I've been holding off posting for a bit, in order to let some information sink in and get verified. And though I'm not 100% percent sure of who reads this blog that I may actually know in person, I'm throwing that caution to the wind and proudly stating that this panda *FINALLY* has a cub in utero.
Yes. A BF-mothafuzzin-P! *insert girly squee's here*
Here's the math behind that BF-MF-P:
Fertility drug-o'rama round #6 +
13 pounds of weight gain that come with Clomid failures +
Femara round #2 +
4 Big Follies +
6 days of relentless BD'ing (distant echos of whip cracking) +
1 cup of pee =
2 Beautiful lines. So beautiful in fact, that I threw the stick across the bathroom and proceeded to scream "don't you be lying to me bitch!" at 8 in the morning.
Since then, I've had two betas. The first at about 11-12 DPO was 71.6 followed by (two nerve racking days later) a 179.2. And since then then I've had an ultrasound where our beautiful asian baby blob was nuzzled into the side of my lady cave, with a flickering heartbeat going at about 197. (Though I wasn't exactly sure if he said 197 or just 97. Turns out I was so confident of myself at the time I didn't say anything, but then the doubt started to kick in after I got home and I had no idea what was what. Womp, womp) At the time I was 7w3d based on LMP, but the RE said it looks like we were measuring a week off. Which was normal, because I really didn't ovulate until day 18/19, so that was no worry. He couldn't give me any measurements or our actual due date because he had to go and calculate them himself, and he said at our next appt we'd get all that good stuff. We got a picture of the panda cub which I'll upload later when I feel like messing with it.
Our next u/s is in about two more weeks. If all is good then and the baby is still doing bean-size baby things, we will graduate to an OB.
In light of all the good news, I have been struggling with not being overly paranoid that something will go wrong. Every twinge, pain, cramp, spit bubble, funky growth...all immediately shout to me "OH GOD...AHHHH!" That first week I had at least 3 miscarriage dreams, so much so that I didn't even want to sleep anymore for a fear of another one. After seeing the heartbeat, I've had a much easier time with it. I've been focusing on the milestones, on what's next, what fruit the baby is this week, when the next appt is, when to tell people, so on, so forth. I thank the bamboo Gods every day that I've gotten to this point, and I find comfort in that even in the worse case scenario of something going downhill, at least I was able to get pregnant, and that's a hell of a stepping stone in itself.
Cautiously proceeding with optimism, one day at a time.
<3 Panda
Peace, Love, & Bamboo
