Dear Creepy (Male) Coworker:

Please stop staring at my stomach when you are talking to me. Yes, it is protruding a bit. Yes, I have been wearing flowy tops and dresses lately. And yes, my boobs need their own office. I'm on my way down the hall to talk to the office manager about that right now.

But have I stared at YOUR stomach, which has been steadily growing over the side of your pants for the last year? OK, maybe a little, but only in meetings with lots of other people where I know you won't notice.

Be patient. Hopefully, I'll be out of the closet soon enough. In the meantime, please feel free to assume that I've had a few too many hits from the vending machine.

Expandingly yours,
Barefoot

p.s. Thanks to all of you for the kind wishes re: the spotting. My ute has calmed down, and seems to realize that today is Hump Day and Friday is just around the corner.

A case of the Mondays

I think that my uterus might have a chronic case of the Mondays.

Both of my scary spotting episodes have happened on Monday. Yesterday, I forgot that it was even Monday (thank you, national holiday) until I saw a couple of brown spots on the TP last night.

Things seemed to have tapered off overnight, but seriously? I need another reason to hate Mondays?

Scary night

Thanks for all of the kind words and encouragement yesterday. They meant so much.

Last night was not a fun one. At about 8:30, I started bleeding. Not brown spotting -- the bright red stuff. We'd been warned at our u/s that this could happen, but still -- it was scary and waaay too period-like for my liking. I called the RE on call, and he (someone I'd never spoken to before, who I have to say I don't much like) basically said that there's nothing they can do, it's probably normal, sometimes having an ultrasound shakes things up, keep my feet up and call in the morning. It sounded like I was interrupting him during a three-martini dinner. Sorry, bud -- not like it's my idea of fun to call you crying at 8:30 at night!

Anyway. The bleeding tapered off after about an hour. I slept for a bit, then woke up to some more bleeding at 1:30. That also tapered off after an hour or so, and now things have pretty much stopped, with the exception of a bit of brown spotting now and again.

I talked to the doctor again this morning (a different one, thank Gawd), and she was very encouraging. She thinks that B's sac collapsed, and probably took a blood vessel with it. She wants me to hang out with my feet up, and call back if the red bleeding starts again. She's hesitant to do another u/s, because she doesn't want to further irritate the uterus, but assured me that all of this sounds completely normal "given my situation." (BTW, I love all of the euphemisms -- it's like everyone's so afraid of the M word. I mean, it's pretty clear what's going on here, you know?)

I'm hanging there -- just trying to keep a somewhat positive attitude -- but it's hard. I so want a peek inside to check on A, but I'm also scared shitless (pardon my French) about what I might see. My mom will be here in a bit -- we're going to hang today and watch American Idol later -- so hopefully that will take my mind off things for a bit.

Because sometimes you just need your mommy.

Scary morning

I woke up this morning at 4:30 to catch my planned 6:30 flight to LA, and had a big brown spot in my underwear. Needless to say, I freaked. I haven't had any sort of spotting at any point during the whole IVF process (and I've never been a spotter in general), so I feared the worst.

I told the Mr. what was going on, then hopped in the shower, still hemming and hawing about whether to take my work trip (big 10:30 meeting). When I got out of the shower, the spotting had increased -- still brown, but maybe progressing. And I was feeling a bit of cramping. At this point, I decided to cancel my trip. The Mr. wanted to go to the ER, but all I could think of was that if we were going to get bad news, I didn't want to hear about it from some random doc in some random hospital.

At about 5:30, I had my RE paged. He was super (as usual) -- said that spotting was totally normal, told me to stop taking the low-dose aspirin I'd been taking, and said that if things hadn't improved by 8:00, to call and make an appt for an ultrasound. (I was scheduled for Thursday, but no effing way was I going to wait this out). Things did improve -- the spotting slowed/stopped -- but I still made an appointment for 10:30.

Everything looks OK. Peanut A is going strong, measuring 7w3d and beating away at 147 BPM. Peanut B is still lagging behind at 6w6d. We saw B's heartbeat for the first time, at 127 BPM. (And we heard both HBs for the first time, which is easily the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.) The RE (different one for today's appt) doesn't think we need to worry at this point, but still thinks we need to wait and see how things develop with B. So we'll have another ultrasound early next week.

We talked a little bit about what might have caused the spotting. I did have kind of an active day yesterday -- a longer-than-average workout, followed by a bunch of errands, which included lifting some heavy grocery bags that I probably shouldn't have. I was just feeling good for the first time in a few days (less nausea, a little more energy), and overdid it a little, I guess. The RE also reminded me that in twin pregnancies, spotting and cramping are more likely, since there's a lot more going on in there. I'm supposed to take it easy for the next few days, whatever that means.

So, I'm home, drinking diet ginger ale, missing my meeting, but happy that things are OK for the moment.

I have a feeling a long nap is going to be in order this afternoon.