"My breasts feel fluffier."

One dear lady-- whom I did not pay-- fulfilled my deepest, darkest fantasies by saying she was reading the blog like a trashy romance novel.  My heart glowed like those pictures of Jesus.

An important distinction, however (other than the fact that I was happier than Jesus looks in those pictures), is that she said she didn't regularly read trashy romance novels, while I have spent the last twenty-four hours incessantly reading the final book of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.  I've been afforded the opportunity because Heather has been incessantly sleeping.  Every now and again, she wakes up to turn on a movie or the Olympics, then fall back asleep while it plays, so at least my sleazy reading has had a patriotic soundtrack.

The other thing that happens when Heather wakes up is that we talk about a) how clearly I'm the best writer in the world and b) the odds of miscarriage.  Yesterday she was out of the regular pee-sticks she's been using for home tests, so she was using the regular plus/minus ones, comparing the strength of the plus marks to the marks on the little pee-sticks.  Some time during the night (which tells you just how effective the Benadryl was for a full night's sleep), she used a pregnant/not pregnant test, feeling predictably ambivalent about its results.  It's a pretty clear comment on our situation that "pregnant" sounds so negotiable.

Our counter-top

Monday night, Heather had terrible cramps and was convinced she was starting to miscarry.  The doctor said she was fine, then the cramps petered out, but the damage was done, and now she's Googling what she shouldn't.  I've learned many times over-- most recently with the "No, I promise I won't do any home pregnancy tests" experience-- that there's no point in telling Heather to stop doing torturous things; she knows better and she's going to do it anyhow.  Sort of like me with junk food.   

This evening, she disappeared from her usual home on the couch, carrying her iPad, and I eventually figured she was asleep, but, no, definitely not.  "I was reading all these blogs about miscarriage."  Seriously?  I mean, I'll grant her the business of Googling signs of miscarriage, but it seems like blatant self-torture to read about how these ladies went to the hospital with slight bleeding, were sent home, and bled heavily.  I'm not sure what the lesson is-- don't let the doctors send you home?-- but it's nothing pleasant.  The other part that's not pleasant is that the nurse, on Monday, told me that they can't really stop a miscarriage.  Heather had asked me to find out what to do if she started bleeding, whether she should go to the hospital or call the on-call doctor or what, and the nurse said not to worry unless she was bleeding so much that she was filling pads.  If, she said, the heavy bleeding was accompanied by shooting pains up her shoulder and shortness of breath, that could mean an ectopic pregnancy, so for that you'd go to the ER.  Otherwise, call the doctor the next day.

The vigilance, as I understood it, is for naught.  It's not something I've Googled, nor have I mentioned it to Heather, whom I sense is about two more blogs from packing an emergency bag for the hospital.  She's consumed.  She told me that her breasts seemed smaller and fluffier.

What's really lame in that is that they did seem less dense and that I lied about it.  "I don't know, babe.  That seems kind of ridiculous."  Yet it scares me.  We've gotten to a point now where we can comfortably acknowledge that to each other, instead of somebody having to be the shiny-faced cheerleader of the enterprise, but I still wouldn't say it.  Tomorrow is the third pregnancy test and possibly the third time we get iffy news.  "Well, things are looking okay, but..." is how I imagine it.  I just can't think of the last time we got unalloyed good news.  Her AMH levels weren't great, then her follicles weren't growing fast enough, then she didn't have many eggs, then the embryos weren't great quality, and we're both looking for something more definite.  I'm guessing that tomorrow she'll have just barely doubled Monday's hCG, so she'll have another test Friday with the same thing, and...  Surely at some point we can actually be excited, right?

Heather asked me if I thought it was better to get pregnant and miscarry than to not get pregnant at all.  Definitely not at all, I said.  She agreed. 

"What happens if I do miscarry?"

"Then we feel really shitty," I said.

"How long will we feel shitty?"

"I'd guess about two weeks."

"I don't want to feel really shitty."

So we wait, still.