I was preparing to give everyone a great update about our blood work Thursday.  The hcg level went up from 17 to 54, which is more than double and the first time my hcg level has ever done what it is supposed to do.  We will have another recheck on Monday, and we have a follow up appointment with the doctor August 1.  If everything goes well, we should be able to see something, even if we can’t see the heartbeat yet, on the ultrasound.  I have done well with the shots, much to the surprise of everyone who knows how I react to blood.  My mother Blessed is very proud.

I had some slight cramping Thursday with some very light spotting, so I put myself on light duty and loafed it for a few days.  By early this morning, however, the cramping became more frequent, and I started bleeding. It is light bleeding, but bleeding that is not spotting at this point is a sign of threatened miscarriage.  While it was only light spotting and cramping, I could convince myself that it is a normal symptom in early pregnancy; I could push the fear and pessimism away.  Now I hate myself for feeling like I’m giving up – there’s a chance that the bleeding will stop altogether, and the blood work on Monday will be perfect. I hope every time I check and the bleeding tapers, and I hope every time I have a few minutes or hours without cramping that it’s still a possibility.  But it is a new and crushing blow every time I cramp up and every time I find more bleeding as long as I hold onto that hope.

I feel so numb right now that it feels like I am sitting outside myself as I type within eyesight of the Buy Buy Baby coupon I kept to celebrate our good test results on Thursday. I had planned to go buy something for the baby with it after we got another good result Monday.  I wish I could cry and scream and sob right now because that would at least release the terror and the tension of the last few days, but my body seems to be waiting.  Waiting for what, I’m not sure – the pain, the blood, the ability to cry, the frustration and angst that necessarily accompany this experience? Maybe my body is giving my mind a chance to catch up, a chance to realize what emotions I should be feeling even as my body feels them.  Maybe God is giving me a respite between the bouts so that I have time to adjust from terror to raw pain.  Maybe I am just too tired to be able to process it right now, but I feel as the earth before God spoke over the waters – dark and void and formless.  Maybe I am over exaggerating a harmless pregnancy episode. I don’t think so, but anything is possible.  It feels as if I will know one way or the other before Monday, but we’ll at least know what the hcg numbers are doing then.  Until Monday, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and wait to see what happens.

I know that there are a few people that I should have contacted directly – I hope you will forgive me for not being able to rehash this several times over the phone.  I don’t really have the heart for it today.