beta day.

In a few hours, I'll get my blood drawn for my beta test. The wait has been excruciating, especially since I started pulling positives on pee tests a week ago. But this morning, the test line on my FRER finally got darker than the control line, and even the Wondfo is a screaming dark purple-red.

I'm kind of all over the place right now. Monday I was so tired I was passing out at 9:45 and put myself to bed. Then, last night, I stayed up until 11 but accidentally forgot to take my progesterone pessary, which I remembered at 5:15 a.m. when I woke up, peed in a cup, and didn't see any pessary residue. I jammed one of those puppies up in my lady business and tried to go back to sleep but my heart and mind were both racing. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Got out of bed again and Googled "took progesterone pessary late." The general consensus of the Interwebs is that I should be fine.

Yesterday was the first day I had some major pregnancy symptoms. I've been getting things on and off - like, my boobs are intermittently sore. Some days I wake up and they're not sore at all and I think, "Okay, it's over," and then the line comes up nice and dark, and two hours later the girls are on fire all over again.

I still feel pinches/twinges in my uterus and a fullness/pressure above my pubic bone. There's been some mild queasiness, particularly in the mornings and usually involving scrambled eggs. If I stop loving scrambled eggs I might just cry. Speaking of crying: At work yesterday I got some emails that made me tear up (all happy things, but I was just so moved).

Other symptoms: yesterday I had a hot flash in my office that caused me to sweat off my makeup and made me hair frizz out around my face. And then there's Harold, which is what I've named the annoying, inflamed hemorrhoid that's taken up residence on the left side of my anus. It makes pooping feel like someone's scraping glass from my inside out and is so tender that right now even sitting is really uncomfortable. I always feel like Harold is a gift from my mom, who used to tell me that she never had hemorrhoids before she was pregnant with me.

Oh, and the hunger set in for the first time. For whatever reason, this cycle I haven't had much of an appetite. But yesterday I was in a 9:30 a.m. meeting and my stomach was audibly growling. This is after half of an avocado and most of a bowl of scrambled eggs with cheese. I drank 24 oz. of water, thinking maybe I was thirsty, but no. Still starving. I ate an apple with peanut butter. STILL STARVING.

Then I got a craving for this roasted red pepper and gouda soup at the sandwich shop by my office. Drove over to get a small bowl of it and saw they still had pumpkin bagels. On a whim, I ordered one toasted with cream cheese. Then felt guilt (but not so guilty that I didn't end up eating half, because I totally did).

In my head I thought, "If this baby is so fragile that half a bagel is going to mean its demise, it probably won't make it anyway."

It's a morbid thought, yes. But at the same time, I felt like maybe this was my way of starting to let go of this insane notion that any little thing I do can have catastrophic impact on my pregnancy. Hell, I accidentally drank a mug of abortion tea and I was fine. I ate half of a papaya salad and I was fine. I scarfed down half a pumpkin bagel AND forgot to take my progesterone pessary on a night when I didn't have a PIO injection either and guess what? BABY IS STILL IN THERE.

I don't know if I'll ever relax enough to truly enjoy this pregnancy, but at least I'm at a place where I can actually think of myself as pregnant. The first few days, I'd SAY that I was pregnant, but I didn't believe it. It seemed fake, like something I made up in my head.

But it's not fake. It's real.

I am really, truly pregnant.

Finally.