My Baby is Lord Voldemort!

My oh-so-preeety scar, which runs across my lower abdomen, stopped hurting months ago. The area around it remains a little bit numb, which is disconcerting, but otherwise it has been FINE. So what am I to think when, in the past two days, my scar has started prickling, tingling, and twinging at random intervals, making me slap my hand on it and yell “ow!”? Clearly, one of my little embies is Lord Voldemort, or at least a close relative.

What to say about the last couple of days? On Friday I was starting to think the wave had broken and the worst was over. Thursday night, when I did my nightly yoga/stretching, my muscles gave in and I really stretched for the first time in weeks. Before that it had been like stretching industrial-strength rubber bands, and I’d been giving up early and going to bed with my back hurting. But Thursday night the stretching felt really good, as my body finally decided to give a little.

Then Friday morning J walked by me as I was finishing my makeup and asked me how I was doing, and I burst into tears and told him EXACTLY how I’ve been feeling, and all the many ways in which his schedule, lifestyle, and general cluelessness have NOT been helping. He was (predictably) incredibly sweet about it, and made all the right noises. So I felt a lot better. Of course, I had to wash my face and start over with my makeup, and my eyes kept leaking, which made it very hard to apply eyeliner and mascara, but I really felt better.

Saturday was a great day. I slept well the night before, my mood was good, and J and I went out to dinner and a movie and finally spent some time together. Thank god, I thought to myself, crazy lady has left the building. I actually felt like me again. And my appetite was back to normal as well, so I was able to eat healthy both Friday and Saturday. Still chubby, but just being able to control the eating made me feel like that, too, would pass.

So you have to know from the tone of this post that there is a big “but” coming. So here it is: But, I woke up on Sunday feeling crappy again. Not the same crappy, of course. I’ve discovered an entirely different kind of crappy. To be fair, it’s not quite so crappy as last week’s crappy. But it still blows.

I think this new version is your standard, run-of-the-mill, PMS x 10 that you get from any medicated cycle. Cramps (which stress me out), headaches, and exhaustion. Combine that with irrational urges to kill people, and the near-constant obsession about What This All Means. Do cramps mean I’m pregnant? Is that a baby implanting? Or is that AF coming? Do sore breasts mean I’m pregnant? What about being tired all the time? Or is it just a PMS thing? Are PMS things bad, because they mean I’m not pregnant? Or do they mean I AM pregnant, as everyone knows PMS and early pregnancy feel exactly the same.

And THAT brand of crazy is here to stay. At least until the Saturday beta, but maybe far beyond then. Because here’s the kicker: none of this paranoia is going to end if I get a positive beta. I was thinking this over last night and I realized that I’ve never done IVF and gotten a negative beta. So I’m kind of operating under the assumption that this is going to work, at least initially. (Don’t worry, I knocked on wood.) But what then? Do J and I really have the stuff to make an embryo that lasts? Do I have giant gaping openings to my tubes that will suck up another unsuspecting embryo into the dark cave of death? And then, to really make me freak out, that random-but-petrifying thought: dear god, what if I have triplets?

Hope my fellow IVFers (and there are a bunch of us in synch right now) are faring better with their nuttier sides.

I’d end with another kitten pic, but I’m posting from work. I suppose I could attach a brief about the Fair Housing Act, but that really doesn’t have the same emotional impact. Sorry FHA, but you’re not so cute and fuzzy.