Too Little Too Late?

I must confess that after getting my most recent BFN, not only did I start thinking about our next FET AND adoption, but I started considering other options as well. Options like clinical trials. I found one in New Jersey that will be studying the effects of in vitro maturation on PCOS patients. For those of you who don't know, in vitro maturation involves retrieving the eggs before they are mature, letting them mature outside the body in a petri dish, then fertilizing and transferring just like a regular IVF cycle. Their theory is that in vitro maturation is better for PCOS patients because we have crusty eggs that have been sitting in our ovaries waiting to ovulate for forever. However, the previous studies I researched showed a fairly low pregnancy rate. Like 10%, almost comparable to an IUI. But I also read that the patients usually produced a high number of high quality embryos too. Nevertheless, free IVF kept ringing in my ears so I emailed the contact person. I heard back once asking about my history and never heard back again so I figured I didn't qualify. I put the thought out of my head and didn't worry about it again.

And then I got an email from them today. They were asking for my infertility records and mailing address to send out their consent form. And I thought to myself "Do I really want to go through this again?". After getting this last BFN, I'm very ready for my infertility journey to be over. Had this opportunity came up a year ago I would have jumped at the opportunity but now I'm questioning whether it's worth it. But I'm not the same person I was a year ago. That woman doesn't exist anymore but I can still hear her voice screaming "Are you fucking kidding me?! Take the opportunity damnit!"

I emailed Dr. P for his professional opinion about IVM and I'm waiting to hear back from him but honestly, I'm just not feelin it. I know it's like a once-in-a-lifetime thing that I should be taking advantage of but I'm just spent. I'm tired of the injections and the daily visits with my vagina, who has gotten more action during my last FET than all my college years combined. I'm tired of the BFN's. Even if I do get one from a cycle that's completely free it wouldn't take away the disappointment and heartache.

I'm just ready to be a parent. So if you're listening God, do whatever you have to do to please make that happen. Move some mountains, part some waters, just please give me a child.

Oh, and I hope everyone likes the new organizing I did to my blogroll. I will be adding new infertility and adoption blogs this week. Enjoy!

WW Weigh In and Other Issues

I did pretty good on my diet all week. I ate very healthy with the exception of a few meals, mostly dinner. But I didn't go completely overboard, I think I just had spaghetti and hot dogs for two meals this week. Other than that I don't recall falling off my diet. The scale kept creeping down every day this week as I drank tons of water. I think at one point I even saw it at 196.2 lbs. Unfortunately this morning I weighed in at 196.8 so I didn't reach my goal. Not even close. I'm not thrilled but it's still a good weight loss. My downfall was the fact that I didn't visit the gym at all. I worked a bit of overtime this week, started going to acupuncture and just never found the time. This week I'm definitely going, starting today (even though it snowed again). My goal for next week is to get to the elusive Ten Pound Mark, which is 194.7 lbs.

On the adoption front, I had a fellow blog reader who had applied with our chosen agency send me The Big Packet to look through before I slap down $200 with them. She ended up not choosing this agency for personal reasons and I can understand why. There were a few things that bothered me and though I know it's going to be a very touchy subject, I will share them here, along with my concerns about the adoption process in general. I'm open to constructive criticism about these topics but please keep your comments civil and respectful. I won't tolerate asshole commenters on my blog. And please don't assume that because I have these thoughts and feelings that I'm not ready for adoption or that I don't really want to adopt. That would be a very inaccurate judgement.

1) Our agency requires adoptive parents to sign a clause stating they will not spank their children. This mostly came as a surprise to me and I wasn't sure how to feel about this at first. I know many many people are against spanking but I'm one of those people that feel that it can be an effective punishment in some cases when other forms of punishment are otherwise ineffective (in other words, I don't believe in spanking as the primary form of punishment and don't feel that it's ever effective on a very young child). So while I had planned to use spanking as an alternative form of punishment, because the agency says we can't we'll just have to find other methods (besides the obvious grounding, time-outs, and revoking of privileges I don't really know of any other forms of punishment). It seems a moot point to think about it now as each child is different but I'm sure Brandon and I can figure it out as we go along. But the situation still irked me a bit. After all, we're adopting, not becoming foster parents. This child is going to be our child and I just felt that we should be able to raise our child in the manner that we feel is best. Whether it's religion, schooling, punishments, or other aspects of life, I just always felt that those would be our decisions to make as parents, not being told what we can and can't do. I did a bit of research and found that this clause is actually quite common and even my friends who have their own children say they're afraid to use spanking as a punishment for fear of their kids reporting them. Maybe it's my ignorance of the parenting world but I guess spanking is becoming obsolete these days. Who knew. I guess that's what I get for being infertile.

2) Our agency has a questionnaire that I'm sure is similar to all adoption agencies that ask what your comfort level is with certain drug use by expectant mothers. They list all kinds of potential drugs, their side effects on babies, yadda yadda and state that we shouldn't select anything we don't feel comfortable with handling. Yet we must be open to expectant moms who smoke daily because it's such a common thing. Smoking was the one drug I was open to accepting as my mom smoked when she was pregnant with me and I still turned out okay. But what about drinking? Marijuana? Antidepressents? I think I'm going to have to see a pediatrician about this. The paperwork states that the second most common drug use is marijuana and that if we're not open to the use of this drug then we may be waiting a longer time than average. I don't want to wait forever but is it really that uncommon to have a birthmom that doesn't do drugs or drink during pregnancy?

After reading this paperwork I started to get the feeling that my notions about adoption were probably a little inaccurate. So while these issues aren't dealbreakers for us, I think I need to really adjust my expectations and assumptions about the adoption process. I'm hoping that once we get the process started that all the rules and everything will make more sense but because we're just starting out it's a little hard.

Another few issues I have has to do with the homestudy part and other aspects of The Big Packet.

1) We need employer letters. I don't know what it has to say or if it's a form or what but I hadn't planned on telling my employer till we got on the waiting list. They don't know I'm going through fertility treatments, all I tell them now is that I have doctor appointments and that I have to leave for a few days for medical treatment (when I go to NC for my FET's). I'm not sure how they'll take it but I'm going to have to find a way to broach this subject with my supervisors soon.

2) We're going to have to talk about our family and our childhood at some point which is going to be pretty difficult. Brandon and I both had less-than-stellar childhoods. I grew up with an abusive alcoholic stepfather for 11 years and Brandon grew up poor. Poorer than poor. He lived in a hotel room in Las Vegas at some point in his life and left at the age of 15 to go live with his older sister for various reasons. I endured all kinds of abuse that I'll never forget, from being nicknamed "Short Fat Chubby Girl" to being made to eat a cigarette at the age of 7 (and it wasn't because I was caught smoking. I don't even recall what I did wrong, all I remember was the punishment). So we don't have the fairytale childhoods that some of our friends had. Some of those things may have determined how we live our lives now (Brandon is a spender, not a saver, because now he has the money and the means to do all the things he couldn't before. But he doesn't care for Christmas because he never got presents as a kid so it really holds no meaning for him). But for the most part, it doesn't. Even though we had so many years of bad situations, we both came out of it pretty unscathed. And everything we have now isn't because someone helped us along the way. Brandon and I are self-made people. We earned everything we have right now. And because of our past we don't really have excellent relationships with family members like we should. We each have our own close relationships within our family (mine is with my grandparents, Brandon's is with his sister and niece) but it still isn't the huge happy family that an expectant mom is probably going to want to see.

**I should point out that I do still have contact with everyone in my family, I just don't talk to them or visit on a regular basis. I sort of feel like an outsider, so to speak. Brandon doesn't talk to anyone in his family except his sister and niece and though he has 14 (I think) brothers and sisters, I've only met a handful of them.

So as you can see, I'm struggling with these feelings of inadequency. Like we're not going to be good enough to be parents. Because who is going to pick us with our crappy childhoods and strained family ties? And how in the world could I explain those situations on our profile without 1) lying by omission or 2) scaring away all the expectant moms?

I know that not all adoptive parents have a huge family circle or whatever but all my life I've been misunderstood and I just don't want that to happen again in this situation. We want to be parents more than anything and even though some say that it takes a village to raise a child, I think that Brandon and I could do a damn fine job on our own without a ton of family members around us. I just hope that there's an expectant mom out there who feels the same way.

The Game Plan

Ladies (and possibly gentlemen, I don't know who reads my blog) I think we have it all figured out. Maybe. As in I think we may have settled on an agency. I'm not going to say the name outright on this blog because I'm sure someone will Google it and I really don't plan on making this a private blog during the adoption process so I will just link the agency's website here. I've spoken to a couple blog writers who went through this agency and had good things to say about them (if you have personal experience with them, good or bad, that you would like to offer, please email me!). The downside is that they are really expensive. I'm talking how-in-the-world-did-I-let-my-emotions-talk-me-into-spending-this-much-money expensive. It's looks like our $30K budget will easily balloon to about $38K and while I'm not happy about that, I am happy about other aspects. Things like 1) they have a very low disruption rate (where the mother changes her mind and decides to parent) 2) their wait time is generally very short and 3) they are a national agency and can work with us if we move while we're still waiting to be matched. I also checked with this agency but unfortunately they aren't licensed for the state of CT. We didn't look at lawyers because I think I remember reading somewhere that in CT you must adopt through an agency, you cannot use lawyers. I may be wrong but I don't really care because I'd prefer to go through an agency anyway.

So this agency requires a $200 application fee, at which point they will send us the Big Packet to fill out, along with getting profile pictures and other documentation together. This is what we plan on working on during the next few months while we go through our FET(s). We know it will take a while so we want to get started on it now.

And speaking of FET's, our next one will take place in April now. I really didn't want to wait until June to go through another one, I can't stand the huge waiting periods we've had between our past cycles and I'm ready for this infertility journey to be over. Whether we get pregnant or adopt, I'm just ready to stop trying to fix my broken body and make it do something it clearly doesn't want to do on its own. It's probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever had to deal with. So I emailed Nurse D and she said they can squeeze me in in April. Since my period came on Feb 13th, I'm going to wait and see if it shows up on its own. If it doesn't show up by March 13th then I'll call Nurse D for some Provera and we'll get the ball rolling. However if my calculations are correct, I might have to cancel the cycle if I have to take Provera because that would likely push me back into a May transfer and that's cutting it a little too close to our vacation. But we'll have to see. If I have to cancel then it's no biggie. I'm going to start acupuncture this week, and really start busting my ass at the gym. I'd like to hit 190 lbs by Transfer Day which is easily attainable if I stick to my diet and exercise.

So that's the plan for now. Let's hope everything works out in April and that we waste $200 on an adoption application fee that we'll never need!

WW Weigh In and Sweeping

I planned on writing a post about sweeping last night but didn't so let's just mash the two subjects together, shall we?

First is my Weight Watchers Weigh In update. I know it's been forever since I've weighed in and I'm sure you can all understand my need to indulge myself in comfort food for the past few weeks but last Sunday I decided that it was time to start the diet/exercise plan again. Well, at least that was my intention. If you remember, the week before Transfer Day I weighed in at 200.2 lbs. So when I got on the scale last Sunday I wasn't suprised to see the scaled tipped back to 202.2 lbs. But that was also the day that AF showed and everybody knows that the only good thing that comes from seeing The Crimson Tide is that you're guaranteed to lose a little weight that week without having to lift a finger. Still, I tried to do my part by dieting (I don't exercise when I'm on my period).

Monday went well in regards to my diet but Tuesday and Wednesday I got depressed again and reverted back to the comfort food. Wednesday night we went shopping for some good healthy food and for the rest of the week I did fairly well. This morning I weighed in at 198.2 lbs. Hellz yea. I actually wanted to get down to 197 lbs and I probably would have done it except for the fact that I got extremely intoxicated from mudslides last night. I think it's safe to say I'll be avoiding milk for the rest of the week. My goal is to stick with the diet all week this time, get back into a regular routine at the gym, and get down to 195 lbs next week.

So now let's switch our minds over to a little something I like to call sweeping. No, I'm not talking about chores, I'm talking about sweepstakes. Back when I was unemployed, I kinda got hooked on entering sweepstakes. I think I started sweeping regularly back in August. I talked about it briefly here when I won a trip I couldn't take because of IVF #2. I found this cool website that made it easy to enter lots of contests every day. Brandon thought I was crazy trying to win something, saying it was equivalent to the lottery. And in some ways he was right. Except for the fact that I did win something. I won lots of things! And I love winning free stuff. Here's my list of winnings to date:
-A Scare-Me-Not doll
-Eat, Pray, Love t-shirt and bracelet
-Box of Barilla pasta and can of Barilla sauce
-My Little Pony doll
-$50 gift certificate to Fantastic Sam's
-Bag of Halls Cough Drops
-"Hallowed Bones" novel by Carolyn Hanes
-Physician's Formula Powder Palette makeup
-Samsung portable Blu-Ray DVD player (Brandon's personal favorite)
-Box of Cheerios

All the food items came as free coupons, and lots of my winnings were pretty small but it's still fun nonetheless. And the stuff I didn't use I donated or gave away to friends and family. The great thing about sweeping is that you can just enter and forget about it. For some sweepstakes winnings you'll get an email or phone call but most of the time they just mail you the prize so it's awesome to check the mail and find a prize waiting for you. And you only have to claim the big prizes on your taxes (I think it's anything over $500 or $600). I don't sweep as regularly as I used to but I'm still getting prizes on a regular basis, mostly because it takes a LONG time for some companies to select winners and mail out prizes. I think the contest for the DVD player was back in September and we just got the prize last week. So if you find yourself with some extra time on your hands you should really give sweeping a try. After all, you can't win if you don't enter!

Adoption

Brandon and I had yet another lengthy conversation about adoption. About the added costs we will be dealing with because of the tax credit (which I'll discuss in a minute), about the possibility of waiting for a long time before being matched, and about a lot of other things.

In the end we decided that if the FET(s) didn't work then we would pursue adoption, regardless of the cost (we're budgeting for a $30,000 adoption). I kinda wanted to move right into the adoption process and go back to FET's in a few years but Brandon really wanted to use up these embryos first and if that didn't work then we'll move on to the adoption. I could see his point so I agreed...on one stipulation.

That we choose an adoption agency now, and have the paperwork filled out and ready to submit in the event the FET(s) don't work. He was disappointed at my "pessimism" but I don't call it pessimism, I call it being prepared. My arguments were:
1) FET's only have a 30% success rate (in general) so the odds aren't really in our favor, especially considering we've already been through 3 very expensive ART treatments and no baby.
2) If we're going to incur any costs at the beginning of adoption, I want to pay those costs in 2011 while we can still get it back on our taxes.
3) Our next FET cycle will be the end of June. August will be the 2-year mark for Brandon's next duty station assignment. If we end up doing adoption we'll have to get the paperwork in ASAP so we will hopefully have an adoption completed by the time we have to move again in August 2013. It's possible to do, but we would need to do all the legwork now to have the paperwork ready by this fall.

So the hunt is on for an adoption agency. I had been doing research on agencies in the New England area but Brandon and I both agreed that now it would be wiser to go with a national agency, in case we do have to move while we're still waiting to adopt (we would have the option to stay here but we really hate Connecticut and would like to move back to Washington). So now I'm starting from scratch on selecting an adoption agency and could use any recommendations. Please feel free to email me if you have any suggestions, keeping in mind that our budget is about $30K and we probably would not be able to afford any agency that is much more expensive than this. We are also only interested in domestic infant adoption.

As for the adoption tax credit, I found on multiple forums that the adoption tax credit is technically extended through 2012, though it's only refundable in 2011. That means if you incur $13,170 in adoption costs in 2011, you get that $13,170 back. But if you incur those costs in 2012, then you can only reduce your taxable income by that amount (and the amount is reduced to $12,170). If you're in the 15% tax bracket and reduce your taxable income by $12,170, that only amounts to an extra $1,800 or so on your tax refund. A drop in the bucket compared to the total cost of adoption but I suppose it's better than nothing. The actual wording on the bill wasn't clear about the 2012 extension but it seems that everyone agrees that you can write it off and get up to $5,000 back for adoption expenses.

I'm curious to see if this change will have an effect on the number of people who choose adoption, or if it will affect how much agencies continue to charge for adoptions. I think losing a $10,000 refund for adoption would be a hinderance for many middle-class families who wish to adopt. That's about 1/3 of the cost of the adoption itself. I guess we'll see.

So Powerful

I heard this song for the first time today and I swear it must have been written about my husband. It's quite a tear jerker and was just what I needed to hear today. It's called "I Won't Let Go" by Rascal Flatts. Here are the lyrics:

It's like a storm
That cuts a path
It breaks your will
It feels like that
You think you're lost
But you're not lost on your own,
You're not alone

I will stand by you,
I will help you through
When you've done all you can do
and you can't cope
I will dry your eyes,
I will fight your fight
I will hold you tight
and I won't let go

It hurts my heart to see you cry
I know its dark this part of life
Oh it find us all and we're too small
to stop the rain
Oh but when it rains

I will stand by you,
I will help you through
When you've done all you can do
and you can't cope
I will dry your eyes,
I will fight your fight
I will hold you tight
and I won't let you fall

Don't be afraid to fall
I'm right here to catch you
I won't let you down
It won't get you down
You're gonna make it
I know you can make it

Cause I will stand by you,
I will help you through
When you've done all you can do
and you can't cope
I will dry your eyes,
I will fight your fight
I will hold you tight
and I won't let go

Oh I'm gonna hold you
and I won't let go
Won't let you go
No I won't

A Rough Week

And it's only Tuesday. This has got to be one of the shittiest BFN's I've ever had to deal with. AF showed up in full force. I've always had very light periods so I expected to get a more "normal" period this time around, considering I've been having horrible menstrual cramps for the past week. It was like my body wanted AF to show up but the Endometrin was preventing that. Now that I stopped taking the meds it has been hell. I never thought I'd have to calculate how many tampons I'll need for an 8-hour workday but I find myself doing that very thing. Let's bring 4, just to be on the safe side. Yes, it's that bad. Am I thinking in the back of my mind that it could be an early miscarriage? Let's not go there.

On a different note I emailed Nurse D yesterday about.....anti depressents. Yes, I think it's time I took something. These BFN's are getting harder and harder to deal with. I find myself losing all sense of motivation. It's hard to pull my ass out of bed and go to work every day. I find myself sitting in bed each morning trying to think of an excuse to call in, staying in bed later and later until I have just a few minutes to get ready and get out the door. The fact that I absolutely hate my job doesn't help but now it's much worse. I have no motivation to go out, go to the gym, watch tv, or do anything that used to bring me any kind of joy. Not even the thought of going to Ireland makes me excited anymore. Instead I come home, read for a bit, get on the computer for a bit, taking a steaming hot bath, and I'm in bed by 7:00. I don't really want to do that anymore. Brandon was shocked that I suggested medication (apparently he forgot I took Lexa.pro for six months while I was going through my divorce) and instead suggested something else like acupuncture. That sounds reasonable and I had planned on doing acupuncture for this upcoming FET but not till April/May. At $60 a visit if I were to start now that would be an extra $600 expense. Not exactly the affordable alternative, especially since I'm not even sure it will work for depression. I haven't heard back from Nurse D so we'll see what she suggests. I don't want to take anything habit-forming and I don't want to take it while I'm doing the FET. I just want to get out of this funk....sooner rather than later.

Posh Peach Winner and Other Updates

First I want to say congrats to commenter #67, Sarah Smith, for winning the personalized market basket from the Posh Peach. I myself am waiting for my new basket to arrive and can't wait! Unfortunately a few people were automatically disqualified for not completing the mandatory entry so for future reference please read all the rules before entering the giveaways! I hope to have another one soon but I will definitely have a giveaway after my trip to Ireland.

So on to other updates. I wish I could give you the results of my second beta test but unfortunately the paperwork never made it to Womack so nobody knows what the results are. Oh well. Nurse D told me I could pee on a stick or take another blood test. I chose the pee stick (which of course was negative) so I stopped the meds. I guess this means I can now go horseback riding and get completely shitfaced on Guinness when I'm in Ireland.

I guess this also means I need to start unfollowing some blogs as well. I know quite a few people got recent BFP's and I'm very happy for you but this is also getting more and more difficult for me to read. I've come up with a sort of "system" for these pregnancy blogs. I usually continue to read and follow them until they enter the second trimester and then I stop. So if in a few weeks you find that you have one less follower I hope you understand and don't hate me for life. Perhaps one day I will join your ranks as a pregnancy blog.

As for me, the past few days have been quite hard. I don't cry all day long but there are moments when I break down, usually when I get up in the morning (I have no idea why). I think this particular BFN hit me hard because I had sort of an epiphany that these last 5 embryos are our last chance at biological children. And while I never thought that having biological children was important to me because we were always open to the idea of adoption (but we put it off because of the ridiculous cost) I guess I was wrong and it really is important. Or maybe it's the thought of never being pregnant that hurts so much.

I indulged in a little retail therapy after my BFN on Wednesday and bought a new camera and tripod. It's an upgrade to my old camera which was kick ass to begin with. It had an incredible 80x zoom (the new one has 140). If you'd like to see what 80x can do, check this out (click on the images to see better):

See the parasailer? No?

BAM!! There he is

Now I'll be able to take shots of stuff from miles away (maybe not miles but really really really really really far away).

I think I'm going to try my next FET again in June. It may or may not be our last. If these FET's don't work out then we will not pursue embryo adoption (I know some people asked me about it in the past). My reasoning is that we make decent embryos. Yes, I've only got 4 and 5-cell embryos left but they're not shitty embryos. Heck, we had 7 left on day 3 during our last IVF which isn't bad at all. So if I can't get pregnant off my own embryos then I'll have no confidence that I can get pregnant off someone else's. And considering my history of miscarriage this option seems just a little too risky.

And unfortunately we might not choose domestic infant adoption either. You see, adoption costs about $25-$30K (let's just highball it and go with the $30K). The military offers a $2,000 reimbursement and currently the IRS offers a $13,170 adoption tax credit, which makes a $30K adoption a very affordable $15K. Obviously you have to come up with the $30K first and then wait to get the money back but you get my drift.

But that adoption tax credit might not be around next year. It was set to expire in 2010 but the government passed a bill to extend the credit for one year and increased the credit by about $1,000. Who knows if that is going to happen again. And I'm sorry but if the credit goes away then I just can't see myself spending $28,000 to adopt a child. After this FET's we will have hit the $25,000 mark in family building attempts...I can't imagine doubling that amount. It just doesn't seem fiscally responsible.

But here's the odd part: for Brandon and I, coming up with $30,000 takes just a little over a year. It's not like we'd be slaving away for 10 years before reaching our goal. For us it's easily attainable because we don't live beyond our means and we're able to save money regularly. So I think to myself, because it's so easy to save up that money, why not just do the adoption? After all, what's one year in the grand scheme of things? A child is the one thing that I've consistently wanted all my life. But then I try to pull my emotions out of it and say that spending $60,000 to have one child is just financially stupid (in my opinion). But on the other hand, as long as we're not going into debt and we save properly, it's not really financially stupid, right? It's not like we're spending money we don't have. So as long as we can afford it, we should do it, no matter the cost. My decision making skills confuse me sometimes.

At this point, foster care is not an option. I think it would be too difficult for me. It's hard enough losing embryos but to see a child walk out of my house who had been living with me would probably break me. So no foster care. Trying IVF again would be tempting because of the low price tag (compared to adoption) but I seemed to have lost all confidence in getting pregnant from IVF.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, as I usually do. We still have one FET left and I should probably just focus on that (while still saving money for Plan B of course). So I guess I'll just work on losing some weight before June, maybe try acupuncture with this round, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Beta Results

1

Infertility Grants

I want to remind everyone that now is the time that most infertility non-profits are taking applications for adoption and infertility treatment grants. Check out my two articles on the right sidebar for all the info but here's a short list of the ones with open applications.

Parenthood for Me
Cade Foundation
BUMPS
Pay it Forward (takes quarterly grants now)

Also, on the second article I talk about conferences and seminars with giveaways. Here's one coming up with tons of giveaways.

Midwest Family Building Conference - March 12th

And here's some random fertility clinic seminars with free IVF cycle giveaways

Life IVF Center in Irvine, CA - Feb 12th
SIRM (Dallas, TX location) - March 5th and 6th (one awarded at each session)
GIVF in Falls Church, VA - April 9th

And there's only three more days to enter my market basket giveaway from the Posh Peach!

8dp3dt

POAS'd this morning. Stark fucking white. I've gone from the highest high (thinking I saw a second line at 5dp3dt) to the lowest low (realizing it was just a stupid evap line). Beta is tomorrow and I don't know how I'm going to handle getting the BFN but it's not going to be well. I might just stay home tomorrow. I can't keep putting myself through this. I don't know how much more I can take.

Fuck my life.


And who the fuck has found this post and my last post funny? You have a sick sense of humor.

Fooled Ya

Fooled me too. The ghost line was still there today, neither darker nor lighter than the day before. I'm almost certain it's just an evaporation line. Oh well. Had pretty bad cramps in the middle of the night. 3 days till beta.

5dp3dt ***UPDATE***

It's a rough week. A really really rough week. Wednesday (2dp3dt) I had planned to work from home so I could keep resting and hopefully let my little embryos implant. So I sat on the couch, reclined the seat and got to work. I had to get up for something and as soon as I stood up something happened. I pinched a nerve in my back. I felt like I could barely move it hurt so bad. I spent the rest of the day either sitting down or laying down but I was still miserable. I didn't dare take anything for the pain or go see a chiropractor so I've just been dealing with it for the past few days. I'm doing better now, I just hobble around like an old woman sometimes.

So, because I threw my back out I had to lay down quite a bit on Wednesday and Thursday. And when I lay down I always fall asleep so I've been getting about 12 hours of sleep a day. Could it be a symptom of pregnancy or just the result of laying down because of my back? Who knows.

Yesterday (4dp3dt) I had sore boobs from the progesterone and a bout of nausea. I didn't puke, though it seemed the more I thought about the nausea the more I felt like I had to. So I started thinking about other things and it eventually went away. I've had no cramping, just the back pain, no spotting, no nothing.

Today my boobs are a tiny bit sore, not very noticeable though. I peed on a stick this morning and thought I saw a ghost of a line but it was really so utterly faint that I could have imagined it. And it looked like only a part of the line was darkening, not even really the whole thing. I asked Brandon for his opinion and he said he could see it too (I think he was just being nice) but then pointed to the same corner of the line I thought I saw. So apparently he saw the same thing I saw, just a piece of a line. Is that even possible? Was it remnants of the trigger (my hcg levels were 61 last Thursday so it should be gone), or was it my imagination willing that line to show up? Again, who knows. By the time I got up again 2 hours later the line was gone. If I'm really pregnant at this point then there should be something on a pee stick tomorrow. So we wait some more.

***UPDATE*** No sooner had I finished typing this blog then I felt a tiny cramp on my left side. Was it my uterus? Ovary? Felt like uterus to me. Dear God let this be it. I feel like I'm going insane. Dig deep little embie! Use your little embie shovel to dig yourself a little embie foxhole!

Oh, and tonight is our trip to Boston to go see Bo Burnham. I could use some comedy, especially after reading this article. And I'm definitely bringing a pee stick with me.