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.

That Was Then, This Is Now

Exactly six months ago today, I was at home, spending Labor Day with R. We were doing actual labor on Labor Day, using a rented steam cleaner to blast dirt out of the grout in our tile floor. It was a long-overdue task – we’d lived in the home for four and a half years and hadn’t bothered to clean the grout once in that time.

We’d just finished our first (failed) fresh IVF cycle and preparing for our first FET. I was working at a job I’d had for five and a half years. Other than that FET cycle, we had no major plans coming up.

That was then.

Fast-forward six months, and here we are: We’ve unexpectedly bought a new house that is 50 percent larger, my mom has moved in with us, we’ve had one failed FET, a second FET that started out well but ended in the miscarriage of twins (one at a time, nine days apart), I’ve quit my job, I’ve embarked on a new career, and we’ve found out that R’s sperm counts are suddenly normal, which means that we could conceivably (sorry, I couldn’t resist) get pregnant on our own.

Welcome to now.

Oh, and did I mention that we’re also gearing up for another fresh IVF cycle in a couple months, assuming that we don’t conceive naturally?

I’m hoping that the insanity will settle down soon. I’ve had the best intentions of spending more time blogging and catching up with all of you. Unfortunately, as it turns out, I stink at quitting, so I haven’t yet had as much free time as I hoped to.

How is it possible to stink at quitting, you ask? Well, let’s see. I, um, keep showing up to work even though my two weeks’ notice has come and gone. My last full-time day was in mid-February, but I told my boss I would continue to work part-time for a while. We didn’t set a firm end-date for the part-time schedule, and when I’ve attempted to bring that subject up, my former boss and current boss kind of start to panic. And I am the quintessential people-pleaser who hates to disappoint people, so I haven’t pushed the issue.

I can’t complain, though, because I couldn’t be more flattered – they’ve made it very clear that they would love for me to stay. But I did finally tell my boss on Friday that I need to stop altogether, so my last day will either be this coming Friday or the Friday after that.

My intention has been to spend more time exercising and eating healthy, and to begin a new career as a Realtor. I’ve always loved homes, I’m a native to my city so I know the nuances of the area well, and I met a Realtor a couple years ago who quickly became one of my best friends. She is an incredible person. She is a fertile, but she totally gets infertility even better than some former infertiles that R and I are friends with. She has been in the business for about four years, and we are working together now. She is totally holding my hand every step of the way; otherwise, there’s no way I would have been brave enough to step out and do this!

But I love the idea of having more flexibility and freedom in my schedule and of being able to be my own boss. So R and I have given me a year to see how this goes. So far I’m having fun, but combined with the part-time job, I’m still not having a lot of free time. Hopefully that will change once I quit for good and actually stop showing up…

Bad Infertility Humor

How do you know you've been dealing with infertility for waaaaayy too long? When a joke like this is funny to you:

R and I were talking a few mornings ago about the idea that since he has sperm again, and since we've gotten pregnant the natural way twice, maybe it will happen for us next month. He actually kind of gets upset at the idea, because he feels like I don't produce great eggs/lining on my own and we might be likely to repeat the miscarriage pattern. (Never mind the fact that our pregnancy conceived through treatment led to the exact same outcome!)

I assured him that I'd do my best to exercise a lot and eat low-carb, because that helps reduce the PCOS symptoms and improve egg quality.

"So, you never know - maybe one of my ovaries will cough up a relatively good egg next time around," I said.

He replied, "Ok, but can you tell it to please make sure it coughs up one with a yoke this time?"

Get it? Yoke - yoke sac? Which is what is consistently missing from the picture during our ob ultrasounds.

I told you it was bad...

The Results Are In

Not a big surprise - today's beta was negative. I had begun to suspect as much, because my symptoms abated during the weekend.

We're fine with it. Chances are, egg quality wasn't high and my lining wasn't great coming off the miscarriage, so we wouldn't have had high hopes even with a positive beta. That, and I need to lose some major pounds before we give this another serious go, because after the last two cycles I am now overweight to the point that my blood pressure is a bit high.

On a happier note, this is my last full-time week at work, so hopefully I will actually drag my overly plump, sorry little (well, actually not-so-little) bottom to the gym very soon. I bought a new swimsuit last week for just that purpose. You know it's bad when you've outgrown even the stretchy things in your wardrobe. Like your old swimsuit...

Sometimes, You've Just Gotta Laugh

Because really, what else can you do? Especially when you find out three weeks after you've miscarried twins that there's a chance you might be pregnant again.

Yep, welcome to my life, which at this point makes a three-ring circus seem dull and ordinary.

I showed signs of ovulating last week. I thought, "Okay, good, maybe my body is working like it's supposed to. I'll see if CD 1 shows up in a couple of weeks." I usually bloat during ovulation, then it goes away for about 10 days, then it comes back a few days before CD 1. This time, the bloating hasn't gone away. So I thought, "Okay, this is a bit unusual, but my body's been through a lot, so it's probably just confused."

This morning, as I was driving to work, I felt a little bit of unusual pelvic cramping. It wasn't menstrual cramping, and it wasn't the typical pinch I get around ovulation - that already happened last week. So I thought, "Hmm, this is kind of weird. It's almost like implantation cramping. And the timing would be right for that, because today is CD 22, and I typically ovulate around CD 16. But nah, it can't be...because R hasn't been on Arimidex for seven months, and he doesn't produce sperm unless he's on it."

I didn't give it any more thought as the morning progressed. Until Dr. Crass's nurse called to give me the report of the semen analysis R did on Monday: "Normal, normal, normal, normal, normal!" She was in shock. So much so that she double-checked the cup to make sure it had his name on it, even though he was the only patient she did an analysis for on Monday. She said she almost fell to the floor in disbelief.

So R has sperm. 78 million/ml's worth, with 53 percent motility, and the vast majority of them swimming in the right direction. And one of my ovaries may have coughed up an egg. I've been instructed to resume the baby aspirin, Lovenox, mega doses of folic acid and progesterone supps.

We'll see what next week's betas bring.

A Leap of Faith

Big changes are afoot over here.

I gave my two weeks' notice today at work. It's something I've been thinking about and R and I have been talking about for a while, but still, the timing was a surprise even to me. R had been hesitant for us to take this step right now, but yesterday he did an about face and said, "Why don't you quit?"

So today I did. I won't be staying home full time, but I'll go into more detail in another post. For now, let's just say that at least I'll have more time to blog and to catch up with all of you.

Between this and the sudden house-buying of last fall, I seem to be living my life on the impulsive lately, don't I? Let's hope this works out as well as the house has!

Not much to report on the fertility front. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough tissue from Baby B to do any chromosomal testing. We had hoped there would be, and that that would provide us with some answers.

Basically, our next steps are:

1) I have to have blood drawn for a genetic karotype to see if I have some sort of chromosomal issue that might be causing genetic abnormalities in the embryos. (R had his done a few years ago when he was first diagnosed with male factor, and it was normal.)

2.) We have to get an answer from our clinic about whether we can do PGD since we are in their shared-risk plan. They generally don't allow patients to do the shared risk plan if they need PGD, but usually they know before patients enter the plan if PGD is necessary or not. It sounds like Doc is willing to consider it, but he has to get the other partners in his practice to sign off on it. Doc wants to do PGD if my karotype comes back abnormal. I want to do it even if the karotype comes back normal, in the hopes that it might provide some more clues to why I keep miscarrying.

3.) R had to have another date with a cup. Since his surgery, for the past 18 months his counts have ranged from barely within normal to practically non-existent when he's not on Arimidex, even though his testosterone level now seems to be holding steady in the normal range. (It was very abnormally low before the surgery.) Because of the fluctuations, Dr. Crass (the urologist) wants to recheck his hormone levels and counts before agreeing to restart the Arimidex.

4.) Unless something unforeseen happens, we're planning fresh IVF #2 for late spring. Retrieval should be sometime the first week of May, and I will probably be spending Mother's Day on bedrest. At least that would be a nice change from the recent years' routine of spending it miscarrying.

Since I'm going to have much more flexibliity in my schedule soon, I have big plans to exercise like crazy and acquaint myself with our kitchen in an attempt to lose the weight these past two cycles have piled on. Forget outgrowing jeans or shirts - I've outgrown my SHOES! Eeeeekkkk!

Well, That Was Fun While It Lasted

As I’m sure you can guess, Friday morning’s ultrasound did not go well. It was done at an office that includes a perinatologist, a genetic counselor and a radiologist who specializes strictly in obstetrical radiology. If you’re there, it’s because something is going (or appears to be going) very, very wrong – it’s not the kind of place where you go if you’re having a happy, run-of-the-mill pregnancy.

After what was by far the most thorough wanding of my life (the tech recorded 53 different images!), the radiologist came in and gave the verdict: “abnormal pregnancy tissue,” “an abnormally shaped gestational sac” and “there’s no hope for this to progress.”

I held it together pretty well up until the words “there’s no hope,” and then my throat closed, my eyes started to fill up and I scanned the room in hopes of spotting a Kleenex box. The tech noticed, and she grabbed a very long, thin box and brought it over to me.

For a moment, I didn’t understand, because this was not like any Kleenex box I’d ever seen. Then, as she pulled out this big, thick paper that had to be at least 20 inches by 20 inches, the image of a clown pulling a giant handkerchief out of his sleeve flashed through my mind. The sound that came from my throat began as a laugh but ended up more like a choked cry.

The radiologist and the tech took that as their cue to high-tail it out of the room, which they promptly did. As soon as the door shut behind them, I buried my whole face in the clown Kleenex and wailed.

I have to hand it to that place – at least they know their audience. No normal-size tissues designed for a dainty little sneeze. No siree, these were definitely industrial strength Kleenex, designed for industrial strength tears.

I’ve been told to stop all meds and to expect the miscarriage of baby B to begin sometime this week.

Two miscarriages less than three weeks into the new year. Not exactly the way I had pictured to start 2007…

Complications

On Monday, I was composing a post in my head about how well this pregnancy seems to be going. My symptoms were good over the weekend – fatigue, increasing nausea, etc. I was ready for lunch by 10:30 a.m. on Monday (the women in the office were laughing at me), and I made R stop and get me a ridiculously large dinner when he stopped by my office at 4:30 p.m. because I was already starving again. Just before he arrived, I went to the bathroom. Everything was fine – not even a speck of spotting.

Less than three hours later, there was blood. Not just a little bit of spotting, but a small clot in the toilet and enough to bleed through to my pants. I paged the doctor on call at my ob/gyn’s office, and he advised us to go to the emergency room.

So we did. And we sat and waited, and sat and waited, with me getting up every hour or so to go pass more clots. When you’re barely 6 weeks pregnant and bleeding, the ER docs and nurses know there’s really nothing they can do for you, so you are at the bottom of the waiting room food chain.

We sat there for five hours, until 1 a.m. I finally went back to the triage nurse, told her I was thinking I’d probably be better off just going home and promptly burst into tears. She promised to try to get me a bed as quickly as she could, which turned out to be another hour later.

They put me in the ER’s ob/gyn room, which at least afforded us a little more privacy than being in a bed separated only by curtains. I remember R and I joking and laughing about things, although at this point I don’t remember what the subject of our jesting was. I just remember commenting on how perverse it seemed that we are able to laugh while I’m sitting there possibly bleeding out our baby. But I guess we’ve been through this so much that it doesn’t phase us like it used to.

An ultrasound was done, and the tech couldn’t see a gestational sac. We thought that was the beginning of the end, but then my hcg level came back at almost 7,400. The first miscarriage I experienced was at pretty much the exact same point in the pregnancy, and that time my hcg on that day was only 424. So we grasped onto the little bit of hope that number presented.

We finally got home at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and then slept for several hours. The bleeding had turned to light spotting, and by early afternoon, it stopped altogether for a few hours. It returned Tuesday night, but by this morning was brown instead of pinkish red and then stopped by late morning.

We went to my ob/gyn for another ultrasound today. He was able to see a gestational sac, although he said it only looked like it was about 5 weeks, and I’m 6w3d today. He wasn’t happy with the quality of images he gets from his machine for this early stage, so he’s sending me for a level 2 ultrasound someplace else on Friday morning.

The spotting resumed again after the ultrasound, but it’s still very light and mostly brown, so I’m trying to take those as good signs. Our RE thinks we still have a good chance of this working out, and that I probably lost a baby on Monday night. The ob/gyn says we “have a fighting chance” and he’s not willing to say it’s a non-viable pregnancy at this point, but of course he’d prefer the sac be bigger. (Wouldn’t we all?!)

So for now I’m sitting at home, trying to rest and not drive myself too crazy worrying about what is ultimately beyond my control at this point. I’m going to try to catch up with all of you during the next few days.

Poking My Head Back Out

I suppose it’s time for me to come back out of my cave.

I’m fine – I haven’t been sad or depressed or anything. It’s just that we’ve had a lot of non-infertility stuff going on what with moving, trying to sell two houses and getting adjusted to a new boss, so the infertility stuff (and blogging and pretty much anything else not house-related) has kind of been pushed to the background for a couple months. Actually, it’s been kind of nice not to focus so much on infertility – I was even beginning to remember what it is like to have a “normal” life!

But, of course, “normal” only lasts for so long, and in my case it tends not to be long at all.

We did our second FET in December. Doc gave us two choices after FET #1 failed: Do another FET, this time transferring back three embryos rather than two; or leave our eight frozens alone for now and do another fresh cycle with less stims (not that I was on much to begin with) to see if that could improve egg quality.

I didn’t see myself being up for another fresh cycle until March or April, so we opted for the FET. To be honest, I wasn’t really in the mood to do that, either. I looked at it mainly as one more thing we had to do so we could cross it off our list, and at one point I almost opted not to go forward with the cycle and wait until after the beginning of the year.

But finally I found a little better place, and we continued forward. Then the betas came back:

Dec. 22, 7dp5dt: 48
Dec. 26, 11dp5dt: 181

So, I’m officially – well, you know. I still have a difficult time saying the word. There are some people who know we were cycling. I’ve told them I’m “incubating.” It’s more scientific, less emotion-laden. It helps me be detached.

I’m 5w1d today. I had some mild pain/cramping/aching from about 3w6d to 4w4d. That made me nervous. Then it went away. That, too, made me nervous. It came back a little bit yesterday. That made me happy, then nervous.

I’ve also had nausea and a heightened sense of smell on and off, but that doesn’t seem to be happening consistently either. I’m happy when I feel it, but nervous when I don’t. On the plus side, so far there hasn’t been a speck of spotting and I’ve been going to the bathroom pretty much every two hours very consistently.

Our first ultrasound isn’t scheduled until Jan. 11, which would be 6w4d. It will be with my ob/gyn, since we cycled out of state. I’m debating whether to call and see if I can get it moved up to this week. What do you think?

People keep saying, "Oh, aren't you so excited?!" Honestly, no, I'm not. Blissful ignorance is not an option anymore in our world. I'm scared. I'm trying to have faith. I'm taking it one day at a time, because there are no guarantees and things could change at any moment. I don't know that I will truly be able to be excited until I am holding a baby in my arms.

Here's hoping that 2007 is a year that brings all of us great joy...

Still Here

I'll be quick about this, because I rose very early this morning to 1) finish contact papering the pantry shelves, 2) register for a make-it-and-take-it dinner place I'm supposed to be going to with a friend in a couple of days (but won't be if I don't sign up before the cut off today) and 3) get to work early. Hahahaha. I got the last four pieces of contact paper cut (turns out I made them about 3/8" too short) and then the lure of the computer sucked me in - I've spent the last hour catching up with as many of you as possible.

We've moved, although we still have a few boxes worth of stuff inside and about half of the garage at the old house. We're getting unpacked, but it will take a bit of time, mostly because I haven't taken any time off work to do this. While I hate to pack, I actually rather enjoy unpacking and getting things organized, so if I had a big chunk of time to do it, we'd be completely unpacked within a few days.

My mom moves in this weekend. It will be interesting. My mind keeps blocking the fact that the whole reason for this move is so she could come live with us. Let's hope we manage to co-exist with minimal strife and that we don't all kill each other.

I talked with Doc the day after our BFN. He gave us two options: 1) do another FET, this time transferring three blasts or 2) leave the 8 blasts we have frozen and go onto another fresh cycle, this time with slightly lower stims. He is concerned that at this point we've transferred back two terrific-looking day 3 embryos and two fantastic day 5 blasts, and nothing has stuck. He thinks we've got the blood clotting issues and immune issues under control, and my lining looked great. So he thinks it may be an embryo quality issue that isn't visible to the naked eye, even via microscope.

He thinks that given R's drastic swings in sperm production (from almost literally zero sperm, highly fragmented while he's not on meds to pretty much totally normal when he is), there could still be an inherent sperm quality issue that is causing problems. He also thinks that while my E2 levels didn't rise too terribly high given the 32 eggs retrieved, he would want to keep everything even lower next time to try to make sure it isn't an egg quality issue. I wasn't on a high dose of stims to start with (300 units for the first two days, then 225 after that), so there isn't a whole lot of room to go lower, but there is a little bit. I imagine he'd start me on 225 and then drop down to 150, but we didn't get into details.

I'm not up to another fresh cycle at the moment, so we've opted to do a frozen cycle in December, then consider another fresh cycle after the beginning of the year (probably March or April) if the frozen doesn't work. Lupron begins on Nov. 11 - hard to believe it's less than three weeks away - and the transfer will be sometime around Dec. 15.

I'll keep trying to catch up with all of you as I can, even though I'm not posting a whole lot right now.

In Other News…

“…and now, we’re taking a break from our regularly scheduled fit of self-pity to bring you this important news bulletin:

I hate packing.

I promised R that I would pack like a Tasmanian devil this weekend. I have no motivation to pack, and I’ve been doing everything I can to procrastinate on it for the past few weeks.

My ‘Taz’ imitation lasted until I finished packing the guest bathroom, which was the first room I tackled. It consisted of a few towels, a couple of candles, a flower arrangement and a harness thingamajig with suction cups on both ends that is (theoretically, anyway) supposed to keep the dogs from leaping out of the tub when we’re giving them a bath.

It took me all of 10 minutes. And after that, I was ready to be done with the packing. But I pressed on, mostly because R wouldn’t let me stop.

In the room where we keep the cats when we’re not home, I dumped scratching posts, kitty beds and toys into a box without bothering to vacuum the coating of hair off them first. My mother is one of those people who cleans her entire house every weekend, and the idea of packing something without cleaning it first is beyond comprehension to her. The first thing she will do as we begin to get settled is unpack the pets’ stuff. Let’s hope I get to that box first, because if I don’t, the shock of it may be more than she can handle.

There’s still a ton of packing left to do. Did I mention that moving day is this Saturday?

It should be an interesting day. R has no problem paying other people thousands of dollars to paint the inside of our house, install landscape, etc. But spend a few hundred bucks to hire movers to load our stuff up, drive it over to the new house, and unload it? No way! He insists that he and his dad are going to move us. I don’t think it’s a money thing – it seems to be more a matter of machismo.

But here’s the thing. R is not in shape to do this, and neither is his dad. Not that I’m the picture of fitness, because I’m certainly not. But I have learned to recognize my limits. R, on the other hand, got out of bed this morning by rolling gingerly onto his side while moaning, then slowly slid his legs over the edge of the bed until he was kneeling on the ground, then put his hands on top of the bed and used his arms to push himself up, his face contorting in pain the whole time.

This, after only half a day of packing. I can only imagine what he’ll be like next Sunday morning, after moving the entire contents of a house into and then back out of a truck.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…”

It Didn't Work

The first beta was less than 2. I don't know what the second one was because I was in a meeting when the clinic called and couldn't answer my phone. But seeing as how the message was to stop taking my meds, clearly the second beta didn't come back with some fantastically high number.

Our clinic usually doesn't give out the results until after the second beta. But on Tuesday I couldn't stand the not knowing any more, so I got the cycle coordinator to tell me. I can be a bit of a PITA patient, so she doesn't even fight it anymore - I think she figures it's easier to just do what I want, because then I'll go away and won't keep bugging her.

I didn't tell R until last night. I wanted to let him have one more day in the Land of Hope, because he was so happy there. As I was walking out of my building at work, he called to find out if I'd heard anything yet. I'd been really calm up until that point - faking hope during the injections he helped me with on Tuesday night, not crying at all since getting the news. But telling him gets me every time. I sank down on a curb in the parking lot and sobbed and sobbed as I told him. I was probably flashing the world since I was in a skirt, and other employees were driving by on their way out of the parking lot, but I didn't care.

At least we have the house to focus on and keep us distracted. I'm hoping to talk to Doc today to get his thoughts, and then I think we're going to do the next FET in the beginning of December. We'll find out the results right at Christmas. A couple years ago, there's no way I would have been willing to do a cycle with that kind of timing. But now my thinking is that we have no child now, so in that sense, how can it get any worse? If it's a negative, we're simply in the same place we are right now. If it's a positive, it's another reason to (reservedly, with great caution) celebrate.

Oh, and you want to hear something ironic? R and I tried to adopt for two years. We let all of our family, friends and neighbors know that we were wanting to adopt, but none of them ever heard of any potential situations. Now, since Friday, two friends and a neighbor have all said, "I just heard of someone I know who is pregnant and planning to put their baby up for adoption. Would you be interested?" It would figure. I've left it up to them to find out more information for us. We wouldn't be totally against it, but given that we've already lost tens of thousands of dollars on that process, we're also not willing to be matched with someone who needs major living expenses for several months.

I haven't told R about any of these situations. Apparently, I'm getting very good at keeping things from him. That's probably not a good thing, but sparing him dashed hopes and pain spares me pain. And right now, I've got just about all the pain I can handle.

God, when does this end? When is it our turn? It seems like almost everyone we know who is dealing with infertility, in the blogosphere or in real life, is having success while we're still left standing here, watching them all go on to have the happy lives we can barely even dream of anymore. I know that's not true of everyone, that some of you who are reading this are still in the boat with us. I wish it was a place none of us had to be.

What to Say?

I’ve been a bad blogger lately, I know. I could use the excuse of the new house and new position at work, and that would be true. (The only reason I’m getting a few minutes of uninterrupted time on the computer now is because R left early this morning to go meet the painter at the new house. Otherwise, after two minutes he’d be scolding me to go pack something or do something else move-related, which I am so not in the mood to do even though I should.)

But the other reason I haven’t been blogging is that I’ve simply been trying to avoid facing infertility altogether. Kind of difficult to do in some ways, I know, given that I’m sticking needles in my backside every night. But it feels like I just don’t have the energy to face it anymore. It’s been 3 ½ years, and I’m tired.

I’m scared, too. You’d think I’d be on cloud 9 given what is about to follow, but I’m not. I’m just scared. The FET, like our fresh cycle this summer, went even better than we could have imagined. Two blasts were thawed, and both survived. The embryologist described one as “spectacular” and the other as “very good.” Doc asked her if he should talk with us about thawing and transferring a third one, and she told him absolutely not. When he did the actual transfer, he was able to see the exact spot he wanted to put them in, and he was incredibly happy with how that spot looked. So happy that I seriously thought he might start jumping up and down around the room after it was done.

My NK cell level was retested after the infusion, and the fat cells seem to have done their job – the level dropped from 13.9 percent to 8.6 percent. The clinic wants it to be less than 10 percent, so I’m in the right range.

So now we’ve transferred two embryos that probably couldn’t be any more perfect and placed them on a lining that probably couldn’t be any more perfect. I’m on metformin to address the PCOS hormone imbalance, low-dose aspirin and Lovenox to address the blood clotting mutations, steroids and fat cell infusions to address the immune issues, antibiotics to prevent any possible post-transfer infection and estrogen and PIO in what I suspect are doses adequate enough for three pregnant women.

So, given all that, what if it still doesn’t work? What’s left? Like I said – scared. Betas are Monday and Wednesday, and at this point I honestly can’t say which way I think it will go. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

The “Maybe This Really Did Work” Category

• Transfer was at noon on Sunday. I saw a tiny little bit of brown spotting late Monday morning, but nothing since. This has never happened before, not after any of the IUIs or the last transfer. Maybe it was implantation spotting.
  
• Since Monday, I’ve been even more tired. Maybe it’s because of pregnancy hormones.
  
• Since Monday night, I’ve been having vivid dreams. (Unfortunately, they’ve mostly been dreams of my mother and I having screaming matches in our new house or dreams of me going ballistic over something at our old fertility clinic in front of a waiting room full of people.) But still, I rarely dream hard enough to remember it in the morning. Maybe it’s those good ol’ pregnancy hormones again.
  
• I felt a little bit nauseous yesterday morning, around the same time that I usually did during pregnancy #1. Maybe it’s the beginnings of morning sickness.
  
• I felt a brief, little, painful twinge in my uterus yesterday as R and I were driving to the final walk-through for our house. Maybe it was an implantation pain.
  

The “Who Am I Kidding” Category

• Transfer was at noon on Sunday. I saw a tiny little bit of brown spotting late Monday morning, but nothing since. Probably a little bit of old blood from the transfer.
  
• Since Monday, I’ve been even more tired. It’s probably because I started the progesterone supps on Monday night, adding even more progesterone to my system. But wait! The extra tiredness started Monday afternoon, before the first supp. Maybe it really is because of pregnancy hormones. Yes, why don’t I just continue torturing myself over this one tiny little point…
  
• Since Monday night, I’ve been having vivid dreams. (Unfortunately, they’ve mostly been dreams of my mother and I having screaming matches in our new house or dreams of me going ballistic over something at our old fertility clinic in front of a waiting room full of people.) Forget pregnancy hormones – can we say “subconscious fears coming to the surface during the dream stage”?
  
• I felt a little bit nauseous yesterday morning, around the same time that I usually did during pregnancy #1. Maybe a greasy, spicy dinner full of salsa and a quesadilla covered in green chili strips wasn’t such a great idea after all.
  
• I felt a brief, little, painful twinge in my uterus yesterday as R and I were driving to the final walk-through for our house. If only I had a nickel for every time I thought a uterine twinge was the sign of a pregnancy.
  
• And, the one that’s stressing me out the most: Every night since the transfer, I wake up around 3:30 a.m. because I have to go to the bathroom and my bladder refuses to let me go back to sleep until I do. But I slept right through last night until the alarm went off at 6 o’ clock this morning. The same thing happened with this summer’s cycle – I kept having to get up to go to the bathroom (usually at 2:30 a.m.), then the day before beta #1 it was 4 a.m., then the day of beta #1 it was 6 a.m. I’m afraid that means my uterus is shrinking back down and not pushing on my bladder as much. Especially because I drank plenty of milk last night, so I know it wasn’t that my bladder was empty.
  

I’m probably not going to POAS this time. House stuff will keep my mind occupied this weekend, and I really, really don’t want to start out the week by staring at an overly white pee stick first thing on Monday morning. On Wednesday, I have a meeting with an out-of-town vendor at 4 p.m. I think I’m going to tell the nurse at the clinic “don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Either way, I don’t want the news until after the meeting.

Again, sorry for being such a bad blogger. I’m going to try to catch up with all of you this weekend.

By Golly, She Really Has Lost Her Mind

I didn't mean to disappear again. It has unexpectedly turned into a crazy couple of weeks, part of it self-inflicted, part of it not.

I've been given a new, interim position at work. I'm very excited about it, because it allows me to focus more in depth on a few areas rather than spreading myself over many areas, which is what my current position entails. If I do well, it will become a permanent position. The downside is that I have two months to prove myself, but I'm still doing several pieces of my other position, so I'm not able to focus all of my energies on the new one. Should be an interesting couple of months...

Then, as if we don't have enough chaos in our lives as it is, I dragged R to go look at new homes on a whim over the weekend. In a few hours, we're signing the papers to buy a ridiculously large, gorgeous spec home. This Friday, we're out of town at the clinic so that I can get loaded up on fat cells and have an ultrasound to see how my lining is progressing. The following Friday is the expected transfer date. Then, the Friday after that is the day I have my first beta, which will also probably be the day we get the keys to the new house.

We hadn't planned on this - like I said, we went looking on a whim. So our current house is not on the market and is nowhere near ready to be shown. But there are some reasons behind my madness. My mom will be moving in with us because she is in her 70s and it's getting harder and harder for her to work full time. (Because of the financial situation my parents' divorce put her in, she can't afford to live on her own unless she works.) This house gives us all enough space that we will hopefully be able to coexist without wanting to kill each other. Plus, the builder was offering huge incentives on the house in terms of a price discount and closing costs/loan rates because they want to get the house closed before their new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. So once we get our house and my mom's house sold, we'll have a small mortgage that will allow me to stay home or work part-time at some point.

The next couple of months will be interesting. I had a check up with my regular doc yesterday, who is also my mom's doc and knows us both very well. I think at this point, he wants to insert a permanent IV into me and keep Ativan (anti-anxiety drug) flowing through me on a continuous basis.

I am horribly behind on catching up with all of you, please forgive me. I'll be back to catch up as soon as I can.

Better Fertility Through Fat

Our first frozen embryo cycle is officially underway. Lupron? Check. Delestrogen? Check. Ultrasound appointments scheduled, plane tickets reserved, infusion of fat cells planned? Check, check, and check.

Yep, fat cells. And I’m not talking collagen to add extra pout to my lips, which, believe me, are pouting plenty on their own over this latest development.

Doc wanted me to repeat a few tests before we do the FET. He doesn’t have all of the results yet, but the NK (natural killer) cells results came back today. I had done that test and several others at a local lab during The Bloodletting of 2005. The NK results were normal that time, but Doc wanted me to repeat a few of them through a lab he uses. This time, my NK level came back at 13.9 percent, with anything over 10 percent considered elevated.

I haven’t done a lot of homework on NK cells yet, but my rudimentary understanding is that if they’re elevated, it can mean that they’re attacking the embryo and the developing placenta instead of recognizing them as things that are okay to be growing in the uterus.

REs who believe in immune issues often use a blood product called IVIg to treat women who have elevated NK cell levels. Doc is among those who prescribe IVIg, but he and one of his colleagues have also recently begun using something called intralipids in place of IVIg. It’s hundreds of dollars per IV infusion rather than thousands, it only takes an hour as opposed to three or four hours, and it’s not a human product, so it doesn’t pose a risk of disease transmission. There isn’t a lot of data on intralipids as a treatment for NK cells in infertility yet, because it isn’t widely used for that purpose at this time, but Doc says success rates are proving to be about the same with IVIg.

The intralipids infusion involves an IV bag full of a milky white solution that includes 20 percent fat cells (from soybean oil I believe), hence the “lipids” part of “intralipids.” I asked if I couldn’t just eat a couple extra bags of potato chips instead, but no such luck. The infusion is scheduled for mid-September, about a week before transfer.

Like most of you, there are things I never thought I would have to do, such as give myself shots or go through IVF. But allowing myself to be injected with fat cells?!? That is so far beyond “things I never thought I would have to do” that I’m at a loss for words in some respects.

I do, however, still have the ability to form at least a couple of thoughts:

1) Boy, are the future kiddos ever going to owe me for this! Forget the “do you know how many hours of labor I had to go through for you??” guilt trip – they’ll have to sit through my “do you know how many fat cells I had to have injected for you??” tale of woe. (I’m joking, I’m joking. Mostly, anyway.)

2) Since I have to suck it up and have this infusion, I think it would only be fair if I could at least direct the fat cells as to where they’re allowed to take up residence: “The cells on my hips and thighs already have plenty of company, thank you, so can you please make your way to…well, never mind that, there are very few slender places on my body to begin with, and I’d really prefer that you not make any of those places bigger, either.”

“So once you’ve done your duty by binding to the NK cells and neutralizing them, can you please just make a speedy exit out of my body? Because, let’s be honest here, even I know my threats to exercise you away will only incite mirth and not instill fear. And I certainly don’t need any more of you jiggling around on me while you’re laughing.”

So there you have it, the latest weapon in the infertility fight: bags of fat. Is it just me, or is all of this starting to sound a little bit insane??

Following Our Hearts

Despite what my silence since the second beta post probably implies, R and I are okay.

It’s just now occurring to me that I never mentioned that we have frozen blastocysts. Ten of them, actually – four that are Grade A, six that are Grade B. Because of that, R is still very optimistic and took the news of the negative betas pretty well.

The thing I was dreading most about the whole cycle was how he would react if we didn't get a positive. Once I was able to believe he really was okay (either that, or he’s become a very good liar as of late), I was fine. Well, at least as fine as one can be under these circumstances. I just didn't think I was up for handling it if he was as devastated as he was by the first miscarriage or as angry and disappointed as he was by the second one. I'm to the point where it feels like I can take just about any pain myself, but please don't make me have to watch him go through any more pain and heartache.

So, the plan is that we’re going to do an FET cycle next month. Since the betas weren’t ever even at a level of 1, Doc said we could go right into a cycle without having to wait a month. I started the BCPs last Thursday, and the Lupron shots begin again on Saturday. The transfer will be sometime in the second half of September.

Right now I’m just trying to focus on being positive and visualizing that I can stay pregnant. I haven’t exactly been a shining beacon of optimism these past few years, and it doesn’t help that my dad called me today to say, “Honey, God spoke to me this morning and told me that what you’re doing – the treatment – won’t work.”

In all fairness to him, he did go on to relay what he believes to be a very positive message: that God will heal us and R and I will become “very fertile” and will have biological children…just not through treatment.

R and I are Christian, and I credit my faith largely to my dad. However, he has some views on faith and God that I don’t necessarily subscribe to in the same way. I absolutely believe that God can and does heal people, so I’m not making fun of his comments. Miracles happen. To R and me, our pregnancies, as brief as they were, were miracles nonetheless.

But I also feel like we are doing what God wants us to by going through IVF at this point in time. That we’re with the right clinic, with the right doctor. I can’t say for certain that I know IVF is what will get us to parenthood, but I have a peace about pursuing this that I didn’t have when we were pursuing adoption.

Deep, deep down, I always felt like I was forcing adoption too soon; it was a back-up plan I was trying to keep under my control in case God didn’t “come through” for us with fertility treatment. I needed to let go of that and step out in faith to do IVF without a safety net that I had created for myself, if that makes any sense, so we let our adoptin certification expire this summer. That’s not to say that I wasn’t sincere in my desire to adopt, because I absolutely was. And despite all of the heartache we’ve endured in that area, if IVF doesn’t work, we will go back to adoption, albeit probably via an agency or international route. But it wasn’t the right time, we weren’t doing things in the order God wanted us to, and underneath it all, as much as I tried to bury it and ignore it, I felt that.

Now I feel like we’re on the right path for us at this moment and time. R and I prayed about starting our family pretty much every single night for seven months before we started actually trying to conceive. We’ve prayed through all of the pain and misery of the past three and a half years. Sometimes they’ve been internal, “how can we bear this, why are You allowing this to happen to us, I’m angry at You, God” kinds of prayers, but we haven’t stopped praying.

If a time comes when IVF is no longer the path we should pursue, I believe we’ll feel God leading us in a different direction. I just hope my dad can accept that we’re choosing to follow our own hearts on this one, and that they’re telling us something different than his is telling him.

It's Official

The results were the same today, so this cycle is officially a BFN.

We're doing okay. I went to lunch and a movie with a couple of friends on Saturday, and R and I jumped into shopping for a small home improvement project on Sunday, so those things kept me from dwelling on the likely reality of today's news.

We have a consult with our RE tomorrow to review the cycle and find out if there's any more testing he wants us to do or any changes he wants to make in protocol before we do an FET. If he says it's okay and I get a period this week, I'll start Lupron again on Aug. 26 for the FET. If he wants me to wait a month or so, then the FET wouldn't be until October.

But I'm anxious to get going again, and I'm feeling great physically, so hopefully he'll let us cycle sooner rather than later. My hormones are normally out of whack, as is the nature of PCOS. I think the stims and the progesterone make my hormone levels much more balanced, because my skin has been so much more clear these past three weeks, and I feel better physically than I normally do. Silver linings, people, silver linings. I'm trying to focus on the positives.

Interestingly enough, when the clinical coordinator called to tell me the results this evening, she also mentioned that she would recommend transferring three embryos for the FET. She said she thinks there's a better chance with three than with two, but of course she also said to talk with Doc about it. Given that he offered to transfer three for our fresh cycle, he'd prbably be agreeable to it.

At the beginning of this journey, my mom kept cautioning me about all the bad things that she thought could happen - like the drugs causing cancer, or me having a "litter," etc. She would "tsk, tsk" any time we started a new protocol. Tonight, she said, "I think you should transfer back three or even four." When I reminded her that she used to be against treatment because she was afraid I'd wind up with seven or eight at once, she replied, "I'm much more educated now." And really, she is. She has a much, much better understanding of infertility and treatment processes than a lot of infertility patients themselves, much less her fellow 70-somethings.

Then I teased her that if we wound up with triplets, she'd have to pitch in to help. "Oh, I've already thought of that! I have two arms and a big lap. I'm all ready for 'em - bring 'em on!" she told me.

Easier said than done. But who knows? Maybe we will transfer three after all.

Three Strikes and You're Out

Great eggs, great sperm, terrific embryos, a beautiful lining.

Big, fat negative beta.

It came back at less than 1.

I Caved...

...and it ain't pretty.

Yes, you guessed it. I HPT'd this morning, and it was negative. Not even a hint of a line, no matter how hard I looked. And believe me, I looked hard.

Today is 8dp3dt (well, technically 7.5dp3dt, since my transfer was in the afternoon). I want to try to stay positive because I know that it's still early, but I don't think this bodes well.

The first beta is tomorrow (Friday). Since 48 hours would be on Sunday, my second beta isn't until Monday. For some strange reason, our clinic refuses to give the results until after the second beta.

Unfortunately, I have things at work on Tuesday and Wednesday that I just can't get out of. So if the results aren't what we hope for, I'd like a little time over the weekend to deal with that. I think I'm going to try to get the lab tech to give us the results tomorrow. She knows me and our situation, and she was good about sneaking the results to me during the May pregnancy.

Something NOT To Say While Helping Your Wife With Her PIO Shot

All is going well here. We got home fine, then jumped back into work, although I probably haven’t been as productive as I could be this week. I had some twinging, sharp-ish kinds of pains intermittently throughout Saturday afternoon and Sunday, so I’m hoping those were implantation cramps, but time will tell.

For some reason, I’ve started having a slightly tougher time with the shots. It reminds me of when I was in gymnastics while I was growing up. I’d learn to do a tough trick, like a backflip, without spotting from a coach. I’d do it for a few weeks, and then one day I’d regress. I’d walk into the gym and say, “Uh-uh, no way, too scary. I could fall and break my neck.”

I’ve run into a similar mindset with the shots. “I don’t want to stick this needle into me, it will hurt.”

The other night, R was helping me with the PIO shot. Laying on my side in bed, I tried to stick the needle in. I got the tip of it in, and it hurt. Ouch! I pulled it back out, and a drop of blood appeared on my skin.

R tried to be encouraging. “Here, why don’t you try that spot.” He pointed to an unbruised area of my backside.

“I. Don’t. Want. To. The last one really hurt.”

His eyes widened in surprise and fear. This was not something he had anticipated. “Oh, come on, you can do it.”

“I. Don’t Want. To.”

Now the fear turned into a look of terror. He was probably envisioning having to sit on me and jam the needle in himself.

Finally I worked up the courage and gave it another try. The needle went right in, no pain at all. As R was pushing in the plunger, he said, “Boy will I be glad when we don’t have to do this any more!”

I don’t know if it was his tone, or the absurdity of his use of “I” when it was me who was getting the shot, or just the emotions of the past couple of weeks rising to the surface. Whatever the reason, his comment struck me as outrageously humorous.

I began to laugh. Big, whole-body guffaws that made it look like I was having convulsions. While the needle was still in me, the syringe now waving madly back and forth.

R did not expect this reaction. His head snapped up. “Stop that! Stop that right now! You’re making the needle move!”

Which only served to make me laugh harder, until tears poured down my face. I tried to stop, tried to bring myself under control. Finally, when I had calmed down enough, I told him to continue pushing the plunger.

As soon as he started, the laughter began again. It took us about three minutes of starts and stops to get the last half of the PIO in. R has vowed never to make any more comments during the shots, lest he trigger a repeat performance of the hilarity.

Transfer Update

I've asked R to put these two posts up for me...

Transfer was Wednesday afternoon, and it went well. We transferred two 8-cell embryos that were graded Stage 1. (If you want to read about the full Day 3 embryo report, please see the post below this one.) Betas are next Friday and Monday the 14th.

The afternoon was not without it's moments, though.

I'm prone to leg cramps, and I think that drinking a lot of water quickly can trigger them. So there I was, laying on my back, the transfer table angled so that my head was lower than my pelvis. Doc had just transferred the embryos.

Then the cramping set in.

Both of my hamstrings began burning. I focused on not allowing myself to bounce around and dislodge the embryos. I tried to will the cramps away, but no luck.

After what seemed like an eternity but was really less than 10 seconds, I had to speak up and tell Doc what was going on. Still positioned with a full view of my nether region, he had to lift up one leg toward the ceiling to relieve the cramp, then the other leg. Laying there with two embryos newly transplanted inside of me, I was doing what looked like can-can dance kicks, wearing nothing but a paper drape below the waist.

I would have been mortified, if I hadn't already lost all semblance of modesty and dignity about 18 vaginal ultrasounds ago.

Day 3 Embryo Report

I've been very, very fortunate and blessed to have (so far, at least) the kind of IVF cycle that I wish every one of us could have. Of course, the betas are still a ways away, and I know that not all great cycles result in great betas, so my optimism is still very much guarded.

Nevertheless, I am feeling what I can only describe as "survivor's guilt" for having the cycle go well so far when I know that some of you are struggling right now.

I realize some of you are curious about how the rest of the embryos are doing. The short answer is that they're doing well. But I don't want to put the details in the post itself, so as strange as this sounds, I'm going to put the report in the Comments section instead.

If you want the details, please go to the Comments section of this post. If now is a tough time and "the transfer went well" is about all of the news you want to hear, please skip the Comments. And if you could use a good laugh and haven't already seen the post above this one, go read about how I wound up doing some physician-assisted, can-can style dance moves while still on the table after transfer.

I Am A Wimp

This will be brief, because I am sitting in an underground parking garage, with the laptop propped at an odd angle on my lap in order to get a wireless internet connection, one which alternates between having full connectivity and none at all.

At any rate, I just wanted to post to let you all know that it turns out I don't have OHSS. Instead, I am simply a wimp when it comes to pain. That's not a surprise - I readily acknowledge that I have practically no tolerance threshold for pain.

My ovaries are irritated with me, and they're making their feelings known, but yesterday's ultrasound determined that there's no excess fluid in them, in my abdomen or around my liver or gallbladder. So, like I said, I'm a wimp.

Thank you all for your words of encouragement and support. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to post during the next few days since we don't have internet access in the room, but I'll probably make R find a way to post at least one update to let you know how transfer goes. It's set for 2 p.m. tomorrow.

I'll be sooo glad to get back home, where I can jump online any time I want!

Retrieval and Fert Report

The retrieval went very well. My doctor was able to get 32 eggs. He warned us that not all of them would be mature, because he said he went into every follicle, even the smaller ones, in order to try to help "deflate" the ovaries.

We got the update today - 20 were M1s (the most mature), 7 were M2s (still mature and good, just not as mature as the M1s), 4 were immature and 1 was non-viable. They fertilized the 27 M1s and M2s, and of those, 17 fertilized normally. We are very, very happy!

The only spot of concern at the moment is that I may be developing a mild case of OHSS. I'm more bloated than I was before the retrieval, and when I lay down, it kind of hurts to breathe. My doctor was monitoring me closely for OHSS and I hadn't shown any signs through retrieval, but I know it can sometimes begin to develop after retrieval. He's bringing me back in this afternoon, I'm assuming for another ultrasound. If I do have it, hopefully it's a mild case that resolves quickly. Right now, transfer is set for Wednesday afternoon.

The Waiting Line - The IM trigger shot went fine in terms of the injection itself - no pain or anything like that. We had a little bit of drama before doing the injection, though. The pharmacy was supposed to have given me a syringe with a 1 1/2 inch needle to draw up the injection and another 1 1/2 needle to swap out and actually inject with.

It turned out the second needle was only 1 inch, but we didn't realize that until I had already put it on the syringe. I was going to swap it out with the 1 1/2 inch, because I figured how dull could that needle be - it was only poked through the rubber of the vial once, right? Well, I had put the 1 inch needle on so tight that neither R nor I could get it off. After a couple minutes of panic, I decided there really wasn't much that could be done, because the 1 inch clearly wasn't coming off and I didn't have another vial of trigger meds to draw up, so I just went ahead and injected with the 1 inch. It seems to have worked out fine.

But, about that "how dull could it be" question - trust me on this, the answer is "too dull to use." I did the first PIO injection last night. The pharmacy and the clinical coordinator said to use a 22 1/2 gauge. But the PIO I have is in cottonseed oil, which seems to be thinner than sesame oil, so I didn't think there would be a problem using a 25 gauge.

And, there probably isn't, except that it needs to be a 25 gauge that hasn't already been pushed through a rubber stopper. I stuck the 25 gauge in my ample posterior. It hurt a little as it went in, and then it stopped. I thought it was probably just because my hand was shaking a bit. So I pushed harder. After all, fat tissue is soft, right? And I've certainly got more than 1/16th of an inch of that to push through. But it wouldn't keep going.

So I pulled it out. And because I hadn't learned my lesson the first time, I stuck it in another spot. Another little bit of pain as it went in. Another refusal to go any farther. I contemplated calling the clinical coordinator and begging her call in a prescription of 25 gauge needles to a local pharmacy, but then I decided to just suck it up for the night, so I took off the 25 gauge (fortunately I had learned my lesson from the trigger and hadn't screwed it on too tight) and put on a 22 1/2 gauge.

Let me just say this: A sharp 22 1/2 gauge is much, much better than a dull 25 gauge. It didn't hurt going through the skin, and it easily went all the way in. The PIO didn't hurt going in, either. I just injected it very, very slowly.

So, I survived through my first PIO injection. I am still going to ask for the script for the 25 gauges when I go in for the ultrasound this afternoon, though.

I'm running out of computer battery power again, but I'll try to catch up with as many blogs as I can until I do.

Ready, Set, Retrieve

It's official - trigger is tonight, and retrieval is Sunday morning. It's been two years since I've done an IM injection, so tonight should be interesting. I'm picking R up at the airport in a few minutes, so at least he'll be here to talk me into jamming that looong needle into my butt when I begin to whine and freak out!

Today I had 20 follicles, and lining was at 10.5. We also got R's latest DNA fragmentation results today, after enduring a little bit of drama with the lab that did the test. His fragmentation was 24 percent, which is his lowest level ever. So, he'll be producing a fresh sample after all this weekend. (We were prepared to use a sample he had frozen this spring if necessary.)

So, prayers seem to be getting answered left and right for us this week. I'm very, very thankful. And, selfishly, hoping they continue to be answered in such a positive way.

Thank you all for your support. I'm not getting to log on as much as I had expected to, but I'll find a way to post on Sunday.

Also, please keep my friend in your thoughts. Her first clot resolved itself, but a second one appeared this week. The babies are still doing fine at this point, but she is now on a schedule of weekly ultrasounds. Why oh why can't this ever be easy for those of us who have had to go through so much to get here? J, if you're reading this, know that I'm thinking of you...

A Quick Update

It turns out we don't have internet access in our hotel room like I thought we did, so this is the first chance I've had to log on since we got here Sunday night.

I'll post more later, but right now I want to catch up with all of you, so I'll make this quick. Yesterday's ultrasound showed 18 measurable follicles and a few more that may or may not catch up, a lining of 9 mm with a triple stripe, an E2 of 1068 and no signs of OHSS. It's bizarre - I'm almost not quite sure what to do with so much good news. But I'm very, very thankful.

It looks like trigger will probably be Friday night, with a Sunday morning retrieval.

Ok, on to all of your blogs. Be back later.

P.S. Meg - Two weeks because they brought me out early to monitor closely for OHSS. My first stim ultrasound was on Monday. If they hadn't been concerned about OHSS, it wouldn't have been until today, and I would have only been here 8-10 days.

The Stimming Begins

The baseline ultrasound went well yesterday. 10 follicles on one side, 11 on the other. My estradiol level was 15. I have to confess that I don't know much about what estradiol levels are supposed to be, because my former clinic didn't test them during IUI cycles. But I'm assuming 15 was fine, since the cycle coordinator told me to start Follistim last night.

My friend was able to see the twins' heartbeats yesterday, and they are measuring pretty close to on target - 7w2d and 6w5d, she was 7w1d yesterday. However, she's having a bit of a scary time. She started bleeding heavily on Tuesday and went to the emergency department. There's a blood clot in her uterus. (I wonder if this is the same thing as a subchorionic hematoma?)

Her RE told her yesterday that it will likely resolve itself and pass through, and he doesn't think the babies are in any danger. Still, she's on bed rest for a few days and she's understandably concerned. She goes in for another ultrasound next week.

I know this is short - especially for me - but I have to get to work. There's about two days of work for me to wrap up, and I've got all of six hours left to do it. I'll post again once I get settled in the hotel.

So Far, So Good

Things are going as well as I could ask for – only one bruise, no headaches, no unusual grumpiness. R is particularly grateful for that last one. (He still harbors bad memories of our IUI days, perhaps because I once locked him out of our bedroom in a Clomid-induced fit of irritation and then refused to tell him what it was that he had done to tick me off.)

I’m making another day trip to the RE on Thursday for my baseline. That’s also the day my friend is scheduled for an ultrasound to check for the twins’ heartbeats. Please think good thoughts for both of us.

The good news continues on the Pooch front too. The vet repeated her bloodwork on Sunday, and it showed that her pancreatic enzymes have returned to the normal level. Yea! One liver enzyme is still elevated but is also heading in the right direction. The vet said it takes that enzyme longer to return to normal, so he isn’t concerned about that.

I’ve started packing for the cycle. The process of packing always reminds me of two of my great-aunts. When I was about 10 years old, they came to visit us as part of a month-long trip that included stops in several states, capped off by an Alaskan cruise. They showed up with one suitcase apiece. For an entire month’s trip!

I did not inherit their ability to pack lightly.

You know that saying, “Pack everything you think you’ll need, then unpack half of it, and that’s probably more than enough”? Um, well, I tend to subscribe to the opposite theory: Pack everything you think you’ll need and then about 50 percent more just in case, because if you don’t bring it, it’s a given that you’ll need it at some point.

Couple that theory with the fact that I’m going to be living in the same, small hotel room for two weeks (half of that time by myself, which is longer than I’ve ever lived by myself in my entire life), and you wind up with a packing list that includes:

• A very comfy bean bag chair, purchased especially for this trip. Hey, I figure I’ll get tired of sitting on the bed and the desk chair after a couple of days. And besides, it’s purple, which is my favorite color, so of course it was meant to be.
  
• A vase. Because one needs flowers to make the aforementioned small hotel room feel like home, right? R just rolled his eyes, threw up his hands and began trying to figure out how to pack it in a way that won’t result in breaking it.
  
• My new baking pan. As if I needed yet another baking pan. But maybe if I bring the RE’s staff treats, they’ll go easy on me with the blood draws. A little sweet bribery never hurt anyone.
  
• Two binders full of recipes, which I plan to make in the room’s kitchenette despite the fact that I (ahem) do not cook. Apparently, I expect these drugs not only to help create a baby, but also to magically transform me into Martha Stewart overnight.
  
• About a dozen books, ranging from romance novels to a how-to-learn-HTML-in-one-day manual to Steven Covey’s famed 7 Habits book, which I started reading more than a year ago but have yet to finish. Not only am I going to morph into Martha, I’m also going to pick up some new skills for work (the HTML book), discover the purpose of my life and figure out how to effectively fulfill it, all in the span of about two weeks. While also trying to grow a couple dozen eggs.

I’m not over-reaching, am I?

Back to the packing…

1 Injection Down, 70 or So to Go

As you can tell, I’ve been behind on blogging and commenting. I started to catch up last night, but I still have a ways to go, so please forgive me if yours is one of the blogs I still need to visit.

I can’t believe a week has gone by already. It’s all such a blur – I’m not sure where it went or what I’ve been doing for this past week, other than working like a crazy person. One of my co-workers gave her notice last week, so my boss’ team is now officially only 50 percent staffed. When I take time off for the cycle, that number will drop to 25 percent – yikes!

I wish I had something profound to write related to this cycle, but I don’t. At least, not at this point. Maybe all of the drugs will eventually give me inspiration. Speaking of the drugs, I did my first Lupron shot this morning. And, as you can see, I lived to tell about it.

The peace I’d been feeling temporarily took a back seat to hyperventilation when I got up today, but ultimately it was much, much easier than I was making it out to be in my mind. It had been almost two years since I’d done an injection, so I was nervous. But the needle didn’t hurt at all going in, and it was such a small amount of liquid to inject that it turned out to be no big deal. One of my biggest fears was that the Lupron would sting, but it didn’t.

Updates: My friend’s first ultrasound went really well. Since she was only at 5w2d, they didn’t see a heartbeat, which they didn’t expect to. However, they did see two sacs – she’s got twins in there! I’m very happy for her.

The Pooch is still having ups and downs, but at least now we know what the problem is: She has pancreatitis, or inflammation of the pancreas. She had a relapse again on Friday, so I took her back to the vet (third time in two weeks, they’re getting to know us really well) on Saturday. They ran some blood tests and called yesterday to tell us the results.

The good news is that she seems to have a relatively mild case of it, and it’s possible that once we get it under control this may be the only episode of it that she has. The bad news is that it’s often triggered by giving dogs high-fat food they’re not supposed to have, like table scraps, and getting my mom to follow the “nothing but kibble” rule is going to be tough. Our zoo will be staying with her while we cycle, and she likes to spoil them.

I’m hoping she’ll cooperate when I make it very clear that 1) pancreatitis can turn serious and even fatal, and 2) I’m going to be super stressed about the Pooch if I think there’s even a tiny chance she’ll be fed something other than kibble and that the stress could mess up the IVF cycle. (Disclaimer: No, I don’t really believe that stress causes infertility or causes IVF cycles to fail, but if thinking so is what gets her to cooperate, I’ll take it.)

My mom is one of those people who, when a doctor says not to do/eat/take something, responds with “Oh, what does he know? Doing (whatever the “something” is) can’t really be that bad.” Then she goes ahead and does it anyway, just to prove that no one can tell her what to do. So, I’m afraid she’ll dismiss the vet’s orders of no table scraps or treats. But I’m also hoping that if I throw in the “stressing me out could mess up the IVF cycle” idea on top of it, the potential guilt will be enough to motivate her to cooperate. We shall see.

1,000 Things, Part 1

Suddenly I have 1,000 things to say. Very few of them are related to each other, and most don’t seem like they rise to the level of being worthy of their own posts – either that, or I’m just feeling too frantic to write separate posts for all of them right now – so here they are, in no particular order.

Continued Happy News
My friend’s second beta continued to rise appropriately. Hurray for her! Her first ultrasound (at 5w2d) is on Friday.

Doggie Update
The pooch seems to be doing a bit better, although we had to make another trip to the vet yesterday. I finally felt okay with leaving her home alone on Friday, so I worked in the office that day. When I got home, there was evidence she was relapsing a bit, but not as bad as what we came home to earlier in the week. The vet gave us an antibiotic to add to the other two pills she’s already taking.

I hope this clears up before we have to leave for the cycle. I’ve never been away from her for more than seven days before, so this is going to be a stressful experience for her and for me. I thought about bringing her with us, but she hasn’t traveled with us overnight before, and I think that would also be stressful on top of the cycle. Plus, R will still be here with her for the first week, then she and the rest of the zoo will be over at my mom’s, who lives two miles from the vet and has pet-sat for us hundreds of times.

On Being a Bad Sister
I’m in a fairly good place right now, feeling peace with our decision to cycle and where to cycle. I can be happy for my friend, because I know what she went through to achieve this pregnancy. But today, when my brother called, I saw who it was on the caller ID and I told R to let it go to voice mail. I haven’t listened to the message yet.

I do not know my brother well. And I’m even less well acquainted with my sisters. They are full siblings to each other from a marriage of our dad’s prior to him marrying my mom and having me. It’s a bizarre situation – we didn’t grow up together, I’ve only ever seen them in person a couple of times in my life, we’re very different people in many ways. Still, my brother deserves all the credit for working to keep our relationship (if you could call it that) afloat, and I do love them all, even though I don’t quite understand that since I don’t really know them.

The thing is, my brother and his girlfriend are expecting sometime this month. It wasn’t planned. Neither was the pregnancy that resulted in his daughter with another girlfriend several years ago. My brother knows what R and I have been through. He doesn’t mean to be insensitive, but he just doesn’t get it. When he called to tell me a couple of months ago, he must’ve said “My girlfriend and I are going to have a baby” at least five times. Everything in the conversation ultimately made its way back to that point. I managed to force out a normal-sounding “Congratulations,” but I got off the phone as quickly as I could.

Today is the second time he’s called since that conversation. I’ve been avoiding him. I didn’t even listen to his message yet this time, because I’m afraid he’s going to tell me the baby was born. And as much as I want to be happy for him, I feel like I need to protect the peace I’m feeling about our cycle right now. Even if that means being a terrible sister.

Missing Out on the ‘Lush’ Experience
I first discovered Lush when I read about it on a fellow infertility blog (I wish I could remember whose) several months back. I love bubble baths, so I decided to go check out the store that’s in our town. I wound up buying a couple of terrific-smelling soaps and a few irresistible-sounding bath bombs.

This was back in the beginning of February, and I still haven’t used the bombs. Cycle day 1 showed up unexpectedly a couple times, then I got sick and didn’t feel like sitting in a hot bath tub when my stomach was bothering me, then the surprise pregnancy, an insane work schedule, etc. I thought for sure that once I started the BCPs, it would be the perfect time. Then came the breakthrough bleeding. That finally went away, and this week I thought, “I’m going to do this on Sunday, for sure.” It’s not too close to the cycle that I’ll worry about overcooking my eggs or anything.

But now it’s more than 110 degrees outside, and even though it’s not quite that hot indoors, I’d be more tempted to load the bathtub with ice cubes than bubbles at this point. It’s 87 degrees in our pool right now. Maybe I should just toss the bath bombs in there and soak away…

Believe it or not, I have yet more to say. But I will save some of it for later, because there are things I’ve been putting off (like work) that I really should at least attempt to make some effort toward.

Eight days until lupron begins…Do you suppose this has something to do with the sudden frantic wordiness? That perhaps if I just keep prattling on, somehow the train won’t barrel down on me? Nah, couldn’t be.