confessions of a early testing addict

When I was a kid, I used to get into swimming pools an inch at a time. I’d sit poolside on the hot concrete lip and dip just my toes into the icy water, concentrating on holding my legs steady so that no strip of skin slipped below the surface before I gave it permission to do so. Once my toes had acclimated, I’d drop my knees a bit so that half of each foot was submerged. Once my legs were in as far as they’d go, I’d turn around and lower the rest of my body in at the same slow, deliberate pace. Hips… Waist… Chest… Shoulders… I’d focus on this task and ignore the trembling in my muscles for as long as it took. I had unwavering confidence in my strategy, despite my brother entering the pool via cannonball over my head and my dad’s assurance that, no really, it would be so much easier to just jump in and get it over with.

And so it goes, for me, with testing. I admire those of you who can hold out until 14dpo and take one test, knowing that whatever result you see is the final answer, let alone those of you who wait past 14dpo and go straight to your beta without having peed on a single stick (Cannonballers!!). I am soo not one of you. I need to ease into my BFNs, each day shining a little more light on the answer, like watching a scary movie through slightly-fanned fingers. In all of my 16 previous cycles, I have started testing around 9 or 10 dpo, not because I thought I had a chance of getting a BFP that early, but because I needed to acclimate myself to staring at a BFN. Once I had a couple of “fake” BFNs under my belt, I felt ready to start absorbing the real deal. Each day, the stark BFNs chiseled away at my hope, but left some intact as well. Maybe it’s just too early. Maybe there will be a faint line tomorrow. Probably not, but maybe. By the time I hit 13 and 14dpo and knew that the BFN was real, I had eased myself into it by degrees. I was ready for it; eager, even, if only to stop the parade of pee sticks and uncertainty.

Until this cycle. This cycle brought something surprising and unfamiliar. I have had NO desire to test. More than that, I've been genuinely fearful of it. Don’t get me wrong, it's not because I'd rather dive right in to the deep end. I want nothing to do with it altogether. Like, maybe I can just skip my beta and go on not knowing until I either have a baby in 9 months or not? A test means the end and if the end is bad news, I’m simply not ready for the hard decisions that come next. When M asked me yesterday when I planned to start testing, I told her I didn’t know and that I didn’t even have any tests in the house. This is crazy, people. I used to buy pregnancy tests by the metric ton and look at them every day, counting down the seconds until I could rip one open and pee on it. (Oh, the crazy things I have admitted in this blog!) M was – understandably – surprised and offered to grab some at the store for me. She asked what brand I wanted. I said “I don’t know, whatever is on sale I guess. Actually, no, don’t get any. I don’t know what I want to do yet.” And I went to bed last night knowing that I would wake up on 5dp5dt with nothing to pee on. It felt right last night. Well, right-ish. Most relatively right? OK, let’s be honest: I was really just avoiding the issue as if that would somehow make it go away.

This morning, it didn’t feel right at all. It turns out the only thing more scary to me than testing is NOT testing. I woke up and, within moments, felt pure, unadulterated panic. What had I done? I got my BFP with E at 6dp5dt. That meant that this morning was my last chance to take a pregnancy test with nothing of substance riding on it. From here on out, they count. Scary, scary. I briefly pondered the idea of waiting until my beta, or at least the weekend, now that I’d already missed my preferred entry point.  The mere thought of setting myself up to be at the mercy of a single test, a single three-minute window to prepare myself for an answer of this magnitude, was more terrifying to me than any test result I could have seen this morning. Clearly, I had made a tactical error.

And that is how I ended up going to Dol.lar Tree on my lunch break and squinting at a pregnancy test in the fluorescent lighting of my work bathroom. It was completely and unsurprisingly negative. Aside from being ridiculously early and not FMU, I’m still chugging water by the gallon at my nurse’s insistence, so there’s barely a concentration of urine in my urine at the moment. Still, it felt good to pick up the security blanket of my practice BFNs. I should have known that abandoning the only strategy I've ever used would feel more scary, not less. The days march on. The answer is coming, whether I want it or not (NOT). Better to get it on familiar terms than to start diving headfirst into the pool now.

Oh geez, you guys. I'm so nervous. I just don't know what I'm going to do if this cycle is a bust.

I've had a lot of cramping since 2 days post-transfer, lots of breast tenderness, and a couple other... well, let's just call them oddities. I suspect they can all be chalked up to the combination of PIO and continued recovery from the ovarian stimulation and retrieval. As I said to a friend over email this weekend, I’m just hoping that I happen to be pregnant, too. You know, incidentally to my many "symptoms."