Afterglow.

I'm still basking in the glow of that lovely, lovely positive test. It was such a gamble to take that darned thing. I ran the risk of those damned lines being light again and considering how terrible I felt yesterday, I wasn't sure I could stand the sight of light lines. But there they were. Nice and dark. It's amazing how that can lift your spirits.

I think I'm actually starting to feel better, although that may be just my warped, hopeful imagination. I still have the pain in my jaw and my cheekbone, but I don't feel nearly as run-down as I did yesterday. Then again, give me a few hours and I might be singing a different tune.

The lingering doubts about my low numbers and the fear about what I'll see on 2/14 are still there, but I'm doing my very best to ignore and block them out. I know I keep harping on it, but it's just so scary to think that I might be building myself up just for a terrible let down. Every day that goes by is one more day that I'm getting attached to the little one poking around in there and that sort of bugs me. I want to stay strong and not let it bother me, but it creeps into my mind at wierd times. Like this morning, I was standing in our staff lunch room thumbing through a store flyer when I came across an ad for some cheapie baby bed linens. It suddenly hit me that I'm going to have to buy that stuff again. It's been five YEARS since I've had to think about bed linens, but I'm going to have to eventually. I'm going to do it all over again. Finally.

I think I'm still just holding back until I see something encouraging on that ultrasound. In fact, I know I'm holding back. Then again, after all the crap I've had to go through to get to this point, who can really blame me? Part of me wants to just jump right in with both feet, but there's some part of me that's not letting me. I really, really hope that's just a protective mechanism and not some terrible forecast...

I can, however, say that any pregnancy symptoms I've been having are so much lighter than what I had with E. I remember my breasts being really tender and sore early on and so far I haven't really had that. They've definitely started to get bigger (one lovely perk of pregnancy!), but they aren't as sore as I thought they would be. I also remember getting sick with E right at 6 weeks pregnant. It was the only time I threw up so I remember it vividly and so far, other than a few near-gagging sessions, nothing in that area. Perhaps it's all another side-effect of the lower numbers?