Let’s get something straight – patience has never been one of my virtues, so the waiting associated with infertility drives me absolutely nuts. And I am sick to death of waiting, especially because (with infertility) it so often feels like I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. The shadow of failure is always hovering, defeat is always looming. I’ve spent so much time being cautious and curtailing my optimism during this process. This pregnancy was the first time I have really truly been whole-heartedly optimistic in years, seriously, years. We got that first high beta and I thought we were safe, I thought we were in the clear, so I was completely blindsided by the bad beta. It feels like infertility saw my hope and joy and turned around and bitch slapped me. Again.

I broke down to S last night. He’s been on a business trip for the last 4 days so it’s been me, my step-daughter and my mother-in-law (who came to watch A while I was at work). I haven’t had a free moment to myself. So once I picked S up from the airport at 11 PM all of the crazy, frightened, neurotic, angry feeling stew that had been brewing in me since the call with the bad beta news just erupted into a massive display of woe is me. There was a lot of “why is this happening?”, “why did I think this would work?”, “why did I think we could ever have a baby?”, “what did I do wrong?”, “what is wrong with me?” in between ridiculously theatrical massive sobs.

Now, I know it’s not over until the proverbial fat lady does her thing, but if there’s one thing infertility has taught me it’s that I am not the exception. I am (almost always) the worst case scenario (with the exception of the egg fertilization thing). I am clinging unbelievably tightly to all of your assurances that it could be a vanishing twin (thank you, sincerely, for all of the support), that there could still be a healthy baby hanging on, but I feel like I’m deluding myself.

I had a ton of symptoms up until Dec. 3 (see one of the earlier posts) and then they all kind of … went away. Not totally away – I had occasional mild nausea and slight cramping – but I thought maybe that was because the implantation part was done and we were moving on to another phase. Silly me. And now I have symptoms again but I think they’re a result of anxiety and possible impending miscarriage rather than pregnancy. My back aches a little, and I’ve been super nauseous – but I often get nauseous when I’m really upset (some of you may recall that while trying to chose a donor I cried so hard I threw up. Yep. You’re welcome).

Anyway, I’m just going hang out in my “woe is me” corner and rock back and forth, waiting for tomorrow to give blood so I can wait for the Doctor to call me. I’m sure I’ll fill my time with something constructive, like vacillating wildly between being completely convinced it’s over and mostly convinced it’s ok. Should be fun.

** And now for the good news!! We got full custody of my step-daughter! Her mother was declared an unfit parent and now is limited to 4 hours of supervised contact every other weekend. She didn’t even bother to show up in court. When we told A she was going to live with us now she asked a few questions like, “Will I ever see my mom again?”, and “Will I go to school here now?”, and then said “Well,  good. It’s better here. This is a better place for a kid, but don’t tell my mom I said that.”