Waiting Game

We're almost half-way through the big "two-week-wait." I think it has been less of a roller coaster than last time. I have kept the google searches to a minimum... mostly focusing on this elevated progesterone anomaly of mine. The more I read about the symptoms of high progesterone, the more I'm convinced that it has been an ongoing issue for a while. Could this have been the cause of our six year battle with unexplained infertility?? Could this finally be our WHY? Of course, I have tried to blame at least half-a-dozen other possible causes for our struggle in the past. It's maddening.

Mentally I have kept myself in check by staying busy and distracted. Physically I'm a little worse for wear. The toll that these treatments take on my body is impressive. A couple of days after the transfer I still had sharp pains in my sides from my giant angry ovaries, which makes everything from walking to laying flat an uncomfortable ordeal. My pelvis/lower abdomen/upper thighs became increasingly painful on Thursday to the point where I was sure I had pelvic inflammation due to an infection from the IUI. Luckily on Friday morning I woke up feeling better. Now I'm fighting through a six-day headache that was triggered by an alarm system at work and has since decided to hang around regardless of what baby-safe methods I try to rid myself of the agony. Nothing a cup of coffee and some aspirin wouldn't fix, of course....

Now is the time I usually tell myself that I' going to wait until the blood test to check for pregnancy and NOT TEST EARLY. There are multiple reasons for this, but the main one is because the trigger shot that I took to ovulate causes false pregnancy results on home tests. Another reason is because it is unbelievably stressful to test at home when the stakes are so high - squinting, taking pictures to convert into negatives, searching the stats about home pregnancy tests in relation to the day of your cycle, posting pictures on facebook groups to see what the group consensus is (yes, I have done that...) --- and that is just if the test is negative. A positive test would send all kinds of mixed emotions and a flurry of questions and possibilities circulating for consideration. Is it real? Is it a false positive? Is it too faint? Could it be a chemical pregnancy? **searches baby announcements on Pinterest** Then you have to wait until the blood draw anyway for a quantitative look at your maybe-pregnancy.

At least if I wait, I get to hang out in the blissfully ignorant "maybe-it-worked-maybe-it-didn't" stage for a while and fantasize about motherhood for an extra week before my world explodes with joy or crumbles beneath me.