As If Infertility Wasn't Enough

My seemingly totally healthy, normal 33-year-old husband isn't so healthy after all. In fact, he could keel over and die at any moment. And without any warning.

That is the verdict of a cardiologist he saw today.

All of this drama started a few months ago, exactly one week after my last post. We went out of town for Mother's Day weekend. I just needed to escape, so I even went so far as to tell my boss I would be in late on the morning after Mother's Day, because we went to a resort a couple hours away from home and I refused to come back on Sunday night. I just wanted to ignore that whole day.

We had a lovely time. I came back totally relaxed. Then half an hour after we got back, we got a phone call from R's mom. R's dad had gone to the hospital that morning to have an electrophysiology (EP) study done on his heart to determine what was causing an irregular heartbeat. There were complications, and the doctor had to shock him four times to get his heart back into a normal rhythm.

We rushed to the hospital. Thankfully, R's dad made it through. The doctor wound up removing the pacemaker he had put in a month before and instead replaced it with a defibrillator. Then the doctor dropped even bigger news: He felt it was likely that R's dad has something called Brugada's Syndrome. It's a rare condition, it's heridetary, and the most common way it presents itself is sudden cardiac death in a seemingly normal, healthy 30-something man (sound familiar?) who has experienced no prior warning signs.

There was some question at first about whether R's dad really had it, so it took a while to work through the process of getting a second opinion with a different cardiologist. The second cardiologist tended to agree with the diagnosis, which means that R and his siblings have to be tested.

R was the first one to get tested. His appointment was today. I wasn't able to go with him because I had a meeting at work that I couldn't miss. It's funny - after so many years (5 1/2 and counting) of infertility, R is totally dependent on me for all things medical. On the way to the appointment, he calls me from his cell phone and asks, "Um, where am I going?" I said, "The cardiologist's office..." He replied, "Yeah, I know that. I mean, what is the address? Where is the building?" Thank God I was still at my desk and able to take the call, or else he would have been driving around town without any chance of figuring out where he needed to be! He also printed out my list of questions and told the doctor, "My wife will want to talk to you...When can she call you?"

He had an EKG done, and based on that, the doctor thinks it's pretty clear that he, too, has Brugada's. I told him to text me when he was done - bad idea. I got the bad news while I was sitting in a meeting with my boss and several of my other co-workers. One of them (who knew about the appointment) saw my face blanche when I read the text.

So in two weeks, R will have an EP study done. As part of the study, the doctor induces cardiac arrest in order to see how the electrical impulses are being transmitted. While he's doing the study, he will determine whether or not R needs to have a defibrillator implanted.

So there's a very real possibility R may spend the next 60 years (God willing that long) with a defibrillator in his chest, ready to shock him back to life if his heart suddenly goes into an abnormal rhythm. It also means that his hopes and dreams of getting his private pilot's license go out the window, because the FAA won't allow you to fly (even general aviation) if you have a heart condition. He was also considering aviation as a backup career if his current job is offshored.

There are smaller consequences, too, if he has to have the defibrillator. Such as, he couldn't have an MRI. Being as medical-focused as I am, I'm wondering what happens if he winds up having some other sort of health issue down the road and an MRI is the only test for it? And then there are other little things, like he'll have to be hand-searched when going through airport security, because he wouldn't be able to be wanded or pass through the medical detector.

We're actually leaving in less than 24 hours to go out of state to the clinic we've chosen to work with so that he can give a back up sample for our upcoming cycle and so that we can meet with the genetic counselor. We're going to cycle again this fall, and then have CGH (testing of all 23 sets of chromosomes to see if the embryos are chromosomally normal) before we do a transfer. One of the things we'll be doing while we're at the clinic is meeting with a genetic counselor (required of all couples undergoing CGH). I guess we'll have to add Brugada's to the list of things to discuss...

Tilting at Windmills?

I'm beginning to wonder if I've become pathetic.

Are people looking at me and thinking, "Doesn't she get it? Can't she see that it's never gonna happen, she's never gonna have a kid? Why doesn't she just give up?"

I mean, really. I've taken literally thousands of pills, stuck myself with upwards of 500 needles, done a couple dozen cycles between all the Clomid, Clomid/injectibles IUI, IVF and FETs, had five BFPs and lost 6 babies. And then there are the three failed adoptions.

Today is the fourth anniversary of our first miscarriage. We should have a kid who is almost 3 1/2 at this point. Thursday is the second anniversary of our second miscarriage. We should have a 16-month-old at this point.

And yet, despite it all, I have appointments set up with two REs in the next two weeks.

One is local. Although I'm not sure that anyone in our area has extensive experience dealing with cases as complicated as ours, it would be nice to go to an RE that is five miles away rather than 350. So I'm toying with the idea; we'll see how I feel after the consultation.

The other RE is at another out-of-state clinic that ranks as one of the top clinics in the country by CDC standards. I've consulted with him before and wasn't terribly impressed by his bedside manner. But as one of my IRL IF friends who cycled with him successfully twice put it, "Who the hell cares if he has the personality of a doorknob, if he can get the job done?!"

I've always been tenacious and not one to easily give up. But when, exactly, does tenacious cross the line into pathetic?

Deja Vu and a New Wrinkle

Aside from many fewer tears, "deja vu" is the best way to describe yesterday's D&C.

It was on a Friday, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. The first one was also on a Friday, either at 10 or 10:30 a.m.

I wound up with the same pre-op intake nurse, although this time I was much more prepared for her. She remembered me, too. But every time she tried to get chatty, I cut her off and attempted to distract her.

Her: "So how many babies have you lost?" Me: "Six. What did my blood pressure read at?"

Her: "Have the doctors come up with any reason this keeps happening?" Me: "Well, clearly none that has solved the problem. You know, I've never had someone take my temperature before by running a device across my forehead. Is that new?"

Her: "Have you thought of adoption?" (as she's walking me to the changing room). Me: "Can my husband come back to the waiting area with me?" (Even though I already knew perfectly well that the answer was yes.)

At least it was better than sobbing through the whole interview, like I did last time.

We were taken to the exact same pre-op area, and then I was put in the exact same post-op recovery stall. And it's not like this is a small place - there must have been at least 20 post-op stalls. The only thing that was slightly different was that I think I was in the operating room adjacent to the one I was in last time. The walk didn't seem quite so far this time.

And also like last time, as soon as I set foot into the operating room, I lost it and started crying. But at least this time I didn't wake up into heaving, hysterical sobs like last time.

The wrinkle in all of this came while we were waiting in the pre-op area.

While I am usually pretty fond of Ob, I am extremely annoyed with both him and the ob rad right now. Ob stepped into our waiting area with one hand holding his cell phone to an ear and the other flipping through my chart. He said hello and then proceeded to read a couple of sentences to us from the ob rad's report that basically says I have a misshapen uterus.

I'm not clear on whether ob rad thinks the top of my uterus is just slightly sagging or if he thinks it's fully bicornate. All I know is that Ob looked very grave and said, "That definitely causes miscarriages." When I mentioned that I had an HSG in February that looked fine, he looked very surprised, said "This February?" and then when I nodded, followed up with, "Well, get the films, send them to the ob rad and follow up with him." And with the cell phone still stuck to his ear, proceeded to turn around and leave!

The next time we were in the same room together, I was unconscious. In post-op, I told the nurse I wanted to talk to Ob because I had some questions. But he had back-to-back procedures and was running almost an hour late to begin with, so we didn't see him again.

The HSG in February was my second one. My first one was 2 1/2 years ago, and that RE also said my uterus looked fine. So my guess is that it probably is fine, but I will get all the films and consult with ob rad to make sure.

What is really irritating me about ob rad at this point is that we saw him three times in a row for all of our ultrasounds during this pregnancy, and not once did he mention this! Yes, he said during the first one that he thought it looked like the baby might be in the corner of my uterus, but he didn't say, "And by the way, your uterus isn't supposed to be shaped like this..."

And then Ob just goes and dumps that on us right before I have to walk into an operating room to have him suction our 6th baby out of me. I realize what he actually said was along the lines of, "You *might* have a uterus structure problem." But translated through the filter of what we've experienced, what I heard was "You've gone through five years of hell and lost six babies, and a problem that should have been FULLY DISCOVERED before you even began any sort of treatment at all may be partially or completely to blame for all of that. And you may never be able carry a child to the point of survival. Gotta go now."

Ggrrrr. Doctors really irritate me sometimes. I'm annoyed enough about this that if I wind up talking with Ob himself about the tissue testing results, I will speak up and say something. Assuming that he even got tissue to test - since he never went out to the waiting room to let R know how it went, we don't even know that for sure.

Pregnancy #5, Baby #6, D&C #2

It was clear early on that there wasn't going to be good news from this ultrasound. We saw the gestational sac very clearly, but unfortunately there were also two bubbles in the sac that weren't there last week.

For one brief moment, I thought maybe a twin had suddenly appeared. But then I realized that we couldn't see a clear fetal pole, much less a heartbeat.

Thankfully, today's ultrasound tech didn't take quite as long. The doctor came in relatively quickly, spent about a minute flipping through the various images and then turned to us.

He knew that we already knew the outcome, so he didn't say much. For once, I didn't ask much either, so I have no idea what most things were measuring. All I know is that he was able to see the fetal pole, but it was only measuring 2mm, which is smaller than last week.

I asked him if he thought there would be any benefit to doing a D&C, if he thought there would be any chance of being able to recover tissue that could be tested. He said, "Yes, absolutely."

The D&C is scheduled for Friday morning, at the same place as the last one. I think it's at the same time, too. I'm just hoping it's not the same nurse - I have no desire to repeat last time's pre-procedure interview from hell.

Nervous About Today's Scan

Our next ultrasound is about 14.5 hours away, and I'm nervous. Even though at this point we are totally detatched from the idea of bringing a live baby home from the hospital, I still really want this to work.

The fatigue kicked up a notch this weekend. I went to sleep Friday night, got up around 9:30 on Saturday morning and then had to go back to bed by 6 p.m. because I was just too exhausted to stay up any longer. I got up for about an hour around 10 p.m., and then went back to bed until 8:30 the next morning. So I'm taking that as a good sign.

And since Thursday or Friday night, I've been having to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom - another good sign. Tonight, I could definitely tell that my uterus has grown when I was looking in the mirror - I'm sticking out further than ever before.

I think all of those things are good signs, but I'm still nervous about tomorrow. God, I hope there is a heartbeat. And an appropriately growing baby. One that sticks around for another 7 months this time.

Here's hoping that for once, we fall on the good side of the 0.1% odds.

Still Not Good, Still Not Definitive

And yet, I still seem to have hope.

There was one bit of good news that was not accompanied by not-so-good news: The baby is definitely not in my tube, and it's not even as far up in the corner of my uterus as it seemed to be last week. It's still not totally front and center either, but the ob rad seemed totally relieved about the location, and it sounds like that wouldn't be much of an issue.

If the baby continues to develop normally. And that's a big if.

The gestational sac had grown 5mm in the past 7 days, which was good. There was no clear yolk sac last week; this week, there was. There was no visible fetal pole last week; this week, the fetal pole measured 5mm. The two small sacs near the baby that looked like they were hemorrhaging have disappeared. They probably reabsorbed, which makes sense, since I haven't spotted in the past three days.

There was still no heartbeat, but the ob rad said at 5mm it's a tossup whether it's visible or not, so he wasn't surprised that we couldn't see it. The tech did most of the ultrasound, and she and I both thought we saw a tiny little flicker at one point, but she couldn't pick up the sound. And ob rad didn't go back and look for it when he came into the room, he just took a couple of uterine volume measurements that she didn't take.

So most of that sounds really good, right? Here's the bad part: I'm measuring more than 1 week behind. Ob rad says if things are measuring 4 days behind, there's still a decent chance, but that's pushing the outer limit. I'm at least double that.

He said if I wasn't so sure of my dates, he would think everything was fine and progressing normally and that I was just further behind than I thought. But with the Clomid, follicle scan and trigger shot, I think the dates are pretty solid.

In that case, he gives it a 99.9% chance of not being viable. But because of the growth we saw, he's not willing to recommend a D&C yet. So we go back on Wednesday for another scan. He said we should definitely see a heartbeat by then, and if we don't, he'll call it over.

Somehow, through all of this, I continue to have hope. Like I said in my last post, hope is a stubborn, stubborn thing.

Emergency Surgery (But Not For Me)

This is turning out to be a really tough week for R.

The first round of the layoffs that his company announced in January took effect on Monday, which meant he had to say goodbye to one co-worker and console the very sad, stressed and overwhelmed co-worker who is still there (until her layoff takes effect in December.) Nothing like a very shy, quiet guy having to be the team leader of all these very expressive, emotional women!

He's also been stressted about me all week, hoping I don't suddenly have a tube rupture. And then, to cap it all off, his dad wound up going into the hospital last night for an irregular heartbeat, and he had an emergency procedure done today to put in a pacemaker.

Thankfully, while it's still a big deal, having a pacemaker put in isn't the ordeal that it used to be 20 years ago. Back then, when my grandfather had one put in, it was major surgery and you were in the hospital for two weeks. R's dad had the procedure at 5 p.m. today, and assuming he doesn't have any complications overnight, he'll be discharged tomorrow and can go back to work on Monday. Thank God for technology advances in medicine.

There's still not much of an update on me, but we'll know more tomorrow. I went in this afternoon to have my blood drawn, and I have a repeat ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

I started having some pains on my right side around midday that made me wonder if the kiddo is in a tube, but they weren't too intense, and they stopped. From everything I've read online, if you're experiencing major ectopic pain, you'll know it. And I'm still having the ligament stretching twinges and pain, which I think is a good sign. I also haven't had any spotting since Monday. So part of me is hopeful, but the protective side of my mind is trying to beat back the hope.

If it wasn't for Ob insisting that we do a scan this week, I think I would have tried to push it back another week. I think even if we don't see good news tomorrow, unless they can prove to me with 100% certainty that something needs to be done immediately, I will probably insist on at least one more scan a week to 10 days later, just to make sure.

Hope can be a very stubborn thing.

Still No Major News

I managed to make it through my first two days of work without a ruptured tube - yea! Although I am feeling some pains on that side that make me wonder a little bit.

I finally got last Thursday's beta results - 6,811 for 6w4d or 6w2d, depending on how you want to look at it. It's kind of on the lower end of the normal range from what I could find online, but still well within the normal range.

When Ob's nurse called to leave that number, she also left urgent instructions for me to get a repeat test and a repeat ultrasound this afternoon or tomorrow morning. She said it three times in a row, like it was a matter of life or death. I was in a meeting for the afternoon and couldn't call her back, so I asked R to give her a call and figure out why this suddenly became urgent after they've spent the last five days ignoring me.

R would up speaking with Ob directly. Of course, communication among guys tends to be limited to not much more than grunts or groans, so I didn't get a lot of detail. The gist of it seemed to be that while the radiologist who did last week's high-level ultrasound was more concerned about the baby's location, Ob is more concerned that they didn't see everything they wanted to see (i.e. a heartbeat). It sounded like Ob was surprised the beta number came back as normal as it did. So apparently he still thinks this has a shot of working out, although how much of a shot I don't know, because R didn't ask. And it's all irrelevant, anyway - he can think we have a great chance, like he did last time after seeing a heartbeat for three weeks in a row - and it still doesn't mean a damn thing in the end.

Work is going well so far. I think it will be a good team to be on. But there's been a lot of baby talk, so it's been a bit tough. My boss' wife is expecting their first soon, and another co-worker announced today that his wife is also expecting. They've already completely redone the room that is going to be the baby's nursery with a new ceiling, new floors, etc. - basically, everything they can do except the gender-related stuff, because they don't know that yet. It sounds like they did all of this a few weeks ago.

Guess how far along she is? About three weeks more than me. 10 freakin' weeks! Can you believe that?? I can't even IMAGINE decorating a nursery at this point in the process. They are living in that blissfully ignorant (part of my mind is screaming "stupid" instead of "ignorant," but I know that's just the jealousy speaking) world that passed us by soooo long ago that the idea of doing such a thing is just laughable at this point. I hate that. And damn - just when I thought I was starting to become so Zen about all of this.

An Uneventful Weekend

It's been a relatively average weekend on the Kiddo front. I had some aching and cramping on Saturday morning that I thought marked the beginning of the end, but it went away by late morning. I had some very light (brown) spotting again this morning, but it tapered out by mid-afternoon, and there was no cramping or aching to accompany it.

I've been oddly calm through all of this. I even went shopping for some new clothes for work on Saturday. Since I can't change what I weigh overnight, and since I can't even diet right now, I decided to suck up the fact that I am double the dress size I want to be and just enjoyed the shopping experience overall.

Except that I've run into one small (but visible) problem. This is my fifth pregnancy, and every time my belly pops out earlier than the time before. (My belly already extends farther than my boobs.) I'm exactly 7w0d today if you count by my last CD1, and if I wear my favorite new outfit, it's really obvious that I'm pregnant. So I'm going to have to hold off on wearing that until I'm in my second trimester and more willing to let my stomach speak for itself or until this pg ends and my stomach shrinks back a couple of inches.

Oh, one other thing. I did some research on Friday about trigger shots. I had forgotten that if you take a trigger shot, ovulation is 2 days later. So I ovulated on CD16 of this cycle, not CD14. So if you calculate based on ovulation date, I'm really only 6w5d today, and I was only 6w2d on Thursday when the ultrasounds were done. Ob's office measured the gestational sac at 6w0d, which isn't that far off at all given how early it is. Of course, I don't know how accurate that measurement is since the nurse practitioner doesn't usually do ultrasounds. And I also don't know what the level 2 ultrasound measured the sac at.

I've also come across several places online where women have seen only a gestational sac at 6.5 weeks (and sometimes even at 7.5 weeks) and then went on to see a fetal pole and heartbeat (in one case, not until 9+ weeks) and then had the baby, so I've decided that I'm going to ask for at least 2 more scans before deciding to do anything, unless it becomes obvious that I have a ruptured tube.

Work begins in 9.5 hours. Wish me luck on my new job. And pray that the first impression I make at this company doesn't involve a trip to the emergency room...

'Suspicious but not Definitive'

Those are never good words when it comes to a pregnancy.

Ob's office wound up calling back this morning to tell us that Ob's meeting had been canceled and we were back on for our appointment today. We rushed down there, only to discover that Ob and the other ob in the practice wound up having to leave in the meantime for deliveries.

The receptionist started to tell me they would need to reschedule, but I interrupted her to mention that I was bleeding. (Although honestly, most of it had stopped by then and it has since completely stopped.) She pointed to a chair and said "Go sit." So we did. And sat, and sat. Finally after about an hour, I was able to see the nurse practitioner.

She said there's a small polyp that is of no concern on my cervix that is probably what caused the bleeding. She warned us that she doesn't usually do ultrasounds, but she would attempt one on me to see if she could tell us anything definitive. She saw a gestational sac and what she thought were a yolk sac, fetal pole and a tiny flickering heartbeat. She wasn't able to hear the heartbeat, but she said trying to do that at this stage (6w4d) is like "trying to take the pulse of an ant."

Since she wasn't 100 percent confident in what she saw, she sent me for a level 2 ultrasound with an obstetric radiologist. He of the "suspicious but not definitive" proclamation wasn't nearly so cheery.

He had multiple concerns, including:

• The gestational sac is "slightly abnormally shaped" - not quite as round and oval as he would like it to be.


• The sac is measuring small and behind. I didn't even bother to ask how far behind.


• What looked like two small hemmorages near the baby, which he thought was likely the cause of the spotting. Although he wasn't as concerned about that as I thought he would have been.


• And now, for the kicker - he can't tell at this point whether the baby is in my uterus or in a Fallopian tube. If it's in the tube, it's in the portion of the tube that is within the uterus. If it's in the uterus, it's up in the corner, which still doesn't sound like a good place to be. But when I asked about what that would mean if it truly is in the corner of the uterus, he would only say, "Let's not worry ourselves with that at this point."

He ordered another HCg, although given that the last one was 17 days ago, I don't think it will really tell us much unless the level is very low. And since I'm still feeling fatigued, sore breasts, etc., I don't think it's that low. But who knows, I could be wrong.

Other than that, he said basically all we can do is wait and scan again in a week, assuming I don't have major pain that would indicate a possibly ruptured tube in the meantime.

Oh, and get this. I start my new job on Monday. I got an e-mail from my new boss today. Several members of our group who work in different sites around the country are going to be in town next week for an all-hands meeting. So on Monday, after my first day, we're all going out to dinner. And then on Tuesday, we're in a meeting all day. Let's hope I don't have to excuse myself in the middle of dinner or the meeting by saying, "Pardon me, I think I've just ruptured a tube..."

On the bright side, my new job is literally just across the street from one of the hospitals where Ob is on staff, so at least I don't have far to go.

Seeing Pink

And not in a good way.

This morning, Ob's office called to push back tomorrow's ultrasound to Friday.

This afternoon, my mother (who lives with us) and I got into a big fight. Apparently I am a controlling, bossy *itch who's main goal in life is to scheme up ways to make her think she has Alzheimer's. (What I gain by doing so was never made clear - apparently that's beside the point.) I tried to stay calm throughout it all. (She doesn't know I'm pg.)

This evening, there was pink on the toilet paper. Not a lot, but enough. And it was there multiple times.

Right now, it doesn't seem to be enough to warrant going to the emergency room. Still no cramping, but I'm sufficiently freaked anyway. I'm calling Ob's office in the morning to see if they can get me in with another doc.

6w2d

I'm not sure that I'm truly over the 6w1d hurdle yet, but so far there have been no more signs of spotting.

I realized a couple of things while R and I were wandering around Target last night buying some organizing supplies:

1) Technically, I'm not sure if yesterday was 6w1d or 5w6d. If I base it on when CD1 was, then yesterday was 6w1d. But I had two possible ovulation dates: CD 14 and CD 16, because I had one follicle that measured two days behind the other two. So if I'm pg with the one that ovulated on CD 16, then really tomorrow will be what I think of as 6w1d. So I'm not feeling like I'm totally over the 6w1d hump yet.

2) I was stupidly tempting fate. The Target we were wandering around was the same one I was in when I discovered I had started to bleed out the twin pregnancy about 14 months ago. I'm not an overly superstitious person, but still - there are just some things that don't need to be tempted.

The first ultrasound is scheduled for 49.5 hours from now, assuming I make it that far. But I seem to be getting even more fatigued, and I'm starting to notice a pattern of morning nausea now, so hopefully those are both good signs. Here's hoping I make it to Thursday...

And Then There Was Spotting

Today is 5w6d. Historically, except for the last pregnancy, all have gone wrong by 6w1d.

This afternoon when I went to the bathroom, there was some slight spotting. It was very light, and it was brown, and it was not there the next time I went to the bathroom.

I haven't had any menstrual type cramps. I laid down and took a nap for a couple of hours. My boobs still hurt, I still seem to be having the "good" kind of cramping pain that I'm guessing are ligaments stretching.

But still, there was spotting. I know spotting is not always a bad thing. I know lots of women have spotting and go on to have normal, healthy, totally fine pregnancies. But I also know one other thing.

Spotting is never a good thing. At best, it's neutral. At worst, well, let's see. I've had lots of experience with that. Five times, as a matter of fact.

I've spent two of the past four Mother's Days miscarrying. Let's hope I don't start to make it a holiday trend.

Totally OT - Pet Safety Question

Okay, this is totally not related to infertility, but I'm hoping someone out there has an answer to this question.

We have lived in a two-story house for about 18 months, and I'm just now getting around to ordering an escape ladder to keep upstairs in our bedroom. Hopefully we will never need it, but if we ever do, we have quite the zoo to evacuate from our house.

I've found a ladder that I'm going to buy, but I can't find anything that we could use to help get our two dogs out the window and down the ladder. They both weigh about 40 pounds, so those cute little carriers that work for dogs like Yorkies and pom poms wouldn't work, because all of those seem to have a limit of 20 to 22 pounds.

One of our dogs is accustomed to being carried around (albiet, something we did more frequently when she was still at her 25-30 pound stage). However, going out a window with a fire happening is something that I imagine might make even her a bit squirmy. Our little guy is not used to being carried, so he'd squirm from the start.

They do both have harnesses (made out of the same material as their leashes), but I don't know that those would be strong enough to hold them if we tried to lower them with that.

For the cats, I figure we could just stick them both in a small duffel bag and sling it over our shoulder. (Much easier to carry in a situation like that than their pet carriers.) The snitty one would probably try to fight the nice one, but then again, given the circumstances under which sticking them in there would happen, she might be too shocked to start anything.

At any rate, we still need a solution for the dogs. So if anyone has one, please speak up. I can't believe this has not been addressed in the retail market, but this is the first time I've ever lived in a two-story house, so I've never had to look for something like this. Thanks.

Jaded

Thanks to all of you for the kind wishes. So far, so good, but we're taking it day by day.

This afternoon I was reminded of just how jaded these past five years have made me.

I was at lunch with a friend, and he was telling me about a job he applied for that he is hoping comes through. The waiter interrupted us to ask if we wanted dessert. We declined, and then after the waiter left, my friend said something to the effect of, "Well, if things end badly, maybe we'll have to come back and slough it off with some peach cobbler."

I nodded and murmured some sound of agreement, thinking about the possibility of losing a 6th baby. About 30 seconds passed before I realized he wasn't talking about my pregnancy - he was talking about if he didn't get the job.

Honestly, I'm not normally that self-absorbed. But it's just that when someone talks about something going badly, apparently it's become an automatic reflex to think of that in terms of pregnancy and miscarriage.

You've Gotta Love the Irony

I was supposed to have a child today.

March 9 was the due date of our fourth pregnancy/fifth baby.

I HPT'd again this afternoon. The ones I did on Monday and Tuesday came out negative.

Today, there were two lines. I'm pregnant again.

Let's hope the 5th time is the charm.

O' Happy Day

I know, I know - I'm three months behind in blooging. There's lots of catching up to do, but for now let me just say this:

The heavens have opened up, the angels are singing and God is smiling down on us: I have just accepted a kick-butt job offer that also has IF coverage, INCLUDING IVF!!!

Oh, and one more thing: I might be pregnant. I'm not feeling terribly hopeful, but at this moment it is theoretically a possibility.

Wouldn't it be just my luck that I would get a job with IF coverage and then not need it? But hey, if that's what it takes to get a kiddo to stick for the long haul, fine by me!

Stay tuned for more...Coming up soon: a hard and fast downward spiral, layoffs at R's company and going back to the very basics of infertility treatment. (Here's a hint - Clomid, anyone?)

A (Small) Goal Accomplished

I mentioned in a post a couple months back that I decided to run in a 5K race on New Year's Day. That plan is still on track, and to prepare for the experience of participating in an organized run, I signed up for a 1 mile fun run that took place on Thanksgiving Day.

I was a bit nervous and kept looking at R and asking, "What on Earth was I thinking when I signed up for this??" But I accomplished my two goals for the day: 1) I ran the whole thing, and 2) I didn't finish last.

In fact, I finished in the top half overall for the 1 mile race. Not that that is truly impressive, mind you, when you consider that 1) the first 10 or 12 finishers were children and 2) my time was upwards of 12 and a half minutes. But still, it gives me motivation. And I finished just below the top 1/3 among all the women who did the 1 mile. Again, I'm sure many of them were walking it just for fun and not for a time, so it doesn't really count. But it gives me a benchmark to start.

My goal for the 5K remains the same - to finish, and hopefully not finish last. But I expect to be very close to last, because the Thanksgiving Day race also included a 10-mile run and a 5K. And for that 5K, most of the participants averaged a 10-minute mile or less. I didn't even come close to a 10-minute mile when I was only doing 1 mile, so I know I certainly won't be close to that this time around when I'm doing 3.1 miles. But that's okay. At least I'm in the race at all.

And I have to say, it feels really good to be accomplishing a goal, even if it's a small one.

The Numbers, Good and Bad

I've gone in for blood draws a couple of times this past week. The news has been a mixed bag, although I do think the good outweighs the bad.

First, the bad: I had a CD 21 progesterone test, and my progesterone level was only 0.5. I was pretty sure even before the test that I hadn't ovulated, but then as soon as I got home, it became clear that CD 1 was on its way. The test result only confirmed all of that.

If I continue to not ovulate, that clearly puts a crimp in our plans to try naturally.

However, the good news: Since it's been 2 1/2 years since my last FSH test and CD 1 showed up, I decided to get a CD 3 LH/FSH test done. FSH was 4.1, LH was 10.3. That's a pretty typical PCOS ratio, which isn't great, but I'm too thrilled by the FSH level to be very bummed about the PCOS right now. (Apparently, somewhere in the back of my mind I keep hoping that maybe the PCOS will go away...)

At least that FSH lets me feel like I have a little bit of breathing room in terms of time. If I do start to ovulate, we will try naturally. However, I don't think we'll spend a lot of time on that approach if my eggs don't seem to be making regularly scheduled appearances.

I've been thinking some more about my consultation with 2nd Opinion RE. As much as some of his comments were totally thoughtless, I do think his overall approach to our case has significant merit.

Every time I've pressed Doc, he refuses to acknowledge (to me, at least) that perhaps 32 eggs were a few too many. He is also adamant that we should go with the same stim protocol as last time. I, however, do not see the merit in continuing to bang my head against the wall with the same approach while hoping for a different result.

2nd Opinion thinks that 32 eggs were too many and probably compromised egg quality, therefore leading to embryos that might have looked good but were likely chromosomally abnormal. He thinks Doc used a valid protocol (4 vials for the first 2 days, then 3 vials per day after that) given the information he had to work with and the fact that it was my first IVF, but at this point he would recommend an even slightly lower dose of stims and would aim for significantly fewer eggs. I feel much better about that approach, because everything I've found in my research says 32 eggs are too many.

So now hope is sneaking its way back in, and we may be doing another IVF sooner than we planned, though it will still likely be late spring at the earliest.

Random Thoughts...

There seems to be a constant mish mash of thoughts running through my brain lately, and every once in a while one of them makes me think "I should blog about that." So here they are, in no particular order.

...on Stupid Things REs Say

I'm still processing last week's consult with 2nd Opinion RE. A couple of things I didn't mention in my last post:

At one point, he said, "As long as you're having miscarriages, I'm happy." I mean it - he actually uttered those exact words. "I'm happy." Are you nuts, too?? I wanted to ask. He must be, because a sane person can't possibly think that's a smart thing to say to a cynical, bitter RPLer. But then again, maybe he figured it was safe since he's 300 miles away and I couldn't exactly smack him through the phone's airwaves. I know what he was trying to say, but there's a better way to word it.

At another point in the conversation, he also compared my five miscarriages to foul balls. Technically, yes, they are strikes, he says. But even if you have 10 miscarriages strikes, you're still up to bat and you should keep trying. Yes, that was meant to be encouraging. Really.

...on Clothes Shopping with 50 Extra Pounds of Infertility Flab

For a very brief time in my life, when I was starving myself and consequently a lovely size 6, shopping was fun.

I ventured out today to try to find clothes for a couple of upcoming occasions. All I can say is What the heck are fashion designers thinking these days??

The item I have the most difficulty buying are pants. Now, please understand that I'm realistic about my size. I'd be lucky if that slinky little size 6 red dress that I had 10 years ago would fit around one of my legs with much room to spare at this point. So I don't go trying on size 10 pants when I'm, well, not a size 10.

I ventured into the dressing room with about 5 pairs of pants, and came up with the same results on all of them: Pant legs with enough extra yards of material at the bottom that a search party sent to find my feet would still be looking for them two days later, while around my waist, stomach and hips I look like a stuffed sausage about ready to explode from its casing.

My ankles don't need that much material - they aren't THAT big. So, fashion designers, please take note: Shear off some of those extra yards of fabric around my feet and move them about three feet north, where I could really use the coverage. And while you're redesigning them, could you also please figure out a style that makes me look about 30 pounds thinner? Thanks.

...on The 'Let's Try Naturally' Approach

Yes, well, about that. In order to try naturally, you need an egg. And an egg is something that my body does not seem to be in the mood to make these days.

I had an 18 day cycle last month. This month, I decided to do a CD21 progesterone blood draw to get a sense of what's going on, because I didn't see strong signs of ovulation. I got poked yesterday morning, then came home, went to the bathroom and saw blood when I wiped. It hasn't been enough to call it CD1, but still, this does not bode well.

Maybe it's just taking my ovaries a while to adjust to an infection-free environment after all the antibiotic treatment. Let's hope, anyway.

There's more, and I know you're all waiting with baited breath, but I'm going to try to get to sleep at a decent hour for once, so that's all for now...

Hope Hurts

Hope shouldn't hurt, but somehow it does.

Even though we're not planning to start trying again for a couple of months, and we plan to try naturally at that point, I went ahead and had a phone consult with another RE this week. I wanted to get a second opinion, and I figure it's best to be prepared in case I don't seem to be ovulating regularly or R's numbers come back low when he retests at the beginning of the year.

2nd Opinion RE said all the right things - he doesn't think my age (33) is a concern, he thinks I'll respond well (based on 32 eggs retrieved in July 2006), he thinks our issues have been chromosomal due to too many eggs being retrieved and that that's easily corrected with a slightly lower stim protocol, he thinks it's a good sign that I've been able to get pregnant so many times, he thinks I'll be able to carry to term with a healthy embryo, he thinks it will happen for us.

All of those are very encouraging things, and I'm grateful for them. But (and isn't there always a "but" with me?) as odd as it sounds, part of me was also sad after speaking with him.

To be totally honest, in some ways it would have been easier if he (and Doc, and Antibiotic Doc, and Ob/Gyn) had said "I'm sorry, but you're not creating good embryos, your chances of creating good embryos are nil, and you should just give up because this isn't ever gonna happen for you." At least then I could begin to accept that and move on. It's been 5 long, painful years. At this point, if he (and the rest of the bunch) had a general consensus of something like that, I think I could be ready to hear it.

But they don't. Instead, they're all sunny, optimistic cheerleaders about our case. They all say that we're so close, that we're way too close to give up, that we should definitely keep going.

When you've been doing this for a year, that's good news to hear. That's motivating and encouraging. When you've been doing this for half a decade, as strange as this may sound, it's painful and even a little bit scary to hear.

Because instead of the ignorant optimisim of a newbie who thinks "They say our chances are good, they say this is going to work, soon we'll be holding a baby - yea!", a beaten down, loss-ridden vet thinks "They said that FIVE. YEARS. AGO. Clearly they don't know what they're talking about. Do we have 5 MORE years of losses and heartbreak in front of us before this purgatory ends?"

And sadly, the only way to find out is to keep going.

I know I could opt to throw in the towel now, that no one is physically making me continue. But there is a part of me that still has hope. Granted, sometimes it feels like such a tiny part of me, so small that if hope was a visible thing it would require a high-powered microscope to see at this point. But still, it's there. And even if it wasn't, I still want this for R, so I would keep going for that reason alone.

I just never knew that hope could be so painful.

Is This Normal, Or Is It Just Me?

I've been struggling a bit lately with what it is that I want to do. Not in the "what direction do we take in dealing with infertility" sense, but in the job sense.

If you'll recall, back in February R and I decided that I should quit my job and embark on a new career as a Realtor. I'm working with another Realtor friend, and the plan was for me to have more time to do things like exercise and cook, to get healthy for another pregnancy.

Yeah, well, the best laid plans...So far, that free time hasn't materialized. Instead, I'm working more hours than ever before. And I'm not having a lot of fun, because our niche market is foreclosures. And when you deal with foreclosures, you deal with things like:

• transients living on the back patio of your property
  
• dead landscaping that ticks off the HOA (this week)
  
• phone calls from police saying "there's been a shooting and we think the perps might be holed up in the house you have listed..."
  
• dead rabbits in the yard (today)
  
• dead pidgeons in the driveway (today)
  
• phone calls from a utility worker saying "I'm in front of one of your properties...the door is wide open, the lock has been messed with so that it won't lock, and it looks like it's being used as a drop house..." (today)
  

That's not to say it's all bad, because I definitely enjoy not having to be at a desk from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and I don't have a boss that I answer to every day.

But I'm working harder and making less money doing so. And I don't have more time to do things around the house, which I told R I would do to take some of the stress off him.

So I'm debating what to do. I used to be a very focused person, at least, I was before infertility struck. It's been 5 years, and it seems like it has sucked the life and energy right out of me. And now I'm floundering.

Here are the different options I keep stewing over:

1) Find a full-time job. If I do this, I'd prefer to find one at a company that has infertility benefits (not easy to do, since I don't live in a mandated state) and one that pays about $10,000 more than I was making before. That part of the goal is probably more feasible. We need at least one or the other in case we have to go back to infertility treatments at some point. And if we get both, I'll use part of the extra money to pay for a house cleaning service, so that my ceiling fans get cleaned more often than, say, once a year...

2) Stick out the real estate career. This is the one that R and my therapist are voting for. Both keep saying, "But it has to get better..." And, yes, it probably will. But the issue isn't that there's not enough to do, because in the foreclosure market, that's not a problem right now. But my goal was never to be a traditional Realtor as a career, it was to get into the field so that R and I could start buying and flipping properties. And I still think that's a legitimate goal at some point, but not right now, not in this market.

3) Get a part-time job and adjust our spending habits to make it work. When I left, my former company split my job into two full-time positions. It appears that they've since switched one of those (the duties I'm more interested in) to a part-time position. I may be able to contact them about coming back, although I have mixed emotions about that for a variety of reasons. But even if I do that, do I then still do some of the real estate work, or just do the 3 days a week and use the extra time to really focus on my health? From a financial perspective, if we are disciplined, we could probably make it work without losing too much ground. However, even when I'm working full-time, I feel guilty about not making as much as R does, so I'm sure I'd feel even more guilt if I was only working 3 days a week.

4) Stay home altogether. Ok, this one isn't really an option. But it's nice to dream.

Honestly, I'm not a lazy person. In fact, I used to be an ambitious person. But in the past 25 months, there have been 4 miscarriages, 3 failed adoptions, 1 failed fresh IVF, 1 failed FET and three months of illness/major tests that resulted in an IBS-due-to-stress diagnosis. In the 2 years before that, there was 1 more miscarriage, 4 canceled IUIs and 4 failed IUIs. At this poitn, ambition is only a distant, faded memory. I know R has gone through his share of it too, but even so, I think it's at a different level when you're the one actually swallowing daily meds by the handfuls and having all those needles/ultrasound wands/IVs stuck into you.

I want a break. I need a break. I guess I need to think about why I made the change in the first place - to give myself the best shot at being healthy enough to have a successful pregnancy. And I don't think I'm doing that right now. And there will be many, many more years for me to work hard at earning more money, but not many more years when my eggs are still (hopefully, potentially) viable.

If only we were filthy rich and I could go with Option #4...I'd be the best darn potato a couch ever met! :-)

Woo Hoo!! (aka Goal #1 Achieved)

I am going to celebrate tiny little milestones in this weight loss process because, well, sometimes tiny little milestones are all that I've got. So...

Milestone #1 - I'm now back below 200 pounds. Yea!! I've never been so happy to see the scale say "199" in my entire life. (You've gotta keep in mind, this is a 5'7" gal who weighed 105 at one time in her life. Granted, that was not a healthy time, but that's beside the point at the moment.)

My next milestone is going to be getting below 195. I've decided to set 5-pound increments for my goals, and a secondary goal of getting to the next goal every 10 days or so. I know that sounds fast, but I'm doing it as much through exercise as I am through cutting back on what I'm eating.

Now, for some comments in response to the comments on my last post:

Grad3 - You crack me up! ;-)

Nico - I hope so! The feeling was still there this past weekend, unfortunately. I think I might be stuck with it for a while...

Anna - I'm glad I've got some running company, even if it's virtual company! :-) I've found that the more I run, the less I crave sweets. I'm not sure why that is, I'm just grateful that it's so. And thank you for the knee advice. I might have to give that a try. I had surgery when I was in my teens - something about the muscle that extends from my hip to my knee pulling my kneecap out of place. The surgeon said it's very common in dancers/gymnasts, and I did gymnastics for several years, so that was probably the cause of it. I also find that if I do my physical therapy exercises when it starts acting up, that usually helps.

And now for a completely unrelated comment...Do you know how to make a cat dance? Toss her into the middle of a room where the carpet has just been steam-cleaned and watch her try to figure out how to exit the room without getting her paws wet. Yes, this is what my evening's entertainment has been reduced to. Sad, isn't it? But also darn funny. I never knew a cat could walk on baseboards!

Weighing In

Um, about that whole weight loss thing...It isn't going quite as planned.

It started off well enough, with a 5-pound loss in about 2 weeks. I was pretty pleased. Then I spent 11 days out of town undergoing the antibiotic therapy. I thought I would have lost weight, because I did a lot more walking than usual. But apparently I also did a lot more eating than usual, because I gained the 5 pounds back, plus a couple of extra ounces to boot.

So I decided that I needed some extra motivation. There's an annual marathon/half-marathon race in our town each year in January, so I considered entering the half marathon. (Mind you, at this point I can't even run a half mile, much less a half marathon.)

But then I contemplated it more and realized that 1) I'm probably overreaching just a tad bit to think I could go from 0 to 13.1 in 3 months; and 2) even if I could run 13.1 miles, I have Absolutely. No. Desire. to do so.

I opted to set my sights at a more realistic level, so now my goal is to run in a 5K race on New Year's Day. And preferably to not finish in last place. Although honestly, to finish at all will be an accomplishment.

I found a 5K training program online. It's 8 weeks long. I finished the first week of it this week. Basically, it involves running incrementally longer distances on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, walking on Sundays and resting on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Because I have cranky knees, and because I'm not in shape at all, I've opted to spend Tuesdays and Thursdays doing the distances on an elliptical machine we have at home. On Saturdays, the plan is to go to the local high school, which has a soft, cushy track, and run there.

This Saturday was my first actual run. And I've discovered yet another joy of infertility: After all of those PIO shots, my ass now hurts when I run. More precisely, it stings. For about the first two laps, anyway. Then it turns into more of a dull, mostly numb ache. Or maybe it's just by that point I'm so focused on the feeling that my lungs are about to explode that I don't notice the pain in my ass as much.

I mentioned it to R. He said, "Well, what do you expect? We've poked you so many times, your mucles are now full of holes."

Great. Now my brain is stuck on the image of two pieces of Swiss cheese where my glutes are supposed to be...

The Things We Do For Kids . . .

This week it was R's turn to suffer for the cause.

Actually, the poor guy spent about 10 days suffering. It began with an itchy rash (an allergic reaction) and ended with getting his arm hair ripped off in an experience I imagine is rather akin to a woman having her leg waxed.

I imagine you're wondering how, exactly, does all of this relate to having kids?

As I mentioned in the Next Steps post, our next move was to undergo high-dose antibiotic therapy with a doctor we met in May. Part of that involved 10 days of IV antibiotics. I did fine and didn't have any issues with it, but R wasn't so lucky.

About 16 hours after he got his IV, he began having an allergic reaction to the medication. The poor guy was covered in a rash, and he began to swell a little bit too. (Fortunately, his reaction wasn't severe enough to make his throat swell and close or anything like that.) He had to go on prednisone and switch medications in the IV. It took a couple days, but the itching calmed down and the rash faded.

Then came the worst part of all - getting the IV out. Actually, it wasn't removing the IV itself that was the issue. Instead, it was removing all of the bandages that were holding the IV and the IV tube in place.

The thing is, R is blond and very fair skinned, so his arm hair isn't particularly visible. The morning he was having the IV put in, the medical assistant forgot to shave his arm. She didn't realize it until his arm was swabbed with generous amounts of iodine, at which point the arm hair became more obvious. But at that point, it was also too late.

When the IV was inserted, she covered his arms with clear, very sticky bandages from about 5 inches above his elbow (which is where the IV went in) to about 7 inches below his elbow, then wrapped the whole thing in an Ace bandage.

My IV was in the top of my hand, because I have no good arm veins left after 5 years of blood draws. So I was fortunate in that 1) there isn't a lot of hair on the top of my hand and 2) there wasn't nearly so much bandaging involved. But still, when my IV was taken out, ripping the bandages off of the few hairs there were definitely was the most painful part.

Being the kind, supportive, smart wife that I am, I opted to stay far, far away when R had his IV taken out. (Meaning, I stayed home.) The nurses used alcohol and a couple of other sprays and liquids in an attempt to loosen the adhesive, but no such luck. Then they decided to cut the IV tube so they could get the IV out and then concentrate on the rest of the bandages.

Unfortunately, they didn't think that plan all the way through. When you cut an IV tube and it is no longer hooked up to a pump and IV bag, it starts to backflow. And R does not do well with the sight of anyone's blood, much less his own. So at that point, they had to lay him down on the exam table and then just rip the bandages off so that they could get the IV tube out and stop the bleeding.

He's usually pretty staid and goes right back to work after medical procedures, but he decided he'd had enough trauma for the day and headed home from there. His skin is still peeling.

All I can say is, when we finally get them - regardless of how we get them - these better be some darn perfect kids!

An answer

We got the results of the D&C testing this evening. It showed a gender chromosomal abnormality - the baby was XO instead of XX or XY.

My ob said that about 98 percent of first trimester losses have that particular abnormality. He also said that is encouraging news for us to try again, because it appears it was just bad luck with the embryo and wasn't a problem with the uterine environment or something else.

It still doesn't necessarily explain the other four, but at least we know that no matter what we did, the outcome of this one was beyond our control.

I'm still processing this news. I think I feel mostly relief, because now it's easier to think that maybe it really wasn't my fault after all. It was hard not to think "Did I lay around too much? Maybe I should have been more active?" or "Did we stop the progesterone too soon?" or "Was my blood pressure the cause of it?" or even "Did the fact that I was soooo emotionally reserved about this make the baby feel unwanted and fail to thrive?"

But a little part of me also feels heartbroken over the fact that there was no way this could have ended the way we wanted it to. It's hard to think that beautiful flickering heartbeat and that normally shaped (from what we could see at the early stages, anyway) baby wasn't this perfect little being we thought it to be.

The fact that the chromosomal abnormality was gender-related is a bit ironic. I told my ob up front that I didn't want to know the baby's gender, because for me it would be easier just to always think in terms of "the baby" rather than know if it was a boy or girl. And now I can go on thinking that way without having to know that the answer is sitting in my chart somewhere.

Next Steps

Some of you already know from previous posts that I am a planner. I have to have my next steps in place, a Plan B, and even a Plan C and Plan D sometimes, so that I can keep moving forward.

Never mind the fact that so far none of the plans have actually gone according to plan; I still have to have them, for the comfort factor alone. So it should be of no surprise that R and I were already talking about what to do next on our way home from the ultrasound that showed the lack of heartbeat.

Some aspects of the plan are easier to write about than others, so I’ll start with the easy stuff.

The Plan, Part 1

This part of the plan is simple to explain: LOSE WEIGHT. Lots and lots of weight.

Now if only it was as simple to execute. Like most of us, weight loss has never been one of my fortes. But I am determined to make it happen.

I’ve gained 40 pounds since beginning the fresh IVF cycle last summer. I didn’t need to gain any weight to begin with, but I now top the scales above 200, and even at 5’7”, that’s not good. Since I’m prone to pregnancy complications anyway because of the PCOS and blood clotting issues, I was pretty stressed about what additional complications the extra weight would cause. One was pretty apparent up front – my blood pressure at all of my ob appointments was high, up to 150/100 during one appointment.

So I’ve created a progress chart that is posted on a wall in our bedroom, and R and I are dieting. I’m not doing any particular diet, just trying to 1) eat less, 2) eat healthier and 3) actually attempt to cook at home from time to time. I also started exercising again two days after the D&C.

In two weeks, I’ve gone from 206 pounds to 202.4. My goal is to lose 2.5 pounds per week, which I know is pretty aggressive, but even if I can be in the 1.5-2 pounds per week range I’ll be pleased. R started out strong, and I was afraid that soon he was going to weigh less than me, which would be wrong on sooo many levels. But the scale was less kind to him during our last weigh in, so I still weigh less than him, at least for now.

My first goal is to get below 200. Then I’m going to concentrate on 170, then 160, and then we’ll see after that. It’s hard to imagine that I used to look at myself in the mirror when I weighed 105 pounds and thought that I was fat, but I did! (Many years ago in college, while I was struggling with eating disorders.)

Ok, so that’s it for The Plan, Part 1. I may post my progress (or lack thereof) from time to time as extra motivation for me to be good.

The Plan, Part 2

I’ve found this to be more difficult to blog about, which is probably part of why I’ve put off blogging about next steps.

On IF blogs, we seem to strike an unusual combination of the public, the private, and the vague. Meaning that our blogs are open for the world to read, we put out there details about cycles, thoughts, feelings etc. that many of us may never share with people IRL, and yet most of us choose to maintain a degree of anonymity by not putting forth identifying information about what clinic we go to, which doctor we see or even (in some cases, like me) specifics about where we live.

But on the treatment front, our next steps are pretty specific. Those of you who are familiar with the theory and approach I’m about to explain are going to know exactly who I’m talking about and exactly where I’m going.

I’m okay with that, because if I wasn’t I wouldn’t blog about it, but on the other hand it feels kind of weird. I think part of it is that I don’t want to come across as an advertisement. Although really, how can I be an advertisement when we haven’t gone through treatment yet, much less had success with it? The other part is some of you may think I’m crazy. But then again, at this point that’s probably not too far off from the truth!

So here goes. There’s a doctor I read about from an online IF forum who believes bacterial infections can cause infertility and miscarriages. I had heard about him a year ago and filed the idea away in the back of my brain. After we lost the twins in January, I thought of it again but was too emotionally tired to pursue it. I finally got around to calling and setting up a consult in the end of April, and then that following week we found out our clinic was requiring us to do our last FET.

We went ahead and did the testing with this new doctor before beginning the FET cycle, just because I wanted to be ready to move forward if we got a BFN. This doctor handles testing in a different way, growing specimens in the lab for about three weeks rather than just a few days, so many patients who test negative through the labs they usually use wind up testing positive through his lab.

The day before our transfer, we found out I tested positive for three infections, and R was positive for four. (None were STDs.) We were a bit surprised that we had that many infections, because we are asymptomatic, but apparently they can be low-grade and still cause problems.

The infections were in my cervix and uterine lining, and it’s likely that they’re also in my ovaries. The doctor believes that introducing an embryo to the uterus can cause the infections to flare, thus raising NK cell levels and resulting in the embryo being attacked by those cells. He says our embryos were likely infected within themselves as well, because R’s infections were found in his seminal fluid, which means that his sperm is marinating in infections as they’re growing and developing. Just like it’s impossible to detect sperm with high DNA fragmentation by looking at them through a microscope, it’s also impossible to detect infected sperm that way.

His belief is that infections damage the DNA, which causes chromosomal issues. And my ob thinks it was likely a chromosomal problem that caused this loss. That could also explain the other losses we’ve had.

So, our next step is to go through high-dose antibiotic therapy to get rid of the infections. Some STD infections tend to be stubborn and can’t be completely eliminated but only tamed down. But since we didn’t have any STDs, the doctor thinks ours can be completely eliminated.

We have to go through a few months of therapy and then wait one more month after that, so we can start trying again around the end of the year. The timing actually works out well, because that will give me a few months to lose some of the weight and develop healthier habits. Also, I need some time to focus on other things in my life, so I’ll have the opportunity to do that.

Once we reach the end of the year, assuming R still has normal sperm counts and I’m ovulating, we’re going to try naturally. I realize that sounds like we’re going backwards, which is a bit insane. (Okay, maybe more than a bit…) But the whole point of IVF was to create better quality embryos that would then last. Clearly, that approach hasn’t worked. And I’m tired of putting my body through all the stress it has to go through when we cycle.

We’ve gotten pregnant naturally twice before, so we know it’s possible. My ob is on board with prescribing the Lovenox, and I’m sure I can get progesterone suppositories from him, too. He doesn’t think they’re necessary, but he knows that given our history, there’s no point in saying no to me because they won’t hurt.

So we’re going to see what happens in 2008. I won’t completely rule out going back to IVF at some point, but definitely not in the immediate future. And if I don’t get (and stay) pregnant naturally in 2008, as much as we dread hate absolutely abhor the idea of adoption hell, we will reluctantly reconsider that option again.

This time it would have to be on our terms, though, meaning the adoption attorney we want to work with would have to agree to take our profile and not call us until there is a baby to be picked up at the hospital. She knows what we’re open to (either gender, any race, no major drug or alcohol use), so she shouldn’t need to call us to see if we want our profile to be shown for a particular situation. And we definitely refuse to go through months of being matched again – twice was waaayyyy more than enough, thankyouverymuch.

So, there it is – The Plan. Now we’ll see how long it takes before it goes drastically and unexpectedly off course…

Why?

I know I promised to blog about our next steps, and I will, soon. I promise. But right now I'm still sorting through some other thoughts in my head.

I have to admit, I'm struggling with the "Why?"s of the losses we've endured.

Of course, there's "Why me?" and "Why us?" But honestly, to me, those are the less significant of they "Why?"s. The reality is, it happens to some people, some couples. I understand that. I can even accept that the best answer to those questions may be "Why not me?" or "Why not us?" Because really, saying "Why me?" implies at least in some way that perhaps I am less deserving of this than others.

To me, the biggest question is also the smallest: Plain and simple, "Why?"

Forget that this is happening to R and me, or to other RPL bloggers, or others IRL who have suffered RPL. Why does it have to happen to any of us? And like most situations that cause people to ask, "Why do bad things happen to good people?", there is no good answer. And certainly no obvious answer.

I'm beginning to think that, at least in some ways, we already have the answer within ourselves. The answer to "Why?" is the answer we choose to create by how we respond in the face of our pain and suffering.

I don't feel like I'm explaining this very well, so if you're scratching your head and thinking "What on earth is she trying to say?", my guess is you're probably not alone. I'll try to explain by giving a couple of examples that have stuck with me recently.

While browsing CNN last week, I came across a guest blog by Miles Levin. He was an 18-year-old diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that is diagnosed in only 350 children in the entire U.S. each year. Sadly, at the time I came across his post, he had just passed away. His entire post was inspirational and thought-provoking, but one paragraph in particular stood out:

"Unlike many cancer patients, I don't have much anger. The way I see it, we're not entitled to one breath of air. We did nothing to earn it, so whatever we get is bonus. I might be more than a little disappointed with the hand I've been dealt, but this is what it is. Thinking about what it could be is pointless. It ought to be different, that's for sure, but it ain't. A moment spent moping is a moment wasted."

I often feel "entitled" to have children. I feel like it's unfair when I see a mom with her kids, and I don't have any to hug or take to school or bake cookies for. But when I read that paragraph, I realized that Miles is right. My whole life is a bonus, and I've been blessed to experience 15 more years (and hopefully many more to come) of this bonus than he ever got to. It helped shift my perspective back to more on what I do have and less on what I don't have.

The sentence "It ought to be different, that's for sure, but it ain't" also struck a chord. Life should have been different for him. It should be different for me, and for you, and probably for 99.9 percent of us in this world. But it isn't. I need to acknowledge that and keep moving forward, rather than allowing myself to get stuck dwelling on it.

Because, really, who knows how many moments any of us has left? I'd rather spend those moments cherishing what I do have than moping about what I don't have.

Another person I've been thinking a lot about is a woman with whom R and I went to high school. She was in R's class, and I was a year ahead of them. Neither of us knew her per se, but I knew of her. She was homecoming queen, and voted "most likely to make you die laughing" in the high school yearbook.

From what I read in her obituary last year, she kept that sunny, graceful outlook on life to the very end. She was 30 when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she died less than a year later. She had been married for a few years but didn't have any children. I don't know if that was by choice, or if she and her husband just hadn't started trying yet, or if they also had problems with IF. But talk about life being unfair. I still get the opportunity to try for kids. She doesn't.

My life may be unfair, it may not be exactly what I want it to be. But at least I still have it. I'm living and breathing and in every single moment, I have the opportunity to make it the best life I can.

Losing these babies that have lived inside me (however briefly they may have stayed) is tragic, no doubt about it. But I'm also slowly beginning to understand how incredibly fortunate I am that my struggle comes in trying to create a new life, rather than fighting desperately to keep my own life from ending decades too early. And if that realization helps me to live life more fully, to take it less for granted and see more clearly all the good things I have to celebrate, then, at least in this moment, I can accept that as the answer to "Why?"

Thank You

I'm still here, and for the most part I'm doing surprisingly well.

The outpouring of support from all of you has helped tremendously, and for that I am very grateful. THANK YOU.

R and I were talking the other night about our reactions to this loss. He hasn't shed a tear or really shown much emotion about it at all. It's not that he doesn't care, because I know he does. But he was so much more emotional when we lost our first baby more than three years ago, so I was getting concerned about him.

He said this whole process has become unreal to him - that seeing all the babies (or lack thereof) on the ultrasound machine's video screen has become like watching a movie someone has made about something unrelated to you. And the injections that he helps me with don't make it any more real, because when you're first thinking about getting pregnant, you think of a romantic night in bed with your spouse, not jamming them with needles day after day.

I can understand his point of view. Obviously it's a little different for me, because I was feeling the nausea and uterine stretching pains and all that stuff. That made it a little more real to me.

But I think I'm getting so much practice at dealing with losses that I'm learning to cope better. For the most part, anyway.

Friday was a bad day. I was in a professional development class all day, and it was a monitored class - in order to get credit, we couldn't leave the room while class was in session. That shouldn't have been a problem, because we were given two breaks in the morning and afternoon, along with an hour for lunch. But as we came back from the second break, I glanced at my phone and saw that it was 10:15 a.m.

Without warning, a thought struck me: "A week ago at this time, I was in my final hour of pregnancy. We were on our way to the surgery center." My eyes filled, my throat closed up, and right there in a class of 100 people, I began to cry. I tried to be as quiet as possible, and I think only a few people around me noticed, but it was still awful. I wanted to jump up , run out of there and hide in the bathroom, but somehow I managed to will myself to stay in my seat. I didn't even have any tissues with me, so I had to just keep wiping at the tears with the back of my hands and try to sniffle quietly.

When I got home, I crawled into bed. R stopped and picked up dinner for us, which I ate while laying in bed, and then I fell asleep. An early night was definitely what I needed. And it's been better since then. I know I'll have more bad days - and more good days - in the future. That's just how grief goes. It's a messy process.

But all of you make it easier. So, again, thank you.

The D&C is Done

This morning I was almost 11 weeks pregnant. Now I’m not.

I didn’t want to go to sleep last night, because I knew it meant that morning would come and then I’d have to go to the surgery center. And let them take my baby.

I hadn’t cried much up until today, but I knew today would be different.

I managed to blink back the tears at the registration desk. Then the intake nurse came to get me, and the tears began to fall. The whole time she was taking my vital signs and going over my medical history, she also kept talking about her own attempts to have children. I don’t know how many she lost, but I know she lost one at 7 months. An autopsy couldn’t find any reason why her baby was stillborn.

I continued to cry. She continued to talk, telling me that she and her husband wound up adopting two children. “My son was a great kid, but there’s something off with him. He doesn’t do well as an adult,” she confided. He’s a couple years younger than me. Apparently he got into a knife fight last week.

That was when she suggested we look into adopting. Thanks, we’ve been there. Then she asked how many pregnancies I’ve lost. The tears were still falling. Four pregnancies, five babies. She asked if my doctor had suggested we do any testing to find out what caused them. Gee, there’s an idea we hadn’t thought of. Then she said, “You guys should look into doing IVF or something like that.” Ok, thanks, we’ll consider that.

Finally, she escorted me to the bathroom so I could change into the hospital gown and robe. After that, it was off to the pre-op area. I was composed until Ob walked over to R and me.

“Are you sure?” I tried to choke it out, but it took a few attempts before Ob could understand me. He squatted down in front of me, took my hand and gently pointed out that even if he had somehow overlooked the heartbeat, the baby’s shrinking size was conclusive. I didn’t realize I was squeezing his hand with a death grip until he tried to stand up.

The nurse came to get me, and I had to say goodbye to R. The last time we would get to hug while I was still carrying our baby.

I cried the whole way as she walked me to the operating room. People we passed in the hallway were probably staring, but I didn’t care. I just concentrated on the floor, on forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other. She was very kind, telling me that if I wasn’t ready, I didn’t have to go in. That they would wait as long as they needed to. Do you think they would have minded waiting 20 years? There was no point in putting off the inevitable, so I just kept going.

The anesthesiologist was kind, too. He tried to lighten the mood by making a joke about being at my service as he took my robe. Then I climbed onto the operating table, and he began putting in the IV while the nurse put on a blood pressure cuff.

I remember thinking, “When I wake up, my baby’s going to be gone, and I’m not going to be pregnant any more.” And I remember trying to keep quiet and still as I cried.

Then I woke up. The oxygen mask was still over my nose and mouth, and I couldn’t open my eyes yet, but I realized I was sobbing. The hysterical, heaving, uncontrollable sobs you cry when a brief moment in time has just permanently, gut-wrenchingly altered your life forever. A moment as brief as the flicker of a tiny little heartbeat.

One of the nurses grabbed a Kleenex and pressed it against my eyes until I was conscious enough to move my arms and hold it myself. A couple of times, I heard someone say something about getting R, and then I heard myself begging, “No, please, don’t. Not yet. I don’t want him to see me cry.”

I don’t know how much time passed, but I kept refusing to let them bring him back to the recovery area. He’s seen me cry so many times during the past four and a half years. I know this is painful for him too, and I just can’t bear to add anything more to his pain. But then I heard the phone ring, and my nurse saying, “She’s fine. No, she really is fine. But I don’t know. She keeps saying she doesn’t want him back here. She hasn’t stopped crying since she came out of the operating room. I’ll have to ask her for permission.”

R is a very shy person, so I knew he had to be very worried to have approached someone. I realized that even though I wasn’t letting him see me cry, I was still causing him pain. So he came back to recovery, and I was able to leave about 15 minutes later.

Physically, it hasn’t been bad at all. I suspect this may be a lot less painful than the other four miscarriages were, particularly the first and third ones, for which I refused to take any pain relievers. (The first one because I didn’t know if I’d ever have another pregnancy and was determined to experience every last moment of it; the third one because I was still carrying Twin B at the time and refused to take anything on the very slim chance that the pregnancy would progress.)

I’m home now, and the tears come and go, as I imagine they will for a very long time. But I function best when I know what steps I’m going to take next, so R and I have made some decisions. We’re taking a different approach, and I’m going to focus on some other things, but we’re not giving up altogether. I’ll post more on the plan in a few days.

The Flicker of Hope is Gone

We had our 4th ob appointment today. I'm 10w2d. No heartbeat, and the baby measured at 8w4d - 0.3mm smaller than our last appointment two weeks ago.

There's no explanation as to why at this point. Everything looked perfectly normal - for an 8 1/2 week pregnancy with no heartbeat, anyway.

I'm waiting to hear when the D&C will be. It will be my first, even though this is our fifth miscarriage. The others never got far enough to need it. My ob is going to send the tissue for testing to see if it will give us any answers.

This cycle used the last of the embryos we had. We started with 17 during our fresh cycle in July/August 2006. 17. We worried at the time that we had created enough embroys for 5 or 6 families. And now there's none. Not one family, not one baby.

I feel dead inside. I've dealt with the pain of loss before, but this is on a whole new level. I don't know what to do, how to begin to process this. I don't want to eat dinner, I don't want to watch TV, I don't want to work, I don't want to do projects around the house. I guess what I really want is to not be inside my own skin anymore, to not be me. Because if I'm not me, then I don't have to deal with this.

I'm not sure where we're going to go from here. Before this pregnancy, I was getting to a place where I felt like I might just learn to live with being childless. It's not something I would choose as an option (though please know I'm not criticizing those who do). But since at this point that is the reality of our life, and despite trying our very best it still is the reality, I'm not sure we have another alternative but to accept it. After our devastating failed adoption attempts, I don't know that I have the strength to go back to that. And IVF hasn't given us any answers or any successes - it's simply added to the losses and compounded the pain. I don't see us going back to that route, particularly since R's counts are now normal and the RE doesn't have any answer to "why?" and just recommends trying the same thing again. Maybe we'll just try on our own and see what happens.

Progesterone Scare

Why does this process have to be so damned hard?

Every time I start to let myself get comfortable and relax a little, I get smacked upside the head with something that is cause for concern.

This time, it's my progesterone level. My clinic usually stops the PIO and suppositories at 9 weeks, so I went in last Monday to have my estradiol and progesterone levels tested. They were 958 and 45, respectively. The clinic told me to stop the shots.

Because I lean toward the paranoid side, I insisted on continuing the suppositories (with the clinic's blessing) and retesting again (which is something they don't usually do).

The results of yesterday's testing: estradiol is 543 and progesterone is 15.4. I'm not quite as concerned about the estradiol at the moment, but I'm on the verge of hysterical about the progesterone. From what I've been able to find online, it should be around 30 at 10 weeks. I'm 10w2d.

So far, I haven't had any spotting. I did have some minor pains last night and this morning that weren't totally familiar and made me a little concerned, but I was managing to stay calm.

I have a previously scheduled ob appointment in about 4 hours. I'm really scared. I can't imagine that such a huge drop in progesterone is 1) a good thing for the baby; 2) a good thing for the pregnancy in general; 3) a good sign about my body's ability to maintain a pregnancy.

Please excuse me while I go find a paper bag to breathe into for the next 4 hours... I'll post again tonight.

We're Both Still Here (As Far As I Know, Anyway)

I really have to get this Google Account thing figured out. Right now it takes me about 10 minutes just to log in, which is why I haven't posted nearly as often as I otherwise would...

I only have a few minutes, but I wanted to post quickly to say that so far, things still seem to be going ok. At our last appointment, Kiddo had grown to measure three days ahead, and the heartbeat was 173 - right on track.

Ob is on vacation this week - (the nerve!) - so my next appointment isn't until Tuesday. It's been the longest 9 days of my life, and there are still 6 more to go.

So far, I've been pretty calm and okay with things. I appreciate all of your comments on my last post. What Thalia said about Liana regretting that she didn't allow herself to enjoy her pregnancy before she lost Zappy really struck a chord. Regardless of whether this ends in 30+ weeks with us holding a healthy, bouncing baby or at some earlier point with a heartbreaking outcome, this is still the only pregnancy I'm going to get to experience with this baby, and I do want to enjoy it.

To that end, I've allowed myself to take a couple of little steps into the world of pregnancy. This week, I asked R to bring home a couple of pregnancy books from his parents' house. (When we moved last fall, I asked him to take all baby related things to his parents; I didn't want them in our new house.) And this weekend, I'm considering going maternity bra shopping with a friend. I'm only 9w3d - I can't believe how quickly I'm outgrowing some of my clothes.

I'll be back soon with more posts...

Hope and Stress

Hope is still alive. Today's appointment went well. But this pregnancy in particular, because it is the one that has provided us with the most hope, is also one of the very most stressful experiences of my entire life.

And that's saying something, because I'm not exactly a stranger to long-term, high-level stress: I served as a full-time caregiver for my diabetic, bedridden grandmother when I was 12 and 13 (while still going to school); when my dad left and my mom fell apart right before my senior year of high school, I got a job and spent two years making the mortgage payments before my mom was able to pull herself together enough to function; R and I lived through about two years of continuous uncertainty during which his company conducted 8 rounds of layoffs.

All of those were painful, difficult experiences. But this is different. The stakes are even higher.

Everything went fine all last week. I was calm. I reached yesterday and I thought, "If tomorrow's appointment goes well, I'm going to try very hard to be a normal pregnant person. I'm going to try to relax and enjoy this and let myself blithely, naively think that of course there's going to be a baby - a happy, healthy, perfect little baby - that pops out of me in a few months."

HA.

I went to the bathroom last night. And wiped. And saw a chunk of mucous that immediately made my mind think "cervical plug." Followed by, "Oh, God, my cervix is dilating." And, "This can't be good." And, a little later, "Why are those uterine pains not as strong? Does that mean my uterus is shrinking back to its normal size? Oh, God, my uterus is shrinking! This is SOO not good."

You can imagine the night I had. And of course, I went online and found a web page written by a woman who lost something at 10 weeks that sounded a lot like the mucous I saw. Everything seemed fine for her for several more days, and then she started bleeding and miscarried.

I didn't tell R about any of this, because he wasn't feeling well yesterday, and I didn't want to add stress to the headache and nausea he was already experiencing. And I couldn't come post on here because I can't figure out how to get Blogger to let me switch over to the new Blogger, so I have to go through a convoluted process to reset my password every single time I want to log on even though I haven't forgotten my password. And I just didn't have the strength or energy last night.

Fortunately, my appointment was already scheduled for this morning. Once again, I was in tears by the time the ob walked into the room. But he did a cervical exam, and he said my cervix was very tightly closed. He thinks what I saw may have just been the byproduct of all the progesterone suppositories I've been taking.

Then we did the ultrasound, and he was quiet as he studied the screen. I didn't see a flicker anywhere, but then again I didn't have the best angle for viewing. I kept waiting for him to say something, and then finally I couldn't take the silence any more and asked, "Do you see something? Is there still a heartbeat?" There was. Apparently, I need to tell him to speak up sooner next time.

The baby measured right on track. We were hoping Kiddo would be 1 cm today, and it was 9.9 mm - close enough! It measured exactly 7w1d, which is what I am today. And the heart rate had increased to 148 bpm, up from 111 bpm last week.

My ob knows what we've been through, and he's good about not just blowing off my concerns and saying "Everything looks fine, don't worry." Instead, he's taking a much more realistic approach. Last week, after the ultrasound, he said, "This is a step in the right direction, but you're not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. You've still got a ways to go."

This week, he said, "These are a few more steps in the right direction." I like that he's not just taking a cheerleader attitude, but at the same time, I wish I was the kind of patient that would allow him the luxury of that attitude.

I'm trying to be grateful for this. I want to be hopeful. After almost 4 1/2 years of hell, I want to be happy that we're here, that we're seeing a heartbeat and making progress. But instead, I'm in tears. Partially tears of relief, I'm sure, but if I'm being honest, a lot of those tears stem from fear, too. I don't want to be like this - for Kiddo's sake, for my sake and even for R's sake. But I don't know how not to be.

Larisa of "The Waiting Womb" wrote a post at the beginning of this month about the "ifs" of IF. It struck a chord with me, because I, too, wonder "When will the 'ifs' stop?"

The ob said we could come back in two weeks, but he left it up to me. Our next appointment is for next Monday morning. As we were leaving the doctor's office, R asked me if we are going to have weekly appointments for the whole duration. Yes, I told him, yes, we probably are.

A Tiny Little Flicker of Hope...Literally

After I had blood drawn yesterday morning, I decided to call my ob/gyn and have them fit me in for an ultrasound. I wanted visual documentation of how far the pregnancy progressed so that we'd have that information for the future in case we needed it.

The blood test was inconclusive - the number (14,523) was higher than Thursday's (6,849), but the doubling time was 83 hours, which was also a lot slower than it has been (29 hours, 32 hours, 45 hours) to this point. So I didn't know if that meant the number had been higher on Sunday and was on its way down or what.

So at 4 p.m., R and I went for the ultrasound. By then, some of my symptoms had started to return. But I was still completely freaked out. And then, the moment of shock came - my ob said, "There's a sac." And, a few moments later..."And there's a heartbeat!"

I'm still trying to process it. A heartbeat. A tiny, gorgeous little flicker of light. And hope. We even got to hear the heartbeat. It was 111bpm. Ob said anything above 100 bpm is normal at this point. I thought it was supposed to be faster, but he said it should get faster during the next couple of weeks. I haven't googled it yet to see if that's really true or if he's just trying to keep me calm.

I allowed myself to be happy about this last night. And hope has certainly snuck in, in a big way. But at the same time, this makes it even more scary. I know how to deal with an early loss. I know how to deal with "I'm sorry, but the sac is abnormally shaped and it's measuring a week behind. I'm afraid there's no hope for this." I've had lots of practice. But with this, I've had no practice.

The next ultrasound is scheduled for next Monday. Ob understands that I'm going to be extremely high maintenance, so he didn't even try to suggest scheduling something further out. In the meantime, I'm going to try not to freak out quite as much about any fluctuations in my level of symptoms. We'll see how that goes...

Disappearing Symptoms

I may have come out of my cave too soon.

Last night, after I posted, I noticed that I wasn't as tired or as nauseous as I have been in the past, and I wasn't as bloated, either. I also had some lower back pain and pelvic pain that made me a bit nervous, although it did stop after a little while and it was mild.

Then when I woke up this morning, I realized that my chest isn't nearly as sore as it had been, even when I go poking at it. And I'm still less bloated.

So far, there's been no spotting. And last time, I still had all my symptoms when the cramping and bleeding suddenly started.

I'm not quite sure what to think. I'll probably ask R when he wakes up if he's sure he gave me the PIO instead of the E2V last night, but I'm sure he did.

I'm leaving for the lab now. I have an appointment in 5 hours, so I e-mailed the clinic and asked them not to call me with the results; I want to get through that appointment and then I'll call them.

Will the 4th Time be the Charm?

Obviously, I haven’t been blogging during these past few months. To be honest, it simply became too painful. Our friends in normal life have kids, many of them two or three at this point. We’ve been long since left behind. Friends we made through Resolve, who started out in the same place as us, also now have at least one or two children. We’ve been left behind by the infertile community.

And then the veteran bloggers who were around when I started blogging all moved on to success, along with many bloggers who started after me. And once again, I’ve felt left behind. Everyone else is moving on to the new phase of their blogs – life with pregnancy, life with kids – and here I am basically retyping the same old variation on a theme: I’m pregnant, oops now I’m not; we’re adopting, oops now we’re not.

I needed my life to focus on something else for a while. And that plan was working, until our fertility clinic decided to brighten up the week leading up to Mother’s Day for us. It’s a long story, but for the sake of brevity, let’s just say the clinic’s financial coordinator was telling us we had to do an FET, the RE was insisting that our next cycle had to be a fresh cycle, and we got stuck in a very awkward tug of war between the both of them, who apparently are either unwilling or unable to communicate with each other.

It was handled, in my opinion anyway, very badly. But regardless, the upshot was that we wound up having to do an FET in June. It was a total no confidence cycle – the RE made it very clear that he didn’t see the point of it, and it was obvious that the feeling rubbed off on everyone, R and myself included.

I forgot to go get blood drawn, the clinic forgot to put me on the schedule and so didn’t realize that they should have been seeing lab results for me, I had to self-dose a couple of times, the clinic forgot to schedule a procedure I needed, they added a medication to my calendar that I wasn’t supposed to be taking, I left $350 worth of meds in a hotel room when I was traveling out of town, a bottle of suppositories I brought when I was traveling out of state to the clinic melted and congealed into one big glob of goo, etc. And then, to top it all off, the morning after bed rest ended, I backed R’s truck into a pole. It was pretty much the perfect cap to an absolutely laughable cycle.

And then, of course, the betas came back positive. I’ve had four so far, and they’ve all risen appropriately. I have the next one tomorrow morning.

My enthusiasm for this pregnancy is totally and completely underwhelming, to the degree that it’s causing concern among those who know me well. But it’s the best I can do at this point – it’s all I’ve got in me to give.

I’m 6 weeks today. That makes tomorrow 6 weeks 1 day. And 6 weeks 1 day has historically not been a good day for me. In Pregnancy #1, I began spotting on 5 weeks 1 day, and it ended in a miscarriage on 6 weeks 1 day. Pregnancy #3 seemed to be going fine. No spotting, nothing. 6 weeks 1 day came, and I thought we’d make it past that point. I was starving for lunch by 10 a.m., my sense of smell was very strong, I was running to the bathroom every couple of hours, I made R come bring me a huge dinner at 4:30 p.m., there was not even a speck of spotting. Then, at 7:15 p.m., I felt some cramping. I was in Target. I went into the bathroom, and there was a lot of blood. We lost twin A a few hours later, and then twin B 9 days after that.

I’m nervous and scared, about the blood test and about the whole day. Not that getting through tomorrow means that we’re in the clear by any means. Every day is limbo, and each morning I get up and go through it all over again. It’s like I’m living the pregnancy version of Groundhog Day. If this isn’t going to result in us holding a live, healthy baby in our arms in 7 ½ months, I just want it to be over with now.

Like I said, my enthusiasm for this is less than underwhelming.

How I Spent My Saturday Night

I knew something was up when I came home late in the afternoon and my mom said, “Sooo, I have a question for you: How would you like to go shopping for a new dryer?”

Considering that when I had left the house earlier in the day, our dryer was fine as far as I knew, it struck me as a bit of an odd question.

It turns out my mom had unwittingly left a black wax pencil in one of her pants’ pockets and then proceeded to wash and dry the thing. It also turns out that while a black wax pencil can make it through a gently spinning cold wash cycle relatively in place, intact and totally undetected, that’s not the case once it reaches the inside of a warm dryer where it bounces up, down and all around.

My poor, unsuspecting mom opened the dryer to find that her load of laundry was covered in black spots and streaks. So was the inner bin of the dryer, as well as the inside of the dryer door. At first she thought the dryer had somehow sprung a major oil leak. Then when she stopped to consider that the dryer doesn’t function via oil-lubed engine, she went searching for other possibilities. And found the stub of the wax pencil.

After some frantic, but unsuccessful, attempts to wipe the interior clean she decided it would just be easier to buy a new dryer.

But it turns out that I’m cheap. Or, more accurately, that I don’t see the need to spend $500 on a new dryer when I could put that money toward an oh-so-much-more-fun IVIg infusion instead. (More on that in a later post.) So after a few unsuccessful attempts of my own to rid the dryer’s insides of its new paint job, including blasting the waxy film with steam from my hand-held clothes steamer, I came up with a question of my own: “What would Heloise do?”

I have a 2-inch-thick Hints From Heloise book that could be useful if I took it upon myself to actually, ahem, clean every once in a while. My mom cracked it open. It recommended something like WD-40, which we weren’t sure was such a terrific idea, but it did spark another thought: Avon’s Skin So Soft product, which apparently not only softens skin but also manages to remove waxy residue from enamel-coated surfaces.

So I spent Saturday evening laying on the laundry room floor, giving the dryer a more thorough cleaning than any of our other appliances are likely to see in their lifetimes. And as an extra bonus, our clothes smell oh-so-soft.

Oh, How I Hurt

This weight thing has gotten out of control. My face is fat, my feet are fat, and I’m even outgrowing some of my by-now-all-elastic-waistband wardrobe.

So I woke up Monday morning bound and determined to do something about it. My chubby little self was in the pool at the local gym by 6:15 a.m.

I love to swim. I was practically half fish when I was growing up. And besides being great fun, it’s a wonderful form of exercise – I can raise my heart rate without sweating. Instead, I sluice through the cool, refreshing water. If I’m not sweating, it doesn’t feel like exercise, which is apparently key for me.

But I digress.

I swam the first lap. It was fine. Since I hadn’t exercised in a very long time, I was taking it easy and not pushing myself. Then, about a quarter of the way through my second lap (still taking it easy and not pushing myself, mind you), my arms began to tingle and burn. Then they began to shriek at me, “What the heck are you doing?”

I kept going. I was bound and determined to keep swimming. For a whole hour, no less. And I did. Eventually, the burning sensation went away. I’m not sure if it was just that my arms went numb and I could no longer feel their protests, or that they finally just gave up and adjusted. Either way, I kept going.

When the hour was finished, I was so proud of myself. I had spent a whole hour exercising, and I felt great.

That lasted less than eight hours.

That afternoon, as I was changing out of a t-shirt, I discovered a problem. I hurt. More accurately, my upper arms, shoulders and neck were sore to the point that I almost couldn’t get the t-shirt over my head. And I had a major headache, most likely triggered by my throbbing neck muscles.

I spent most of Tuesday in bed, popping pills to try to make the headache go away.

But on the bright side, my feet look thinner.