Not to be too hopeful, but...

Yesterday I started getting some pregnancy symptoms. Yesterday evening I had a dull cramp that continued until late this morning, like menstrual cramps or a gas pain. Last night I woke up to pee and then woke again having to pee but held it until morning. I NEVER pee at night, so twice in one night is a big deal. Yesterday was day 7 past my IUI and should be around the time the implantation occurs. I looked it up and found these early symptoms:

Slight bleeding or cramping
For some women, a small amount of spotting or vaginal bleeding is one of the first symptoms of pregnancy. Known as implantation bleeding, it happens when the fertilized egg attaches to the lining of the uterus — about 10 to 14 days after fertilization. This type of bleeding is usually a bit earlier, spottier and lighter in color than a normal period and doesn't last as long. Some women also experience abdominal cramping early in pregnancy. These cramps are similar to menstrual cramps.

Frequent urination
A woman in the early stages of pregnancy may feel she has to urinate frequently, especially at nighttime, and she may leak urine with a cough, sneeze, or laugh. The increased desire to urinate may have both physical and hormonal causes. Once the embryo has implanted in the uterus, it begins to produce the hormone known as human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), which is believed to stimulate frequent urination. Another cause of frequent urination that develops later is the pressure exerted by the growing uterus on the bladder.


Uh! We have to wait until Sept 22 for the blood test. That seems like so long from now.

A whirlwind weekend

I am so tired from a whirlwind weekend. I just got back from lunch with some coworkers, where I had caffeine, so I'm feeling a little better for the afternoon.

We were pretty depressed Thursday after the weird sonogram results. But our college friends were coming to town, so we put it all behind us as we looked forward to a fun weekend. A arrived on Friday night, we had a tasty meal at the Taste of Jerusalem and stayed up late into the night. Saturday I got up early to pee on a stick. If we got a positive, we needed to call the doctor by 7:30 am. Based on the sonogram, we weren't expecting a positive until Monday, but got a positive on Saturday. So we called the doctor and she said to rush in for another sonogram. The sonogram showed the same thing - no follicles were ready, I probably wasn't ovulating. But since there was a +OPK, she drew some blood to get the hormone levels. We went home and waited for the call. K was more depressed, crying while driving home. It's never going to work, we can't do anything right, why are we doing this when we could just adopt, we're going to spend all of our money and still not have a baby...

L arrived around 12:30. We were happy because we haven't seen him in a year. Emotional roller coaster. We go to Thai at Silver Spring for lunch, and while there receive a phone call from the doctor. She says the progesterone looks right, the LH is surging, and the time is now. Huh? This morning she basically told us to give up on this cycle, and now things couldn't be better? Confusion and more emotional roller coaster, but we agree to come in Sunday morning for an IUI. Spent the rest of the day relaxing with friends that we love as family - relaxing and laughing. It's good for the spirits, and good for the soul. Again we stayed up way too late. A and I each laughed until we had to pee.

Sunday we woke up early and all four of us piled into the car for a trip to the clinic. We were nervously chatting and laughing while waiting to be called. K and I went into the office and left A and L in the waiting room. A really wanted to come in, but we said no. There is some privacy left... They sat listening through the walls instead. We told doc that our college friends were visiting so we dragged them along, and she said "Oh, I was wondering who those people were..." Doc says cervix was open but on it's way closed, so this was perfect timing. I still don't understand about the sonograms and the follicles, but if the doc says it's perfect we'll go with it.

We were headed to Berkeley Springs, WV, for a day of spa treatments, soaking in the baths, and swimming and boating at the Cacapon State Park. K asked the doctor about these activities and she said they were not for me. No swimming the day of an IUI - good to know. We went anyway, and still had lots of fun. K and A took in the baths while L and I watched the kids swim in the springs. It was a wonderful day and would be a great day to conceive a baby - with our closest friends listening through the wall in the waiting room - but I still don't know if there was an egg. We are cautiously hopeful - the whole event just felt so good, but everything about it was fucked up. This two week cycle of hope and despair totally sucks and I don't want to do it again.

On Monday we went to Mickey D's for a egg mcmuffin. I read somewhere that they help the with the implantation, I told this to K and A, and said it was probably unfounded, but they both wanted to use me as an excuse to get one themselves, so off we went, arriving just in time before they shut down breakfast. It was not so tasty, but I've always love McDonald's hashbrowns.

We visited Greenbelt for the Labor Day festival. L loves sno-cones and lemonade and fair food so when we told him about it, his eyes got big and he said "you mean they will have sno-cones?" The parade was going on when we arrived. We didn't care about the parade, but had to walk past it on our way to the Greenbelt Museum. There aren't any sidewalks and there were people standing on the edge of the road, so we started marching in the parade. First we joined the dog group, then joined the Obama group. We stood with them, chanting along with "Vote Change - Obama '08". We crashed the Greenbelt parade! This is the strangest parade - even code enforcement was included. My favorite was the people pushing lawn mowers with the words 'Kick Gas'.

A left Monday afternoon. L stayed - he's moving to the area for 3-6 months (hopefully forever) and we helped show him around. We're trying to sell him on the area so that he will want to stay. If this IUI worked, he'll leave when I'm 6 months pregnant. If he stays, he'll be here for the birth.

This was our 4th annual Labor day with our college friends celebration. We look forward to it every year. If I don't get pregnant soon, I will either be big and pregnant or we will have a new born at Labor Day next year. We don't want to miss it - we want to bring our baby with us to celebrate. Another reason we hope to be pregnant this cycle.

So now we wait. I go in on the 19th for a pregnancy blood test. Cross your fingers.

My first dildo cam!

I was supposed to get my +OPK on Tuesday, and haven't gotten it yet. Yesterday afternoon I had some fertile mucus so I called the doc first thing this morning and she told me to come in for a sonogram. The sonogram was on the dildo cam, which I was really afraid of until I saw it. I fear this big huge dildo, but it's actually pretty small and painless. Turns out I haven't ovulated yet and won't for 4-5 more days, which will be about a week late. The nurse assured me that this is completely normal and that I shouldn't worry about anything. I'm still a little worried but what can I do.

K has been in a funk all week. On Sunday we both had the feeling that this was going to be the cycle, but by Monday she had switched to feeling like this isn't working at all. It doesn't help that I haven't ovulated yet and every day I don't ovulate depresses her more. I am trying not to worry about it much because I'm supposed to be calm and not stressed in order to make this work. But everyday this week she is depressed, so last night it broke and we argued and cried and hurt each others feelings. We ended with a decision to try to stay positive. We will do what we can to increase my fertility and to get the timing right, but we will stay positive. K has been doing a lot of reading and has some ideas about how to do things better, and we will be trying those options. And we might have a burning ceremony where we write down things that we worry about but we have no control over, and burn them to symbolize that we are letting them go. And we are both going to try to support each other better.

This weekend our college friends are coming to stay. We plan to laugh a lot, and act like we did 10 years ago. And relax and forget about it all. Except that we have to wake up early to pee on sticks and keep hoping for a positive.

Adoptions, anniversaries, divorces, and hope

First, the adoption. On Friday I attended the second parent adoption ceromony for A and baby K. It was such a nice ceremony, A's parents came to it and were very happy, it was just beautiful. We're very happy for them.

Second, we spent the weekend camping in Harpers Ferry, WV, with another couple celebrating K's 29th birthday and our 11th anniversary of when we met. It was K's first camping trip that she enjoyed. We stayed in cabins with AC and the campground had a nice bathroom facility, and that helps a lot. We went tubing, rented bikes, made smores, and ate lots of food. It was very fun and very relaxing.

Third, the divorces. I talked to my dad yesterday for his birthday. He told me that two close family friends are getting divorces from their husbands. One is my age, my best friend growing up but we're not close now. She and her husband have been married 7 years and they have two kids. The other is her older sister, my sister's age, one of my sister's closest friends growing up. She and her husband have been married five years and they have one child. I just keep thinking about how excited my parents were about these two families. Oh, K is getting married! Oh, K is pregnant! Oh, look how adorable K's children are! So much excitement for them, but yet these relationships didn't even last. Our relationship has lasted, will last, but no celebrations will come from my family. It just sucks.

Fourth, the hope. I should be ovulating this week, and we can start again with the IUIs. We've been sad this month since we've been "trying" for three months but have only had one real "try". This feels like a fresh start, like we can leave all of that disappointment behind because we are definitely trying for real this month. K and I both said last night that this feels like the one that will work. Of course, that means that we are setting ourselves up for disappointment, but we really have hope for this cycle.

Still not pregnant

Got my period last night. We didn't expect that this try would work, so now we can finally just move on to the next one. This period came with vicious cramps, which I don't appreciate.

Make room for baby

We live in a two bedroom condo that currently fits us just fine, but we know that there will one day be another tiny person we need to share our space with, so we've got to make some room. Currently we use our second bedroom as a guest room, a TV room, and a storage room. We have to turn it into a nursery, which means most of that stuff has to come out, either by getting rid of it or moving it to another room. For the most part we are putting this off until we are actually pregnant, but in the past couple of weeks we have been making major progress.

A couple of weeks ago, on a whim, we went to Ikea and bought the desk we've always wanted - a secretary style (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10115213) with a hutch (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30115212) - and put it in our living room. It replaced a mostly decorative bookshelf, which someone from our condo is coming to pick up tonight. We also bought a file cabinet bench that replaced a coffee table (also from Ikea). This allowed us to move our computer equipment and supplies, office supplies, filing cabinet all out of the study. Now the living room is much more elegant that before, and more useful.

Last week was K's 29th birthday, and I got her CD booklets (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005ATMF) to hold all 400+ of our CDs so that we could get rid of the CD cases. This freed up a lot of space in our entertainment center, so we moved all of our DVDs from the storage ottomans to the entertainment center, and all of our electronics (extension cords, camera equipment, batteries, etc) from the bedroom closet to the entertainment center. Then we moved our tablecloths and blankets from the linen closet to the storage ottomans, and some storage boxes from the bedroom closet to the linen closet.

Then, viola! We have 1.5 empty shelves in the bedroom closet and all of the floor space. It's starting to feel like this will actually work! We moved the coffee table into the now empty closet floor space to be used as a toy chest, though right now it's still full of photo albums that will eventually need to find a new home. We really like living in a small home, but it presents a space challenge. But for the most part, we like the challenge. All of our furniture serves a purpose and there is no place in our home we don't use. And we don't keep things we don't need.

The next plan, but one we have to save more money for, is to buy a bed frame with drawers for our bedroom to move some of the stuff into our room. And to buy a flatscreen TV to move the TV out of the second bedroom and into the living room. And to do a major purge - getting rid of more things we don't need. K's been looking forward to that part for years - getting rid of stuff is her favorite activity. But all of this can wait until we have more money, energy, or need. Right now we are just happy with the progress we've made so far.

We tackled other home improvement projects this weekend as well. We bought a digital converter for our television and went from having 3 fuzzy channels to having 21 crisp channels. The picture is so clear it's like we have cable again. We stayed up late Saturday night watching travel shows on PBS and The Chapelle Show on the CW, both channels we couldn't get before. All for just $23 after the government coupon. Why did we wait this long?

Also we tried to replace our dining room light with a paper lantern that better matches our Asian themed dining room, but we got confused and quit midway through and called our friend A for help. She hasn't come by yet, so basically the cords are hanging from the ceiling. So that was our only failure this weekend. Hopefully we can get that one fixed soon. But all in all it was a very good, very productive, weekend.

White, creamy discharge

Today I have the white, creamy discharge that you get on toward the end of your cycle, maybe a week before the period comes. Does this mean I'm not pregnant, or would this discharge come anyway?