Size of a Grape

Greetings from 9 weeks. Never thought I'd arrive, but the weather is fine!

Seriously, people. How is it that other people's pregnancies are over in a flash? Friends and celebrities seem to have mastered some sort of supersonic gestation technique. But your own pregnancy, when you've worked for it and just really need the first trimester to take about five minutes -- it crawls by at a snail's pace.

Still. Obviously I am grateful to be at this point. I don't want to say it out loud but I have not been here often.

The spotting continues -- all brown, which makes health care providers absolutely yawn in your face, because they are not the one who has to take a deep breath while pulling down their pants. I think it would really help me if someone would come over here with an ultrasound machine, like every single day. Why is this not offered? Luckily, I am still seeing the RE to monitor hormones as I'm weaned off the medications, and have also gotten in with an OB and a perinatologist, who will do my scans. So if a slightly illogical but urgent question pops up, say, what will happen if my son's friend pushes me in the stomach or will I bake the baby with my heated car seats, I can spread the crazy evenly over three medical professionals' offices.

Meanwhile: pedestrian complaints I am not supposed to complain about because I'm an infertile. Like oh, Lord, the nausea. Hungry every. Single. Minute. And yet everything, to me, is exactly like Oliver Twist's porridge: an unappealing, colorless pile of slop. Please, sir, I do not want any more. And yet I must eat or I will throw up, and everyone who knows me understands that throwing up signals the coming end of the world. So I eat exactly five things: pizza, bagels and cream cheese, apples and cheddar cheese, and yogurt with granola. Do not ask me why these things are okay and chicken makes me gag -- all I know is that keeping up with the hunger when you don't want to eat anything is making me so tired.

Finally, a slight obsession with progesterone. My clinic has already weaned me from the estradiol this week, which felt a little early -- but their medical degrees really gave them a leg up in that debate. They typically wean off the progesterone at 10 weeks, and looking back, that's exactly when I stopped it for H. On this they're a little more willing to work with my neurosis. They say no problem if I want to go longer, to 11 or even 12 weeks. Advice welcome.