Nose bleeds and other indignities

Yesterday, day 8 of the 2ww, was quite an uncomfortable day. I got up early to help cook brunch at the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center. My abdomen felt tense and uncomfortable the whole time, but part of it was the fatigue, I think. I had acupuncture, ran an errand, then had dim sum with my friend G, who was equally if not more tired. She was tired because she'd had too much to drink at a wedding the night before, which reminded me how much we were at different places in our lives.

I'd had a pretty big meal on Saturday at a Jamaican themed potluck, and was in some significant abdominal discomfort on Sunday. It went beyond the bloating I'd experienced last cycle.

And then my nose bled, which was weird. Today, during one of our passing period tete-a-tetes about pregnancy (she's pregnant, I'm trying), my colleague K told me nose bleeds are a symptom of pregnancy, that your nose doesn't bleed profusely, but you do get some blood, which is what happened to me. It has something to do with how your blood vessels are expanding or something.

The abdominal pain could be an ovarian cyst, something that happens to about 10% of women who take Clomid. Since my insurance won't cover me for fertility treatment, I'm not being monitored by ultrasounds, so there's no knowing what's going on inside me. I will just have to wait and see, and assume things are Ok until I feel something different.

Lately, I've been thinking about how sometimes gut feelings come from fear, desire, or greed. And then there are times when gut feelings are prophetic, perhaps because some part of our minds tap into a greater wisdom. I've not yet mastered the ability to tell the difference, but for what it is worth, my gut feeling tells me that either a) I'm not pregnant and won't get pregnant, or b) I might have a boy.

With all the difficulty I've had with boy names, I've been thinking about Thelonious (after Monk) quite a bit. It is a mouthful, but Theo for short sounds good.

Incidentally, on one of my dates with the half-Greek librarian the name "Monk" came up. Of course, he was talking about the TV show and I was thinking about the jazz pianist. Perhaps that was a sign that it was definitely not meant to be.