8 Days a Week

It's been an 8-day week for us, a whirlwind of 8 days which have brought so much change to our lives, yet have gone by so slowly as well. I feel as though I have experienced every minute of these 8 days...it feels like far more than 8 days have gone past.

I took the advice of the majority of you and decided to not go in for the ultrasound today. My mom told me, if I were in Canada now, I wouldn't be having an u/s, so why bother getting an extra one today. I agreed. I called at 10am to cancel the appointment.

At 12:45pm (I happen to know the exact time because I was looking at the clock, waiting for my online class to start back up), I had a sudden very sharp pain in my lower stomach region. I ran to the bathroom, thinking that perhaps it was one of those crazy weirdo gas problems. As soon as I got there, the pain got even more intense, and I ran back out to lie on my bed. The pain was getting stronger and sharper, spreading from what I assumed was my uterus all the way up through my stomach, up to my chest. I could neither lie down nor sit up, nor could I find any sort of position that alleviated the pain. I writhed and moaned in pain for 15 minutes, praying to God to protect my baby and me, frightened to death about what could be happening. Was this the beginning signs of an ectopic? Was my body going through a miscarriage?

My parents (who are both physicians too, sure comes in handy :) said to see if I could go in for the u/s, and thankfully the original time slot was available. By the time of the u/s, the pain had significantly subsided into a dull ache.

The u/s tech said, "This is a Clomid pregnancy? Likely you had a nasty cyst." Apparently I had developed a large cyst (no way to know how large) that had ruptured - this was the cause of that unbearable pain. And the u/s showed that my cramping from last week was likely due to other smaller cysts that had ruptured. I have one more that is 3.5cm which we hope will just dissolve but could rupture - the tech said this one is much smaller than the one that ruptured today would have been.

At this point, honestly, I was so incredibly thankful that I wasn't having a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, that I didn't care about much else. But I am pregnant (ahhhh!!!), and I was having an u/s, so obviously we had to look at the uterus too.

And this is what we saw.


It's not a great picture, since it's a picture of a picture, and I forgot to turn the flash off...but I think it's still pretty clear. :)

So, like I said, it's been some 8 days for us. We are thrilled, but of course we are still very cautious...it's incredibly early. One baby measured 4 weeks 5 days, and the other measured 4 weeks 4 days. It's still too early for a heartbeat, and the gestational sacs themselves are so small (about 2 mm) that the u/s tech couldn't see inside them.

Now we wait patiently for Sept. 18th - the 8 week u/s at the fertility clinic back home. I know anything can happen between now and then, and even after then, but I'm so incredibly thankful that so far all is going well, and we've been blessed by two babies, which we pray will stick with us for the next 9 months.

Again, I'm so touched by all your support and comments, especially in light of my inability to return any comments right now. I'm with my family now (who are spoiling me rotten!), and I likely won't be back online until I return home mid-September. In the meantime, I will miss reading your blogs, but I look forward to catching up with everyone when I get back. Thanks so much for your prayers, thoughts, and support. :)