Waiting

If (please) I remain pregnant, how many entries will have that title, I wonder?

I'm five weeks along today, and still don't really have any symptoms worth mentioning. That could mean something, or it could mean nothing. As Don says, there's nothing to do but wait and see.

We were talking about this, tonight; we're not used to waiting and seeing. Both of us tend to create what we want, and make things happen. Applying to colleges or for jobs, making big moves, going after that girl that you've been friends with but now want to be with (that would be him), trying to conceive; we're neither of us used to just letting things happen-- and then being surprised when nothing happens at all. When, as a sophomore in college, I decided to get out of my homestate and see a little more of the world, I had a few people say how lucky I was that I was going away. That wasn't luck, my friends; it was making a decision, filling out an application, and taking the plunge. It feels good to do things like that. Makes you feel like you hold your destiny in your own two hands, that you're living with purpose.

This is the opposite of that; it is knowing that the outcome is out of our hands. There is nothing we can do to hurry the pregnancy along to a point where it looks either good or bad. Sitting and waiting. Sure, I take my vitamins, supplements, and hormones with alarm-clock regularity (Seriously. I have the alarms on my cell phone set so that I take the progesterone as close to 12 hours apart as I can.); take extra care with my diet, re-read my books on fertility and pregnancy; compare and contrast with other women online. It's all to make me feel like I'm doing something productive and helpful, but it's a blind. It's hard to want something so badly and be so helpless at the same time.

This is sort of why I (think) I'm not going to have an eight-week ultrasound. What good is it, really? What does it do? For my first time, the sonogram showed a pregnancy already ended. That was a good thing, I guess, because it prepared me for the coming miscarriage. For the second, the sonogram showed a healthy, seemingly thriving embryo. This built my confidence and hopes rather too high; I didn't fully realize that it was still possible to miscarry after such a hopeful beginning. This time, I will just not find out either way. I don't need the forewarning of a miscarriage, as I'm more experienced now. I don't need the insecure hope, and it probably wouldn't comfort me much anyway. If everything's still wonderful at 13 weeks, then I'll know it was ok all along. If I miscarry again...well, I'll probably wish I'd done the scan for research reasons (more data to bring to a reproduction expert), but I don't care. It's too negative to do something that will only make a difference should we lose this.

As Don said, we wait and we wait and we wait, and we'll see.