The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I am super distracted today.  The last couple of days before the beta test are just impossible.  My focus is a mess.  It's a time of the month that is not the best generally - I mean, PMS makes me anxious and in pain and distracted in the best of scenarios.  But now my brain is just constantly buzzing.  I try every cognitive trick I know to shut it up, to control my emotions, to move through my day like a reasonably functioning human being. But all of those tricks are sort of more brain spinning.  It's something like this:

I feel a symptom that makes me think my period will be coming (a cramp, a mood, nausea, sore boobs) and I immediately start to feel deep and crushing despair.  Then my brain goes nuts to try to halt that despair and I just start the thoughts spinning and spinning and spinning - telling myself that it could still be my month - that all these same symptoms can be pregnancy symptoms.  This is when I go online and look up whatever symptom it is.   My search history looks like this:
"feeling cold and goosebumpy and early pregnancy"
"cramps and early pregnancy"
"nausea and early pregnancy"
"strong sense of smell and early pregnancy"
"hopping on one foot while rubbing your belly and early pregnancy"
"sudden love of the album vital signs by the classic band survivor and early pregnancy"

I want to read if it makes sense at all, whatever day I'm in, to be feeling what I'm feeling and still be pregnant.  Of course, the answer is always YES because it's different for everyone and each of these things can be early pregnancy symptoms.   Yes, even the Survivor one!  Believe me, I was as shocked as you are.

Then I look back at all evidence I have of my past months - the calender where I've charted my ovulation and menstruation (and lately my cramps and other symptoms, to make this crazy part of this crazy process easier for me) - my emails etc and try to see if this month is different in any way to all those months in the past.  I can usually find something.  And this something is just more evidence.
"This month the cramps feel more like pulling"
"Last month I didn't get cramps until 3 days later than this"
"My boobs are definitely MORE sore this time."

So the despair is somewhat in check and I start to feel a little hopeful.  But with the hope comes fear, because if I get too hopeful, and it *is* just PMS (as it has been every single month for the last two fucking years) and I had been too excited, too optimistic, too full of possibility, I will be crushed.  And being crushed leads back to the deep despair that I was trying to avoid in the first place.

Sometimes I just have the thought, "Either I am or am not pregnant right now.  There is no way to know.  I am making myself insane trying to figure it out, but nothing I am thinking changes whether I am or am not." and that thought is sort of just crippling because I don't know what to do with it.  I mean, I know it's the reality of the situation.  But what am I supposed to DO with that?  It doesn't fix anything.  I just want to get through this time - if I'm not pregnant, I just want to get my period and know and move on.  And if I am, I wish there was some irrefutable sign.   

So, what can I do?  Try to calm myself down by keeping hope alive. But  work on keeping hope in check simultaneously.  I get totally stuck up in my head in thoughts spinning and spinning and spinning.  But if I stop them spinning then I might accidentally start to really FEEL which I know I can't deal with.  So, I don't have a choice, really.

I don't take Advil for my cramps - the only thing that stops my cramps - until I am sure I'm not pregnant.  Tylenol only helps minimally.  I try not to drink any booze, but I also feel a little bit like FUCK THAT after two years of negative negative negative.  I don't want to take a home pregnancy test, because deep in my heart I know it will be negative, and I'm not ready for that yet.  So, when I do give in, and it is negative (as it always has been), I go into this same mode of coping - I still don't fully believe it.  My brain finds all kinds of ways to remind me that it could be wrong and that I still might be pregnant.  So, what's the point?  Until I bleed (or get results from a blood test) I won't 100% believe it's a no.  So I wait.

I guess all I'm saying is that if you're wondering exactly what could be so distracting to me, here's a little insight to what's going on in my head.  This whole process has probably happened no less than 10 times during the writing of this post as I feel a variety of twinges in my lower abdomen.  Today is Tuesday.  Day 12 post-IUI.  I get my blood test on Thursday.  I've had minor cramps off and on since Thursday (day 7 post-IUI).  This is my life right now.