You look like a monkey, and you smell like one too

I don't usually tick off my ailments for everyone to see because, really, who cares? But I feel so shitty that I have to tell someone and I choose you guys. :-)

I don't feel shitty in that ooh-i-think-i'm-pregnant way. I just feel shitty in a dozen different ways and have since the retrieval and transfer. In a way it's nice because with the first IVF (at least the first one that made it to retrieval and transfer), I felt this shitty and it worked (albiet briefly). With the second IVF, I felt totally fine -- I swear it was like I had defective estrogen pills and progesterone in oil because I felt no effects at all whatsoever. Go figure.

Anyway, without further adeiu, here are my complaints for today. I refuse to call them "symptoms" because they cannot be related in any way to the ficticious HCG that may or may not be floating around in my system since implantation that happened about 8 seconds ago (it's 8dpo so, in theory, time for implanting).

1. Feel shitty - Um, yeah, I just feel shitty. Luckily the horrific headaches that I got on the stims are gone. This benefit far outweighs any of the problems I prattle on about here, so don't think I'm not feeling like one lucky duck. But it would be nice if I didn't have 827 random pains whilst I feel like the entire inner cavity of my body has been hallowed out and filled with wet sand.

2. Round ligament pain - I had insanely painful round ligament pains when I was pregnant with Megan. They were truly debilitating. Ever since she was born, I've continued to have them especially around AF's visit -- my guess is that even the subtle changes in uterine weight caused by the extra blood puts strain on them. It really sucks. They always reach an all-time high just before AF comes during a progesterone-enhanced cycle.

3. Bloating - I look like a dead trout. Okay, if I was to be cute about it, I'd say I look like I'm 5 months pregnant. But mostly I feel like one of those nasty, decaying, bloated fish you find washed up on the shore of a highly toxic lake. It's so not cool.

4. Heartburn - Ugh. Nothing seems to keep it at bay. I'm nervous to take Tums or Pepcid too close to my morning and evening estrogen pills/vitamins/etc so my window of attempted relief is pretty small. Over the weekend it hurt so much I swear I was having a heart attack what with all the pain in my chest. Actually, today, it's considerably better so who knows.

5. Sore stomach - I distinctly remember reading other people's complaint lists post-transfer and seeing them complain about sore stomach muscles. I didn't really know what they meant, but now I do. It feels like I've done 1,000 situps in a row. (Truthfully, I haven't done 1,000 in the past 12 years combined so that's just hilarious to me.) It's sort of a weird feeling, as if I'm constantly tensing up my stomach muscles and can't make them relax. It makes me mad because I'm trying desperately to relax and visualize my embie(s) gleefully burrowing in, but I'm afraid I'm creating a hostile environment with all this tight stomach muscle nonsense.

6. Spotting - This is SO annoying. I bled the day of and the day after my retrieval. Then everything was fine until the back-to-back transfers. They both hurt more than any of the previous ones so I remember thinking that I'm surely going to bleed from this. I didn't bleed that day, but every single day since I've spotted. The first day, it was pink and since then it's been brown every day. Again, it makes me feel like my ute isn't being very hospitable to the new neighbors.

7. Cramping - This too has been there every single day since the transfer. For the first 3 days, it was a constant, never-ending mild cramping. More annoying than anything else, except that it makes me clutch my midsection (particuarly in the uterus-ovary region) often which I have to assume makes people suspicious. I typically get cysts after a stim cycle so I'm sure part of the pain is my ovaries making their displeasure known -- especially since it's often on the right side and that was the ovary that overachieved (well, at least as compared to it's counterpart). Luckily it's waaaaaay too early for me to be worrying about an ectopic problem, I'm just chalking it up to a statement of displeasure regarding the poking and prodding last week, and some nagging cysts.

So there you have it. I feel like shit and I bet I look like it too. (Anyone else humming that version of Happy Birthday?) POAS is set for Wednesday but I might start tomorrow just so I can feel like I'm doing something. Plus, I'll have already gotten over the initial shock of a negative test so that I don't get all freaked if it stays negative for the next few days. Of course it won't do that because this cycle WORKED. I am hopeful that it did and LJ has simply WILLED it to work, so it must.