My nose is a bloodhound

My nose is a bloodhound, hunting down just the right smells to make me gag. This morning as I checked all four floors that our region resides on I learned what a dangerous adventure it is to wander a building when one is suffering from morning sickness. I staggered from one floor to another, holding it all in by breathing through my hand.

On my way up from the first floor I found myself in the elevator with two of my coworkers, an employee from a different department in our region and the manager who is three managers over me. The employee from a different department had gone downstairs and gotten herself a breakfast burrito. I am sure it was super tasty and all, but the smell caused me to gag, so I covered my nose and mouth with my hand and smelled in the neutral smell of soap. My senior manager looked at me and said, "What are you laughing at?" To which I began to respond by saying, "I'm not laughing..." and one of my coworkers (the office gossip) finished for me by saying, "She is about to puke." Of course my senior manager looked a little closer at me and I said to forestall any other questions, "I am dealing with morning sickness." Which should have answered all other questions. But of course he followed it up with, "Is there a reason for this morning sickness?" To which I said, "Yes." and he congratulated me as I got off at my next floor to check.

Still have not tossed my cookies yet, but I have had close calls. I am sure that this gagging is going to turn into something full blown soon. What I wonder is will I want to stay at work if I am throwing up? And will my manager let me work from home if I end up puking a lot? I need to sit down with her and have that discussion. And soon.

Crackers

Yesterday I was hit by a day full of super nausea. I still haven't thrown up yet, but I did come close, gagging a few times and standing over the toilet just waiting for it to come. Kevin and I went shopping for foods that will help my tummy be happy. We got lots of crackers, and other bland foods.

This morning I put my hair in a pony tail, but then after a second's thought put it into a braid as well. Judging by the way I felt yesterday and the way I felt this morning I would not be surprised at all if today is the first day I puke.

I have been visiting pregnancy sites all morning and have been checking out their advice on morning sickness and nausea and how to fight it. Ginger is one of the things they brought up. So after work today I will head out and get some candied ginger, and maybe even some ginger candy. Anything I can do to keep from tossing my cookies would make me happy.

Tired of course, I seem to be always tired. I am beginning to wish that they included nap time at work.

Other things learned at doctor's visit

I am 5 weeks 6 days along, the baby is at six week size.
My due date is January 28th. I don't know if we have many January birthdays in our family or Kevin's family. In fact I don't know that we have any in our family. This also means that I will be my biggest during the winter, something I have heard as being a good thing.

I am continuing the progresterone in oil shots. I had to call for a refill this morning. I also requested a new sharps container, more needles and syringes, and alcohol wipes. I have my own alcohol wipes but I like their's better. Also discovered that Kevin perfers Johnson and Johnson sterile gause wipes, as opposed to the Walgreens brand.

Found out that when it comes to exercise they really only want me walking. When Kevin asked about using the eliptical they said no. I think I have exercised using the eliptical twice during the pregnancy, maybe it is a good thing I haven't done more. Looks like I need to do more walking though.

1st Ultrasound of the baby

Today was my first ultrasound to see the baby. It turned out that it was an internal ultrasound. They told us that they were looking for the yolk sac and they were able to find one. So we are having one baby. It was awesome to see the little thing that will become our baby. Right now it looks like a grain of rice. We were also able to see the heartbeat. I guess today was the first day we would have been able to see it! How exciting. I think the best part of it all was watcing Kevin as the ultrasound techs showed him what he was looking at, he had this look of happy awe on his face the entire time. They pointed out the baby, and the yolk sac and the heartbeat. They said that the heartbeat is currently at 90 beats per minute. They also took a picture of the baby for us. I have the picture below, the little white thing inside the red circle is the baby, the black area around it is the yolk sac. My next ultrasound is scheduled for next week. I can't wait to see how much the baby will have grown!

Ultrasound tomorrow

Tomorrow is my first ultrasound since finding out that I am pregnant. To say it is my first ultrasound would be untruthful though as I have had many internal ultrasounds since starting our attempts at getting pregnant through the fertility clinic, and I had an external ultrasound during the implantation of the embryos.

Tomorrow is the ultrasound that should show me how many babies I have in there. There were two embryos implanted, so we could have one baby, or we could have two, or if the embryos split we could have three or even four. We could have more than four as well, but I am pretty sure that will not happen.

It still seems crazy to me that this early on they can do an ultrasound and discover how many babies we will be having. I have feelings on how many it will be, but I am not going to say what those feelings are until tomorrow. I don't want to jinx it. This week has been a good bit stressful, what with a very important meeting at work this morning and the spotting that happened earlier this week. But the meeting is now over, and the spotting has for the most part gone away. I am feeling better about it all. Still worried, but better.

Tomorrow should show that everything is ok, and should tell us how many babies we have to look forward to. I will be asking the doctor a bunch of questions as well, most important of those being, "Can I get off the progesterone shots? Because 1. They hurt, and 2. I am running out of the medication itself." Hopefully the answer is a good one. Either way I wil probably have an overnight shipment of progesterone to me, I might ask for a sharps container while I am at it. It depends on what she prescribes me.

Stress, fear, I no longer know my emotions

Yesterday I began to spot. I have been told that spotting can be normal in pregnancy. I noticed it right before going to a friend's house. One who knows about my pregnancy, but really hadn't been able to wish me congrats in person yet. With the spotting on my mind it was difficult to be as thankful as I should have been for her congratulations. I felt unsure and awkward.

Last night was terrible. After I returned I googled "spotting at 5 weeks pregnant" of course it pulled up stories from people who miscarried. I pretty much freaked out, I prayed, I wept, and I begged for everything to be ok. This morning I called my doctor's office at 6 am, the message said they didn't open till 6:30 am. The closed office message didn't go down though until about 5 minutes to 7 am. The nurse I needed to talk to wasn't there and so I left a message. (It didn't help that last night I had a dream about going to the doctor's office and speaking to the nurse face to face and having her tell me that it sounded like I lost the baby and that she really couldn't care less) At about 11 am she called me back and told me that it sounded like I would be ok, and that if I started having severe stomach pain and cramping and began to bleed a lot then I should worry and contact them immediately. I took that to mean that if that happened then I would be definitely losing the baby. She told me to take things easy and not to lift anything heavy. I told my manager and she had the meeting I had scheduled for later that day then and there and then sent me home. The meeting itself stressed me out a good deal. And tomorrow I have another meeting that will stress me out pretty good.

Today has been weird for me. I don't know quite how to feel. I feel tired, worn out, and worried about this. I have not really wanted to talk to anyone and so I fear I was snarky at work with certain people. My father in law called and left a message to see how everything was going. I could not call him back, I really did not want to talk about any of it at that point. I still feel torn, what if it all fails, now, now that I have told everyone? I just don't know anymore...should I let things out, should I keep things in? All I feel I can do now, is keep up hope, and wait till Friday for the ultrasound. It seems strange now, I know I should be excited, like I was, about the ultrasound. But at this point I can only worry, and hope everything is ok.

5 weeks

Last night I decided to try and figure out my due date (because so many people have been asking) using a pregnancy calculator. But all the calculators I found out there ask all the wrong questions for me. So I googled IVF Pregnancy Calculator and found one. It was nice to have a calculator that asked for the date of egg collection to determine pregnancy. And based off that date I am 5 weeks along. This Friday when I have my first ultrasound I am going to verify that, but if it is correct then I am farther along than I originally thought. It is exciting.

I am looking forward to Friday. It will be nice to find out how many embryos took, and I have questions I would like to ask the nurse anyway.

Also last night I found a few sites that help prepare people for becoming parents, I figure I can use all the help I can get.