It's a "B"

I stood in the kitchen, before departing on the 100 mile round trip for yesterday's ultrasound, and concentrated on my ambiguous, mediocre pregnancy symptoms, and thought, "This is going to be a "b" on my options list. This is going to be a mediocre, ambiguous ultrasound."
And I was right.
So: the good news is, it wasn't a "c". No molar pregnancy, no ectopic pregnancy, and there was a gestational sac in the uterus, so I am pregnant. There was a 9 mm gestational sac, and an appropriately sized yolk sac off to one edge, and what the ultrasonographer called "appropriately heterogenous endometrium" - apparently the endometrium has a characteristic sort of busy, mottled look in early pregnancy, which then clarifies and clears later on, and this looked active and busy and just like she wanted it to for a 5-6 week pregnancy.
But there wasn't a clearly visible fetal pole, although there was a pulsing on one edge of the yolk sac that could be where a heartbeat is going to be soon, but not necessarily. And at just on 6 weeks, you would normally expect to see a clear fetal pole, and possibly a heartbeat. Also, the gestational sac, which grows 1 mm a day at this stage in pregnancy, should be well over a centimetre in diameter by now, to be typical.
So the technician thinks this is a completely normal pregnancy about 4 days behind where I think it is, and that either my dates are wrong (but they aren't, they aren't) or that implantation etc was a bit slower than average for some reason. She says that nothing about the scan makes her suspect that there's anything wrong with it. And when I got home, I googled gestational sac sizes and so forth, and it's true that everything I saw yesterday is within the normal range for 6w 1d after LMP. So it could all be fine, and just a bit lethargic to get going. What's more,the first pregnancy test I did was only weakly positive, which would go with slow implantation etc, and so the "normal" explanation has appealing backup, too.
But somehow, I don't think so. I think this is going to be a re-run of last year's missed miscarriage. Maybe these are just nasty wrinkled old eggs. Maybe we have some horrid chromosomal issue, and were lucky to have two normal pregnancies when I conceived the girls, and this is not just a function of age. Who knows? Apparently only 10% of pregnancies fail after seeing a yolk sac, but then 50% of pregnancies at age 42 end in miscarriage, so I could play with these statistics endlessly, and pointlessly.
It's a good job that I have that NHS scan on the horizon. I don't think my pregnancy symptoms are nearly powerful enough for this to be a viable pregnancy. If coffee avoidance and nausea are linearly related to HCG levels for me, which I sort of feel is the case, then I would put good money on having HCG levels that are well above zero, but far below where they should be. I think a miscarriage lies in my not too distant future.
Even so, I don't regret going through all this again. For me, this will be it. I am not putting myself through this a third time, at the age of rising 43. But I do have much better closure on the whole subject as a result of this final effort. I will work through it, doing whatever I need to, and I will close the door on this part of my life, and move on.
It's always going to suck, though.

Nerve cracking

Well, today I gave in and arranged some ultrasounds. 5w6d today, and my symptoms are so variable that I don't know what to think. On Sunday morning, I felt so un-pregnant that I expected to see blood every time I went for a pee. On Sunday evening, John came back from a weekend sailing and said, "Oh, your breasts look pregnant." All Monday, my breasts felt pregnant - huge and tender, they felt, and I think they even looked bigger through clothes. Today, they are still tender but less so; I woke early needing to pee (hooray!) but haven't felt particularly in need of it since (boo!) and, most worryingly of all, I still feel almost no nausea (although coffee is definitely still well off the agenda). Yesterday, I'd have put money on having an establishing pregnancy; today, I have no idea. I don't know if this waxing and waning of symptoms is normal, because I have no idea what happened with the girls - it's too long ago, and I just wasn't as obsessed then, being young and feckless and confident and so forth.
So I rang the local NHS early pregnancy unit, which was so helpful when I had the miscarriage last year, and (greatly to my surprise) got the lovely nurse I dealt with last time, who made no bones about booking me in for a scan without having to go through the GP first. But they won't do it before 7 weeks - fair enough - which is next week, in the middle of half term; and I don't want to tell the children before I know what's happening (if then). So that's arranged for rising 8 weeks, after half term.
I brooded about whether I could wait another 2 whole weeks, and eventually decided to go for a private scan this week - there's a place over in Kent that I found via Google, which does them for quite a reasonable cost. I know it may not be conclusive, but I reckon one of three things will happen:
a) embryo doing fine and on target - in which case it'll still be nice to see what the NHS scan shows 12 days later
b) embryo alive but unhealthy - in which case I'm prewarned and can feed into the NHS in due course
c) embryo already dead (or never existed), in which case, really, the sooner I know, the better. If it's like last time, my body may stop holding onto it and start getting rid of it once I know it's died, and the sooner that happens, the less unpleasant it will be. Equally, if there's some creepy rare complication or abnormality, the sooner I know, the better.
On the whole, I am fairly calm about all this. I want this baby very much, but I am almost sure that, if it's all gone wrong, I am done trying. Already I would be 60 when this one reached 18, if it exists, and I think that's quite enough of an age gap.
But still: no blood, no pain, so maybe things are fine. But that was true of this stage last time, too, so who knows?
Update on Thursday.

Uneasy

5w3d. Coffee alien but not heavingly horrible. Breasts tender but not agonising; in bath, a bit fuller looking, but not massively so. No blood. No uterine twinges. Almost no nausea - just slightly queasy-feeling, briefly, now and then.
On the one hand, I am still only 10 days after when my period was due; on the other hand, I am distinctly uneasy about (especially) the lack of nausea. Somehow I can't help feeling that, if my HCG levels were shooting up as they should be, I would be feeling a bit worse and - well, more pregnant, somehow - by now. I do feel pregnant. And there are moments, like waking up this morning with sore breasts and needing to pee, when it all feels fine. But.... I don't know. Somehow I'm dubious.
Better a chemical miscarriage now than a Down's decision in a couple of months, I do realise. If no healthy (ish) baby is waiting for me down the line, then the sooner I lose this pregnancy the less hellish the whole process will be.
But as yet there isn't the slightest hint of a speck of a smear of a suspicious discharge, so maybe I'm worrying unduely. I don't know. But somehow I will try to arrange an early viability scan some time this week, if I can. I doubt it will be good news, just at the moment, but whatever it is, I'd rather know.

One week down: how many to go, I wonder?

Yesterday my breasts felt so un-tender and generally normal that I did something I've never done before, and took a second pregnancy test for the same pregnancy. I put it down on a flat surface as instructed, and left it alone for two minutes; when I came back, I was horrified to see a clear negative line. Then I looked more closely and saw that the negative line was on a nasty old-looking yellowish background, and realised that this was the old test from December, from the same double packet, which for some reason I had put back in the packet rather than throw away (why, I wonder?) The current version was the clearest, darkest version of positive on the accompanying Helpful Pictures. It was a different brand from the test I took last week, being one that I just happened to have lying around, so I shouldn't really be comparing, but that one was only just positive, whereas this one couldn't be more so. So I suppose my HCG levels must be going up, although in the absence of access to the serial beta samples that American bloggers all seem to get, this is the most evidence I seem to have.

As if reassured by the technology,today my breasts have felt much as if someone is inflating them with a bicycle pump; I don't think they look bigger, but they have that tingling, active, tender, somehow busy feeling again, more than ever before (this time). There is still almost no nausea, although I do feel briefly queasy now and then, but not very strikingly so. Coffee smells totally different; I open the tin of coffee pods, and instead of inhaling with wistful rapture, it smells like something quite alien; not repulsive, exactly, but like a substance which has nothing to do with me or anything I might want to consume, as if it was shipped in from Mars. No blood.

So: five weeks exactly today. I have told nobody except John, not even Mum, and I don't think I will until I see a heartbeat, if I do. Somehow it feels as if I'll jinx it if I mention it - I didn't even want to tell John. I'm trying to pretend it's not happening, and not think about it. Which, of course, means I'm thinking about it all the time.

Good enough

Coffee: yuck. Nausea: sometimes, slightly. Breasts: ouch.
I wish I could just fast forward to a 7 week scan, or develop selective amnesia meanwhile, alternatively.

Again?

Well, after more or less recovering from the mystery illness, and with no firm date for Qatar yet set, I'm pregnant again. I really am, this time: I did a test and everything, and got a clear though faint second line, even though my period was only one day late and I didn't use morning urine. This month was the first month when I have been absolutely sure we had sex on the day of my LH surge, because I tested for that too. And while I was at it, I tested my FSH levels (oh, the joy of Internet shopping!) and found that they were normal, so obviously I am not yet perimenopausal either.

So: currently about 16 days post ovulation, I reckon. Breasts tender in that special pregnant tender way. No blood. Coffee not as nice as it used to be, but by no means a total turn off either. No real nausea, but slightly queasy feeling in the afternoon today. Lots of mysterious uterine twinges. No heightened sense of smell yet.

And so far, I haven't even told John (though if he's concentrating, he's bound to know). I am not telling anyone, just yet. I am not thinking too much about Down's (just under 2% risk) until I know I have a viable pregnancy (what are the odds for that? 50-50 at my age, which is now just 42, but then perhaps better than that, given ease of conception, which is certainly above average. Last time, I carried a dead embryo around for at least three weeks without knowing it. This time,if I get as far as 6 or 7 weeks, I'll have an early viability scan (privately if I can't get one on the NHS), so that I know ASAP whether it gets as far as a heartbeat. I am not trying to see the doctor yet. I don't want any part of those cheery, wholesome leaflets. I especially don't want a maternity exemption certificate that will become invalid if I lose the baby before 24 weeks. I am not looking up the due date. I am absolutely not registering with any online forums and risking having soppy development emails turning up in my inbox on random future dates. If this pregnancy fails too, of course rationally I should call a halt there. But I don't know if I'll be able to do that, if this try will provide enough closure, in the jargon. So while I am sort of ignoring things, I'm stopping myself from facing up to the horrible fallout that I'll have to deal with if things go wrong.
I'm not especially worried, strangely. During the last few months, when I wondered if I could still conceive easily (though I can't really say it took any time at all to succeed, not with the likely failed implantations and the husband absent at key moments and the illness and suchlike), it felt as if conception was the goal, and as if I would be so grateful and my uncertainties resolved, if only I knew I could still conceive. Now I have conceived, easily and naturally again, and I am sorry to say that I am not particularly grateful, or apprehensive, or ... anything, really. I suppose I am trying to keep as detached as possible until I am a little further down this road, while at the same time seeking as much scientific information as possible, as if knowledge will actually alter any outcome.
I picked a tarot card last week, before I knew, and asked what would happen about my chance of conception this cycle, and got Death, which was disconcerting. Assuming it wasn't just random twaddle, this could either mean "death to your chances of conception", which it obviously didn't, or "death to your zygote" - let's hope not - or, as the more abtruse advice on interpretation tends to suggest, nothing to do with death at all as such, but just things like "this is the end of one period in your life and the start of another." So let's hope it meant the end of the waiting and uncertainty, then.
One thing I know: some time between now and the end of next January, a lot of blood and something else are going to come out of my vagina in a painful and messy way. How, and what the outcome will be, who knows? I certainly don't.