technically pregnant.

The go go go of Christmas didn't wind down until about 8 p.m. last night, when Mr. Hope and I settled in with some leftovers and exhaled. Deeply. On the one hand, the busyness was good - distracting. On the other, it was a rough weekend with Mini-Hope, who's turning into a moody teenager even while she clutches her new doll and schemes on getting more candy out of us.

Then Mr. Hope went off to do some chores and left me resting on the couch. I started watching What to Expect When You're Expecting, a terrible ensemble movie starring typically awesome actors. Why I would choose to watch this when I'm currently expecting my own pregnancy to fail is beyond me. But I did, and it was every bit as painful as you can imagine.

Mr. Hope joined me for the last 45 minutes or so, and by the end, the two of us were crying on and off. It feels so ridiculously unfair, what we're going through. Not so much that we will likely lose the baby - lots of good people lose babies, so why should we be spared? - but that we know it's probably coming, and have for weeks. It destroys any joy we might (should?) have over this pregnancy. And it makes it so this pregnancy doesn't feel quite real. Like I am technically pregnant, but not really.

Last night the BFF and I were texting and she said something along the lines of how she couldn't help thinking that if I wasn't seeing an RE, I wouldn't know the size of the baby or my hCG level right now. I'd have my positive pee sticks and likely one blood test and that was it - I'd be waiting for my first ultrasound at 8 or 10 weeks. And that even if I went in to hear the heartbeat at 8 or 10 weeks and didn't, I'd at least have had several weeks of pure pregnancy bliss before the Bad Thing happened.

Meanwhile, the nausea has been coming and going since Christmas morning. Some days are worse than others. My boobs burn and are sometimes so tender that I cry out when Mr. Hope tries to hug me. Harold has been behaving, thank god, but this makes me think my progesterone levels are in the toilet. The three spots of psoriasis on my left hand, all of which pretty much disappeared during this pregnancy, are back with a vengeance. Is it because the pregnancy is starting to fail? Or is it because I stopped caring what I ate last week, when my hCG level barely increased after five days?

My weight. MY WEIGHT. There were points of this pregnancy during which I was losing weight. Not a ton - just 4/10 of a lb. here, 2/10 of a lb. there - but since last Monday, when I slammed my face into a bowl of lobster ravioli, I've packed on 11 lbs. I know for a fact that it can't all be real weight - that's not physically possible - so I'm guessing that a good portion of it is water being retained from me going carb crazy. Even so, it's so disturbing to see that increase, especially after I just worked so hard to LOSE 20 lbs. 

(Now that I type this out, I'm realizing that this could also be evidence that my progesterone levels are failing - if my E2 is high and my P4 is low, I'd be prone to this kind of gain. Regardless, time to climb back up on that EZ Diet horse and return to healthy eating.)

I'm off from work this week, and I have so much to do it's scary. I'm behind on a freelance project that's due mid-February, and I need to use this week to gain some ground on it. My home office is a complete nightmare of a mess, since it served as Holiday Central. Our laundry situation is out of control. Etc.

But all I really want to do is curl up on the couch and veg out in front of the television. Shut my brain off and go a little numb inside my own skin. 

Sometimes being a grown up sucks.

This is definitely one of those times.