Dreams and False Alarms

Are you ready? Yes I'm ready.

I'm sorry that I've turned into one of those bloggers who broods around with blog posts rattling around in her head, instead of setting them free to rattle around on the internet.  Brooding does seem to capture what I am doing with my thoughts, and my feelings, I mean brooding in the more "sitting on one's eggs" rather than in the sense of being sad and grumpy.

Have you been following Mo and Will's report on their 1 day work up in Colorado?  I've been peeking at it through my fingers. For a moment when Mo first described her work up I felt an upwelling of my own wish to have a one day at the temple of last chances and miracle babies.  I thought, only for a moment, maybe I too have a constricted blood flow that hasn't been seen. And then, I stopped. I just stopped myself from walking down that road, and reminded myself that more data would only make me feel crazier, and that I was done with being crazy.  For me, the data is in.  I don't get pregnant, maybe if we'd known about the translocation earlier we could have moved to donor sperm and we'd already be dandling our little baby on our knee. Or not. Maybe there is something that goes on with my eggs that is beyond age.  Whatever it is, it's not knowable at this time. The "why" of this situation is not going to be answered.

Not having an answer, oddly enough, has really helped me to feel that I'm ready to move on to DE. If it can't be known, it can't be known, and I will only lose more precious years of my life to answering, what has become, a not too important question.

Am I sad that I won't see my family and my husband's family expressed in our child? Of course, but it's sadness, a relatively easy burden to carry compared to the rage, terror, helplessness and sense of annihilation that I carried with me for most of the time I've been trying to conceive a child.

And you know what? I'm excited! Really excited, about this next step. It's not a guarantee, but it's a damn sight better than what I've been working with for many years now.

Although this baby will start out it's life in a lab, this child will be conceived out of our love and passion , and it's going to be wonderful.

So bring on the beta on Monday, and set me free from the endometrian, I'm ready.

In which I compare failing at IVF to The Chicken Ranch

Hi.

Sorry about just dropping out like that. I'm not sure of what to say, of how much I even want to know about what I'm feeling and thinking at this point. This could turn out to be a long post, or a short post...

I am crushed.  Yes, partially by the negative--even though I was ambivalent and scared of a positive, it would have also have been wonderful. I literally feel crushed.  I think that the weight of what I've been doing for the last three years, and in the case of IVF, for the last year and half, finally came down on me.  I think that my way of coping was to repress how hard it was (not completely, but enough), and to keep my eyes on the prize.  As negative and as anxious as I was, I really believed that IVF could help us, and my faith was renewed when we found out about the translocation--maybe I really did have the same chance as a lot of other nearly 39 year olds.  This last cycle seems to indicate that my eggs are kaput.  Whatever it is that they need to have produce a healthy embryo/baby is just not there. Maybe in 20 years they'll know what that is, but for right now, it's unknowable.  In some ways that is a relief--to have a knowable problem, and to not be able to solve it would be a different kind of hard.

Another way that this has all crashed down on me is financially.  At the beginning of the cycle I kept having the idea that infertility treatment is like the Chicken Ranch, a movie that those of you who took Women's Studies classes in the '90's can probably remember. The scene that has always stuck with me was the girl Mandy who at one point in the movie, after a particularly lucrative session, is talking about how great it is to be a prostitute, and then later when she's pissed off the madam or the owner is forced to the an 'around the world' for the cost of a lesser act.  She is crying, she is raging, she is humiliated, she is ultimately fired for her outburst.  I think that scene has stuck with me all these years because it so clearly illustrated how when you are doing something hard, with the idea that you will get something good at the end (money in her case, a baby in mine), the humiliation, the hardships, the endurance that it takes to just get through the damn thing is tied to the end result. When you don't get it, the reality of what you've just put yourself though comes crashing down on you like a ton of bricks. In the past there was always the next cycle, the next idea, the next last thing. And now it is over, and it is sad, a relief, a huge loss, and more than I can even articulate.

I am exhausted. I am heartbroken.  If the DE/DS cycle doesn't work, we will be broke and still without a child.  I realize that may sound like catastrophizing, but just because we came out on the wrong side of the odds this time, doesn't guarantee we won't again.  Someone has to make up that 40% who don't get a baby with DE--I really fucking hope that isn't us for once.

It is getting pretty hard to keep taking money out of the savings account and telling ourselves that it is going to get us anything--pretty soon there won't be anything to take out...ugh.

***********************

While I am grateful for what we do have (each other, our kitties, some version of healthy, a good job (husband) and a job that I love, I can't help but feel all that we don't have at the moment, and the dwindling resources we have to get a child. If we were to stop all this pregnancy stuff, and move to adoption, the cost would be about the same as a DE cycle, and the wait would be 2 to 3 years.  I know that county adoptions move faster, but not always as fast as people think.  It could still be 2 to 3 years.

I feel very isolated--not because people don't care, but because it feels so impossible to explain how profoundly and utterly lost I feel at the moment. And I don't want to hear that it isn't the cards I'm dealt, but how I play them. I want to hear "This hand sucks, and that's all there is to say."  It isn't that I don't want to feel hopeful at some point, but right now this is just fucking awful, and there isn't a silver lining.

I know that eventually I will feel better, but I think at this point I am really feeling the damage this has done to me. And I think that is reasonable. It has kicked my ass, and no amount of endurance has changed the fact that no matter how much we spent, or how hard I tried, or how good I was, or how stoic I was in the face of failure after failure, this didn't work, and it's not going to work, and it was harder than most people can ever imagine. I have been through some very very hard times in my life, but the difference was that I could do something to change them. I could leave my ex-husband, I could go to college, I could go to therapy, I could find a better man. I can't do anything about this. This is what it is. It is just over, broken, fucked, unfixable.  No child, no matter how they come to us, will change the facts of the last 3 years.  They may soften the blow, fill us with more joy than we can imagine, but this is immutable.

This is the end of an era. This is the end of IVF. This is the end of the idea that I can be helped. This is the end of feeling like every penny is worth spending if it gets us our child.

*********************

Compared to most people, I don't have a lot of pregnant friends and baby showers to contend with.  But a friend and his wife are having a baby in November, and their shower is in a month.  I looked at their registry and thought "You two are missing so many really important things, and have way too many of the 'hyped but useless' stuff on here."  I felt so...annoyed. Here I am, having collected and observed, and thought through all this stuff for YEARS, and I'm still on the fucking sidelines.  In the end I bought them two things that I know have been lifesavers for my friend with twins, and left it at that. They'll figure it out, and I don't have to do a thing.  But ya know, it just killed me to do it again, to buy a gift I'd like to have for myself, to have for my child. And here I am again on the sidelines.  In this case, it was pretty painful, probably because of where I am (duh), but also because I feel so invisible. With my friend who has twins I don't feel invisible, and that makes it so much easier to really get in and enjoy the babies. With most people though, I'm just invisible. Of course I don't have to be but, what do you say? "I'm so happy for you, but I just got a negative pregnancy test for a cycle that cost 12K and buying you a baby gift is pretty much going to rip a little more of my heart up." No, I don't say that. I buy the gift, Husband and I lean on each other for support, and leave as early as possible.

Argh, I'm rambling.

We went to a bbq on labor day, all of the people there have kids. We didn't know 2 of the couples at all. The host and another couple were more of known quantity.  Somehow the subject of 'snowflake babies' came up, and embryology, IVF and all sorts of other things were just being mangled. Husband and I both just sat there dumbstruck. I knew that If I said something it would come out somewhere between a strangled cry and bitchy, and I just couldn't do it. The host is a dear, and she has been nothing but a true friend through this whole awful ordeal, but it struck me just how hard it is to be in 'mixed company'--I have limited myself so much to people who are in the know, that I've forgotten how hard it is to be with regular people who don't have to know the intricacies of embryology, or cryopreservation or the difference between IVF and insemination. 

When the hell with this stuff just be a bad memory?  I'm exhausted.

Sparky and the Panda's

A wise British psychoanalyst once said "there is no baby without the mother". Since he was an analyst, we could imagine that he wasn't talking in a concrete sense, but that the baby exists because in some sense, the mother has created the baby in her mind.  It is starting to hit me that the babies I've had in my mind, those babies waiting for a body, aren't to be.

Sparky was real, he had a body for a precious few weeks.  The Pandas, what I started to call the last set of embryo's, had cell bodies for about 5 days, and then they were gone. But for me, these are my children. The only children who will ever share that precious mix of my husband and myself.  These children carried within their cells a mix of us that will never be expressed.  My blue eyes, his dimples, his congenital scrawniness, my impossible to fit feet, our big teeth and small jaws and on and on.  They also carried within them that indefinable, and indescribable hope of humanity--the hope that the love of our bodies, and the love of our minds will be expressed in flesh. These are the children that will never be, and yet they are so real to me I can see them running through the house, sleeping contentedly, making paper Mache models of the planets the night before the science fair.  I can see them growing up, and growing shy about their bodies, suffering the slings and arrows of first love, finding careers, finding love and becoming parents, and bringing home their own babies for us to love.  And yes, there will be children who will do this, and much much more. And we will love those children fiercely, aware of how close we came to not having any children to love at all, and yet, at this moment, it is my Sparky and the Panda's that I want.

When my husband and I were on the cusp of dating, I was trying to get him to kiss me and he said "I can't kiss you, because if I do, we'll have grandchildren, and I'm not ready for grandchildren yet."  In that moment a life flashed before my eyes, a life where we would make love, make children, and grow old together.  In some ways that vision hasn't changed, we do make love, we will make children, and we will grow old together, but this morning when I woke up, I just felt so so sad about the loss of...I suppose the loss of every piece of him going into our child.  Please don't reassure me that everything is going to be ok once I get 'the baby'.  I actually really know that. This stands alone; this loss is irreducible. 

So Sparky and Panda babies Mama loves you, and daddy loves you. And thank you for every precious second you were here with us.

News you can use (and a lot of cusswords) **with a clairfication

I'm sorry I didn't update yesterday--I'm still in shock, and trying to get my head around this new vision of the future.

We talked to Dr Calm on Monday afternoon, and I expressed my frustration and anger, and to her credit, she didn't ignore it, and promised to remember our story when she's in a similar situation with another couple.  It doesn't change the past, but it does help to know that she too has regrets.  It's helped me sleep a bit (I'm down to 1 ambien and a 1/2 of a muscle relaxer).

The translocation is on chromosomes 1 and 5, so it's not a Roberstonian translocation, which is the one that many people who have infertility related to translocation have.  In a Robertsonian translocation there are generally a lot of first trimester miscarriages--probably owing to the chromosomes that are involved, and where they come into play in terms of development. It seems that Husband's translocation doesn't prevent his sperm from fertilizing my eggs, but the development stops quite early.  A blessing? Sure, if you know about the translocation, otherwise you spend three fucking years raking yourself over the coals, and wondering if those assholes who decry women in the workplace might be on to something.  God I'm angry

I am so angry at...not sure what. I am just so angry that I have lost all of this time, that I have been through all of this torture. There are whole parts of myself I will never get back. Knowing that he has a translocation doesn't change the last 2 1/2 years of my life. I guess you can say I got my infertile badges.  Thanks, but no thanks. 

The worst part is that we wasted years and years of my eggs. Thank goodness for the DHEA, my eggs might have a chance, but then again, they might not, because we fucked around for nearly 3 years with really problematic sperm.  AHHHHFDKLLLLLLLLLLSIEHIFDKHNFDSIOHEFIHFD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So now what?

We are not going to do PGD. It is very expensive, and may not accurately predict the health of the embryo (could be wrong in either direction), and furthermore, we usually lose a lot of embryo's between day 3 and 5 (on our best cycle, we lost 5 between day 3 and 8), so we don't have much to work with.

The possible outcomes are:

We do the cycle and no embryos make it to transfer.

We do the cycle and embryos make it to transfer, but don't implant.

We do the cycle and we get a positive, but I miscarry early.

We do the cycle and we get a positive, and we get a viable embryo/fetus/infant.

We do the cycle and we get a positive, and we make it to amnio, but we have a trisomy, which we will terminate.

Doesn't that sound fun?

**Just so you understand, the likelihood that Husband's sperm and my old ass eggs will make a baby is pretty excruciatingly low.

Please, no one say "at least you know what you are dealing with", because honestly, what I am really dealing with is a high likelihood of another passel of grief and loss, and I feel like I have already done enough in that department.

Husband is ok--not great, but not a wreck. We both feel that we need to do one last cycle with all his sperm. Even thought it would make scientific and financial sense to do it with 1/2 his sperm and 1/2 donor sperm, it doesn't make emotional sense. We need to be able to close the door on his genetic material (or not, if we get lucky!) and not feel that we moved on without giving it a real chance.

I'm still a wreck, less ambian notwithstanding. I feel sad and clingy, and I find it hard to leave his side.  We are pretty much in each other's pockets these days.  A part of me wants to take a month and get used to this new reality, and another part of me wants to just get it over with. DHEA or not, my eggs aren't getting any younger.

I am shocked at how sexist the gamete donor selection process is. In CA at least, there is no doubt that you are going to see a full range of pictures of a prospective egg donor, but sperm donors? No siree bob. The Fairfax sperm bank is starting a program of  "lifetime pictures" but only one of the donors that would meet our requirements has that option available. However he is also CMV positive, and if I'm not, we can't use him. We'll find out my CMV status this week...God what an awful process.

So now we are just waiting for my period to start.  We are reserving the right to pull the plug on the cycle before stims, so stay tuned.

I, Veruca

Its been a while since my last post. At this point, I think I can manage a post a week.  Gone are the heady days when I had something that needed to be said daily--gone are the days when I could bare to think about infertility daily.

Monday would have been Sparky's due date.  As is my style, the two days leading up to it were awful (cranky on Sat, and a weepy mess on Sunday), but Monday, was ok. My husband had a business trip from Sunday through Wednesday, and strangly enough, it couldn't have come at a better time.  One of my friends reflected to me that sometimes it is better to go through these things alone, but it is so hard to know the right time to do it.  The stars aligned, and it was the right time.  I just simply did whatever I needed to do, and I didn't take a moment to think about anyone else. My husband is a wonderful compantion, and wouldn't have made any sort of demands on me, but for some reason, after the crying stopped, I was able to be focused, and it was very restful.  He's back now, and I'm ready for some company, but we could sure use a vacation.

I had my progesterone checked on day 21, and it was 8. Enough to signal that I'd ovulated, but not a high number. The last time I'd had it checked (2007), it was 13 without clomid and 21 with clomid, so hmmm. We're going to see the newest doctor in the practice today; Dr Calm is on vacation.  Psudonym to follow.  We're doing an antral follicle count, and I'm going to ask her about my lining, but this close to the end of my cycle, I'm not sure what that would tell us.  I think I'm suffering from data withdrawl.

Here is my (not so) secret wish: I'd like to do a monitored IUI with a trigger shot. Or timed intercourse with a trigger shot.  I guess I must secretly want the mindfuck of the trigger shot. Here is why I want this: I want to know if the DHEA is affecting my response in any measurable way.  Are my eggs getting large enough? Is my lining growing appropriately? Could I get pregnant with an IUI? I think I must also be suffering from Drama Withdrawl.  I'm also going to ask her about the drinking a quart of milk thing that BeeCee is doing. 

As I alluded to in my last post, my husband suggested that we may want to wait an extra month, just to give the DHEA more time to work. It seems that the internet agrees that 4 months is the minimum amount of time you need to take it to get the best results. And I do want the best results, but I also want something now. Feeling a bit like Veruca Salt.

I am not actully crazy at the moment, but sometimes I think the effort to keep the crazy under control is very hard. Like Veruca, "I want it now!", and in the craziest part of myself, I would steal a squirrel (novel), or a goose laying the golden eggs (movie).  But alas, my inner Veruca is chained up, only to come out at therapy, where I let the nice lady help me with all these bad scary feelings. 

It is not easy to be grumpy and cranky. I am not usually a grumpy, cranky person. It feels very disorienting to feel greedy, petty, angry and irritable. 

And yet, a small aprt of me would like unleaseh my inner Veruca:

Just substitute baby, and I think you get the picture:

Veruca:

I want the world
I want the whole world
I want to lock it all up in my pocket
It's my bar of chocolate
Give it to me
Now!

I want today
I want tomorrow
I want to wear 'em like braids in my hair
And I don't want to share 'em

I want a party with room fulls of laughter
Ten thousand tons of ice cream
And if I don't get the things I am after
I'm going to scream!

I want the works
I want the whole works
Presents and prizes and sweets and surprises
Of all shapes and sizes
And now
Don't care how
I want it now
Don't care how
I want it now

Now if that isn't a prayer for the deep down crazy in me, I don't know what is.

Scabs

Saturday night my husband and I were both suffering from his having worked for 6 out of 6 of the last weekends, and wanted to go out for a nice dinner where we could look at each other, not just sit on the couch and look at the TV. We were seated next to a couple who looked normal from the back, but from the front, the guy had a really odd bulge in his jacket. Lo and behold, it was a baby in a sling, under his jacket. I was bracing, but I wasn't sure for what. It isn't always wrenching to see a baby or a pregnant woman, but sometimes it is, and those 'sometimes' don't always fit into neat categories. So we all ordered dinner, and when there were little sounds from inside the jacket, the dad would get up and walk outside and jiggle the baby for a little while and come back in. The mom was eating her dinner--clearly, this was the plan. The whole time the dad was soothing the baby, it was hidden from view. Finally the mom finished her dinner and it was the dad's turn to eat. The baby had gotten wiggly and mewley (not a crier at that point), and so the dad handed him to the mom. He was probably 2 months old. A little bigger than a new born, but not as fleshy as a 3 month old. I ate my dinner and watched as the mom snuggled the little baby, kissed his fuzzy little head and moved him around to keep him comfy. I really kept it together. Near the end of their meal, we interacted with them a little bit, complemented them on their baby (I must have said something, but mostly I remember my husband talking to them). As they were getting up to leave the father asked us if we had kids. Ugh. Clench. My husband smiled blandly and said "We're working on it." and got a little advice about taking your baby out in public. As soon as they left. Tears filled my eyes,and I tried not to cry. One of the ways that infertility manifests is that you no longer think about babies, or actively admire them, or even imagine your own or play the name game. It's like a scab on a wound that never quite heals. As long as the scab is in place there is no oxygen getting to the wound, and aside from tightness and tenderness, the wound is covered. But then there are times when the scab get's knocked off, and the wound opens up, and you remember what it is that hurts. So back to those tears. They just started falling of their own accord. It wasn't a noisy sob fest, but I was really crying. My husband took my hand and just held it while I cried. He said "We'll get you pregnant, by hook or by crook." Which was so sweet, and something we say to one another in the hard times. The 'crook' changes from time to time.

So what was I crying for? I was crying for so many things. For my little Sparky, who would have been around 26 weeks gestation by now, for all of times the scab stayed intact and I didn't feel how bad it felt to have empty arms, and for the fact that the dream of a baby seems so far off. The little fuzzy head, and the sweet little face feels like a mirage. I really miss the part of myself who could conjure up my dream baby, and feel their little head in the crook of my neck, the fuzzy baby head all ready for head kisses. Infertility is a thief. It not only robs you of your children, but being able to dream freely of your children, and that gets to be a hard spot in your soul. That little baby saturday night opened up the box of dreams, and I still feel a bit raw where those scabs let loose.

The Impossible dreams of miss 'fix-it' and the language of loss (it's a long one)

The Impossible Dreams of Miss Fix-it:

I've been busy out here in the real world trying to hack through yet another jungle of my 'issues' on the way to the next IVF, and if necessary, the next step.

If you know me in real life, or have read the first entries on this blog you'll know that my conception was covert (as in unplanned) and the discovery of my eventual entrance into this world collided with the death of my 14 year old brother. My mother was 41,and my father was 45. They had been married since their early 20's, and had three children over the span of 5 years. Their childbearing days were over, and they were both secretly hoping to be able to divorce the other when the youngest of their 3 children graduated from high school. Instead, he died at age 14 in a car accident.  The day before the accident my mother had gone to the doctor for a pregnancy test, alarmed that her customary pregnancy response to coffee had been triggered. She'd told my father that Thursday, and they had yet to share it with anyone else.  The next day my brothers (16 & 14 at the time) went out with friends, their car stalled on the railroad tracks and and was hit by a train. My younger brother died, and my older brother walked away with minor injuries. On February 13, 1970 a bomb went off in my family.

As you can imagine, this was not an easy gestation for me, nor an easy pregnancy for my mother. There weren't any physical complications, but she was in the most horrific grief imaginable, and I was inside of her.  With all of her other pregnancies she had stopped smoking, but with me, she felt she couldn't. When I was born I was both perfectly healthy, and yet extremely sensitive and hard to soothe. I remember in my 20's when I realized that each year of my life, and most significantly the first 5 years of my life, were the first five years of their grief.  I don't know how they did it.  Yet I do. They pushed their grief as far down as possible; froze it in the deepest recesses of their souls and persevered.  This has been a lesson that is hard to unlearn

From what I can gather, things weren't great before he died, and they just continued to get worse.  I think his death, and my birth galvanized each of my parents in different directions. My father became a very dedicated parent, and my mother decided to make her separateness clear. In the midst of all of this my psyche was forming. I was forming fantasies to restore us to some mythical land of happiness--one I now realize never existed for them.  I formed a twin-ship with my dead brother, both necrotic and life affirming. Someone like me, someone untouched by the grief of his own death, and my partner in 'restoring' our family to a place where adults love and respect each other, and children grow, and individuate, and maintain connection with loving parents. Yet damaging because I was tethered to him in a way that didn't allow me to integrate his death as a reality imporatn to, but seperate from me. Rather I built myself around his death. It was as if I was a living memorial to him. Strangely enough, we rarely spoke of him, we still rarely do.

Last week, in yet another iteration of trying to understand what it would mean to me to do egg donation, something separate from what it would me to my husband and me, I realized that I have a fantasy, a dream, that I would someday have a baby, and he would be the embodiment of my brother. I would have both fixed my paretns and siblings loss, and given birth to my salvation; a being who could complete the task I'd started but failed at and free me to live my own life.  I felt surprised and shocked to realize this. I have gone through many phases of relating to him, most recently to feel angry that so much of my life has been usurped by fantasizing about him and by others frozen grief. I used to always imagine any boy child I had would have his name as a middle name, but not any longer.  

One of the effects of our collective frozen grief is that we do not talk about him. Whenever anyone says his name, or tries to reminisce about him or their own childhoods, it is as if the room freezes, and whomever brought him up finishes up as quickly as possible so as to relieve the tension.  Recently my sister (the oldest of all of us) has recently started talking about how painful it is to not be able to tell any sort of stories about ourselves for fear that one might include him. My brother recently made a friend who he felt a brotherly connection to and is more aware of how much he misses him, and how lonely he has been since his death. We have all talked about family therapy to give us a place to talk though these impasses, but I, and I am the one who would do this, hasn't pushed it.

The specter of egg donation made all of this much more intense. I understand that the desire to have a genetic child isn't unreasonable, but there was an edge to my desire that felt out of control, out of proportion. 

Last week was my 38th birthday. I got a call from my brother and decided to tell him that I had this wacky idea, and uh, even though it was wacky, did he actually expect it of me?  The answer was no. Of course not, but he did see how I could have arrived at that idea. That was a huge relief. Next was my mother. I told her about this odd fantasy that I had, and she was empathic that it was not my job to replace him with myself, or with my child. She said the best thing possible "People want to fix things, and this is not the kind of thing that can be fixed. Of course you had this idea, but it's not necessary." It was such a relief to hear that.  Next was my father. In a recent post I referred to my fear that my father wouldn't fully embrace a child that was not genetically mine (based on some evidence from another situation, and his investment in his own genealogy). So I mustered up my courage and went over to talk to him. Luckily my mother was primed, and she helped. He was very clear that the most important thing is that I do what is right for me, and that he will support whatever decision I make. He did suggest I ask my cousin (from my mother's side, not his) to donate eggs to me--thus puncturing my fear that he felt his genetic material was important--but understood why that wouldn't work. Essentially, she is too old (one year younger than me), and both my husband and I feel that we want a non familial donor because while we want the child to be able to know the donor, and know about the donor, we don't want the donor at Christmas/Chanukah dinner. 

The Language of Loss

Looking back it seems that breaking up some of the ice in my own family around grief, may have unfrozen some of my grief over Sparky. My birthday fell on Infant and Pregnancy Loss remembrance day.  Luckily for me, I didn't know it until the following day.  On Thursday I posted this comment on uppercase woman : 

"I miss my little Sparky. He (I always think of Sparky as a he), would have been close to 25 weeks gestation now. I'd have looked all round and pregnant, and who knows what a else. He may be my only genetic child ever, and I have to remember that I am a mother, but my arms are empty, and that is damn hard."

I would have been 23 weeks pregnant on my birthday. I had a few dates marked out in my mind, and it seems my birthday was one of them.  This is my third birthday with no pregnancy, and now with my very wanted and loved baby gone.

I wrote that comment and went on to have a really busy day--work and talking to my both my parents about my fears, and my odd fantasy.  I felt so relieved Thursday night, as if I might finally sleep well for once. I didn't. I slept very fitfully. I woke up around 5 and my thought was "I want my baby. I want my little Sparky." Finally I got up and went into my bathroom and cried into my towel.  I had a big day (job interview of sorts at 9:30), a lunch with a work colleague and a meeting I was really looking forward to. I pulled myself together and made it through the first thing and didn't really feel the sadness. At lunch my college was very insightful about where I was, and how hard things have been for me, but I managed to not cry, which I wanted to do very badly.  Next was the meeting--one where I used the metaphor of a baby to explain something, and I managed again not to cry. But let me tell you, that was one weepy ride home.  When I got home I realized I felt resentful because I felt I couldn't share my grief, that it would be too overwhelming to my husband. That is sort of true, but also sort of 'my stuff.' He does get overwhelmed my my obsessive negative worrying, but he is really able to grieve with me. I wonder if part of my obsessive worrying is a sort of diverted grief?  Once he was done working, I decided to say something and it was a relief. 

So I'm going to try to stop saying "the miscarriage" as if I lost a "the". I didn't . I lost my baby, our baby. And I know the pain will dull over time, and I will love another child, but I will always love you Sparky.

Healthy as a frickin' horse and a bit of a pity party

So it turns out I do have 1 copy of the MTHFR gene, but my homocystine is very low, so that means I doing a great job of metabolizing folic acid, and am therefore not clotting overly enthusiastically from that malady. Neither do I have the cardiolipin dealie, so basically we are back to "Gee, we have really no idea why you aren't getting pregnant, and no idea why you miscarried."  Argh.

I did manage to regain my calm, about Thursday, so that was good.  But I realized yet another way that grief had infiltrated my daily living: I had not done anything beyond the minimal paperwork at work so that I could avoid writing any of the days of the month of July.  As I started to do one task which required that I write 7/3/08 over and over, I realized I was reliving that morning and afternoon over and over again.  It helped to at least recognize that and then I could push through and do some of the more complex stuff that was weighing me down, and contributing to the feeling that I couldn't catch up.

Over the last 4 days I've been digging my way through paperwork at work, and all of the receipts, credit card offers and things to file that have literally be threatening to fall of my desk at home. It felt good.

AND THEN...

Ok, so that is a bit dramatic, but ya know, you are having a cleansing experience, and feeling like you are going to really make some headway and put the IF and M/C in perspective and just do your best to enjoy the next 6 weeks?  Yeah, well, if you want to do that, don't decide to attend your 20th high school reunion. Oh, and don't spend an hour looking at the class website with all of your classmates and their adorable pictures of their adorable children.  That is a recipe for a pity party.  I went to run some errands and get a mani/pedi and the whole time I was about 10 steps from the verge of tears.  This was yet another occasion I had imagined being at pregnant.  Crap.  So I came home, told my husband I was having a pity party, and even felt bad because I know my single friends were having their own pity parties about their singleness and there were probably pity parties going on all over town about one thing or another. Heck, were in our late thirties, there has been some shit that has transpired.  So I told myself to suck it up, and got myself together.  So, it was a short pity party, and I actually had a really fabulous time with some people I knew pretty well, and others I didn't, and myself and another guy put ourselves in charge of name tags and so for the whole party I was carrying around a sharpie and a clutch of name tags and having a grand time--give me a job and I am the life of the party. No job and I'm still making a spectacle of myself.

The pity party was also in part about feeling old looking and frumpy and feeling like everyone else would look so great.  Yeah, no so much.  On the whole, there were a lot of receding hairlines, some really slim and lovely ladies, many of them hotter than in high school, and then a lot of gals like me: pretty faces, but holding extra pounds on the hips.  WHOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  Not the only one wearing a double digit pants size.  Yeah, I'm shallow and petty, I admit it.

Blargh. Ack. Ugh. Damn

Dr Calm called this afternoon to say that they couldn't complete a chromosomal analysis on Sparky because the tissue was too old to grow a culture.  Ugh. That means he (Sparky is a he in my mind) had been dead a while before it was detected.  Ugh. 

So now my calm is disturbed, just as I knew it would be.  Dr. Calm asked if we wanted to take genetic tests, we could.  She doesn't recommend it, but does want us to know our options.  She said it is 99% chance that it was a random genetic problem.  I'd love to be so sure.

My husband is less inclined to do the testing. I'm more inclined.  I feel like we have these two windows, and once they close, we are out of full bio-kid options.  And as controversial as that may be, but right now, taht is what I want. So, the current compromise is to get the codes, and check with the insurance company, and then go from there.

In terms of moving towards the next cycle, I have been haphazardly doing OPK tests (last one on Friday 7-25, resounding negative), and then I did one this morning, and it was a resounding positive, so the stabilization continues.  I probably got the surge yesterday (and uh, unknowingly, 'baby danced' [barf]), and today was likely day two. I'll do another tomorrow and if it's fading, I'll have a rough idea of where I am in my cycle. If my estimations are vaguely correct, I should expect my period around the 10th, be ovulating in the middle of my vacation (woo hoo!), and then getting my next period the first week of September.  All good, except I need to do another mock transfer between day 6 & 10, and I'll be in the woods.  Hmmm.  I'm sure my period will be a day early or something, so I'll deal with that freak-out later.

Onwards.

Hello Stranger

Wow, I'm not sure how long it's been since I've posted, but clearly it's been a while.

The rawness of the grief is starting to fade, but I wonder if this weekend will be hard.  It is my husband's grandmother's 80th birthday party; it is also close to when I would have made the 12-week mark.  I am working hard to not mark every milestone, but because I had imagined this one in advance, it might hit me a bit.  Also, I'm seeing my husband’s mother and sister, and I wonder if their grief over the m/c will rekindle my own.

I was feeling all calm and confident about having the homocystine test and the cardiolipin and lupus antibody tests, and then I did a little googling and got myself a bit freaked out. Since I already have two autoimmune syndromes (fibromyalgia and vitiligo, and I guess you could throw in allergies) the cardiolipin and lupus antibody tests make sense, but what is unclear to me is if I do test positive for those things, beyond using Lovenox during pregnancy and popping 4k of folic acid everyday, what are the long term health issues? I realized I was avoiding the blood tests, so I got myself over to the lab and did the blood letting. In terms of venipuncture, it was one of the best I've had in months--and I am a connoisseur at this point.  So, hopefully Friday will bring news about both the blood tests and the chromosomal analysis on the Sparky.

It's one of those odd situations where it is hard to know what would be a good outcome? Clearly, a chromosomal problem, of the non repetitive type (i.e. not Robertson's translocation etc) and no clotting issues would be ideal. However, the wish to be able to control some other aspect of the pregnancy, and imagine that I can do more to make it successful, gives rise to this little hope that I have a clotting issue. But then, the fear of long term health issues is scary.  Oy.

I am going for my annual exam today--it seems like a bad idea because there is still some odd colored stuff coming out,but my RE assured me it is ok. 

My cycle is definitely stabilizing, I'm gearing up to ovulate, heavish breasts, hunger. All good signs, but that post-menstrual lack of appetite was so much easier to do WW on.

I went to the local Y and had a tour. They have 4 pools!  The parking is a bit of an issue, but I think I'm going to join and do some swimming stuff.

We are taking a vacation. Camping. I know. You who know me IRL are a bit confused, but hopefully the longer term stretch of it will make the more troubling aspects less problematic. We have a new tent (less claustrophobic), and it's a vacation we can afford.

Sorry for the banal update. I'll try to wring out some emotion, but for the moment, I'm not feeling particularly funny or sad, and that is a nice change for me.