8w4d: Waiting

The past week has been a time of joy, fear, plans, google searches and endless questions.  I don't know if I am worrying too much about nothing or not worrying enough about something.    A week ago I was convinced the embryo had died.  Today, one week later, I feel 8w4d despite the huge uncertainty.  My underwear is getting tight.  I bought a pregnancy book.  As much as I've tried to stop myself, to wait and see what Tuesday's ultrasound will tell us, I've been compiling a list of birthing centers.  I am so close to moving on from the RE to official pregnancy land I can taste it.

But I know I am getting ahead of myself by letting my emotions go there before Tuesday. I don't know if my embryo will even survive the 'vascular shadow'.  I had a dream last night that the ultrasound showed a huge knotted umbilical cord (in amazing detail).  And then as we watched the screen, the cord miraculously untied itself and everything was fine.   At other times fears take over and I imagine what we saw last week to be a twin that didn't split completely, or that a blood clot has already stopped the heart from beating.  The problem with possibilities is that they are endless in my imagination.

And still other times, it is difficult to imagine something terrible, even the possibility that the embryo has already stopped growing.  No one seems to have ever heard of anything I describe showing up in ultrasound.  So in a way, it doesn't even seem real.  Despite telling my mom everything, she is still just as excited about this pregnancy as she was the day we heard the heartbeat.  She understands the worry, but in her mind, it is nothing.  I've only told one friend (who has had 3 normal pregnancies) about the abnormal ultrasound, and I think simply due to the rarity of it, she pretty much brushed it off as one of those weird early pregnancy scares that mean nothing.  "Early ultrasounds will only make you worry."  Um, no, infertility and multiple miscarriages make my early pregnancies very different from yours, but anyway....

But an abnormal ultrasound does mean something, right?  It means that I might not need that pregnancy book, or my list of birthing centers, that I will not be moving on from the RE's office.  It is all too scary to think about.  So I'll just be living in pregnancy land trying not to think about the vascular shadow, for a couple more days at least, and hopefully come Tuesday, I'll still be here (and the vascular shadow will not).