Pregnancy Symptoms

Forgive me upfront, I fear this post may get wordy.

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Do you have any (pregnancy) symptoms?

or 

How do you feel?

These have been the two most prevalent questions I've gotten since announcing our news. 

The first question is a little more simpler (though not so much when I start dissecting it.)

The second is a super loaded question.

Let's tackle the first.  

Pregnancy symptoms are a funny thing. And by funny, I mean I'd punch them in the face if I could. 

Every woman who is trying to conceive or just found out she's pregnant has done a pregnancy symptom google search. Don't pretend like you haven't. 

You get top ten lists or 'earliest signs you might be pregnant' lists.

Women who have walked along the path of infertility will drive themselves extra crazy with those lists.

Trust me, I know.  

(I'm not saying women who have experienced getting pregnancy easily can't drive themselves crazy, I'm just saying that people who have experienced infertility are slightly more hyper sensitive to them.)

Here's the two most important things to remember when asking me if I've had pregnancy symptoms. 

1. For eight years I have trained my brain to be super aware of my body and then to not put any stock into what it's doing or telling me. 

2.  I'm still on progesterone in oil injections. This means, even if my pregnancy starts to fail, the progesterone will still make me feel like I'm pregnant. 

The easiest answer to the question is yes.

Yes, I've had pregnancy symptoms.

The end of that statement in my mind is always…but they're irrelevant.

Here's why.

When women ask other women about their symptoms it usually stems from a place of pure curiosity and (hopefully) genuine support/advice if a women says she's having an awful go of it.

But, in reality, it's another sort of checks and balance system in our brain. 

You either realize how lucky you are because your pregnancy was smooth sailing.

Or you curse the women who did have an easy, smooth pregnancy.

The biggest reason it's irrelevant is because every woman, every pregnancy is different.

The sex of your unborn child will play a factor. Your age, what you're eating, even the actual season of life you're in, will all be contributing factors.  Even the fact that we did a Frozen Embryo Transfer  and didn't conceive naturally is a factor. Thinking that because you have symptom x, y, and z means you're going to have a successful outcome is just as ridiculous as thinking because you don't have symptoms x, y, and z that something is wrong.

Based off of my past almost eight years of experience, I knew something was different with this cycle than with the others from the beginning. 

I got my first super faint pregnancy result in late October.  

But that meant nothing to me. I've seen double lines a few times before and still have no kids.

But that first weekend in November I experienced two things I have never, ever had before.

I sneezed all weekend long and I had super itchy palms and was super itchy in the area right under my ankles. 

I'm talking ridiculous amounts of sneezing and itchiness. I wasn't sick, but I sneezed a minimum of once or twice an hour for the whole weekend and I could not stop scratching my hands and my ankles.

And then, as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared.

So did the twinges and the pulls and I was convinced it was all over.

I spent the better part of the first two weeks not just googling pregnancy symptoms

(yes, sneezing is a symptom called pregnancy rhinitis and so is the itchiness), but also googling specifics like 'pregnancy symptoms at x-amount of days post a 5 day transfer'. 

I realized I was slowly going nuts.

Especially when I went from our final beta blood work to our ultrasound with zero symptoms what-so-ever.

I'm also able to explain away anything I may be feeling (especially if it's specifically listed on those darn lists.)

Exhaustion? Of course I'm exhausted! It's a crazy busy time at work, the holiday season, I just drove for almost twelve hours in a 48 hour span in holiday traffic.  Or am I choosing to slow down and nap because when I'm sleeping, I'm not worrying? Could it also be that my body is currently trying to grow a tiny human? Of course.

Nausea? Yes, I've had nausea. But not the hanging my head over a toilet and hurling non-stop nausea, it's been more of the fast acting gagging reflex to any ungodly smells kind of nausea. 

I have a stomach made of steel.  Needles, blood, and human or animal excretions have never bothered me.  I have no smell aversions. But, the other day, I opened the same type of spinach, kale, & chard mix that I've been putting in my smoothies for the past six months and spent the next 5 minutes dry heaving over the kitchen sink (actually telling myself to 'get it together').  I have zero tolerance for a cigarette smoke smell.  But on the way into the grocery store this morning we followed a smoker in and what happened to me was an awful gagging fit culminating in almost an entire bottle of water consumed in an attempt to make it go away.

Could the progesterone I'm putting into my body be causing this? Of course! Could it also be that my body is currently trying to grow a tiny human? Of course.

Aversions? Chest tenderness? Change in eating/bathroom habits?  I'll lump all these into one category since they're the least fun to talk about.  The answer is yes, no, yes and I won't go into too many details. Let's just wrap it up by saying, I don't feel bad, but I certainly don't feel like myself.  There is no regularity these days in any capacity.  I'm not eating the same things I've been eating regularly for the past five years or so and I'm eating stuff I haven't eaten in the past five years or so and, well, that has a domino effect. I go from nothing sounding appetizing to being ravenously hungry. Take last night for example. We ate dinner. I had dessert. Then a bowl of cereal. Then was starving a mere thirty minutes after my cereal.  Of course I'm making more frequent trips to the bathroom because I'm drinking a ridiculous amount of water, but I can still sleep through the night without getting up to pee.  

See what I mean? 

Every symptom has an argument for it or against it. 

And over analyzing any of them does me no good.

As for, How do I feel?

I feel like I'm just trying not to go bat shit crazy, honestly.

I feel like I'm walking in this weird limbo of the infertility world and the pregnancy world.

Even though we've had confirmation that there is actually a beating heart, I still feel like it will be ripped from me at any moment because that's what I'm used to.

I'm having a really hard time comparing anything I may be experiencing with women who haven't actually had the same history I have had because my mental sanity is probably just a little more off its rocker.

I'm not saying I don't have faith that this pregnancy will result in an actual baby, but I am all too aware of everything that could go wrong.

So, yes, I'm trying really, really hard to ignore any supposed pregnancy symptoms.

This means not psyching myself out with the over-analyzing of what symptoms I have and what I don't. I'm trying to just make it moment by moment.

I don't want to be the fool who puts all the faith and energy in the world in reading into my symptoms, if this pregnancy should end in another miscarriage.

I'm trying to keep a sense of my realism because it works for me, but trying to have all the faith I can in our awesome God because that's where my true faith resides. 

I'm grateful for whatever I do experience and grateful for whatever I don't experience.

Walking the fine line of gratitude in both scenarios is currently consuming my entire thought process.

I expect it'll be this way no matter how long I get to say I'm pregnant.

Sorry for the long post,

you asked.

And, well, this.

Because I have one foot in the infertility world and one foot in the pregnancy world and it's odd and new and uncomfortable and I will never, ever take a single moment of this for granted. 

The good and the bad, I cherish it all.