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.