All in

On Friday, we upped the ante. My favorite ultrasound technician (never an unsolicited comment, always the right amount of small talk) called my name in the waiting room at my clinic, and this time my husband went in with me. Because instead of looking at ovaries and follicles, we were looking for a developing baby. And before I even had time to get nervous, she found one: there, on the fuzzy black and white ultrasound screen, was the loveliest black blob I've ever seen in my life. I found out later, when the nurse called, that everything about this splotch/blob/black hole (as my husband so delicately called it) was 100% normal for this stage. Which means I should be able to relax a little, right? Wrong. So wrong.

That ultrasound raised the stakes. We're no longer talking about the success or failure of a cycle. We're talking about a real pregnancy. A real developing baby, albeit a sesame-seed sized one, that I saw with my own eyes on a fuzzy screen. And all the hope and the early plans that go along with it, that I've dared to make mentally for this developing being in my rare moments of sheer optimism.

I'm all in on this. And there's nothing left to do but wait and see what the next hand looks like next Monday, when we peer at that screen again, this time hoping, praying that we see a heartbeat.