I worried, after yesterday's post, that my omission to wax lyrical on the joys of being newly pregnant might leave you with the impression that I am not appropriately or proportionately ecstatic. This couldn't be further from the truth - I am elated but I am also terrified. I am scared to take our good fortune for granted - we have been incredibly lucky so far and I sense that caution is required to preserve the last of our felicitous allocation; we could still fall folly to 'chemical pregnancy', (which is where you get a positive for a week or two before the embryo dissolves); some sort of quasi ectopic experience, (I had an ectopic pregnancy that lasted approximately 6 weeks about 10 years ago); or, indeed, an ordinary miscarriage, (which we have seen cause terrible suffering to some of our friends). Since we didn't have IVF in the country there is no way for us to confirm that the hcg in my bloodstream is doubling every day as it should - because we are not entitled to standard post-IVF after-care. I don't think my odds of miscarrying are any greater than the statistical average but I do think that I have ridden the bejesus out of my luck to get this far.
I also feel guilty... not hugely, horribly or pervasively guilty - just guilty enough to temper any premature rhapsodising - we kicked the ass out of someone else's chances with our positive result and I feel I owe it to them to pay a modicum of heed and homage to the bigger picture. All of that being said, I do not think I will be able to hold onto these concerns for the full first trimester, I can only imagine that with each passing day 'not-taking-it-for-granted' will become an increasingly impossible task but, bear with me for a little longer, while I give in to the futile pursuit of trying to influence the universe with the flimsy, misguided power of my mind.
If it illustrates my mental state any, a close friend and my sister both mentioned that, if everything went well, this would be an October baby. I realised when they said this that I had managed to compartmentalise so effectively that I hadn't yet allowed myself to work that out. I doubt you could pull off a stunt of this calibre if you weren't mathematically challenged to the nth degree but I was pretty impressed nonetheless - check me and my self-imposed-ignorance, just imagine all the things I could fail to achieve if I really set my mind to it!
As well as a visit to the gynaecologist we also saw the GP yesterday, (that's what we call a day-to-day doctor in the UK); I was nervous going in that we would be subject to more disapproval but he was harmless enough; completely uninformed about IVF and had never heard of OHSS but referred us for the traditional 12 week booking/scan at the appropriate clinic - and then said that we would probably be seen a little bit earlier because I'd previously suffered an ectopic. So no specific dates to look forward to but at least we weren't denounced for daring to jump the IVF queue, (queuing is a British institution and jumping the queue is punishable by death... stares.).
diaryofamaybebaby 