Swan song

Yesterday I had all kinds of hope for this cycle. The perfect timing of everything, the perfect implantation signs...it was looking good. Even this morning it was looking good. Last night I had this dream, it was really vivid. V, my work friend, suddenly appeared to be pregnant for the second time in two years but she hadn't told me yet. So I asked someone about it and they said "yeah" like in one of those "duh" tones. So I felt sad that she had been afraid to tell me and hurt that I was the last to know, but then I took a HPT - right there in my dream! Just like I planned to do this morning! And let me tell you, this was like the mother of all HPTs. As soon as I "used" it it started blinking and scrolling like the neon lights of Vega$ and eventually generated a big blinking positive sign and a few seconds later it showed me my HCG level!! (There's a million dollar business idea if I ever thought one up) It looked like one of those complicated stopwatches with all the bells and whistles, it was hard to figure out what was what at first. But there was the plus sign, clear as day. My HCG was 46 which, three days past implantation, I was happy with. How obsessed must I be that the HCG level in my dream is perfectly calibrated to what it would be ideally in reality (keep in mind that after my molar experience I am positively phobic of too-high HCG levels - so 46, while low, sounds pefect for where I am)?

Then I woke up and temped. And wouldn't you know - record high. Highest high since my HCG finally hit zero five months ago. Triphasic anyone? So you can imagine my optimism as I made my way to our second bathroom (so as not to wake DH) and pulled out an FRER...

Big Fat Nothing. Negative. Stark white and this is with FMU. :(

I'm bummed out and I've pretty much given up on this cycle. While it may only be 10 dpo, it could also be 12 dpo. More depressing is that I did a quick scan...wait, scratch that...I spent at least 30 minutes scrutinizing charts with implantation dips on FF and I'd estimate that roughly 99.9% of the ones that turned out pregnant got a BFP the first or second day after the dip. Today is four days out for me. I'm so bummed.

Being convinced that this cycle is a bust has made me more upset than a simple failed cycle warrants. I think it's because it brings into focus what a huge loss the last year has been. It makes me wish for any of those months back. Makes me realize how precious each one is. And it makes me more bitter toward my fertile friends. When I was on a forced break and couldn't even try, there was no internalizing the fact that I wasn't getting pregnant. There was no expectation. Now that I am trying, it looks like its going to be back to the "why me" frustration every month things don't work out.

On the other hand, it does make me appreciate how quickly, relatively speaking, things should move now. If I am blessed with AF's on-time arrival, we will be trying again in a couple weeks and then I'll be back in the throes of hope and optimism soon after.

And my one hope now is for a swift end to the cycle. Swift justice. A healthy baby would of course have been the best outcome, but an on-time AF comes in second, albeit a very very indescribably distant second. I really wouldn't want anything in between at this point. No beta hell, I would rather not get pregnant at all than get pregnant and miscarry. I realize there are those among us that would feel differently, who, when they find out their pregnancy is not viable would prefer the short time they had with their baby over not having gotten pregnant in the first place, and I respect that. I even felt that way the first time. And I certainly understand enjoying the time you have with your little one, the life you created, even if it lasts only a short while. But after the hell of the last year, and after losing all that time, I feel quite resolved in not wanting to go through anything like it again.

I don't think there is a thing I would have done differently this cycle, given the chance. Not one thing. And the whole implantation episode makes me think we got as far as we could get and there was nothing we could have done to change the outcome. It didn't stick, that's life I guess.