A reemergence, a new goal, and some rambling

Yes, I’ve been well aware of my absence over the past five, nearly six weeks. It crosses my mind every few days that I should really post something to my blog. And I have stuff to post; thoughts, emotions, experiences that I’ve been thinking about and wanting to document. I just haven’t had the motivation to sit down and actually write them down.

I’ve determined that it would be absolutely awesome if I could blog in the shower. I do a lot of thinking when I’m in the shower. Not on purpose, my mind just seems to wander as I thinking about the prior day or what’s on the schedule for the current day. I think about situations that I experienced, how I react to them, how they affect me and I think “that would be such a really great blog post.” And then I never get around to writing it out.

I’ve gotten bogged down in what any normal, sane person would consider to be mundane. You see, I’m what some would call obsessive. Anal maybe is a better term for it (oooh, can’t wait to see what kind of searches are going to be linked to my blog from using that term!). I’m a research queen. I need to know all of the facts, opinions, reviews, school of thought, etc. before I can commit to anything. And by no means is anything baby related exempt from this compulsive behavior of mine. In fact, anything that has to do with our baby is probably subjected to even more scrutiny than my average obsessiveness. And I’m drowning in my own desire for knowledge.

I find myself spending hours a day on the computer researching my newest obsession, cloth diapering. My desire for knowledge (and cheap diapers) cannot be quelled. I’m pretty sure that I know everything there is to know about cloth diapering at this point (without having any actual hands on diapering experience), but I’m still not satisfied. I cannot even begin to estimate the amount of time I’ve spent on this matter. And it makes me sad and a little bit angry when I think of all of the time that I’ve spent obsessively going over little things like this that, in the end, probably don’t really matter all that much.

So today I resolve to try to spend less time planning out what products we will use, how I will give birth, and how everything in our life will work out after this baby girl joins our family. Instead, I will let try to let our lives just happen and focus on enjoying today what we have now. And if we make a poor choice on something now and again, well isn’t that all just part of experience?

20 week reflections

I am officially 20 weeks pregnant today. There were so many times that I never allowed myself to imagine getting this far. Now that I am here, I am so thankful that we’ve made it this far.

From my perspective, the first 20 weeks have gone by relatively slow. In the beginning it seemed like one agonizing wait after another, first with the early ultrasounds and then with the later testing and regular OB appointments. Then, when I started to feel more secure about the pregnancy it because we seemed to have passed out of the “danger zone” it was a matter of waiting for a different set of things – the fun things. Waiting for my belly to get big enough that I could consider myself showing and not just chubby, waiting to find out the gender, waiting to feel those first movements. That’s where we’re at now. We know that we’re having a little girl, I finally feel like I’m starting to look a little bit pregnant now, and I’m pretty certain that I felt our little girl’s first kicks yesterday. And all signs show that things are progressing well as far as the growth and development of the pregnancy is concerned.

Of course the emotional side of things has been a completely different story. There was the initial bleeding scare between my first and second betas and the fantastically delayed notification of my appropriately rising second beta. The huge relief and emotional high of seeing our girl’s tiny little heart beating away at our first ultrasound, followed quickly by the terror of the gushing blood episode. The seemingly nonstop spotting and bleeding that continued through my entire first trimester and left me, for the most part, on edge.

And beyond the fear that I think any woman would have if they had all of the spotting and bleeding that I did was dealing with the fact that nothing was as I would have expected it to be. As I’ve mentioned before, I knew from real life infertiles that the transition from infertile to pregnancy is not always all sunshine and rainbows like I expected it to be. Even thought I knew that, I never quite believed it, and to then live it firsthand and understand what they were talking about was a completely shocking experience.

I’ve been repeatedly surprised by my behavior during this pregnancy. I waited longer than I ever imagined to become pregnant. The entire time we were trying, I was planning out how things would be once I was pregnant. The very first month we tried I was absolutely convinced that I was pregnant. I went out and bought a pregnancy book and immediately started reading it. I was disappointed to find out that I may not start showing until 4 or 5 months into the pregnancy. I wanted the world to know that I was pregnant immediately! I read that book nightly until it was determined that I was, shockingly, not pregnant. I put the book away, knowing that I would need it again in a few short months. I daydreamed about telling all of our friends and family about our pregnancy and how exciting it would be. I read labor stories and bought books on natural births and fetal development. I browsed “belly shot” picture galleries imagining the day that I would post my photos there. I couldn’t be stopped in my enthusiasm for all things pregnancy, birth and baby related.

And I assumed that once I was pregnant, the first thing I would do would be to pull out all of those pregnancy books and start devouring. I would run out and buy super cute maternity clothes. I would sign up for those weekly e-mails that tell you all about your baby’s development and compare her size to a specific fruit. I came up with the off the wall idea that instead of a weekly photo, I would take daily photos and create a flipbook of my growing belly.

Nothing could be farther from reality. Instead of wanting to scream from the rooftops that I was pregnant, I wanted to cower in the corner. To this day I’ve spent less than a half of an hour reading my pregnancy books. I never signed up for the e-mails. Instead of buying all kinds of cute maternity clothes, I’ve been hiding behind baggy, oversized shirts. The thought of telling our friends and family made my stomach turn with nerves and fear. I’ve taken only three belly pictures.

Nothing is how I thought it would be. And it’s not that these things are bad, they’re just different than I had imagined. A small part of me feels like I may be missing out on all of those things that I had looked forward to so desperately, but a bigger part of me feels just right about the way that things have unfolded. I’m not the same person that I was when I developed those grand plans, and I suppose it’s only natural that my feelings, reactions and perspectives have changed as well. And that’s OK.

My day was just brightened

I just got a phone call from my RE. When I saw the number come up on my phone, I began to panic, just a carryover from all of the times when a phone call from that area code only meant one thing…bad news. It took me a moment to realize that the clinic couldn’t possibly be calling with bad news as they are no longer involved in my care and have no idea how things are progressing. I couldn’t quite figure out why they would be calling, so I picked up the phone with no expectations.

It was my RE, which shocked me. I had guessed that it would be my nurse, so when I heard a man’s voice, it caught me off guard. He introduced himself and asked how I was doing. I told him everything was going well and he asked how far along we were. I told him 20 weeks and he was very happy that everything was going well.

I kept waiting for him to get to the point of his call, and he finally did. A couple of weekends ago, my husband and I were in town to go to a concert. We bought some cookies and a thank you card and dropped them off at the office, just to show how appreciative we are of all that they did for us. Our IVF experience did not go anything like I had anticipated, and having the unwavering support of our clinic behind us really made a difference for us. I wrote all of that in the thank you card, and dropped the card and cookies off with the receptionist (along with two large OJ containers full of needles).

So my RE was calling to say thank you for the cookies and card, congratulate us on our baby girl, and wish us luck with everything to come. I thought it was such a great gesture. I don’t know how many RE’s would take the time to do that, especially ones that aren’t even in the same state as their patients. It was such a nice end to a long and arduous process and I couldn’t have asked for more. It made my day.

Not what I expected, part 2

NOTE: I thought long and hard about actually writing this post. I hemmed and hawed thinking about how it might come off and might be upsetting to some readers. The last thing I want to do is upset anyone, but in the end, this blog is for me. I intended it to be a record of my thoughts and feelings as I dealt with infertility and now pregnancy. As such, I feel I would be remiss in not writing this post because it has been at the forefront of my mind for days now, which means that it is meaningful enough to me to document. I apologize in advance if anyone is upset, but please understand that these are my thoughts and I can’t really control how I feel. As always, I welcome comments, but if you don’t have anything nice to say, please don’t say anything at all.

I’ll be completely honest. Both Mark and I had hoped for a boy. The reasons why are numerous and I won’t go into a lot of details, but we both really hoped for a boy. Though we wanted a boy, we both figured that we would have a girl, not because of any intuition, just because it seemed like that’s what would happen. As pessimistic and awful as it sounds, after all that we had been through to get pregnant and all of the things that went wrong along the way, we figured that we would end up with the opposite of what we wanted. A “things never go the way we expect them to” kind of mentality, I guess. I tried to prepare myself for that possible outcome, but try as I might, I still had it stuck in my head that we would have a boy.

In my mind’s eye, I always pictured our family with a little boy. Long before we started trying to get pregnant I always thought that we would have boys. Obviously I was very aware that the odds were just as good that we would have a girl versus a boy, but it just never really clicked with me that we would have a little girl. In fact, I was so confident that we would end up with a boy, I bought a handful of little boy clothes at a garage sale last summer before our first IVF cycle.

At an appointment a few weeks ago, I asked the doctor about my prior bleeding episodes and asked if he thought that since I’d been spot free for a couple of weeks that I was done bleeding completely. He humored me and offered to do an u/s to check on it. During the u/s he asked us if we were going to find out the sex and if we wanted to know that day because he thought he caught a glimpse of something. We said yes, but our baby didn’t want to cooperate anymore and both the doctor and u/s tech were unwilling to tell us what they saw since it was such a quick glimpse at an early stage. I left the office disappointed that we were teased like that, but feeling pretty confident that it must be a boy. To me it seemed that boy parts would be much more easily recognizable at a quick glance than the three lines that indicate girl. I talked to other women about it and they all agreed that it was probably a boy if they “saw something.”

Any progress that I may have made in trying to prepare myself that the baby was a girl, which was minimal at best, was completely shot at that point. I would catch myself referring to the baby as “he” and looking at nursery ideas for a little boy. I found myself gravitating towards the boy sections at department stores, adoring all of the cute little boy outfits and imagining our baby wearing them. I was sure that we were going to have a little boy.

On Friday, as I lay on the u/s table, those three lines came up on the screen and absolutely took my breath away. I choked out the words “It’s a girl, isn’t it?” and tried to maintain my composure. I was inexplicably on the verge of tears. I couldn’t even look at my husband, knowing that I would completely lose it if I did. The rest of the u/s was a blur, but I managed to keep it together. We were sent back out to the waiting room, where I sat in shock looking at the u/s pictures until we were taken back to an exam room. We found ourselves alone in the room waiting for the nurse practitioner and I tried to put on a brave face. I looked over at my husband and asked him if he was disappointed. He said he wasn’t and that he was just excited to know so we could start planning. I told him that I was disappointed and I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. They came in an uncontrollable flood.

It seemed so irrational to me, to be crying over the gender of my baby. All we ever wanted was a family. There were no gender conditions on our dreams of having children. So why was I so upset? Without realizing it, my vision of our family with a little boy had slowly become a dream, and while our dream of having a baby appears to be coming true, an unconscious, yet no less significant, dream appears to be dying. In all likelihood, this baby will be our last. I cannot put myself though all that we went through emotionally to get to this point again, it’s highly unlikely that we will be able to afford adoption in the near future, and the chances of us conceiving naturally are close to zero. We will probably never have the little boy of my dreams. And not having a boy is by no means a bad thing, it just takes time to adjust. I have no reservations whatsoever about having a girl, it’s just not what I expected.

After our appointment, we got in the car for a four hour drive and spent a good chunk of the time discussing room ideas and little girl names. When we arrived in our destination city, we went to a consignment sale and picked out our very first gender specific purchases for our little girl. We called the grandparents-to-be and told them they were going to have a granddaughter. Little by little, it’s becoming a reality to me. Last night I grabbed all of the little baby clothes that we’ve purchased along the way and threw them in the wash. The vast majority are gender neutral, but as I was pulling them out of the washer and putting them in the dryer, I’d come across a pink sleeper, or a little pink sock and think “these are for our baby girl.” This time the thought took my breath away in an entirely different, and good, manner.

Not what I expected

We’re having a girl!

Even though we both figured it would be a girl, I was still in shock when we saw the pictures on the u/s. I think it surprised me because I’ve always believed we’d have a little boy. I’m still getting used to the idea, but am getting more excited about it every minute. Now, let the shopping begin!

What kind of baby are we having?

We will know in less than 24 hours! A teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy part of me wishes that we wouldn’t find out because the surprise at the birth would be fantastic, but I’m not fooling anyone. There’s no way I could possibly wait that long to find out what we’re having. I’ve already been using all the self restraint that I have to not buy every adorable non-gender neutral outfit that I run across.

We both still think it will be a girl, but I’ve been having boy dreams lately, so who knows. Only time will tell and I can’t wait!

Pregnancy after infertility repercussions

It’s a subject that nearly every infertility blogger writes about at some point. The reason why is simple: there is no avoiding it.

The positive that has come out of my struggle with fertility is that I have found myself surrounded by an amazing group of women, both on the internet though my buddy group and blog, and in my everyday life, through my real life support group. While all of the women who have been a part of my infertility journey have added something special and unique to the experience, it’s the women in my real life support group who have made the biggest impact on my life.

These are women who have been with me through thick and thin and can relate to the struggles that we’ve endured. We clicked as a group, in a way that I didn’t think was possible for a group of women brought together by one small common link. They were there to provide listening ears, arms for hugs and humor and invaluable laughs when I was down. They were there for me when I felt like there was no hope. There were there when it felt like no one else in the world could possibly understand. They provided hope and they understood. They picked me up when I was down and provided me with something to look forward to every two weeks. They became my friends. I always left our meetings feeling uplifted, refreshed, renewed and with the energy to face our next infertility battle.

And one by one, miracle by miracle, babies were conceived, grew for 9 months and were born. One by one, women realized the dream that they had been wishing for for months and sometimes even years. One by one the number of those still waiting for their miracle slowly decreased.

It seemed crude to compartmentalize the women into “haves” and “have nots,” but in reality there’s no other way to do it. The “haves” still wished and hoped for miracles, but this time for their friends, not themselves. The “have nots” desperately wished that it would be “their turn” next. Eventually the “haves” outnumbered the “have nots.”

Shortly before I became pregnant, I was discussing with one of the two remaining “have nots” how things were different with our group. While I knew that everyone was still rooting for us and I still felt supported, things just weren’t the same. I missed the common thread that we all had: trying to have a baby. We discussed potentially recruiting new members who could provide more of the “still in the thick of it” support. We discussed trying out a different local support group. We discussed meeting as just the three of us. In the end, we didn’t do any of those things. We agreed that our group, as it was in the past, as it was at that very moment, and as it would be in the future, was most important to us. The relationship that we had formed was unlike anything we thought that we could replicate with new members, a different group, or just as the three of us.

Eventually, and seemingly miraculously, I crossed over from the “have nots” to the “haves.” This meant that there we only two women left in our group still trying to become pregnant. Even though I never believed it would be possible, the pain and sorrow of the past two and a half years slowly started to fade away into the background. While I don’t think that I will ever forget how awful that time was for me, I can no longer feel with the same intensity what it was like to go through each and every day wanting and waiting. Unconsciously my heart has moved to a different place, a place that has forgotten the mire of infertility, a place where hope has replaced fear and dread. My heart aches for these women, but I can’t honestly say that my heart aches WITH them.

And that is what makes me feel so guilty. I always thought that if the day came that I was actually pregnant, that I would never forget. How could I? But now here I am. I’m finally on the other side, and everything that I thought would be true just isn’t. I feel like a traitor, like I abandoned my friends. It’s as though I traded what I wanted the most and sacrificed knowing, understanding and having the ability to support my friends who are still trying. And the part that makes me the saddest is that the two who are left are the two who have been trying the longest. One woman for the entirety of her marriage, nearly six years, and the other woman somewhere between four and five years. And both are nearing the end of their rope; ready to give up entirely on having children in any way. Sadly, none of the rest of the women in our group have ever been where these two women are now. Yes, we all dealt with the emotions of infertility, but none of us for as long as these two women, nor were any of us ever at the point of seriously considering a childless life. While I was never able to relate to the length of time that they’d been dealing with infertility, at least I was able to share in their emotions and feel the camaraderie of still being in the depths of infertility together. Now I can’t even provide them with that comfort.

I feel like a failure in that respect. I feel guilty that I have what they want, and even more than that, I feel as though I’m not able to bring them the comfort and support that they brought to me over the past year and a half, and that hurts. Every day it seems more and more apparent to me that the scars of infertility, while seemingly invisible, reach deeper than I could ever imagine.

Oh my god…I’m pregnant

So I wrote the other day about how we told our co-workers about the pregnancy with an e-mail saying that we’re celebrating and to come on over and get a cupcake. Next to the cupcakes I had put a note saying how we’re having a baby due in February 2010. It was the perfect solution for not having to actually speak the words “I’m pregnant.”

Except it didn’t quite work that way for one co-worker. She got the e-mail and before she grabbed a cupcake, which were sitting just a few feet away from my desk, she stopped at my desk and asked “What are we celebrating?” Before I could suggest that she grab a cupcake and find out, a guy who sits about 10 feet away said “She’s pregnant.”

Oh.My.God. Hearing him say those words absolutely took my breath away. It shocked me. It surprised me. It didn’t seem real that he could be saying those words in reference to me. It was as if it were the first time that it actually hit me that yes, I AM pregnant, and yes, I AM going to have a baby.

I remember the first time we saw our baby on the ultrasound with its little heart beating away. Tears sprang to my eyes and I was in awe. That’s OUR baby, I thought. And every other time we’ve seen our baby it still blows me away that there is, in fact, a baby growing inside of me.

But even those live, moving images of our baby doing flips and mini sit-ups didn’t have the same effect on me that hearing someone actually say out loud that I am pregnant did. The confirmation by someone who wasn’t a doctor, nurse, u/s tech or family hit me in an entirely unexpected way. The realization that what I’ve been living for the past 13 weeks is actually reality hit me hard and left me speechless.

I find myself feeling like I shouldn’t be here. That this was never supposed to happen for us. We never should have been so lucky to have finally achieved a healthy pregnancy. It just can’t possibly be true and be happening to us. But it is. My belly isn’t only growing because I’m eating like a mad woman…it’s also growing because there is a tiny little baby in there. And for that I will be forever grateful, whether I can believe it or not.

We’re having a baby!

I think that I’ve mentioned in the past that telling people that I’m pregnant has actually been a terrifying prospect for me. A part of me really enjoyed having a secret that very few people other than us knew. It was fun and it was ours. But beyond just having our own little secret, I was really, really nervous to tell people. I’m sure that a lot of those nerves and fear stems from all that we’ve had to go through to get to this point and I was afraid that people would ask me questions that would make me uncomfortable or would put me in an awkward position. We hadn’t told anyone other than two of my friends and both of our parents about our infertility struggles, so the entire process of conceiving a baby has, for the most part, been one huge secret. For two and a half years, it’s been such a huge part of my life that the thought of letting all of our friends, family and co-workers know that I’m pregnant felt like losing a big important part of who I’ve become.

I kept putting the announcement off for one reason or another. Mark was ready to tell people around 10 weeks, but I really wanted to wait until after our NT scan, just for that extra reassurance. Then after the scan I wanted to wait until the blood work portion came back normal, which was another week. Even then I still wasn’t really ready to announce it to the world, but regardless of my fears and nerves, the time had come. We couldn’t put it off any longer.

There were two significant family events (a family reunion and an 80th birthday party) on Mark’s side that we felt were great opportunities to tell family that we don’t often see. Those went pretty well, with the news starting with one person and eventually just kind of making its way around to others, so it wasn’t really a barrage of people all finding out at the same time. And it WAS uncomfortable for me. Apparently I must have either looked fat or maybe my big, baggy shirt gave me away, but before we had even been at the reunion for 5 minutes, and without us knowing, one of Mark’s aunts asked Mark’s dad if I was pregnant and he confirmed it. We sat down as Mark’s aunt was leaving the table and Mark’s dad told us what had just happened. She came back after lunch and slyly asked us when we were going to have a baby, as if it just occurred to her out of the blue. I just stared at Mark and waited for him to say something and he eventually said “February!” Of course she feigned surprise, though she seemed genuinely delighted, and thus the news started to spread. And I was hit with all of the questions that I dreaded having to answer. How are you feeling? Are you tired? Are you sick? Will you find out the sex?

After spending two and a half years hiding what we’d been going through, all of these questions felt like a huge intrusion of my privacy. And I know that most any woman who easily conceived wouldn’t think twice about all the questions, and may even be thrilled to be the center of attention, my reaction was the opposite. I just wanted to crawl under a rock and hide. I think that my fear of saying more than I wanted to played a part in that, but I’ve also noticed that I’ve become a much more shy and conservative person over the past few years. Whereas in the past I would have loved all of the attention, now I just shy away from it.

But like I said, the news spread somewhat slowly, so it was just one or two people at a time coming over to congratulate us and ask questions. Telling our co-workers was anything but that.

In hindsight, I really set myself up for exactly what I got in the end. Like I said, I’m not thrilled about having to “announce” anything, and the thought of just saying to my co-workers one day “Guess what! I’m pregnant!” didn’t really appeal to me. So I stole Polly’s idea and made a couple of batches of pink and blue cupcakes to use to make our announcement. The plan was to bring in the cupcakes, send out an e-mail to key co-workers saying that we brought in cupcakes because we were celebrating and then having a sign next to the cupcakes explaining that we’re having a baby. I thought it was such a great idea; I wouldn’t have to actually TELL anyone that I’m pregnant and that people would drift by throughout the day to get their cupcake and all would be good.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Apparently people REALLY like cupcakes! Within two minutes of sending out the e-mail there were at least 10 people standing outside my cube all talking and asking questions. It was the exact opposite of what I had expected, which, had I reflected further on my great plan, I would have figured out. While it wasn’t what I had expected, it actually worked out alright. Since nearly everyone came over within the first 5-10 minutes, I got most of the attention and questions out of the way early and was free to relax for the rest of the day.

There are a couple friends yet who don’t know, and we’re making plans to tell them within the next week or so, but for the most part everyone knows now. I do feel better about not having to hide anymore, like a small weight has been lifted off of my shoulders, but part of me will always miss having our little secret.

My favorite and least favorite things about being pregnant

Let me preface this post by saying that this will in no way, shape or form be a mushy post about pregnancy and it will not reflect my emotional feelings about being pregnant whatsoever. This post is just for fun.

And speaking of fun, my all time favorite aspect of being pregnant is my new found fun bags. Yes, I said fun bags.

Let’s start with a little background. I have never been well endowed in the boobie department, and please don’t mistake what I mean when I say that. When I say not well endowed, I don’t mean B’s or even large A’s, like some of you larger chested women might think. No, I fall more in to the pre-teen category when we talk about the ta-tas. Yes, for years I lived in bras from the “Thank Goodness It Fits!” line labeled “Nearly A.” How demeaning, really, to have to buy bras from a line called “Thank Goodness It Fits!” Thank Goodness indeed, because if THOSE bras didn’t fit, I’d surely have to go into the GIRLS department to find ones that did. Every once in a while I’d find a bra that I liked (and more importantly FIT) and I’d stock up in every color they had because who knew how long it would be before I’d find another bra that actually fit me. Along those lines, I’ve been living in 8 different colors of the exact same style of bra for nearly 4 years now.

I remember in the 6th grade one of my friends came up to me and told me a joke with a punch line of “then why is your front as flat as your back?” which she followed up by noting that the joke wasn’t directed at me, it was just a funny joke. But how I could I take it as NOT being directed at me? I was flat as a board with no signs of that ever changing. As I grew older, I kept waiting and waiting for some sort of something to happen, but repeatedly found myself sorely disappointed. Finally by the end of high school I came to the sad realization that I was just stuck with what I had, which wasn’t much. And what an unfair hand to be dealt, when both my mom and sister wear D or larger cups. When I was in middle school mom put a few of the bras that my sister outgrew when she was younger into my dresser for “when I needed them.” Yup, never needed them. I’d try them on occasionally and think about what it would be like to actually have something to fill them out with, but obviously that time never came.

During the course of our two and a half year struggle to get pregnant, I often dreamed of the day that those pregnancy hormones would take over my body and hopefully add some inches to my upper torso. Well I’m finally living the dream! I knew that the girls were growing a couple weeks after my positive test, but it didn’t seem to be anything too impressive and I just chalked it up to the PIO I was taking. When we were in Colorado a couple of weeks later, I put on a tank top that while low cut was also still conservative since I never had anything even remotely close to cleavage. Well all of the sudden said tank top revealed a lot more than it ever did before. My husband, who is 100% a boob man (though he’ll never admit it) was thrilled. I was thrilled. We were thrilled together.

While my current lineup of 8 bras still fit, they are starting to get a bit tight in the band, so I decided to check out my options this weekend. I started off with a 36A in a brand that I’ve had success with in the past. Holy cow! Instant décolletage! While the profile looked nothing less than absolutely stunning to me, the darn thing was just too small. My boobs were overflowing out the top of the bra and there was no way it would be anywhere near decent with an actual shirt on. OK, no problem, it’s probably just this style of bra that isn’t working for me. On to bra number two. Same problem. Boobies are hanging out the top, smooshed down by the top of the bra. I’m dumfounded. Really. I don’t feel like the girls have grown THAT much over the last couple of months that I would go up over a whole cup size, but it appears that is exactly what has happened. I know that they’re bigger, I just didn’t realize how much bigger.

So it was back out to the lingerie department to pick up the same bras in a 36B and start all over again. This time there was more success, though I was still encountering some of the “overflowing” issues that I was with the A’s. Not wanting to even consider the fact that I could possibly be a C cup, I stuck with the ones that fit me from that batch and left the store with a whole new wardrobe of bras in hand.

Now those of you who are well endowed may not comprehend what a life changing thing this is for me. My flat chestedness has always been a self confidence killer for me. I have never felt womanly or sexy or even remotely confident in my physical appearance as a grown woman. I have always been self conscious about my body and how others perceive me.

My increased bust has me feeling like a new, confident, sexy, desirable woman. I keep saying to my husband “It’s like I have real boobs now!” I feel like I’m finally a woman in a woman’s body, not a woman trapped in a pre-teen’s body. I absolutely love it. I love the way I look, I love how the way I look makes me feel and I love that my husband loves it. We’re all around a happy family.

Oh, except there is one small catch. I’m on pelvic rest. Awesome. I’ve got crazy pregnancy hormones making me more “interested” than I’ve ever been in my life, big, giant (to me) and fantastically sensitive (in a good way) boobies to be played with, a sky high self confidence level, and a general feeling of sexiness and I can’t even get some nookie? Come on… Life is so unfair sometimes.

Wasted energy, once again

As is usual, all my worry was for naught…well so far, at least. Baby is measuring right on target, heart rate has dropped down to 155 bpm, just as it should and the NT measurement was 1.6, which is within normal range. So far so good. My clinic operates on a “no news is good news” policy, which I absolutely detest, by the way, so if we hear nothing by the middle of the week, we can assume that the risks are minimal.

Today we got to see our baby moving around and even putting its hand to its face which we assumed was the baby sucking its thumb. Next up? Good question. It occurred to me a couple of days ago that I don’t have any appointments set up. I’m not sure how that happened, but I should probably call and set something up, huh?

I’m nervous

Ok, try to follow along with my thought process here.

As mother ages, her egg quality decreases
The risk of Down Syndrome goes up with mother’s age
Therefore the risk of down syndrome has to be linked to egg quality

Right?

I’m really, really nervous about our NT scan tomorrow for the above reasoning. In the words of my RE, I have “junky eggs” and I’m absolutely terrified that my junky eggs have put us at a much higher risk of conceiving a baby with Down Syndrome than your average 30 year old. I’ve gone from worrying about the baby having died in utero (which is no longer a worry thanks to the reassurance of the Doppler) to worrying about our baby having some kind of chromosomal abnormality.

I can’t seem to shake this worry.

Obviously the spotting and bleeding that I’ve experienced have been less than desirable, but for the most part, this pregnancy has gone perfectly so far. For all of the good that we’ve experienced, it seems like we’re due for something bad to happen. For so long it’s been our reality that nothing ever goes our way and now it’s so hard for me to believe that things can work out just like they should, that everything can be OK in the end. It’s so difficult for me to fathom that not everything has to be traumatic and upsetting and because of that it seems impossible that tomorrow could have a good outcome.

And there are small “incidences” running through my mind that stress me out even more than just my worry about my junky eggs.

On two separate occasions, two different u/s techs have asked me if I’m having the 1st trimester screening done. I’m sure it was just a question, based mostly out of curiosity, but in the back of my head I’m convinced that there is a reason why they are asking. Did they see something on one of my many scans that just didn’t look normal and they want me to come in to check on it in more detail?

At one of our recent scans the tech turned on the 3D feature and said in surprise “Oh wow! Look at that cord!” I wonder what in the world she meant by that. She’s done hundreds, probably thousands of scans in her lifetime. What was it that was so phenomenal about our baby’s cord that caused her to exclaim “Oh wow!”

It seems that I just can’t stop the worry. While I hope more than anything that our baby is just fine and that our risk of any chromosomal issues is very low, I know that even those results won’t stop me from worrying. I know those who have gone before me state that the worry never stops; that there is always something new to worry about and it doesn’t get any better once the baby is born…it will continue on for the rest of my life. It seems overwhelming at times. But for now, my focus is getting past today’s worry; to get through tomorrow and keep moving forward. It seems that’s all I can do at this point.

A new experience

Yesterday I experienced something brand spanking new to me…an abdominal ultrasound.

Yes, the bleeding/spotting is still a part of my life. I naively thought I may have beaten it after going spot free from Friday through Monday, but woke up Tuesday morning to more red blood. Not a whole bunch, but red and I had mild cramps too, so I decided to call the doctor and see if I could get in. I walked into the u/s room and the tech (the one I hadn’t met before) told me to have a seat on the table. What? Shouldn’t I go and change first? I thought maybe she was just going to go over my history first or something, then send me off to the bathroom to empty my bladder and change into my sheet. Nope. She says “let’s try and abdominal u/s first and see if we can figure it out without doing an internal.” Huh? It was like a foreign language to me.

So she gave a towel to tuck into my pants, squirted the jelly on my belly and off we went. And you could see our baby without having an electrical device shoved up my hoo-ha! Crazy! Who knew it was even possible? Actually, I’m guessing most fertiles don’t know that an internal u/s device even exists, so I suppose I’m probably in the minority here. Anyway, we could see the baby and it’s heartbeat nice and strong in the upper 170’s as usual. She started moving around looking for the bleeds, but the picture wasn’t too great, so she decided to switch to the internal anyway, which was fine by me. Crazy as it sounds, I actually prefer it…it gives a much clearer picture when the baby is so small and you can see a lot more detail. Before she switched to the internal wand, she took a photo of the baby’s profile and it’s pretty grainy and undefined. I’m guessing that it probably would have been better had my bladder been fuller, but I wasn’t expecting an abdominal u/s and had just gone to the bathroom before we left for the doctor’s office.

She had me change, she switched over to the wand and there was the baby again. She showed me my cervix and the placenta, which was interesting as the other tech had never pointed those things out to me. She couldn’t find any new bleeds, which was a relief and said that as the baby grows the one bleed at the top of my uterus will likely just get squished and will resolve itself. The other one was a bit smaller, but still there. So no new news, just the same old, same old.

She asked if we’d talked to any of the doctors about things yet and I explained how we were supposed to but then there was the dental emergency and the other doctor was running an hour behind because of it. So she offered to get one of the doctors and have them come in to talk to me.

Guess who showed up? Yup. Dr. Ass Clown.

I know, I know. I promised that once I finally did get pregnant that I would find myself a new OB/GYN, but I never really researched it before I got pregnant and then once I was, I wasn’t sure how well a brand new doctor would feel about me sending in orders from my RE for my first couple of scans. So I stuck with Dr. Ass Clown’s practice. And for as much as I despise Dr. Ass Clown, I’m really digging everyone else at the practice. I am so thankful for how willing they are to get me in with no questions asked when I’m bleeding and worried. I mentioned this to the u/s tech and she said that she’s really impressed with the practice in that respect because a lot of practices are not like that. She said they are always willing to see someone if they feel uncomfortable with things, even if it’s just to listen to the heartbeat real quick. And that’s something that is invaluable to me as an infertility patient. As such, it’s not something that I’m willing to give up at this point. I love that they are so caring and understanding and make me a priority.

But then there’s Dr. Ass Clown. I told my husband as we were walking to our car that every time I see him I hate him more and more. Reason being? He kind of plays down my concerns, makes me feel like a hypochondriac for asking questions and doesn’t ever really provide any real information. I asked him a few simple questions yesterday (are these internal bleeds sub chronic hemotomas or something else? Do the bleeds put me at a higher risk for something going wrong, like a placental abruption? Is there anything that I’m doing that I shouldn’t be doing or is something I’m doing causing this?) and he didn’t really give me any answers at all. He just tends to talk around the subject and say things that will give you the warm fuzzies. Which, I’m sure, some patients like. I, however, do not. I’m an info hound. I want to know the details, and I want to know what I’m dealing with, not just that “25% of women bleed during pregnancy.” If you don’t know the answer, then tell me you don’t know the answer, don’t just talk around the subject. Ugh, I’m getting anxious and upset just writing about it, so I’m going to stop.

Bottom line is that I really feel like I’d like to get farther along in this pregnancy before switching to another OB or midwife. In the meantime I will try to schedule my appointments with the three other OB’s there in hopes of just completely avoiding Dr. Ass Clown until I make some decisions on where our long term care will be.

So yesterday’s appointment yielded no new internal bleeds, a happily beating heart and another few days of reassurance. I’m really hoping that I can make it until next Tuesday without any serious bleeding incidents. It would be great to keep the ultrasounds to only one a week. :o)

It’s the final countdown

I realize that I’ve not been very good at updating after appointments, which is something that I kind of regret because it would be nice to document all of the details and feelings while things are still fresh in my mind, but something is keeping me from doing it. I think that I am still very protective of this pregnancy and maybe feeling just a little bit selfish about wanting to keep the experience all for myself and my husband. And I’m still not wanting to “get ahead of myself” with everything, should anything bad happen and documenting everything still feels a bit like playing with fire… I just don’t want to get too excited and then get burned in the end.

But for now I’m ready to share the events of last week. We had our 10.5 week appointment set to meet with the NP and have a physical, and as I mentioned before, I also managed to squeeze in another u/s due to all of the spotting that I’d been having. I wasn’t super concerned that anything would be wrong, I was more just curious to see if all of the spotting meant that the sub chronic hemotoma (SCH) has decreased in size. The u/s tech said that it did look smaller, but it’s hard to tell exactly how much smaller since it had completely changed in shape. Everything else looked good, baby was measuring right on track and the heartbeat was in the 170’s.

We then met with a nurse who took our medical histories and then the NP came in to give me my physical and pap. I was a bit disheartened with she said that my pelvic bones are a bit “flat” which means that I may have difficulties giving birth vaginally. She didn’t rule out a vaginal birth, but said we’d “have to see what the powers of labor can do.” Again, not what I wanted to hear.

I was scheduled to meet with one of the four doctors at the practice, but she had a dental emergency, so we weren’t able to meet her. They offered to have me meet with my regular GYN, which we said was fine, then found of five minutes later that he was running an hour behind due to having to cover for the other doctor. So we didn’t get to see a doctor at all that day, which seemed fine at the time, but in retrospect, I wish that we’d had the opportunity to talk to someone about the SCH and what, if anything, it means with respect to the pregnancy. We left the office feeling good about everything and looking forward to our next u/s in two weeks.

The confident feeling was extremely short lived. In the middle of the next night, I got up to go to the bathroom and found the toilet full of red blood, with red blood on the tissue as well. I wasn’t cramping, so I wasn’t in full on panic mode, but it was a lot of blood which had me significantly worried. The next morning I hemmed and hawed about calling the doctor, not wanting to be one of “those” patients, but did end up calling first thing. They were able to get us in immediately for and u/s which was much appreciated. Right away the u/s tech found the baby and we saw it do a little flip for us…absolutely amazing! It was the first time we’d seen it move and immediately put our minds at east. We listened to the heartbeat which was in the 170’s again and the baby continued to measure right on target. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the feeling of relief that seeing our tiny baby brings me.

As for the bleeding? Within the span of the day and a half since our last u/s, I’d developed yet another hemorrhage. This one was much smaller than the first, though the tech was a little perplexed since it was near the top of the uterus and she would have expected any bleeding from that hemorrhage to be brown (due to the amount time it would take to move through my body), not red. Once again, we left feeling relieved and confident again.

I immediately e-mailed my friend who had borrowed a Doppler from yet another friend and asked her if I could pick it up soon. We made arrangements and I picked it up that night and put it to use right away. My husband happened to be away when I got it and I knew that searching for the heartbeat might make him upset since I wasn’t sure if we’d even be able to find it, so I gave it a go without him. It took a while, but I eventually found the heartbeat, nice and high in the 170’s again. And, as luck would have it, he walked in the door just then. Of course I‘m sure I was quite the sight to see…all slouched over the couch with my pants around my ankles and a bunch of blue goo all over my bikini line. He gave me the craziest look and I just said “that’s the heartbeat!!!”

I’m not 100% certain about the safety of using a Doppler every day, but for now, it’s what’s keeping me sane with all of the spotting, and I’ll take what I can get at this point. We’ve listened every night just for a few seconds just to put our mind at ease, and I am so grateful for the ability to do so.

As for the title of the post? I have officially started the countdown to the end of my meds. I put my very last estrogen patch on this morning and I have only two more progesterone shots left to do. I shouldn’t say this because I’ll probably jinx it and end up with a couple of bruisers, but as of right now, I really can’t complain about the PIO shots. Everyone told me that I’d be so sore at the end of the shots, but for now I feel really good. Sure, I’ve had a few shots that didn’t go super great and left me sore for a day or two, but I don’t have any of the lingering pain or numbness that seem to be so common with prolonged PIO usage. I will count myself as very, very fortunate in that regard. Stopping the supplemental meds with make this pregnancy seem even that much more real. I’m so grateful for how far we’ve come; at so many times it seemed like we’d never get to 12 weeks and yet here it is, only two days away.

It still feels like a dream and I don’t believe it at times. But it is real and even though it’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around sometimes, there is not a day that goes by that I’m not thankful for all we’ve been given.

Losing My Willpower

Many months ago, my acupuncturist told me that she would really like to see me give up dairy as well as sugar before I started the redo of IVF #1. I could handle giving up sugar (and obviously imitation sweeteners like Splenda, etc) as I’d been doing that on and off (though mostly on) for 8 months prior. The thought of giving up dairy was absolutely unfathomable to me as a vegetarian for many, many reasons that I highlighted in this post. However, I wanted a baby so desperately that I gave up 16 years of vegetarianism, bit the bullet and gave up dairy (and sugar again).

I’m not going to lie…giving up dairy is a huge challenge for me. I’ve lived nearly all of my life in Wisconsin and I love me some dairy. Sugar was not as tough as I thought it would be, but I still had my moments of weakness as I’m pretty convinced that I’m addicted to sugar. Once I start eating it, I can’t stop. It’s BAD.

So I’d muddle through about 6-8 weeks of a dairy free lifestyle before and during my IVF cycle until I got the official BFN from the clinic, then promptly go into depressive cheese/sugar/booze binge for a few weeks until it was time to do it all over again. I distinctly remember a particular trip to Target where I walked out with a package of peanut butter M&M’s, a bag of green apple Jelly Belly’s, three Tollhouse cookies and a block of cheese. And ONLY those items. It was heaven. I also got to experience cheeseburgers for the first time in years. Absolutely divine. And having cheese and sour cream with my Mexican food was so delicious.

And while giving up dairy and sugar during those weeks was tough, it was certainly doable. But like I mentioned above, it was only for 6-8 weeks at a time. At this point, I’ve been sugar and dairy free for 14 weeks and counting. I’ve tried to make due with substitutes. I found grain sweetened chocolate chips to help with my chocolate cravings. I’ve got a great sugar free and dairy free pumpkin muffin recipe that I’ve been baking nearly nonstop so I have quick snacks that somewhat help quell my sweet tooth. I’ve got rice milk that I can pour on my sugar free granola. I’ve gotten by without too much discomfort.

But now it’s starting to kill me. I honestly feel like I can’t do it anymore. My acupuncturist told me that I needed to maintain my diet until the end of the first trimester. If I’m calculating my trimesters correctly, I won’t be into my second trimester until the 16th of August, which, while only three weeks away, seems literally like an eternity to me. I really don’t think don’t think that I can hold out much longer. Every day gets harder and harder to decline those foods that I crave so desperately. In fact, I suppose my statement above about being dairy and sugar free isn’t entirely true. In the past week I’ve consumed two tiny sips of a 7-11 cherry Slurpee, one tiny bit of a 100 Grand bar, a bunch of tiny pieces of melted cheese on the nachos that I was mostly able to de-cheese, a tiny bit of sour cream which I was unable to remove from said nachos, two small sips of a Starbucks caramel Frappacino, a sip of iced coffee and one small fried cheese curd.

And isn’t the general rule “all things in moderation?” And don’t they generally say about pregnancy related guidelines that if avoiding whatever the taboo items is that if it’s going to stress you out significantly, then perhaps it’s better to just partake than to stress yourself out more? Can you tell I’m fishing for support in my desire to return to sugar and dairy?

I think that if all is well at Tuesday’s ultrasound, I will probably gradually start to bring those items back into my diet. At this point it’s causing me more stress and anguish than I believe it’s doing me good. All things in moderation, that’s just what I need to remember.

Catching up

It’s been a crazy week and a half since my very brief and not very informative post regarding our second u/s and it’s time for me to catch up. As I mentioned previously, I was quite honestly fearing the worst, right up until I got to work, at which point I ceased to be nervous or afraid anymore. I was not nervous for the ride over to the office and only briefly got nervous right before the tech began the u/s.

Once again, the initial angle of the wand was just so, so that the very first image that we got was what appeared to be an empty gestational sac. Before I could even begin to process that image, she moved the wand every so slightly and there was our baby. I couldn’t see the heartbeat as quickly this time and before I could even worry about it, she said “There’s your baby and its heartbeat.” She turned on the microphone and we could hear the heart beating away at 173 lovely beats per minute. The relief was amazing. Despite the bleeding, everything was OK. She did the measurements and proclaimed that the baby was measuring at 8 weeks and 4 days, which was right on target with our retrieval date. More relief.

She took other measurements and showed me a black spot on the u/s that she said was a pool of blood. She said that bleeding that I had the day before was from this pool and not from the baby, which was a relief to hear. She said it wasn’t extremely big, but it also wasn’t extremely small and it was something that we would need to keep an eye on. The blood would either be absorbed by my body, or expelled, which would be in the form of bleeding or spotting. Just knowing that there was a reason for the bleeding and that there would likely be more definitely helped to ease my concerns. She put me on pelvic rest and told me to take it easy.

She had me get dressed and then we talked about how the office works and the various screening tests that we could do. She gave me a copy of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” info on the hospital that I will deliver at, and information about all of the doctors at the office. I guess with a heartbeat at 8.5 weeks, they consider you officially pregnant. She also gave me our official due date of February 18th, 2009.

We made an appointment to see the nurse practitioner at 10.5 weeks and also made our appointment for the 12 week NT scan and testing. And that was that. We went to breakfast and it was a completely surreal experience. I just kept repeating over and over again “I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it.” After so many months of waiting for this to happen, it’s so difficult to actually come to terms with it when it finally does.

But all was well, and I actually was beginning to enjoy my time being pregnant. I knew that we would be vacation for 10 of the next 15 days until our next appointment, so I was sure the time would go quickly. There was no u/s scheduled for our next appointment, but I was really hoping that given my bleeding issue, that we could squeeze a quick one in anyway.

Then came Friday, which brought lots and lots of spotting, though this time it was dark brown. I knew that more bleeding or spotting was likely to happen, but it still caught me off guard. I did my best not to worry and mostly enjoyed the day. By Saturday the spotting was gone and Sunday was spot free too. Monday brought more spotting which was gone by Tuesday, but made yet another reappearance bright and early on Wednesday morning. By that point, I’d had enough. I didn’t want “chance” not being able to have an u/s at our next appointment, so I called the clinic and explained my situation to them and they were able to actually schedule me in for an u/s before my appointment with the NP.

So for the time being, it’s back to being a waiting game, though I am so much more relaxed at this stage of the game. I have an explanation for the spotting, which bring me great comfort. I know that the pool of blood (which she never actually called a subchronic hematoma, but that’s what I’m guessing it is) can put me at a higher risk for complications, but for now I’m not worrying about that. It’s time to enjoy this.

Trying to find a balance

I’m sitting on the balcony of our condo in a beautiful destination in Colorado trying to even begin to comprehend the past few months and everything that has happened. It all feels like a dream to me. Not real. Something that could never happen. I shouldn’t be here.

I am ten weeks pregnant today.

The fact that we have made it this far is absolutely incomprehensible to me. After all of the failures, after all of the disappointment, after all of the heartache, it seemed that nothing good would ever come to us, yet here we find ourselves. In one of our favorite vacation destinations and I’m carrying a baby that has been growing inside of me for nearly eight weeks.

I know of many, many women who say that even though they are pregnant, they can never forget their struggle with infertility and how painful and draining it was. I always thought that I would be one of those women. It seemed impossible to let go of those feelings, no matter how sweet the feeling of eventually becoming pregnant could be. I couldn’t fathom it. But as each day passes, I feel that pain, hopelessness, frustration, and despair slowly fade away into a distant memory. That realization absolutely terrifies me. I’ve known that I’ve been pregnant for just a little over six weeks, and knowing how greatly the pain of infertility has diminished already scares me.

I don’t ever want to forget what a gift this pregnancy is to us. How much we wanted it and how much we were willing to give up in order to achieve it. How much we unintentionally gave up along the way, not knowing if the ultimate outcome would bring us what we wanted. I don’t want to take for granted all that we’ve been through.

But at the same time, I don’t want to be mired in the terrible, terrible place that I was in just a few short months ago. That is a place that I don’t ever want to go to again, and it hurts me so much to see those who are still struggling in the place, trying to get to the other side.

The quickly fading memories of the past two and half years were completely unexpected and are leaving me feeling unbalanced and unsure. I know that I need to find a balance between appreciating where I’m at, while at the same time appreciating where I’ve come from, but I’m really struggling to do that.

I suppose that in the end, it’s more important to live in the moment and enjoy every moment of this pregnancy. I know that I won’t ever completely forget our long journey to get to where we are now, it will always be a part of me and for now I will just have to take solace in knowing that.

All is OK

Details to follow later, but all is OK. The baby is measuring 8 weeks and 4 days, which is exactly what I am today, so we are thrilled. The u/s tech found a pool of blood next to the gestational sac and determined that was the reason for the bleeding yesterday. She said it’s not extremely large, but not extremely small either, and there will likely be more bleeding to come. Just having an explanation for the bleeding, and also the heads up that there may be more made me feel so much better about everything. I am so thankful and relieved. This is really happening and I could not be happier.

Fearing the worst

I know I’ve been absent lately. It was pointless attempt at keeping my mind off of things until we got to our next ultrasound, which is tomorrow.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, trying to stay positive and not worry about things too much. I was doing a pretty good job, I think, and was so excited that we have another u/s and I would hopefully get some more reassurance.

That all ended this morning. I got out of bed and said good morning to my husband and dogs. While I was sitting on the couch, I felt what has come to be the familiar sensation of wet underwear, but this time was different than the last four weeks. This time there was a LOT of wetness. I went to the bathroom and even before I evaluated the situation, I felt like it was going to be bad news. My underwear was full of dark red/brown blood, so full, in fact, that it had soaked through to my pajamas.

I told my husband about it and he asked what it meant. I told him that I honestly didn’t know. He asked if I should research it on the internet and I told him that I already knew what I would find: women who had bleeding and miscarried, and those who had bleeding and went on to have happy and healthy pregnancies. I went back and forth about going to urgent care, and ultimately decided to just take a “wait and see approach.” If the bleeding got worse, then it would seem obvious what the outcome would be, and if it didn’t then who knows what’s going on. Either way, I’ll have my answer tomorrow. So far the bleeding has tapered off, but I’m still spotting brown.

Please keep me in your thoughts. I am fearing the worst, but hopeful that I am pleasantly suprised.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words