Waiting sucks - hard

I'm in my 2ww (2 week wait) for my last break cycle before doing IVF. Today is 9dpo (days post ovulation) and my usual luteal phase (2nd half of my cycle) is about 14 days on unmedicated cycles. So, that means I have about a week more before AF should be here or is officially late. By far, the hardest part of the 2ww. You start looking for symptoms of pg or AF's arrival. You check the toilet paper for red. You wonder if it's too early to POAS.

This time it's just a little bit harder. Why? Well, let me step back for a moment and explain a little bit more. I've been seeing an acupuncturist for about 7 months now to help with this whole IF deal. In the TCM (traditional chinese medicine) world, a diagnosis is made partly by feeling the patient's pulses. Not in the western sense, but 3 levels of pulses. The quality of the pulses tells the practioner what is going on with the patient and helps her to understand where the needles need to be placed to bring the patient into a more balanced state. When a patient is pregnant, the pulse takes on a 'slippery' feel to it. When I was pregnant in March, my acupuncturist confirmed that my pulse was "very slippery". In the hellish week between ultrasounds when we were waiting to see if the weak heartbeat we'd seen had improved or was gone (it was gone) she didn't find my pulse to be quite as slippery, although she didn't come right out and say that, bless her.

Ok, fast forward to this week. I went in on Wednesday for my weekly treatment. A few hours before the appointment, I had this thought sort of pop into my head that I should see if she can feel a slippery pulse. No good reason to suspect anything really, but the thought was there, so I honored my 'inner voice' and asked. I think I was wanting her to say that the pulse wasn't slippery so I could relax for the rest of my 2ww, expecting AF and gearing up emotionally for the IVF. What happened was that she felt something, but not clearly slippery. She said it could go either way, but that "something was happening in there". Since the needle placement she was going to do would not be a good idea if I was pg, she tried to see if she could make it more clear by placing a few needles to bring up my Kidney pulse a bit. It was still unclear a bit so to be on the safe side, she opted NOT to do the treatment she had originally planned. We went with a treatment that is good for early pg instead. After the needles had been in for a while, she came back to take them out and check my pulses again to see how I had reacted to the treatment. She commented that things were much stronger, but didn't specifically say the slippery pulse was stronger. BUT, she then asked me if we'd want to know the gender. (In TCM, if the Kidney pulse is stronger on the right, it's a girl, if it's stronger on the left, it's a boy. Not 100% precise, but her stats are more like 85% accuracy - pretty good in my book. And, she was right about the pg in March being a girl, it was confirmed by DNA analysis post D&C.) I said, sure we'll want to know [when I get pg]. Her response was, "if you're pregnant, it's a girl." WHOA! I was fine with the 50/50 chance based on the possible slippery pulse, but this threw me for a loop. How could she think she felt a stronger pulse if there wasn't an embryo in there working on implanting???

See, now my 2ww just got harder because I have to wait another week with this wondering and hoping. I refuse to test early because I never want to see a BFN (big fat NEGATIVE) again, so I want to wait at least until the day AF is due (Thursday/Friday) to test. So, now I wait, and wait, and wait. Waiting sucks - hard.