Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

We had a little "oops" moment that very night after our perinatologist visit and I knew right away that since it was during the middle of my cycle, I was most likely going to get pregnant. I was immediately concerned, since we were supposed to wait at least 3 months. The next day, I called both my new OBGYN and my PCP. I wanted to 1) relay our perinatal visit, 2) find out who I was supposed to be talking to while we were planning to get pregnant, and 3) to see if I should be on progesterone now. After several phone calls, we decided that I should be liaising with my OBGYN while preparing to get pregnant. She said that even in light of the "oops", I should wait until I have a positive home pregnancy test to start taking the progesterone. I wasn't sure I agreed, but I'm not the doctor.

After a couple of weeks, I didn't feel any pregnancy symptoms, so I talked myself into believing that I wasn't pregnant after all. I only allow myself one caffeinated beverage a day, but I kept that up, feeling guilty the whole time.

We shot a wedding on September 12 and I was exhausted, as usual, the next day. I spent nearly the whole day in bed. The day after that, I still felt incredibly tired. At first, I was very confused, until I remembered the "oops." For a few days, I kept my suspicions to myself. I told myself that I would wait until the end of the week to see if Aunt Flo stopped by.

On Wednesday, the 16th, I was a little emotional and I decided to just take a test that evening. The "control" line was nice and bright, but the "positive" line was very faint. I was angry. We'd been here before and it ended badly. So, I decided that this was also likely to end badly and Roy agreed.

I called my doctor the next day so that I could go ahead and start taking the progesterone just in case. She wanted me to come in right away for a sonogram, but I requested to wait a couple weeks. This really flustered the nurse, but I explained that we'd been through this 3 times already. We had just received the bill for the last sonogram, which ended badly, and weren't all that excited about paying another $150 for a similar result. I reasoned that since I was on all the medications I was supposed to be on, that there wasn't anything they could do either way. She spoke to the doctor and agreed to wait a week and a half for the sonogram. I hated feeling this negative, but I figured I shouldn't get my hopes up.

Using my LMP, we figured I was 6 weeks along. I asked the nurse if the line should be faint at 6 weeks. In our experience, a faint line could mean either you just got pregnant or you are about to not be pregnant. She agreed that the line shouldn't be faint at 6 weeks. She told me to wait a couple days and take another test, but in the morning. On the morning of the 19th, I took another test with the same faint result, so I was feeling even more negative.

The next week, though, I really started having serious symptoms. I was so tired that I was letting Audrey sleep in ridiculously late and forcing her to take naps that she didn't want to, all so that I could get in some more sleep. Sometimes, I even threw in movies so that I could nap on the couch while she watched it. I was hungry all the time and I started feeling slightly nauseous. As the week progressed, the symptoms got stronger. My first trimester with Audrey went like this the whole 3 months. Despite being miserable, we figured this was a good sign, since I hadn't felt these strong symptoms with the other miscarriages. I started thinking ever so slightly more positively.

As usual, I kept waiting for the telltale bleeding to start. When we got to a week after the first pregnancy test, I got a little more excited. With the 1st and 3rd miscarriages, I didn't make it a week after a positive test. On Thursday evening, the 24th, we decided that I'd take another test to make sure we were still "positive" before the Monday sonogram. We'd hate to waste our time going to a doomed appointment. This time, we used a digital readout test. It told us very simply that we were, in fact, "pregnant." There were no lines to worry about, so I don't know if we would have had the same result if we'd used the line test again. Frankly, I don't think we wanted to even take the chance that we'd see faint lines again.