A line is a line!!

I have more than once said that I would love to get a peek into the future.
Maybe if I did, I could devise a plan on how to cheat fate or do things differently and at least it would saveme from a few days of obsessing and wondering...

But I have my days when I wish I was blissfully ignorant. I get vivid visions of myself covering my ears, humming and slowly backing away... "I don't want to hear it, I don't want to hear it" I would say while I would hum away really loud, like when I was 3.

As I found myself holding the little stick in my hand, clearing sporting two lines all I could think of was that long list of things than can go wrong from now on.
This is the modern age... there is no "you got pregnant you will have a baby" guarantee. We obsessive TTCers (where TTC stands for Trying to Conceive) have read, studied and know our bodies and our reproductive cycle better than any other woman in any other day and age, ever. We are in a position now to even contradict our doctor!! The age of "this is what you have, this is what you do" is over. We now say "says who?" and we look for another doctor.

We think all we want to see is two little lines but having being engrossed so much in this TTC and IF game, that the joy of seeing two lines is brief. The longer you have been in the infertility roller coaster, the shorter the moment of your elation becomes because inadvertly the more time you spend looking for information, you also come accross some information you probably weren't looking for. The stories of those TTCers who got the second line, got pregnant but never became moms.

Suddenly you are not pregnant... you are having an ectopic, possibly miscarrying and most certainly the cramps you have been having are something bad, something you shouldn't be having and you bite your nails while you complusively test twice a day hoping for that second line to get darker. Then you have your first beta which confirms what the 20 home pregnancy tests have been telling you. You ARE pregnant... but its certainly not enough. Then you bite your nails some more while waiting for your numbers to double in 72 hours...
And this is just the first week...

Insert image of me running away with my hands covering my ears here, screaming "no, no, I don't want to hear it"

But I HAVE heard it and I had to live through two of them first hand when two friends lost their babies (one full term, one at 25 weeks) and the sad stories draw me like a magnet and no matter how hard I press on my ears and how loudly I hum, the possibility that the end result of my two pink lines might not be a screaming, writhing, pink baby, is very much always at the back of my mind.

When we go on a medicated cycle we are told all about the success rates. For me and my 12 eggs the success rate was 93% for singleton and about 60% for a multiple. But no-one ever told me what the possibility of something going terribly wrong is... When I asked my RE what happens after I get my two lines, all he said was that 75% of women go on to have a healthy baby. But those sad stories of poor women who did not, certainly look like much more of the 25% remaining percent.

I consider myself a logical person. I totally understand that how dark my second line on the uptienth HPT is, is no indication of the state of my pregnancy, even if I have heard the story that a faint line means a miscarriage is imminent. I tell myself that some woman indeed had a faint line and then miscarried but I know 20 more women who are moms now but 9 months earlier their lines were faint too.
Then I hear of the other woman who had a "fluke" ectopic (the baby grew in her tubes instead of her uterus) and she too had a faint line and of course not doubling beta and a pain at her side...
Then I freak out because I have aches and pains all over!! But I also have OHSS which means both my ovaries are filled with fluid so I might not be having an ectopic at all...
Oh yes.. You get your daily scare alright and its right when you wish that people with happy, healthy prengnancies would speak out more.
I wish I would hear more often from people like me, who had the same fears and misgivings but had healthy babies anyway... so I made a pact with myself...

I am pregnant. I am 4 weeks along. This is my first pregnancy and if its a multiple and all goes well, it might be my only one.
What is to happen will happen. If my baby has attached itself well and in the right place is out of my control. Whether the egg it came from was good quality thus has more chances of developing, if 2 weeks from now it has a beating heart, that's also not in my control... Talking or not talking about it, dreaming or not dreaming about it and being happy or not about it, won't affect the way this pregnancy will turn out. It will either do well or it won't and I will either have a baby in December or not. But if I am NOT happy about it now, if I am not talking about it and if everything turns out good and I have my twins in 9 months or so from now, how will I feel not having celebrated that for which I prayed, cried, paid for in blood for so long?

So hi baby... welcome to my uterus. Please stick around and grow fat and healthy for the next nine months. Feel free to use any of the nice gadgets around for your pleasure... but please, do stick around. We would give anything to meet you and hold you and love you....

Love,
Mom and Dad