Halfway there

I'm currently 7dp3dt and my beta (pregnancy) test in next Monday 13dp3dt; in less than a week I will know whether this cycle has worked or not.   I really love thinking that it is going to work, but I don't exactly "feel" pregnant.  On the same note, I don't exactly feel as though AF is coming either.  It is interesting though that I'm aware of every cramp, gurgle and pinch that occurs in my abdomen; what all this means I have no clue.   How do you plan for such an event?   Women trying to get pregnant the natural way never really know that there was a living embryo in their uterus.  I really think a negative after an IVF cycle is very different than any other cycle.  However medically speaking, a failed IVF cycle is simply a failed cycle.  There is no acknowledgement of the living embryo that was in your uterus.   Right now I equate this more with a miscarriage than with a failed natural cycle.  I know that there was a growing embryo, but just like a miscarriage it couldn't thrive.  I will have lost a child just as much as everyone; it's just that no one looks at it so.  That makes it a little harder to get over.   I have photo proof of the six children I have already lost, something a lot of women who miscarriage do not.  

I'm currently trying to live by the motto my therapist gave when I first met with her: "Expect the worse, but hope for the best".   While I have some great ideas of what will happen if I finally get the BFP:  trip to Babies R Us, some great phone calls and a celebratory dinner (mother's don't have to cook, right?); I'm trying to focus on how I will respond if it is negative.   Hopefully I will be home by the time I get the call and I can spend the night crying into a bottle (or two) of wine before putting away baby's first (and only) picture away.  Then I will somehow try to move forward with everything.

Hopefully all of this will be moot and next week I will be buying baby products and we will be discussing baby names (which will probably take a good 12 months to agree).  Hopefully our family trip to Disney in May will be a true family trip and we can take our first family picture in front of the castle.  Hopefully I will be yet one more woman who overcame infertility.