February 22. The flowers I sent had a short note -- "Whatever will be, will be good." She gave me the news a couple of hours after she received the flowers, and indeed it was good. But my reaction was less than positive. I'm both happy and terrified, the recent past a reminder not to get too comfortable with such news. She on the other hand is totally in sync with my note's message, happy as can be and figuring that if the news turns sour later, she can deal with it then. All I want to do is try to take it one day at a time, even as my mind races ahead several months. I will try to be happy with Kathy even in the presence of my fears, and I can accept well wishes to some extent. But I don't want to hear "congratulations," because there's nothing to be congratulated on, yet.
Now. A little while ago I said we should know by the end of February whether our attempt at using frozen embryos would be successful, and here we are, into March, and I've been keeping you in suspense. Of course if it hadn't worked I would've said so pretty quickly, so from that I suppose you could have inferred (though I'm telling you now) that so far so good. Yesterday we went in for an ultrasound, and unlike last time, we got to see a heartbeat (a single embryo) -- it's about as early as it's possible to see one (new device in the doctor's office -- even the nurses were impressed with what we could see). While at one level that's exciting, at another I'm still scared. Last time, when we went in for an ultrasound and there was no heartbeat, the doctor indicated that it must have happened only a couple of days earlier. And that time, we went in for the ultrasound nearly two weeks later in the pregnancy than we did this time. So even though we got to see the heartbeat this time, we're not even as far along as we got last time (which is why we're going in for another ultrasound in a couple of weeks). Of course, I recognize that assuming all goes well over the next month, we still might not have a successful pregnancy, so I don't know when I'm going to start relaxing and believing that it'll really happen this time. Given that we're still only about midway through the first trimester, it'll probably be a while still. Yesterday, the doctor put the odds of miscarriage at this point at under 10 percent, and if all is well at the next examination, those odds will decrease to roughly 3 percent.
As for how Kathy's doing, she's experiencing various symptoms of pregnancy, most notably forgetfulness. Many have said that all the blood rushes away from the head down to the womb, and that seems consistent with our observations. She's also tired a lot, and lately has been extremely clumsy. Plus, either her allergies are acting up or she has a cold, but either way, she misses being able to take something. Underneath all those symptoms, however, is a happy woman, taking it one day at a time.
