Not 12 weeks

Today I'm not 12 weeks. 12 weeks, the last week of the first trimester, the time when most people start sharing the news. I'd be scheduling my nuchal screen.

I'll stop this self-pitying countdown eventually, I'm sure. I'll just forget one day, and not remember until Thursday or Friday or something. I'm not trying to be mopey about it. It's just Wednesdays are hard not to count.

My body is apparently remembering by offering a fresh bright red bleed. I guess it's good? I mean, action is good, right? And maybe it'll help my beta come down, in case there's a wee clump of trophoblastic tissue somewhere generating hCG.  My pee sticks aren't notably lighter, which makes me grumpy. Last Friday my beta was 467; recheck in two weeks.

Here is my riddle: how is a BFN different than a chemical pregnancy different from a 6 week miscarriage different from an 8 week miscarriage?  After all, they all end up in the same place: unpregnant.

I am not sentimental about embryos. With eyes focused on the bottom line (i.e. chances of success) I have always pushed for the production and cryopreservation of as many embryos as possible. If we have any left over, I will cheerfully donate them to Science.  If I am not sentimental about embryos suspended in cryoprotectant, then why be sentimental about embryos in my uterus, or no longer in my uterus?

There is a difference, and that difference is the difference between missing a bus by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks. How hard my heart was pounding, how much I thought I'd make it, how ferociously I clench my fists and dig my nails in frustration.

A BFN is missing the bus by weeks, I think. A pre-heartbeat loss is missing it by days, and a post-heartbeat loss is missing it by hours. I can only pray with all my heathen heart that I never experience missing this particular bus by minutes or seconds.

Not 11 weeks

Today I am officially precisely not 11 weeks pregnant. It's been two weeks since I took the misoprostol, three since the ultrasound where the RE said "I don't see a heartbeat".

Things are okay. I had a followup appointment two days after the misoprostol, and everything looked good and clear. That was the best I could've hoped for. My pee-sticks are still a lot darker than I'd like, but I guess it takes some women a really long time to clear out all the hCG. I can't start another cycle until my level is all the way down and I have another period, so I'm just spinnin' my wheels here. I have another followup on Friday. I imagine they'll start doing blood tests every week or two until I'm at zero.

Time floats by so aimlessly when you're unpregnant. Pregnant means that every day is an achievement, and is moving closer to Something Big. Unpregnant you're just waiting for something that may or may not happen. And if you can only conceive with fertility treatment, you're waiting to start waiting for something that may or may not happen.

I'm mostly back in the TTC mindframe (as opposed to the pregnant mindframe). I know how to do this; I've spent a lot more time trying to get pregnant than I have actually being pregnant.  But some part of me, maybe 10%, is still stunned and saying wtf happened here?  See, it all just seemed so right. The transfer was exactly on my birthday. The due date was exactly my mother's birthday. My BFF is pregnant right now, and we were going to be pregnant together. Some things are just meant to be, you know?

Some things, but apparently not this one.

A poem has been stuck in my mind: A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London. I don't know why. I have only a weak affinity for poetry, and almost none for Dylan Thomas; most of it just reads as word-salad to me. But this one has been drawing me back. I guess "unmourning water" is really a pretty good description of the resting place of those two tiny embryos, poor miniscule brine shrimp, released unto the municipal sewer system.