Well then

On cd 24, I finally, finally get a change on my monitor and get a High! Of course, I had to go buy more opk's for back-up, but what the hell? I haven't been using them everyday, just in the last couple of days.

The opk was dark, but not positive, so it seems like the monitor is right on. I expect I'll get a firm positive/peak tomorrow then. It's late, but I stopped caring about that. It'll happen or it won't. Because I recognize my utter lack of control here.

I think deciding to pursue treatment in August/September and not really thinking I'll be pregnant by then has been somewhat liberating. I feel a little broken, a little busted. But more free. Relieved, maybe?

Doesn't mean we are quitting, on the contrary - we're still very actively continuing. I just think I feel beaten down by the continual ups and downs that has been trying to conceive again.

But for now, it's go with the flow. Who knows where it leads?

I dreamed of him.

This morning, after the temp was taken, the cup peed in, monitor used and cat shooed away. I slept again, dreaming. So odd. It shifted and changed. At first he was girl, a daughter that was more like a plastic baby doll than alive. But I knew him. I was sad because I'd forgotten him and no one had fed him. And shift, and he was a boy I called Christopher, but I compared his face to his picture and it was him. And I knew. And he knew me. No longer a stiff doll-baby, he reached for me. I was ashamed for having thought he'd died, when he was just taken away to NICU. I dressed him again and again and laid him down for a nap and watched him sleep. I was angry I'd missed the first nine months of his life, but I pushed the anger away every time I held him. All I could think then was I'd wanted so badly to hold you again; I have to remember this, how it felt. He was squirmy sometimes, he patted my face, he reached up for me to lift him, settled his head in the crook of my neck and slept, sweetly, and just clung to him. I woke up when we were making plans to move back home so that we could spend all our time with him, jobs be hanged. I was listening to him babble baby-talk, holding him on my lap thinking, I have to remember this and how it felt. I have to remember this.

And then I was awake and remembering and it was Gabe and it wasn't, and I don't know whether to be grateful because I held him again or angry because he's gone again. So I'll just feel sad for a bit.

May 24, 2010

Nine months.

I knew it was this week. I knew it was coming.

Nevertheless, it managed to take me by surprise when I saved my weekly report and typed in the date and said, "Oh."

Maybe this is why I'm feeling contemplative. Why I'm feeling withdrawn and introspective, why I keep searching for him in the midst of a crowd and in the quiet of my heart.

Nine months. Twice as long as he existed. Time enough for a new human to have been created and born. As long as he was supposed to have been in me.

I would have thought that by nine months many things would have been different, if I could have comprehended nine months away at the beginning. I would have thought that I could breathe more easily, that I would be adapted, that the shattered feeling would have faded away.

Instead I find that while I can look back at that time and see the progress I've made, the reality sets in that I may always feel this shattered, this lost. I may always find my breath catching in my throat at inconvenient times and adaptation is a myth created to help those around you who need to believe that you can be better.

Or maybe adaptation is an apt word after all. I suppose I have adapted to this half-life of parenthood and mothering a spirit. I suppose I have adapted to the spiritual limp with which I walk, to the sharp pain that may accompany the unexpected reminder, to accepting that the most I have is a few pictures and a ring and a love that aches with longing.

I am learning to live with this constant presence of pain, and I can acknowledge now that it has not lessened so much as I have become accustomed to it. The tears are far less frequent and I rarely indulge in them when they spring up. Sometimes I am afraid that if I open myself up to that darkness again, I won't emerge. I came through it once, and that is enough.

Still, I miss him. How much I miss him still astonishes me. I would have expected the ache in my arms to lessen some, but they are as empty as ever. I wish to see his name today, to speak it aloud, to know it's not just a name pulled at random, it is the name that belongs to my son.

My Gabriel.

It's Never Fucking Over

I had anticipated that I would sit down tonight and write a cheerful post. Because up until about 10 minutes ago, I was feeling pretty cheerful. My job is safe, I am doing well, I was super-productive at work, dinner was cooked, we took our walk today, we planned to have sex, I like my monitor, and DH wasn't as down tonight as he's been for awhile.

But I just got a call from a fucking collections company seeking payment for a bill that I am completely and utterly unaware of for OB/GYN services I received in June 09.

So. Is it possible? Sure. I had at least two small bills slip through the crack amidst the myriad of bills from the hospital (why they can't send you one bill, I don't know). As soon as we were made aware of them, we paid them immediately. We had at least one large mystery bill out of nowhere that I just paid to be done with the fucking mess. I should have challenged it, but I was done. I wanted it to be over.

And yet - out of nowhere, nearly a year after services were rendered, with no other notices or calls - there is suddenly another $100 bill floating out there?

What the fuck?

WHAT THE FUCK?

These bills have gone on for twice as long as I was pregnant with my dead son. It's ridiculous. It's completley and utterly ridiculous.

I'm furious and DH, after a long rant about the assholes at the hospital - because it has to be them as I can't think of anything else it could be - has just shut down. He's angry and hurt and I don't know how to begin approaching him.

It just never ends. Never.

Relief

I know I've hinted that things at work are a little . . . uncertain right now.

I haven't wanted to come out and say what exactly was happening - partially because I didn't know before today, but also partially because I've been trying not to let the worry consume my entire life (that attempt has been less than successful, btw).

But now I know what's happening. Due to budget cuts (which we knew about) there will be positions cut (which we knew about). Late last week, word came down that instead of the 100 or so company-wide (over 6,000 employees), it was going to be more like 40 from our unit alone. Cue wild speculation and rumors flying and living in total fear about what will happen next.

The reality is that we spend up to (and sometimes over, though we're getting a lot better) our budget. If DH lost his job, we'd be tight and he'd have to find a way to make some income, but we could make it work somehow, at least short-term. If I lost my job, we'd be screwed. I make 2/3 of our income. The very thought had me shaking like a leaf. We're paying down debt and trying to build up savings, but . . . that is dependent on having income.

Before I'd been worried about getting pregnant and how leave would work and time off and bedrest and all the doctor visits . . . Suddenly, I was concerned about whether or not we should even be considering having a baby. And you want to talk about conflicting emotions. We've been all over the map. The compulsion to try is so strong that the thought of not trying (though tempered as it has become over the past few weeks) makes me cry. But trying when things were so uncertain and my job may be on the line? Utterly foolish.

Today, however, I was given the details about the cuts and what happens next and told explicitly that I am NOT on the list. I have never been on the list. And even better than that, I was told that I have really stepped up and am doing exceedingly well and that my boss' boss trusts me and will NOT let me go because she knows I can do my job well and I will be needed in the new plan. She also added that the database I'm creating has piqued interest in the Big Big Super-Boss' office. When I'm done, she's turning it over to them and they are going to consider it for a company-wide mandated use. Which . . . holy shit. No pressure or anything! God knows I'm frantically trying not only to make it useful for our purposes but also trying to make sure it can be used by others easily and intuitively as well.

So, I've been fretting. Worried, anxious, dreading each day at work, each closed door meeting, and now I feel as if an enormous weight has been lifted from me. I have a job and will continue to have a job for the forseeable future. And I'm succeeding in my job and we can go ahead with trying to conceive after all. The relief is too great for words. Thank God.

Writing

Back in high school, my senior year, there was a standard project in AP English (Honors English may have done this too). It was huge. A 20 page paper, minimum number of words that I forget now, handwritten to specfic instructions (computers weren't as much in use at that point - I didn't type my first paper until college. Hell, I didn't have an email address until my second semester of college!) - it was a big deal, accounting for nearly our full grade of one entire grading period.

I remember it very well. Looking back, it was a fairly standard sort of thing. Pick a book from a list (mostly Brit lit), read it, research it, write on it. Minimum of three outside sources. Some kind of argument. I chose Pride and Prejudice, mainly because I'd already read it a million times, which I figured would save me some time. I remember researching it, spending time in the library. I remember writing it for days, and rewriting it hastily so that there were no errors on any page in my French class while my kind teacher pretended not to notice. English was directly after, it was due that day, and I kept screwing up spelling or leaving out conjunctions, meaning I probably rewrote sections eight or nine times.

I remember turning it quite nervously; because you see, I had no fucking clue what I was doing. No idea what I was writing about. I totally made it up. I read those outside sources and I used quotes and I wrote 20+ pages on P&P without a single fucking idea of what it was supposed to be about. I knew the story backwards and forwards. I'd seen the play, owned the BBC movie version, and I guess that was evident, because I had no thesis that I found comprehensible. I just wrote and wrote and prayed it would get a passing grade.

I got a 98. One point deducted for a bibliography citation error and one point deducted for having more than two spelling errors in the paper. I got a comment that it was lovely, flowed beautifully and supported the arguments well. To this day, I have no idea how that happened.

Much of my college career was like that too. I floated through, rarely understanding the assignments without help, but somehow pulling enough out of my ass that people often assumed I could write and that I understood the material. Perhaps that was why I was drawn to History - there were facts I could grasp there and interpretations were for fun. RML was perhaps the one professor who saw through the facade and pulled me out of it. I was and am quite intelligent, and he insisted I live up to it, and use my brain. He was often considered a bit mad; his assignments often took the form of "In what manner and to what extent was Thomas Jefferson influenced by John Locke in the writing of the Declaration of Independence?" or "Who is 'the Prince' of Machiavelli's The Prince?" Ridiculously difficult questions pondered by scholars for centuries - and we were expected to distill that into a maximum paper of 3 pages (but as many endnotes as you like) and cogent arguments supported by the text.

I'll tell you this much - if there was any time in my life I learned to be brief, that was it. As you see, the lessons rarely carried through. Crystallization of thought processes, careful language choices, and really worthwhile textual analysis - that is what you needed. RML often said, and it was true enough for me, that the essence of the paper was the introduction. If the introduction laid out your argument, the rest was merely window-dressing. I learned how to break down the questions to see what he was really asking, and the day I got an A on a paper remains one of the proudest in my life. It was one of the few times I felt as if I knew how to write and what I was doing. Ross often told me in my early papers that I overthought things and made them far more complicated than they were; he was right, as he most often was.

I often sit down here to write, and that still plagues me. I don't know what to say. I have not determined who my audience is, and who I am writing for many times. Am I just sharing bits of my life? Am I skimming off the excess thoughts to relieve myself of their burden? Am I trying to enlighten or entertain? Am I seeking to clarify my thoughts for myself or help others understand what it is like to live in this unique situation? I think the answer is Yes, to all.

I think that I do best, that I give most, and get most when I stop overthinking it here. When I just let it go and write. I may not know what I'm doing, but something else comes through. Perhaps an instinctual understanding of a goal my conscious mind is still trying to work out, perhaps it's merely the truth of me unadorned and therefore more easy to relate to (even for me). I don't know.

I don't know why I am writing this even as I type. I think perhaps I am realizing how little control I exert over my own life, and how often the attempts to exert control leave me feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. Perhaps I simply need to let go and let life flow, as the words are flowing right now, as love flows. Without conscious thought, without dissection, without overthinking.

I have so little idea what I'm doing in this life, and I find myself constantly seeking answers, trying to understand. Maybe there isn't anything to understand, maybe it's all just doing it, living it, and seeing how it comes out in the end. I don't know.

Holding steady.

Not much is different, not much to add.

Used the first stick with the CBEFM. I'm pleased with the purchase thus far. If my cycle is readable, then I can see this being really helpful in terms of helping narrow the fertile time down a bit and maybe reduce the stress.

I'm been trying to be more healthy, including going walking. Tonight was the third time this week. One mile for now. Averaging just over 4 mph pace. I'm surprised by how good I feel afterwards. But since I pulled a muscle in my chest somehow doing this, I can't say it's my favorite thing ever.

Eating more healthfully overall, and that's good I suppose. I'm drinking green tea like there is no tomorrow. It's incredible the number of ways in which it can benefit you. Cutting back on the excess food and sweets. But man, I would love a good trip to Taco Cabana.

Things at work are ok. Things at home are ok (if messy and unorganized). I continue to write, approaching 50,000 words now. I'm sleeping ok. Just don't have much to say right now.

Doing Better

Certainly, not being in the throes of fluctuating hormones and bombarded with messages celebrating mothers (and inadvertently driving home that I am not one of those - in the traditional sense, anyway) makes a big world of difference to my psyche.

But I'm still having difficulties. Work is busy, so busy I can't touch the project I've been enjoying. I'm feeling a bit stretched thin at the moment.

I'm lonely, terribly lonely right now. And I am SO grateful for my friends who have especially been there the past week or so (and T - for sitting with me and chatting for hours on Sunday - I absolutely adore you more than words can possibly say). They've been wonderful, beyond caring and kind.

But it doesn't matter so much to where I am. Because there are so few people I know going through something similar, this ttc after this type of loss. There are many wonderful women out there, but very few I've found in similar enough circumstances to really be able to talk to them about how this feels. And the ways in which this hurts and pinches.

And I want to talk. To other people who understand, not just well meaning people who care. Because while the caring is so good, and so touching and so helpful, it's not quite the same. I don't always have words to explain this to someone who hasn't been there; it's a failing on my part. And I don't want to burden people with it, even here in my space. I find myself shying away from saying too much or going on about it.

And if I'm being honest, I've been isolating myself in general for the past couple of weeks. I'm not sure how to fix it. Losing friends after losing Gabriel has made me wary of reaching out too much, has made me watch myself and what I say and do. I've never been good at moving physically beyond my comfort zone and going out to activities that might introduce me to new people. I have a touch of social anxiety and find it difficult to even meet one on one with people I've exchanged emails with, let alone go somewhere and try to meet new people in person. The thought is terrifying.

So, while things are better than they were on Friday (let alone over the weekend), things are still . . . not great. I'm trying. I'm trying to make steps towards being healthier - I walked a mile after work yesterday and did not eat the extra sugar on top of the ice cream I had - and to focus less consumingly on ttc. But I'm still feeling unsettled and upset and unhappy inside.

Inside my head.

I am sitting across from them, and we are discussing relational tables and database construction. It's all very calm and civilized. She says something and I crack a joke about it and we laugh.

And the whole time I'm screaming inside my head. Screams, shrieks, wailing, echoing around and around.

"Oh yes, but the problem is that I have two unique identifiers, and there are too many fields linked with this to separate them. We can make do with 400 records per fiscal year, but it's not the ideal."

Inside my head I'm saying, "I'm not pregnant after all. But that line was there. I know I didn't imagine it. God, another fucking evap? How is this possible? Fucking hell. Over eight months now. I never thought it would take so long. It's never taken so long before. What is wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? What am I going to do?"

"No, come see what I've already done. It's pretty neat. We'll just put in the customer ID, and look! The other basic identity fields populate. Nope, it's that easy. That's why I'm using relational databases."

Inside my head I'm saying, "God, why did I open that article about the abused child? I knew what it would say. My God. They essentially boiled him. Why, why, why does that fucker get a living child they have no interest in or love for and I have only ashes of my dead son? I know the universe isn't fair, but come on. It's just so patently wrong."

"It might work that way. But I still think there is a more efficient way to do it. No, I know it doesn't make much sense now, but that's because I'm only half-way through establishing the fields. I have to stop and figure out the relationships before I go any farther. No it'll make more sense when I finish the layout. Then I can walk you through the entire entry of a record and we'll test it."

Inside my head I'm saying, "What am I? Am I mother? Most people would say I am. I would say so. It's just that my parenting was all compressed into about three hours. And I didn't manage that very well. All these mothers, they have no idea what they have and how desperately I want what they have. What if I am never going to be a mother again? Is my time as a mother through? In a sense it is. That identity, that label, it was put away when Gabriel died."

"No no, the book is really helpful. I will get this, I know I can do it. This is going to be great. Oh, really? Show it to the other divisions? That would be great, but it won't be ready before the fall. It's going to need a lot of tweaking, especially since we're building our process at the same time. My primary goal right now is to get it functional, and then we can work on making it more automated and easier to use."

Inside I am crying. I can't stop thinking about him. About what should have been. I know what should have been is an utterly useless thing to ponder, because it is not. But I can't help it. My arms ache with longing to hold him. I can't remember with physical memory any longer how it felt to feel him move within me. I can't remember quite how he looked anymore. I wonder if I have merely made a fuss over nothing. Was Gabriel nothing, really? Just another miscarriage, right? Why can't I get over it? But why should I? Stupid line of questioning. I am not over it and I will never be over it in that way. I am forever a different person and there is no going back.

I'm sitting here, sounding confident, smiling. Pleased with these developments. Inside I am a wreck, a mess, lonely, desperate, falling apart. I feel broken and beaten, pushed aside and withdrawn. I am a ghost, a wraith. I wish so much to speak of the pain welling up once again inside me, of how I am driven to my knees, how my husband is trying so valiantly to catch me as I'm falling again. Grief is not linear. There is not a progression you can make in that way. It's a spirl, or a wheel, and again, I've come over the curve to find myself thrown down.

It's not just not being pregnant, but that's part of it. It's not just missing Gabe, but that's part of it. It's the fact that pain of his loss has hit me again, and I feel again like I'm gasping for air. It's hard to breathe and hard to speak and yet, it's going to be nine months soon and I can't appear to be anything other than pieced back together and happy again. Sometimes that's not just a front. Today I can feel the glue seeping between the cracks, and pieces caving in and I am terrified of how this will end and who I will be.

I am so lonely right now, I can't express it. Even the company of other dead baby mamas is a small consolation. I yearn to be around others, but I shrink away as well. I can't express it, it's too vast. And I am having a difficult time again with coping with the Others. The Happy, the Blessed, the Smiled-Upon. Those with pregnant bellies, with infants, with children. I know their lives aren't perfect or ideal. I know they are tired and frustrated and worried and pulled too thin and I would still beg to have it.

I know I cut myself off from people and places. It was necessary, and as such, I can't regret it. I do miss it. I do miss them. But I am not her, and cannot be her again. I might come close, if I ever conceive, but it would still be me. Gabriel's mother, and not her. I wonder, sometimes, who was right and who was wrong and then I remember, no one was either. I had my necessary spaces and where I went could not be followed.

I am so sad. So tired. Tired of fighting, tired of hoping, tired of trying. I want to lay down and be still for awhile. But I can't. There is no escaping the core of the problem. My son is dead. He can't come back. No matter how much I long for him and love him, he's gone. And today is a day when I don't know how to live with that forever.

And now I'm crying on the outside as well. Quietly, no screams. Much as I want to scream and scream and scream until the pain is gone, I don't. Much as I want to drink and drink, I don't. Much as I want to curl up in a ball, I don't. Someone once told me they wondered how I could be so hopeful and I was taken aback because I do not see myself that way. I believe I told her that getting out of bed everyday was an act of hope. That making the decision to live is an act of hope. That there is no choice or option. You can hope or die. I can't die. There is no choice but to pull myself back up, hope the glue holds and drag myself along again, no matter how little I want to.

Fuck Today

So I had what I thought was a positive test.

But apparently not after all.

Today my temp dropped and I'm spotting. My period is due tomorrow. It seems pretty clear to me what the answer is.

I am so unhappy right now.

And to make it all worse, Mother's Day is this weekend. I can't get away from the fucking ads. The morning show on the radio station was all women calling in to say what they want.

I just want my baby back, alive and whole in my arms. And I can never ever have that.

And I'm not cautiously hoping for the next child. I'm facing this whole fucking nonsense all over again. I just want to crawl into bed and sob until I fall asleep. I feel so broken.

Psssshhhhhhhhffftttttt

So, I clearly have nothing better to do with my time than look at pictures of pregnancy tests.

I was specifically looking at the WalMart/Target/CVS/Walgreens Store brand tests, which are now all the same. 2 line, blue dye. The search was focused on faint lines. Faithful readers may remember that I have had mixed results with these tests in past - they were the first to reflect the ectopic pregnancy and the first to reflect Gabe's pregnancy. They also indicated I was pregnant in early December, and when no other test agreed, reflected (quite disturbingly) that my husband was likewise pregnant. Turns out, neither thing was true and the tests were simply lying liars who lied.

Anyway, I'm looking at these, and I commented to DH that I found it entertaining what some people consider to be faint lines.

Now, I will pause momentarily to remember back to over a year and a half ago, when I took the first tests with Chickadee and got a pink line on FR. I didn't believe it. It was faint, but oh so clearly there. And then I continued taking tests of all sorts and most of them were positive. As dark as the control line? Nah. Not at 10 dpo. Dark enough for my husband to believe me? Nope!

That makes the next moment much funnier, you see. We were so young, so innocent. I'd taken less than 30 tests at that point in time. Ah, youth.

Anyway, I made the comment to Dh and then showed him the picture I was looking at, which was clearly a positive test, with a strong blue line. Not as dark as the control, but in no way faint, unclear or not positive.

He started laughing so hard he snorted. Because dude knows what a real faint line looks like. Oh, man. The idea that people can be as sweetly innocent as we once were . . .

Just bought a CBEFM

And a box of test sticks.

You think that might ensure a positive test tomorrow?

I'm hoping so.

But if not, well, I guess I'm set for something new to try.

Not sure what to say.

I've sat down numerous times since my last post, thoughts swirling and I start to type, then I delete it all and sigh and close the window.

I'm just not sure what to say.

I don't want to bore you with the details of the interminable wait that is the luteal phase, especially when I know that the likelihood is getting excited and worked up and then feeling let down and disappointed when it doesn't work out. Or whinging about how I don't have a good feeling.

Yesterday, I felt quite positive and nearly posted that. Some instinct held me back, said it was too soon. Today, I feel quite negative, and I am posting this. I guess negatives can always turn into nice surprises, and no one would mind that.

I think, as I've been waiting to find out the results of this last go round, that I've slunk off into a corner and am hiding there. Things are all right, they are fine, I'm doing well, thanks for asking, how are you, nothing much happening, just really busy. It isn't that that is untrue - I took on a massive project at work on top of what I'm already doing and it is swallowing me whole, but in a good way, and I am enveloped in my silly little story at home (up to chapter 8 and just shy of 40,000 words).

But beyond that, I feel isolated and watchful, a little like a lizard on a rock. I am finding it painful to be around much children and baby stuff, and the bombardment of ads for Mother's Day don't much help. I can distinctly remember what was happening last year on Mother's Day - I was 5 weeks pregnant and thinking 'I hope I have something to celebrate next year.' And, well. Here I am again. A shadow mother, with a shadow baby, afraid of the light exposing how empty it is. The physicality of loss seems returned this week. I am not sleeping as well, I feel large and heavy. It weighs me down, my shoulders are bowed, my head down so I don't stare at the belly of that pregnant woman or track the child on the tricycle. I so very much want to have the hope that we will be there again, that we can have that, and I just . . . don't. Not today.

My friend G posted on FB that a year ago she'd just found out she was pregnant. I can remember when I found out too. April 28. That day slipped right by me between illness and work. I'm finding myself glancing at the calendar and remembering, and it makes me wince. There is a pain in my chest when the idle thought 'Oh, right, 4 weeks. We went to Benihana to celebrate.' or 'Right, Memorial Day. We'd just seen the heartbeat and were getting ready to tell everyone.' I had thought that passing the due date would end that sort of hell, but it seems I may be doomed to relive every moment of that pregnancy again and again.

Today I miss my baby. I miss the life I'd thought we would have now. I am tired of being happy with less than that. I wish for more, and keeping the fear at bay is difficult. I am tired today, and sad. And I am tired of being sad. I am unhappy that this is now my life. Forever my life. Forever missing Gabriel and wondering how things would have been, how he would have been. I never wanted this.

Supertitions

So the Spurs won their series against the Mavs, in 6 games, as I had bet on. It was a fun, exciting, physical, hard-fought series that I wouldn't have predicted in March that they could possibly win. By game 4, I had no doubts.

But you know what? I didn't see more than a handful of minutes of live action in any of the winning games.

Superstitious.

We watched game 1, they lost. We didn't watch game 2 - instead we tracked it via box score on the internets and ESPN crawl - they won. Same for game 3, and same for game 4. We watched during game 5 - they lost. Reverted to the non-watching following for game 6 - they won.

Logical? Of course not. We are fans in a different city. Other than some faint cosmic thought-as-physical-weight-which-carries-some-import sort of thing, we have zero outcome on the game. Whether we watch or not is merely coincidence to the outcome.

Still, we were excited to see them advance, and are prepared to only watch the first quarter to determine how the series against Phoenix will go.

Same is true in other ways. Little superstitions throughout the day, adding up to make me superstitious despite my black cat and the love of his life who is mostly black with some tortoiseshell amber.

For instance - always quick-pick the lottery numbers and never look at the ticket until we know whether or not the jackpot was won. In fact I still don't know about last night. And I feel like our chances are better when we use a dollar bill rather than coins to buy the ticket. Ludricrous? Obviously. We have never won the lottery. So perhaps I should investigate totally changing our strategy. . .

I avoid stepping on cracks in pavement, though bricks are fine.

I cross my fingers for certain things and always say 'Bless You' when someone sneezes (even me).

I try to apologize mentally for unjustified bad thoughts so as not to leave them out in the universe to return to me.

I think I'll have a better chance getting pregnant if I ovulate from the right ovary than the left.

I eat chicken soup when I'm feeling sick.

I listen to my instincts when it says 'Something is in the wind.' even though that often turns out differently than I might have interpreted it.

So now, either 3 or 6 dpo, depending, I am sitting here once again in the two week wait, knowing I cannot possibly effect the outcome at this point, and I am reviewing the superstitions. Didn't have pineapple, will that make a difference. Ovulation was very late, must mean I'm out. We had sex at least 5 days in a row before I ovulated, that is a good sign. Overall, we had sex at least 12 times, that has to be good. My boobs are sore, that's a wash. I am nauseated, that's good.

Round and round we go, where we stop . . .

I know, logically, that I have done what I could do. That this is and always was out of my hands, save for having sex at the right times. I know that it means nothing this would be a pregnancy of the same timeline as Gabriel's. I know it means nothing that it has been 8 months, and that that feel in April, which is the fourth month.

Emotionally even, I know these things.

And yet. A feeling persists. It's been around all cycle long, that this cycle Means Something. That there is a Portent here, a Sign if only I could read it.

Honestly, though, I'd settle for finding out this afternoon that my lottery ticket was the winning one.