While I wait

I know I said I'd next blog when I'd done the test on the 29th, but I couldn't resist.  A couple of days after the IUI in Copenhagen I began to get weird tight, pinchy abdominal cramps.  Not painful, but accompanied by excessive gas.  Nice.  Suddenly I can rival a teenage boy in the fart department.   I'll stop short of trying to light them though,  for everyone's sake. I recognised these signs as being identical to the very early stages of my previous pregnancy.  Those signs are still here and now I am having vivid dreams, slight nausea, sore breasts, snappiness and fatigue that could floor an Ox.  Although it's only one week and one day since I had the insemination I feel something's 'up'.  If I'm not pregnant then I must be coming down with something.  So I started over analysing.  Of course I did.  Perhaps the cramps are just my uterus reacting to the IUI, I'm getting a cold, have eaten too much rubbish and my swollen boobs and snappiness are just the usual signs of PMT.  Or... I have conceived, hence the signs, but the fertilised egg couldn't attach and I'm not going to be pregnant.  Positivity tempered with some very strong negativity - always a winning combination.  I'm unable to think about anything else and super alert to very little bodily change.  I find myself actually happy when I feel so exhausted I could sleep on concrete or nauseous when I'm on the bus.  I don't dare count my chickens before they are hatched, but I can't help being hopeful.  It's the kind of thing I shared with my boyfriend the last time, but this time I don't have that luxury.  So I share with one of my friends who knows and post here.

It made me realise that there is a whole other consideration about who you tell and when.  There are many friends who would be brilliant about this, and were, when I mentioned it as a possibility months ago.  It's interesting that now I'm actually doing it I have mostly told friends that I don't see often and whom I'm not particularly close to, with one exception.  I suppose I don't want to have to answer questions every month about whether or not I'm pregnant.  I have also made the decision not to tell anyone else in the event I do get pregnant till I'm at least 16 weeks or showing.  The reason for this is a bit daft, but I lost my last baby thanks to huge fibroids degenerating in the second trimester, well after the supposed safety of week 12, so I suppose I'm being over cautious.  I don't want to jinx it.  That's the truth.  I think I'll be too scared to buy anything if I do manage to stay pregnant past 4 months, for the same reason. I have this vision of me, hugely pregnant, ordering a cot and other baby furniture from IKEA at the eleventh hour and then not being able to put it all together.  I remember my mother telling me that when I arrived she was so unprepared that my Grandpa was sent to buy a moses basket on the day I arrived.  This was all because she'd had two miscarriages followed by a stillborn before me.    I really understand this now - don't tempt fate.  Crazy behaviour nonetheless. 

So, I have 6 days left to wait!  Here's hoping the pregnancy signs continue and that I don't get a cold, the flu or my period. Mine's a helping of cramps and bloating with a side order of nausea please.  Throw in some attachment bleeding for good measure.  For anyone else on the same track, I wish this for you too.