Too Good to Be True

I just knew that if I dared to think for even a second that this might work out, that this positive pregnancy test and good initial scan might lead to a second good ultrasound and -- imagine -- a real live baby, that something would happen to prove that hope foolish. That I would then be left not just with a broken heart, but with a broken heart and vivid images in my head of those moments of hope, doomed to play over and over and over until I feel like I can't breathe.

Today was going to be either one of the best days of my life, or one of the worst. As the ultrasound tech started the scan that would seal the fate of this day and this pregnancy, my heart hammered in my chest and I struggled to catch my breath. I yearned for her to turn the screen toward me, to reassure me that there was a live baby growing in there. But she didn't. I looked at my husband, who raised his eyebrows and looked hopefully at the screen. I thought it was a good sign -- he looked positive -- but I later learned it was because he wasn't sure what he was looking at and thought the sighting of the sac was good news. Nothing -- nothing -- could have prepared me for what I heard next: that there was still a gestational sac, but nothing inside. No heartbeat. No baby. Nothing. Turns out, today was going to be one of the worst days of my life.

I wish there was something someone could do or say to take this searing pain away. Some medication they could give me to let me leave this head and the raw sadness for just a while. I want to box up all of these feelings and send it away somewhere so I never have to know them again. I don't even want to write this post, these words, because someday when it doesn't hurt so much I don't even want to remember how it feels to be me at this particular moment. I'm afraid of muscle memory, afraid this sorrow is leaving some indelible mark on me that might never fully disappear.

I was handled well today -- they did everything right and my amazing doctor said all the right things. She just couldn't say the words I most wanted to hear. No one can. And I literally don't know how to live with this kind of pain.

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.