CD2: and so it begins!

My rest cycle was surprisingly good.

Stuff I did during my rest cycle that I wouldn't have done while actively TTC:

• a crazy cleansing diet ("UltraSimple" -- can't say I'd recommend it)
• started and promptly abandoned an exercise program
• went days at a stretch without thinking about my uterus.

 Real life has seemed slightly crazy lately, crazy enough that I sometimes think and you want to add an infant to this? And the only answer I can come up with is yeah, yeah I do. So sue me.

My CD2 E2 was 38, very good. We're going full steam ahead. We'll have to jigger the schedule because, right around transfer time, I'm going to be at a conference in Las Vegas. The last time I was at this conference was 2008. I was nauseated there, from taking the birth control pills for my third IVF cycle. I wrote:

I was at a conference this week, in a discipline that's heavily female and, apparently, fecund. I overcompensated mightily, as always. If I'm ever pregnant, I wonder will I notice when a woman is smiling at me too warmly? I know I'll never be a belly-rubber, but I wonder if I'll see. Probably not. I can't see it on anyone else's face even now. I always feel like the only person whose eyes slide away.

Here I am, on the other side of the chasm. And now I know the answer to this question: no. I never did notice. As soon as I got pregnant, I was utterly inward-turned, utterly consumed with myself and my fetus and holy cripes look at me I'm doing it I'm doing it. I am 99% certain that I never was a belly-rubber, so that's something, but I don't know how I feel about my own obliviousness. On one hand, maybe it wasn't as obvious as I always thought it was, maybe my longing wasn't painted on my face in four-inch letters. On the other hand maybe it's as eggdance said in her comment to that post: we are invisible to them, I think.

If I had noticed, I don't know that it would have been much better. There was absolutely nothing I could have said.

Things will be different, this conference. This conference, I'll be on estradiol, not birth control pills. I hope I won't be puking (I didn't on estradiol, last time). I'll be by myself; last time I brought Her Indoors with me, to enjoy the local sights and ridiculously extravagant vendor parties. This time, she'll be at home, caring for Small Boy.

This is going to be the longest I've ever left them for. I get a lurch in my stomach when I think about it, so I'm not going to think about it.

Anyway! Here we are. Here we go. Here we go.