Verses to Remember

From birth I have relied on you; You brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise you.

Psalm 71:6



Thursday, April 22, 2010

To Be or Not To Be... Pregnant, that is!

Hey there, folks.

So, as the title of this post indicates, I MAY be pregnant! (little woo hoo!)

If you ask me to go by my womanly intuition (or a new mothers instinct?), pregnancy symptoms and timing, I say definitely yes. I'll go into the details of that below.

If you go by those pesky little tests, maybe not.

Thing is, I am almost 3 weeks late, but my body has not produced enough hcg yet to get a positive pregnancy test.

There are many possible reasons for this:
  • One of them is that I might not be pregnant. I don't love that reason, but it is still a possibility. Though I would like to know why I'm not having a period. . .
  • Another reason could be that it's still too soon to tell if I am pregnant or not.
  • And the last reason for the low hcg could be that my system is the same as my mothers was during her pregnancies, and I am pregnant but not producing enough hcg to register positive yet.
My mother did not test positive until she was more than 2 months pregnant. And according to my research this is not all that uncommon! Not only have I found numerous stories online of women in this same boat, but even when I was at the hospital taking the test, the lab tech told me that her daughter did not test positive during either of her pregnancies, and her doctor did not believe she was pregnant until she was showing, at almost 4 months along!

There are many symptoms I am having that lead me to believe I am actually pregnant, and they are increasing by the day. The first symptoms were an insatiable hunger (particularly for Frosted Shredded Mini-Wheats--I go thru a box every couple days!), extreme exhaustion and funny twinges behind my belly button. I threw up while out to dinner the first week (barely made it out the door to the bushes... hmmm). My headaches have changed and are worse at times, like they often are at certain times of the month. Most recently I have been feeling queasy in the mornings and evenings, am getting heartburn at bedtime, and my chest is tender, swollen and covered in blue veins.

If I was the first person in my family to not test positive when pregnant, I would be more hesitant to believe that was the explanation. If I had not heard from the lady at the lab that her daughter tested negative into her 4th month, I would be more hesitant. If we were not trying to conceive and I did not have increasing symptoms of pregnancy, and really just feel different, I would be more careful to not get my hopes up at all.

But because of all those reasons above, I do feel that the most likely explanation is that I really, truly AM pregnant, even though the tests have not yet confirmed it.

I know what you are thinking. I need to be careful, need to not put all my eggs in that basket (pun intended). Nothing is for sure yet. Don't let myself get too carried away until we know.

Just about all of the people I have told about my current situation have reminded me that I don't know for sure yet.

As if I don't KNOW that.
As if I don't think about that possibility every single day.
As if I am not praying every hour that God will keep me from being completely crushed if I'm not actually pregnant.

Because the truth it, though we have only been trying for a couple months, I really really WANT to be pregnant! This is something I have wanted for years, and now that we have finally decided to try to conceive, I don't want to have to wait any more!

I know that no matter what the odds are or are not, I will be sad if this turns out to be some sort of flukey hormonal thing. Especially now that I know how it might feel to actually be pregnant! Now that I am watching my body for any changes, learning what stage a baby is at during each month of pregnancy. All of those things make me want to be pregnant more than ever!

So. That is my story.

As of the end of this week, if I am indeed pregnant, I will be 7 weeks along. At which point the baby will be able to be seen on an ultrasound, and the heartbeat can also be heard.

Because what I have read says that ultrasounds are much more indicative of pregnancy than blood tests, if I continue to have symptoms and don't start my period, I have decided just to skip the next blood test and wait for an ultrasound in order to know for sure. I'm hoping and praying my doctor will see the wisdom in this, and order and ultrasound sooner than later.

Because, really and truly, I just want to know! Is that too much to ask?!

Sunday, April 11, 2010

What in the bloggy world is going on??

As you all know I am new to the wonderful world of blogging. One of the things I like about this world is that it's so easy to navigate. Hit New Post, type out a few things, hit Publish Post and viola! A new post. Well, that is how it is supposed to work. My blog apparently has a mind of it's own! Why you ask? Well, let me tell you.

First, the font. When I published yesterday's blog I noticed that the first couple paragraphs were in black, instead of the typical teal I have always used (because isn't teal a happier color? I mean, really.), and that the font was larger as well (I wasn't trying to yell, I promise).

So I went into Edit, selected the entire post, changed the color to teal and the size to normal. There. That seemed like it should solve the problem, but when I hit Publish again. . . same thing. Grrr. I tried it one more time, first selecting only the offending (offensive!) text and changing it, then selecting the whole thing, turning it black and then back to teal...each time it looked correct in the preview (I believe it was mocking me.) but when I published it, same old, same old. Lame.

At this point I gave up. If you are going to judge me on the mismatched size and color of my blog posts, I guess I have other things to worry about.

Secondly, my last post was written and published (3 times, mind you) YESTERDAY. April 10th. Not, as my blog now says, March 15th. What the heck?! I wonder if that is only showing up incorrectly on the blog itself, or in everybody's readers and emails? Who knows.

If any of you vastly more experienced bloggers care to tell me what might have possessed my poor little newby blog, I would appreciate it. Keep in mind, however, that I am a template kind of girl. No programming for this chica. I speak English (and a little Spanish) and that is IT. No programming languages of any kind.

And I like it that way.

Except when my template acts up, as it has been doing lately. I have tried to give said template a stern talking to, to whip it into shape, however all my attempts to do so have failed. I think this is because I speak English and my template speaks computer and apparently the translator has taken a little vacation.

So apparently, until my translator returns, or my template learns English, I am stuck with a rebellious template for my poor little blog. If I could speak to my template, which we know I cannot, I would simply say: Hey. Don't take this out on my blog. She hasn't done anything to you. If you have a problem in computer-land, take it up with them. Leave my blog alone. Thank you very much.

(It always pays to be polite even when you don't know the language. Maybe especially then!)