Dreams and False Alarms

The Verdict is in

Triploidy. Basically, the baby had 3 sets of chromosomes (69 instead of 46), most likely from letting two sperm instead of the one.  I sort of imagine my old dithery egg getting confused, and forgetting she'd already let one in...

As sad as this could be, it is also actully a relief. My worst fear is that we would have miscarried a genetically normal child.  That would have meant that something was up with my uterus, or blood or something, and that would mean DE would be a more perilous endeavor.

Dr Calm recommends moving on to Donor Eggs, and that is likely where we are headed. Although Dr Google says that Triploidy is not dependant on a mothers age (one of the few), given that we don't know what felled Sparky (likely the translocation, but that is just our 'choice' to believe that in the absence of data), and that I didn't get pregnant with the Donor Sperm in the last IVF, that it's time to cut our losses and jump on the DE train.

Husband and I haven't had any time to talk this over, but I'm assuming that after my cycle in February, we'll be in Lupron land.

I am remarkably relieved.  I was also worried that they wouldn't be able to culture the fetus, that's what happened with Sparky, and to not know twice would be awful.

So come on period!  Let's have one of those nice short cycles you are famous for and get this show on the road.

The somewhat big-ish meeting with Dr Calm

The big news is, there is no big news just yet. Dr Calm doesn't have the pathology report yet, so she wasn't able to tell us WTF happened with Fishy (that is what we named this one, after the fact).  We did tell her that we didn't want to know the sex, and she made a note of that. Unless it is clear that it was related to Husband's translocation, we'll be looking at ye olde eggs as the culprit.

Also, my darling doctor friend looked up my harebrained Vitamin K theory and said this:

"Vitamin K is a cofactor which allows your liver to make certain blood clotting factors (actually factors that allow you to make blood clots AND ALSO factors that dissolve clot - keeping you in balance). There is no scientific data that I could find that suggests that having too much Vitamin K makes you hypercoaguable (while having too little Vitamin K definitely puts you at risk for bleeding as your body can not make its normal clotting proteins). The amount of clotting factors is highly regulated and no matter how many times over the recommended dose of Vitamin K you take, your liver won't make more clotting factors than you need.

Love again,

Your friendly neighborhood M.D."

And yet another omnipotent "I'm the cause of all bad things" theory bites the dust. It's ok. I wanted less reasons to blame myself.

So back to the visit: I was wanded, and my uterus is clear of clots (unlike last time, when there was one that was allegedly going to come out with my next period, but instead got me a hysteroscopy after an evening of hemorrhaging).  Also, all's quiet on the ovarian front, so I'm thinking we may not see a period until about 6 weeks from the D&C which was on 12/16, somewhere near the end of January.

I have to wait two cycles before I can do anything uterine related, so that is clearly March-ish.

Also, we decided to not go back on the DHEA. She isn't impressed, and I don't need another pill to take.

We talked about Donors in their program, and things of that ilk.

Basically, no matter what the pathology report says, the decision we make will be based on what we think we can bear. 

-If it was Husband's translocation, and my FSH is below 10, can we bear to do 3 more IUI's?

-If it was my egg, can be we bear to say "Well, at 39, the miscarriage rate is 20%, so let's roll the dice?"

-Or do we go to the bank, write the big check and say "Donor Eggs better work or were SOL on the pregnancy front."

We won't be able to put it all together for a few weeks, and in some ways, we'll just need to let it stew. Nothing like time to make things clearer, eh?

As anyone whose been reading this blog for any time knows, I like to stay one step ahead of the current situation.  My preparation for the meeting was to spend a an hour and half absorbing an adoption agency site that a friend directed me to (email me for the name, if you want it). I read over the letters to birth mothers, looked at the pictures, and found myself edging towards a funk.  We are not athletic. We don't come from cookie cutter happy families, we are not Christians, we don't live in a suburb, and we are not obsessed with cleaning products. Ok, the last one was from a profile that sort of freaked me out, the woman asks for cleaning supplies as gifts! I'm at least a little more approachable than that!

Anyhow, I started composing a letter to a birth mother in my head. At first, had more in common with David Sederis's Christmas Letter from the Pierce's, but as I went along, I realized, we are pretty awesome, and if I were a birth mother with a sense of humor, and a wish for an honest couple who loves, respects and LIKES one another, we'd be a shoe in. Try it. Try writing a letter to a birthmother, and you might just find out how awesome you are. 

So, it seems one must say something about 2009.

So here goes:

2009 was truly one of the absolute worst years of my life. It was the year I faced and worked through what it meant to lose this life long dream of easy motherhood, of being genetically related to our children, and the loss of my husband's genetic relationship to our children.  It was one of the Dark Nights of my Soul. And yet...and yet, it has strengthened me in ways I would never have allowed myself to imagine as I was in that cold hellish place. Also, I have made some amazing friends, and I have allowed others to see me at my most vulnerable, not so easy for me.

So, yes, 2009, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. So long and thanks for all the growth. I hope 2010 is less personally...challenging, yes that is the word. 

A couple of really nice things that happened yesterday

1. I got my "For Your Tears" handkerchief from Debbie Pucci, which of course, made me cry.

2. My sweetest co-worker, got my note about the miscarriage, walked up to me in the hallway and gave the longest, sweetest hug. Somehow that hug really reached me in a way that not much else has in the last week.

3. When I saw my chiropractor, who is also such a dear dear person, I told her about some of the digestive issues I was having since the miscarriage, which can absolutely be attributed to hormones, but also, to what she called the "Grief and Loss Diet." Which relies on a lot of cookies. Somehow calling it that made me smile, and also let me put a frame around it which makes it feel like I can set it aside after the new year.

4. We made reservations for sat and sun after xmas at a cabin overlooking the ocean--and we need some ocean right about now.

5. My kitten plays fetch, and presents her toy to be thrown. She might be a dog.

Surfacing, bobbing, gasping, blathering.

Friday was awful. It was that horrific crashing day when the progesterone really starts to plummet and your whole life flashes in front of your eyes while you wear 3D "your life is crap" glasses. Yeah, that good.

I raged at my therapist for telling me, earlier in the week, that I needed to rebuild my trust in my body, to which I politely replied, "Not until I have some reason to!"  I also said fuck a lot. A lot.  I said mean things about my 22 year old nice who just had her second child with her sort of boyfriend, who she allegedly doesn't like, and her  main goal in life to get tattoos and piercings. Oh, and don't even let me get started on the fact that she never even sent a thank you (even a verbal one through my mom who was at the baby shower) or a written note for the $100 Wal-Mart gift card I gave her--ya know, the place she buys her formula and diapers. For the moment, she can just suck it. Yeah. I'm feeling really nice.

Also, if you are my friend IRL, I can't imagine you will be able to take this any other way than to be hurt, but it is really painful for me to open your holiday cards. Please keep sending them, in the part of me that isn't burned into a little black cinder, it is nice to see how your children have grown, but the rest of me just weeps. Weeps at the sight of all of that adorable abundant child-ness.  If we don't have a baby by next year, I'm seriously considering sending a picture of our cats. I know I could just not look at them, but I want to. I want to be normal and happy, and enjoy other peoples happiness, but when you are coming off a miscarriage, or a failed IVF, it's just a little hard to be rational.

So back to Friday. I feel, and especially that day felt, like a colossal failure. My work, my business, my reproductive organs, my everything.  I just had no place in me that felt good at all. Ok, that isn't completely true, my husband, my marriage and my cats were exempt from that shit storm.

The reason I most likely miscarried is a chromosomal abnormality. It's the most common reason for a woman my age. Furthermore, husband and I thought I'd be ovulating a little later in my cycle than I did, and we were, shall we say, injudicious with our timing. So there is a possibility that for once, at the ripe old age of 39, I actually might have gotten pregnant by having sex with my husband. Hopefully the baby wasn't too far gone, like last time, and they'll be able to culture some of the cells. It would be good to know if it was the translocation, or just old eggs. No matter what the reason is, we still lost our baby, and choosing what to do next is daunting. If it was the translocation, do we take another whack at donor sperm and my eggs? If it wasn't do we chalk it up to regular 39 year old miscarriage (oy) risk, and try donor sperm, or do we just throw in the towel and go for DE.

Sprogblogger, proceed with caution...

AND THEN...what if that doesn't work. It doesn't work for 20% of people. Yes, I am allowed to think about that. We have been on the wrong side of every fucking statistic we've come up against, why should this be different. We can't afford to do shared risk--it's 31K plus meds, plus donor compensation. Yeah, we'd need a serious cash infusion to make that seem even reasonable. So when I said in my last post that DE was the bottom of the financial and emotional barrel, I didn't mean that we didn't value it, or even feel like it was our best bet, it's just that it's our last chance at pregnancy, and anytime "last" is in the equation, it takes on enormous weight. Of course, after we rob a few banks we could do adoption (even county adoption costs money--they don't just give those babies away).  Yes, I am feeling a little angry and bitter.

Yesterday was better, I did the laundry, I made some very thick bean soup, I baked some bread, and caught up on some movies and TV shows, attend at all times by at least 2 of my three cats.  Little furry bundles of love.  Many multi cat households struggle with the relationships between the kitties, but our kitties are very compatible. We have two boys and a girl. The girl kitty is 6 months old and so cuddly and playful. There are times when Husband and I just marvel at how lucky we got with this little one.

Today I am determined to get a tree. Part of my funk on Friday also feeling like I didn't have the energy to do it for us any more. Husband major holiday tradition involves Chinese food, not too hard to honor. Over the last three years I've tried to set the stage for welcoming a child into our home, I've made some stabs at holiday traditions, but they all get squashed under the weight of all of this fucking loss.  So, today I going to drag him away from his desk, where he sits to make the all important money for all this fruitless baby making mishigas, and try to have something resembling a good day.

And I'll probably cry some more. But oddly not for the baby itself, the way I did for Sparky, who seemed so real, so inevitable, but for all the faith I've lost; for all the time that has passed; for all of the fear I have about all of the next steps; and most of all, my fear that I'll never recover. That even if we do finally get our child, I'll always be this broken, sad shell of a mother.

Thank You

Thank you so much, each and every one of you who has commented, sometimes twice, to let us know that you are with us in our pain and loss.

I am numb. I may be angry, but I'm not quite sure who or what I'm angry with. I can't cry. I cried more on Monday than I have Tuesday and Wednesday combined.  I just feel shut down.

At this point what I am most sure of is that I am weary, and that husband is weary. We hardly let down our guard through the whole 7 weeks--each of us was waiting for a bad thing to happen, and when it did, it felt as if the inevitable had come to pass. Of course, that's hindsight, but still, we are so battle weary it is hard to really believe that pregnant means baby.

We are at a crossroads. Hopefully we'll have the genetic results in two weeks, hopefully there are some results to be had. The last time it was too late and nothing could be learned from the culture.

We are looking for the money tree, wishing that doing DE didn't mean scraping so close to the bottom of both our emotional and financial reserves.

Thank you again for all of your support--it means the world to us.

No heartbeat

The baby died sometime last week. D&C tomorrow. Heartbroken and numb.