Phantom pregnancies and other bumps in the night

a thread on the discussion board from women in the agonizing WAIT stage prompted this response from Lorie, well worth sharing:

This post is great because it bought out all the "weird" things we do when TTC.

Leading up to the first try I had rearranged my whole life mentally. I had a serious talk to my flatmate (I was sharing with my best friend) about the baby that was coming and telling her that she needed to decide whether she was prepared to share with a single mother and baby etc etc.

Three days after my IUI, I started getting pregnancy symptoms, needing to go to the toilet often, feeling like my tummy had gotten bigger. A few days later I thought my breast were so much bigger that I needed a new bra. By this stage my flatmate thought I had completely lost the plot and said she really began getting worried when I kept putting my hand on my belly like 9-month pregnant women do.

Of course my weirdness must have rubbed off because when I did my pregnancy test on some ridiculous day, like day 8, I got a very very faint line and I remember jumping for joy with her in the bathroom and then she said "I'll do the other pregnancy test too, to make sure they work," knowing that she couldn't be pregnant. I remember jumping for joy that hers was blank.

I also remember how much sadder I got each day after that joyful day, when my pregnancy tests were blank. When my period finally came, it was the first time I really understood the true significance of bleeding each month -- previously it was something that was just annoying really. And then the emptiness of the next few days.

Of course I giggle now looking back, because being blessed enough to have become pregnant -- five tries and two years later -- I now understand when the symptoms come (or more to the point, how late in the pregnancy they actually come).

But that first try...I was so excited and so hopeful and so certain. I had done lots of reading and was practically a pregnancy symptoms expert before the IUI. Prior to my first attempt I would longingly look at baby things all the time and had to stop myself from buying them.

One of the real joys I had during pregnancy was when I felt I was able to look AND buy. I had sooo many baby clothes by the time my baby was born -- she happened to be born about the size of a 3-month-old at birth and didn't even fit into half the little cutey things I had bought.

Everything about wanting a baby is weird, but in a wonderful way. How it creeps up on you, how it overtakes your every cell, and how you will go through so much to get one. And how scary it is when it fails. And how hard it is sometimes to resign yourself to the fact that its not going to be (as I did when I was T42, six IVF treatments later, having to start from scratch each time).

I think that it's nature's way of letting us know that we are ready and making us do what it takes to get one.

So I say cheers to all the weird things that push us along to one of the most magnificent journeys you could ever undertake.