things aloud There was a question you were the answer We heard music you were the dancer But in the in-between time, waiting for my body to recover so we could begin treatment again, it eventually became too much to ignore that we had a child. Two children, I guess, though my mind can't possibly comprehend the existence of that other one, the empty sac that never grew beyond four or five weeks. But that beautiful miracle on the ultrasound scream, the sound of the doctor exclaiming "There's a baby with ...
5 comments
Read more

IVF update

We completed our first IVF cycle (minus the transfer)! For those are interested, here's an update on how it went. Stims I was looking forward to the stimming process, with all the sciency needles and vials. And it was fun for awhile, until my follicles (eggs) started growing. Then it started to get old and very uncomfortable. But I responded so well! For our IUI's, I usually had very little response at the first ultrasound. But for my first IVF ultrasound, I already had a great number of follicles growing with an E2 (estrogen level) of 937! And then things just ballooned. Two days later, I had 27 follicles. Then 39. I triggered with 39 follicles and an E2 of 4540. One of the reasons they pushed the number of follicles was due to my left ovary, which they were concerned they might not be able to reach for retrieval. For most of the stimming process, it was hidden underneath my uterus. So they wanted to make sure my right had a good amount of mature follicles, and it di...
3 comments
Read more