Being on birth control was nice and simple. It was a clear and easy break from the pressure and stress of it all. I started taking it in early December, when we got the results of the genetic test on Nugget 2. Took it through the hysteroscopy, and then it was January.
We went in to see the RE on Monday, January 4th. Two days after my birthday and a week after the hysteroscopy. I was nervous...I even told Michael it felt scary. I knew the next step was IVF, and I wanted to take that step, but I had this awful dread in the pit of my stomach. A fear mainly of putting myself in a position to get disappointed and emotionally broken again. The second miscarriage was awful, and as we were just pulling ourselves out of that grief, here we go again.
What if the hormones make me an emotional wreck? ,,,ahem, or more appropriately: "an even bigger emotional wreck than I already am at the moment?"
I have never given myself an injection before. What if I do it wrong?
Or stab myself in the finger by mistake?
What if I drop and break the expensive medicine when I stab myself in the finger?
Ok, assuming I don't stab myself, ruin all the medicine, and actually get the injection pat right, what if we don't get any follicles to grow?
What if we do get follicles, but didn't get any eggs?
Or what if we don't end up with any embryos? Can we handle that disappointment now!
It's a lot of work, hormones, discomfort, hope, and science to end up back at 0 again. That's awfully pessimistic, I know...but that was me at the beginning of January as we walked into the RE's office. All of these ridiculous questions and more were swimming around in my fearful head.
As usual, he made us feel better about the whole thing, especially when he said that for someone my age, it's very rare to have to "cancel" a cycle (stop shots due to poor response / not enough follicles) or even end up with no embryos. He said they would go forward even if I only had 3 follicles when it's time to retrieve.
He performed the ulrasound to check my baseline, and there was a hitch. I had a cyst on my right ovary measuring 13mm. The risk of starting injections (or "stims" as they are often referred to by the initiated), is that the cyst that is there might get all the benefit, when it might not even have an egg in it. If other follicles grow, the cyst, taking up the space that it is now (or more, if it grows) could get in the way of their healthy development. It was clear that a blank slate is more optimal as a starting point, and ironically the first time my ovaries were over-performing vs. expectations, just in the exact wrong way. Figures.
He said cysts like this are common after miscarriage and invasive procedures like the hysteroscopy. The nurse would go ahead and teach us how to mix and give the shots today, but that the blood tests needed to come back with my estrogen at a certain level and I needed to come back for another scan later that week to see if the cyst is shrinking.
Now nervous at the prospect of NOT getting to start the IVF cycle due to my craptastic and belligerent ovaries (overreaction, sure, but exactly what I was thinking), we were led into another room where we were asked to sit down amidst what seemed like a buffet of injection paraphernalia. The nurse went to get some instructions on paper, and I locked in on a GINORMOUS needle staring back at me from the array. I do not like needles...not that anyone really does, I suppose...but I could feel my blood pressure rising. She came back, arranged the notes alongside the supplies, and began to walk through what would become our nightly routine. One of the first steps, thank the Lord!, was to remove that awful 20 gauge needle, and replace it with a much smaller one. Whew! There were way more steps than I expected. I will bore you with them later in another post... We received our very own needle buffet in the mail in a large styrofoam cooler the following day.
I came back that Thursday. For the past 2 days, the injection medicines had been safely stashed in my refrigerator, behind the milk, which was less intimidating not to have to see them the instant you open the damn door. The scan showed that cyst was the same size as before, which after so many of these ultrasounds, I could now tell as he measured it, before he said it. Here were my already uncooperative ovaries just continuing to make things difficult... We had two options: wait another month on the birth control, and see what the cyst does, or take our chances. The RE seemed on the fence. When he recalled how long we had already been on birth control (since Dec 2) and how low my estrogen level already was, his opinion took a turn. He said the cyst wouldn't likely shrink much further with another month of birth control. In fact, being on the birth control for much longer would more likely have the opposite effect, suppressing my ovaries into a state that would be even less responsive to the hormones. He recommended that we go ahead with the "stims". Chances were good that the cyst wouldn't be an issue at all (this was not an uncommon obstacle in IVF), and he would keep an eye on it as we go, just in case.
It was after the Monday appointment, but even more so during this discussion on Thursday, that I realized how much I wanted this to happen. The chance of NOT getting to go ahead and having to wait another month suddenly struck me as far less desirable than jumping in head-first now. I still left feeling uneasy about the shots we would start on Sunday, January 10th, only 3 days away, but now we were both pretty excited to take the plunge. We left the office hand-in-hand, excited and hopeful for the first time since early November.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Friday, March 11, 2016
January 2016 - IVF #1, Process
Before we jump into all the thoughts and stresses of IVF #1, let's talk some process, if you're interested. IVF stands for In Vitro Fertilization. This is one of the best and best high-level descriptions of the process that I have come across.
Here's my summary of the process. Feel free to skip it if the steps / science is not your thing. Long story short there are quite a few steps and many of them include injections...
Each month, in a normal, natural cycle:
A woman's ovary (this often alternates left to right) will produce 1 mature follicle, which, when the time and hormones are right, will release 1 mature egg, which hopefully meets up with a special sperm, This zygote will travel down the fallopian tube to the uterus, a journey that takes about 5 days. If the embryo (now a blastocyst of over 100 cells) seems healthy, the uterus will allow it to implant. To produce a follicle and a healthy egg, a woman's body must produce a cocktail of hormones in varying proportion to result in a single healthy egg released at the right time.
In an IVF cycle:
The goal is to produce as many follicles with healthy eggs as possible, and keep them inside the ovaries until the RE goes in and can extract them. Growing more follicles and eggs requires additional hormones beyond that of a natural cycle. For my first cycle, which is pretty typical, I started out on birth control. Yes, that sounds odd, but what it does is calms the whole system down to a baseline level of hormones, hopefully with minimal ovary action to start.
From there, a common protocol is the following: Stop the birth control and start hormone injections. The injections run for ~6 days before an extra "antagonist" shot is added in to prevent premature ovulation. Usually after about 10-12 total days of shots with visits to the RE's office every other day for ultrasounds to measure and count follicles as well as bloodwork to check hormone levels.. Once the follicles are all the right size and hormone levels are right, a "trigger" shot is administered at a very specific time, and exactly 36 hours later, retrieval happens. Retrieval is yet another procedure under anesthesia (going under is becoming a routine!).
For me during my first IVF cycle, this portion of the process included the following:
Here's my summary of the process. Feel free to skip it if the steps / science is not your thing. Long story short there are quite a few steps and many of them include injections...
Each month, in a normal, natural cycle:
A woman's ovary (this often alternates left to right) will produce 1 mature follicle, which, when the time and hormones are right, will release 1 mature egg, which hopefully meets up with a special sperm, This zygote will travel down the fallopian tube to the uterus, a journey that takes about 5 days. If the embryo (now a blastocyst of over 100 cells) seems healthy, the uterus will allow it to implant. To produce a follicle and a healthy egg, a woman's body must produce a cocktail of hormones in varying proportion to result in a single healthy egg released at the right time.
In an IVF cycle:
The goal is to produce as many follicles with healthy eggs as possible, and keep them inside the ovaries until the RE goes in and can extract them. Growing more follicles and eggs requires additional hormones beyond that of a natural cycle. For my first cycle, which is pretty typical, I started out on birth control. Yes, that sounds odd, but what it does is calms the whole system down to a baseline level of hormones, hopefully with minimal ovary action to start.
From there, a common protocol is the following: Stop the birth control and start hormone injections. The injections run for ~6 days before an extra "antagonist" shot is added in to prevent premature ovulation. Usually after about 10-12 total days of shots with visits to the RE's office every other day for ultrasounds to measure and count follicles as well as bloodwork to check hormone levels.. Once the follicles are all the right size and hormone levels are right, a "trigger" shot is administered at a very specific time, and exactly 36 hours later, retrieval happens. Retrieval is yet another procedure under anesthesia (going under is becoming a routine!).
For me during my first IVF cycle, this portion of the process included the following:
- My shots started with a combination of Gonal-F (follicle stimulating hormone - FSH) and Menopur (FSH + luteinizing hormone - LH).
- After ~6 days of this combination (300 units of each, nightly in 1 shot), I have to add in a second shot called Cetrotide, which is used to keep the LH level in check. If the LH gets too high, the ovaries can release the eggs, and for this process, we want them to stay put for retrieval.
- I would continue with the 2 shots per night until the follicles are the right size to indicate that the eggs are mature enough for extraction (usually >20mm / 2 cm each).
At retrieval, the RE typically gets an average of 15-20 eggs from a <35 year old. A smaller number (~70%) typically fertilize to become embryos (more about this later), then an even smaller number (~50%) make it all the way to growth day 5/6, when they become blastocysts (which already >100 cells) and can be sampled for genetic testing, and cryogenically frozen for storage.
The samples (1-2 cells in size) are then frozen and sent off to a special genetics lab that does a full 23 chromosome pair analysis called PGS/PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Screening/Diagnosis). This is optional, comes at additional expense, and takes about 2 weeks to get results back. At this point it is clear which embryos are normal, and which aren't (like our previous Nuggets). PGD ultimately helps ensure that only normal embryos will be transferred back into the uterus, increasing the chances for a successful implantation and pregnancy and greatly reducing the chances of miscarriage.
Overall, every step of IVF is intensely scientific. And while taking the injections at the right time is a big responsibility, the whole process is being overseen and supervised by the RE. He/She is the one checking hormone levels, making adjustments to medicine dosage, and ultimately the one to make the call when it's time to retrieve the eggs. The lab is then responsible for the fertilization and culturing of the embryos. All of it is outside our control, yet is the most control to be had over this fertility process that a human can have. It all takes place over the course of 3-4 weeks, after which, if we have enough blastocysts, we prepare for transfer and hope for the best.
More on fertilization:
At the time of retrieval, while I'm under anesthesia, Michael gives a sample. The lab then washes the sperm and chooses the most perfect, shiny and strong looking ones from the millions in the sample for a process called ICSI, where they will actually inject a single sperm into each egg. This increases fertilization success rate from about 60% to 80%, and hopefully results in more blastocysts in the end! Fascinating!
 |
| ICSI in progress. |
Some History - 2015, part 2, Low AMH & Another Hurdle
The time leading up to the appointment with the RE was far more stressful than the actual appointment, but it went by quickly. My brother got married to a fabulous woman! So there was lots to celebrate and pass the time.
The RE was great, very informative and positive. We had already started a 4th round of Clomid, because, why not? We had to wait for the appointment anyway, it was only $20, and if it worked, we might be off the hook! He said he would treat this cycle as an observation / diagnosis cycle. We could go ahead and do all the blood tests (except for a few where timing in the first days of a cycler was essential).
The first visit Sep 21 (day 12 of my 4th Clomid cycle), they took 14 vials of blood, a urine sample, and did an ultrasound. I didn't run away from the nurse when she plopped these down on the table, for that I was very proud of myself:
| My 14 vials |
 |
| My cup for pee (empty) |
The lab techs at the RE office are awesome. Lori and Kim. They do this all day everyday, and they are good at it. All my life, I have hated needles, but they make it easy and relatively painless, which is good, because I would be back for more...quite a bit more.
The ultrasound showed 2, yes TWO!!, follicles on my right ovary. This meant I could ovulate 2 eggs! They told me this is good news, and shows that I responds well to stimulant medicines (i.e. Clomid) and to stick to a strict "schedule" that week, and to resist the urge to take a home pregnancy test until 15 days after ovulation. The RE also put me on a progesterone supplement, which was precautionary, to ensure that any embryo(s) we created, would have the best chance of implanting. The supplement was a vaginal suppository, so that it can get as close as possible to the uterine tissue and have the best effect. It was messy, but it was an extra tool in the toolkit! That week, we took the "like bunnies" approach. Figured we'd throw everything we could at the two little eggs. Then we had to wait.
The blood test results started to trickle in. Some of them before the day was done. The lab is right there in the office, so for the main things like estrogen, progesterone, FSH, etc, they get the results back same-day. Others had to be sent off. The genetic tests took the longest.
My "Patient Portal" had everything updated as it arrived. It is a secure website where I can log in and see my appointments, fill out forms, get my lab results, and email my nurses. It is designed with cool, calming colors, and cute baby-themed imagery. I would probably prefer it be sterile, black & white at this point, but whatever, I'll take it. Data. Data is good...
| All the tests they got out of my 14 vials of bood and cup of pee. |
The way this portal works, the results come in and are mostly just a number. No reference range or anything that helps you determine if it's good / bad / normal / abnormal. I assume most people are ok with being patient and waiting to go hear what the doctor has to say at their next appointment. I'm not one of those people.
So naturally, when my results started to come in, I started consulting Dr. Google to see what they meant. Most everything was coming back in the normal range, it seemed. Except for 2 things. My vitamin D was a little low, and my AMH (Anti-Mullerian Hormone) was very low.
A normal 32 year old has an AMH ~2.5ng/ml. AMH over 4.0 indicates PCOS, whereas an AMH below 1 is indicative of diminished ovarian reserve. My AMH was 0.24ng/ml. What does this mean?
To quote my favorite fertility information site:
- Research shows that the size of the pool of growing follicles is heavily influenced by the size of the pool of remaining primordial follicles (microscopic follicles in "deep sleep").
- Therefore, AMH blood levels are thought to reflect the size of the remaining egg supply - or "ovarian reserve".
So my egg supply was not just low, it was very low. My AMH is what you would expect to find in a 40+ year old woman. Not only that, but Dr. Google goes on to tell me that many fertility clinics turn away patients with AMH <0.5.
Rather than find relief in the fact that this is what has been keeping us from getting pregnant, I panicked. It was confirmed, I was broken. It also felt like not just a "little" broken, but a LOT broken. I'm scraping the bottom of the ovaries for eggs. What does this mean for our chances? Does this mean we can't have kids? What if they turn us away? What if our insurance coverage, which I was just learning was pretty damn good, disqualifies me from being covered? If we hadn't gotten pregnant in November, would we have found this sooner? Would it have helped? I start searching for cases of under 35 women with low AMH / low reserve...
Michael peels me off the ceiling at this point and brings me back to earth. He reminded me that figuring out what was wrong was why we were doing this. We should be glad to know what the issue is so we can tackle it. The RE had said there was a protocol for just about everything, and we need to wait to hear from him on what the prognosis and options are. Plus, we didn't even know how this 4th cycle of Clomid was going to turn out. We had 2 follicles that we need to focus on! He made me put that bastard, Dr. Google, away for the night. He was right, but it was really hard to hear. I just want to make sense of it all. To know what it is and how to ask the right questions. My head was swimming.
They told us to wait 15 days past ovulation to test. I cracked at 14. It was October 6, and I was at a work conference in the Woodlands for a new role I was about to start. I had just enough time to drive all the way home and back between the last meeting of the day and the work dinner that night. Michael was there...we could do a test together and (hopefully) know. He thought I was a little crazy and he tried to get me to wait, but I talked him into it.
In the bathroom together, we waited. After all my practice, and just in case we needed a secondary test, I peed in a cup.
It was POSITIVE!!! The line was very feint, but it was there. Just to be sure, I took out a digital test and it agreed. We were pregnant. The Clomid worked!
| Oct 6, 2015 |
We were so excited. We jumped up and down, hugged and kissed...I cried. Then I headed out the door, back to my work dinner meeting! I called my parents on the way. I was 15 mins late to the dinner, but I didn't care. When the table ordered a bottle of wine, I had to figure out a reasonable excuse..."too tired, have to drive a ways home...I'll just have water." I could barely breathe I was so excited. I quickly texted some close friends under the table. Friends who had been rooting for us and knew what was happening. One was the gal I was handing over with at work, who was pregnant with twins (from IVF!). She and I had already spent several of our first handover meetings talking fertility stories. Another friend I texted is one of my best friends, who also struggled to get pregnant, and was currently pregnant with her first. I was so excited at the prospect of being pregnant at the same time, having our kids be the same age. It was an amazing feeling.
We went back in to see the RE and they joked we had "slipped one past them", we all laughed. We started a schedule of weekly ultrasounds and blood tests to monitor the pregnancy. After a couple of weeks, the HCG levels were going up at the right rate and we could see him/her on ultrasound!
We called the baby "Nugget", just like we did with the first one, and argued lightheartedly over whether or not to find out the gender when the time came. We spent lots of time with our pregnant friends, and it felt wonderful and right. At night I would put my hands on my stomach and think about Nugget and how grateful I was. I was so happy, even when I was tired or feeling nauseated, That was exactly how I was supposed to feel. In the back of my head, I was also feeling nervous. After the last miscarriage, I didn't know if I could let myself get too carried away just yet. I wanted to get past the first trimester as soon as possible.
| First Nugget 2.0 sighting, Oct 2015 |
The first week of November, we got to hear the heartbeat. It was a wonderful sound. It also meant there was a much higher chance of this being a healthy pregnancy. It was 94 bpm. >90 is what they look for. It was such a relief. But Michael noticed that the nurse and RE had a look on their faces. They said that Nugget was measuring a little small...closer to 6.5 weeks than 8, where it should be. They said maybe the ovulation / conception date was likely just a few days later than we thought. They said to come back the following week and we would check it again. I started to do the math. Based on our "schedule" and the last time we did it, Nugget was starting to measure just outside of the reasonable range. This was likely the cause of the look Michael noticed. I allowed myself to dismiss this. The heartbeat was good, and I proceeded to consult Dr. Google to find as many cases as I could that turned out just fine at this point.
The second week of November, we went in for the next scan. Nugget hadn't grown much, and the heart rate had slowed. Michael held my hand while the doctor said he was so sorry, and that it didn't appear to be a viable pregnancy. It wasn't completely definitive at that point, but that we were entering "miracle territory". They asked us to come back in a couple of days for another scan, just to be sure. They told us to take our time, and the left the exam room. I sat there on the table, paper sheet over my lap, and Michael held me while I cried. All I could think was "NO!!! Why?! We just heard the heartbeat! It was fine!"
On November 12, it was confirmed. The heartbeat had stopped. A small part of me, I realized as the RE told us, had kept hope for that miracle. He gave us 3 options. We could let the miscarriage happen naturally, which could take weeks. He could give me a pill that would help it happen sooner. Or, we could opt for a procedure called a Dilation & Curettage (D&C). In a D&C, they would put me under anesthesia, dilate my cervix, and suction out the contents of my uterus. This not only definitively allows my system to reset, but it would allow us the option to send a tissue sample off for genetic analysis. The data would tell us if the baby's chromosomes were normal or not. He said, ideally, the results come back as bad chromosome pairing, which as we learned before is the cause for most miscarriages. If the baby's chromosomes were normal, that meant there was some other issue or complication that we would need to figure out.
We chose the D&C. Nugget was gone no matter what we did. We wanted something good to come from this, some bit of knowledge that might help. They booked me for the next day, Friday the 13th of November. The waiting room was full. A few families with babies. I hadn't eaten or had anything to drink since before midnight. They took me back and asked me to change and sign all the forms. I was able to select an option that would donate any additional remains to scientific study, which felt a little better. They put in my IV, and finally allowed Michael to come back and sit with me. I kept tearing up. The guilt was back...could I have done something to cause this? Eaten something? I had slipped and fell about a week ago...could that have been it? I wanted to be anywhere else. Think about anything else.
Turned out that my doctor had been called away, so the new doctor came in and walked us through everything before they took me into the procedure room. He was nice, but I was a little thrown not to have my doctor there. The nurse led me into the procedure room. They had me untie my gown before climbing onto the table. From there, they folded the bottom half of the table into leg braces and they put each of my legs in place. Let me just say, this was not a time for modesty...there were at least 6 people in the room that got both the open gown view and now this one. They quickly and gently covered my legs and lap with a blanket, and the anesthesiologist said they were starting the medicine. We talked briefly before I fell asleep. I woke up in recovery feeling sore.
Michael was brought back and helped me change back into my clothes. he said that it all went well and it was time to go home. The nurse put me in a wheelchair and rolled me out to the parking lot. Michael wrapped me in a blanket in the car, and on the drive, he got me a Whataburger chocolate milkshake. We got home and learned of the attacks on Paris on the news. It was too much to take in. Michael switched it over to a cartoon movie about penguins, which, silly as it may seem, made me feel better.
In the end, we worked through this one better and talked more openly about we felt. We both had started to get our hopes up with the heartbeat. This time, we spoke more about our feelings of loss and disappointment. Michael wanted this as badly as I did, and this was wrenching us both back to square one. I tried to articulate to Michael better what it had felt like to be pregnant, and why losing our Nugget was more than just disappointment. Being pregnant, particularly this second time, was in an odd way like being in love. It had made me so ridiculously happy. As with love, before you've truly felt it, it's so hard to describe that feeling. For me it was a fullness of heart and connection to something essential and vital, which in feeling it fully, was so much more authentic and real than it ever was in concept. Losing our pregnancies was like losing a true love, which had just made me feel whole. I missed Nugget dearly, and it was heartbreaking.
We grieved together, and focused on getting ready for Thanksgiving guests, which was a nice project and distraction to have. It still hurt deeply and was very hard to get back to a feeling of normal, which wouldn't come until after Thanksgiving. It was then we found out the results from the chromosomal testing on Nugget, which confirmed she (we found out Nugget 2 was a girl) was trisomy 16, which means there was an extra #16 chromosome, which is not compatible with life. Our RE said that usually trisomy 16 embryos don't even implant and form a pregnancy, but for whatever reason, ours did.
The RE recommended we move to IVF with PGS. Not only does it increase our chances by pulling more eggs at a time, but after 2 miscarriages, the genetic screening of our embryos could help us avoid another. Our time was short, and with my low ovarian reserve, IVF could let us freeze enough embryos to be able to have more than one child, even after my ovaries stop producing eggs. (More on how this all works later)
Within a week or so, we went out to dinner with friends to celebrate a birthday. We knew one friend who would be there was currently pregnant. As it turned out, two of the three women in attendance had their babies with them, and two of the three were pregnant. For the majority of the evening, the conversation revolved around babies and being pregnant. These women had all gotten pregnant easily, and around the time that they had intended. Listening to them vent about their frustrations with being pregnant and dealing with their children made that one of the most difficult meals I have had. Just a few short weeks ago, experiencing those early symptoms had me literally shedding tears of joy while sitting in my car a Kroger parking lot. I would gladly take all of their symptoms plus worse, just to be lucky enough to be pregnant. Squeezing Michael's hand tightly under the table, we both tried to change the conversation to something else...anything else.
The next step before IVF was to have a hysteroscopy and tubal cathetarization, a procedure where they can look inside my uterus with a camera to ensure everything looks ok and there's no scar tissue or polyps that might interfere with carrying a successful implantation and pregnancy. It would also allow the RE to check that both of my fallopian tubes were open by filling them with a fluid that shows up on a specialized x-ray device. We knew at least one of the tubes was open, given our two pregnancies, but checking both could be useful. He put me on birth control, keeping my cycle steady, and scheduled the procedure for the week after Christmas. It was very similar to the D&C, except far less depressing and sad. Everything checked out, and we were ready to start IVF in January.
We grieved together, and focused on getting ready for Thanksgiving guests, which was a nice project and distraction to have. It still hurt deeply and was very hard to get back to a feeling of normal, which wouldn't come until after Thanksgiving. It was then we found out the results from the chromosomal testing on Nugget, which confirmed she (we found out Nugget 2 was a girl) was trisomy 16, which means there was an extra #16 chromosome, which is not compatible with life. Our RE said that usually trisomy 16 embryos don't even implant and form a pregnancy, but for whatever reason, ours did.
The RE recommended we move to IVF with PGS. Not only does it increase our chances by pulling more eggs at a time, but after 2 miscarriages, the genetic screening of our embryos could help us avoid another. Our time was short, and with my low ovarian reserve, IVF could let us freeze enough embryos to be able to have more than one child, even after my ovaries stop producing eggs. (More on how this all works later)
Within a week or so, we went out to dinner with friends to celebrate a birthday. We knew one friend who would be there was currently pregnant. As it turned out, two of the three women in attendance had their babies with them, and two of the three were pregnant. For the majority of the evening, the conversation revolved around babies and being pregnant. These women had all gotten pregnant easily, and around the time that they had intended. Listening to them vent about their frustrations with being pregnant and dealing with their children made that one of the most difficult meals I have had. Just a few short weeks ago, experiencing those early symptoms had me literally shedding tears of joy while sitting in my car a Kroger parking lot. I would gladly take all of their symptoms plus worse, just to be lucky enough to be pregnant. Squeezing Michael's hand tightly under the table, we both tried to change the conversation to something else...anything else.
 |
| I have not yet slapped anyone...but I have been tempted. |
Some History - 2015, part 1, What to Say, Babies Everywhere, & Giving Up Control
Starting off 2015 was pretty rough. New Years weekend and my birthday came and went. My brain made sense of the fact that it wouldn't have worked out. I always thought that would be enough for me, were I ever to be faced with this situation. You know, you play it out in your head, and think, "Yeah, I'll make sense of that and that will be enough to help me deal with it." It wasn't. The hope, excitement, and projection of all the wonderful tings to come...the fact that this was all worth the wait to this point...the fact that I had let myself start to daydream about nurseries, names, etc. All of that had just disintegrated. I felt guilty...though I had heard the words...It wasn't my fault, but still I felt it. Plus the hormones crashed. Over the course of the next few weeks, I would just fill up with tears and cry, "I'm so sorry!" I couldn't help it. We were both sad and frustrated with having to start over again.
Miscarriage is not unlike any other kind of serious illness or trauma that you might go through, I suppose, but with an extra dose of hormones on top. It's physically happening to one of you; the one with all the hormones. And that part is awful, and worse the farther along you are, to my doctor's point. (NOTE: still NOT helpful to use the at-least-it's-not-worse approach as someone is going through something awful. Thinking about how much worse it could be is just more depressing.).
All of this is likely to put the partner in a position to feel a strong need to be the rock to lean on. To be the strong and stable one, and to help the hormonal and traumatized one work through it. It's such a helpless position. Especially when in reality, BOTH of you have been gut checked. Both of you have just had your excitement and hopes dashed. We were both devastated by the loss, but in some ways, it can feel harder for the partner to allow themselves to give in to the grief, too. And as the hormonal one, I admit, I didn't do a very good job of seeing this. I saw disappointment and sadness on his face, and the crazy part of my brain just felt that I had let him down. Not that he was needing to grieve, too.
We got through it, all of the stages of grief, and after the next cycle we got started again, trying to be positive and. This time I bought an ovulation predicting computer. Because when in doubt, add technology! Do more analysis!
In all seriousness, I think I was just grasping for some form of control. Maybe I'm not ovulating at a typical time Maybe we can be more precise with more data. Things had spun out of control and I needed to feel like I could make a difference somehow. Now, before you say, "Well, you had luck when you relaxed...", I went back and did the math. We ended up doing it right when we needed to, so our previous method was sound.
Also, if I hear one more story about couples who "give up" and then suddenly get pregnant by surprise, I think I may explode. Everyone seems to have one of these stories. It goes something like this:
"Yeah, so I knew this friend of my cousin who totally tried for years, then one day they just gave up, and BOOM! within a week and a half they were pregnant with quadruplets!"
The message received, even if this is not what is intended, is the following:
"Yeah, so you're obviously doing this to yourself by trying so hard. Being stressed is probably why you aren't getting pregnant, so it's most definitely your fault. Maybe that's why you miscarried, too! You need to give up on your dreams and then maybe they will happen anyway, and the sooner the better. Here is a single data point that says giving up is the way to go. Totally scientific. Why don't you try it?"
This message ate away at me for a while. I knew what they meant was for us to have hope, and they could see I was stressed and wanted to help me let go of that. I know that I'm a higher-stress person...I've been called intense before. This whole situation, a year or so into it, was indeed stressful, and I was already taking steps to gain more control, if possible. Could I be doing this to myself??
I did a lot of reading on the right kind of diet, exercise, and especially stress. Stress, while it can be hard on you, is NOT a cause of infertility. If it was, fertility offices would have fewer exam rooms with stirrups and more with couches and psychologists on staff. Stress can make things harder, from a romance point of view, no doubt, but please, please, stop using this story with couples who might confide in you that they are having problems conceiving. I don't care if your friend or friend of a friend ended up with a perfect little baby this way. It doesn't help give hope to the person who is in the midst of it right now. They just hear how it's their own fault, and how other couples have gotten so worn down that they made the decision to give up.
Tell them instead that struggling with fertility sucks, but that many people do and they are not alone. That they are brave to stick with it, and that it will all be worth it in the end. Tell them it must be so frustrating to be in their shoes, but that they will take the obstacles as they come. They just have a different road to travel.
It is particularly difficult to feel like you are not alone in the struggle with fertility when all you see is super-fertile friends and colleagues. This was pretty hard for me. At the time, I knew of a few others who had struggled, but the numbers were few. Maybe it's just the coincidence of observing it far more due to the fact that fertility is all I could think about. Maybe it's because our friends are mostly at the same stage of life, and it's just natural that pregnancies and babies just start popping up everywhere.
After the 6th baby shower invitation I received that spring, I started a list. I couldn't tell if I was crazy and just seeing it more, or if it really was more. I had seen friends having babies and posting their pics on Facebook since our mid-twenties, but what was happening seems way beyond what I had seen up to that point. By the end of the year, when I stopped counting, there were over 30 babies on the list. At one point in the summer, 5 of them were born within 7 days. I'm not proud of having kept a list. It was and obsessive way of keeping track of what others had that I didn't, and maybe couldn't. It added to the stress with envy.
I love my friends. They have all made adorable babies! And I couldn't bring myself to be around them very much during this time. Holding their beautiful babies, seeing their pictures on Facebook, going to another baby shower after shopping for baby gifts. It was just an overload. I had to take a break from Facebook, and I saw those friends less as they moved on into parenthood together.
In pulling back from those friends a little, we made new and wonderful friends, who have also gone through similar struggles with fertility. In sharing a little about our experience and miscarriage, we began to see more and more that we aren't alone. Friends from college, from work, from our neighborhood. Miscarriages, hormone treatments, IUI and IVF. It became less lonely. Having people to talk to, vent frustrations to, to ask advice made 2015 bearable.
In April, Michael had another knee surgery to fully restore function to his leg. Poor guy had been on crutches from Thanksgiving until early March. It felt like he had just gotten off of them to now go back for another surgery. Thankfully, this one was easier than the last one. ACLs have become fairly standard and minimally invasive since even our high school days when they required a 12 inch incision. He bounced back quickly, considering everything he had gone through up to that point, and while physical therapy would go on for several months to come, he was through the worst of it. Michael is the toughest person I know. He rarely complained from his pain or felt frustrated or sorry for himself in his limited mobility. He was making jokes and keeping positive the majority of the time. I admire him so much for that. Watching him go through two surgeries and rehab after rehab gave me renewed strength and focus.
In June, I was due for my annual check up with my OB/GYN. Michael came, too. We asked about taking the next step. What else could we do? We had been using the ovulation computer, and I had the suspicion that I wasn't ovulating reliably. Maybe only 1 of the past 3 months. It felt like the definition of insanity at this point, every month hoping for a different result. The doctor said he recommended trying a few months of a medicine called Clomid, and if not successful after 3 months, to go to the fertility specialist.
I was happy to have a new tool in the fertility tool box. Clomid. I had read about it already. It would help me ovulate by stimulating certain hormones in my system to help ensure a mature follicle develops and releases an egg. It sometimes results in multiple eggs...so the risk of twins goes up, but not by much, and at this point, we were very ready to take on as many babies as luck might throw at us. Clomid is cheap to try (I think ours was $20/mo, a full IVF cycle can cost 1000x that, so definitely worth a try), and I would take it on day 5-9 of my cycle. Doing this felt like the right step. It gave us new hope, plus, the Clomid path was short (only 3 more months at the most!) before we could feel confident in taking the next step from there.
Clomid wasn't fun. It wasn't awful either, and we have done harder things since, but it wasn't a cake walk. I had awful headaches that pain killers just wouldn't help. Light hurt, breathing hurt, noises hurt. My desk at work was in an open area (noise) and faced a big window (light), and the shades were programmed to retract every 2 hours. So every two hours, I would jump up and push the button to get them to go back down before my head split open. I read some more about it and started drinking lots of water. Water water water...as much as I could swallow. It helped make the headaches manageable, and kept me from doing a full out Dracula hiss every time the shades started to rise. Thankfully the headaches tapered off each month after the 5 days of pills were finished.
On Clomid, I could feel it more. It was working. The fertility monitor said so the first month, so I put that away after that. At 5:30 every morning on days 6-20 of the last 4 cycles, I had peed in a cup, then dipped a test stick for exactly 15 seconds, which I then put into the computer for 5 mins of analysis. I did this even on weekends and on an international business trip where I did it on a plane both coming and going. I only spilled it once, and no, it wasn't one the times on the plane. It was at home and it went all over my sink area. Fun. Cleaning it up, I thought about it being a preview of things to come with babies. This time, for the first time in a while, this idea made me smile. Technology and control were overrated at this point. We focused on our "schedule" instead, and I put the computer away.
3 months of Clomid went by quickly and unsuccessfully, and then we were told to call in reinforcements. Sigh...I made an appointment with the specialist, or RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist). I had wanted to find out what was "wrong" for so long, but now I was feeling some fear. We had hoped it wouldn't come to this...pulling out the "big guns". Was this really our path? Michael had been tested...it wasn't a new thought that what was wrong was likely with me. It was September of 2015, and I was about to find out what was "broken" inside me, and ultimately give up control of the process to someone else. There was a combination of fear and relief in the pit of my stomach when we walked into that office and met our new doctor.
Miscarriage is not unlike any other kind of serious illness or trauma that you might go through, I suppose, but with an extra dose of hormones on top. It's physically happening to one of you; the one with all the hormones. And that part is awful, and worse the farther along you are, to my doctor's point. (NOTE: still NOT helpful to use the at-least-it's-not-worse approach as someone is going through something awful. Thinking about how much worse it could be is just more depressing.).
All of this is likely to put the partner in a position to feel a strong need to be the rock to lean on. To be the strong and stable one, and to help the hormonal and traumatized one work through it. It's such a helpless position. Especially when in reality, BOTH of you have been gut checked. Both of you have just had your excitement and hopes dashed. We were both devastated by the loss, but in some ways, it can feel harder for the partner to allow themselves to give in to the grief, too. And as the hormonal one, I admit, I didn't do a very good job of seeing this. I saw disappointment and sadness on his face, and the crazy part of my brain just felt that I had let him down. Not that he was needing to grieve, too.
We got through it, all of the stages of grief, and after the next cycle we got started again, trying to be positive and. This time I bought an ovulation predicting computer. Because when in doubt, add technology! Do more analysis!
 |
| Fertility monitor. |
Also, if I hear one more story about couples who "give up" and then suddenly get pregnant by surprise, I think I may explode. Everyone seems to have one of these stories. It goes something like this:
"Yeah, so I knew this friend of my cousin who totally tried for years, then one day they just gave up, and BOOM! within a week and a half they were pregnant with quadruplets!"
The message received, even if this is not what is intended, is the following:
"Yeah, so you're obviously doing this to yourself by trying so hard. Being stressed is probably why you aren't getting pregnant, so it's most definitely your fault. Maybe that's why you miscarried, too! You need to give up on your dreams and then maybe they will happen anyway, and the sooner the better. Here is a single data point that says giving up is the way to go. Totally scientific. Why don't you try it?"
This message ate away at me for a while. I knew what they meant was for us to have hope, and they could see I was stressed and wanted to help me let go of that. I know that I'm a higher-stress person...I've been called intense before. This whole situation, a year or so into it, was indeed stressful, and I was already taking steps to gain more control, if possible. Could I be doing this to myself??
I did a lot of reading on the right kind of diet, exercise, and especially stress. Stress, while it can be hard on you, is NOT a cause of infertility. If it was, fertility offices would have fewer exam rooms with stirrups and more with couches and psychologists on staff. Stress can make things harder, from a romance point of view, no doubt, but please, please, stop using this story with couples who might confide in you that they are having problems conceiving. I don't care if your friend or friend of a friend ended up with a perfect little baby this way. It doesn't help give hope to the person who is in the midst of it right now. They just hear how it's their own fault, and how other couples have gotten so worn down that they made the decision to give up.
 |
| For my Game of Thrones friends... |
It is particularly difficult to feel like you are not alone in the struggle with fertility when all you see is super-fertile friends and colleagues. This was pretty hard for me. At the time, I knew of a few others who had struggled, but the numbers were few. Maybe it's just the coincidence of observing it far more due to the fact that fertility is all I could think about. Maybe it's because our friends are mostly at the same stage of life, and it's just natural that pregnancies and babies just start popping up everywhere.
After the 6th baby shower invitation I received that spring, I started a list. I couldn't tell if I was crazy and just seeing it more, or if it really was more. I had seen friends having babies and posting their pics on Facebook since our mid-twenties, but what was happening seems way beyond what I had seen up to that point. By the end of the year, when I stopped counting, there were over 30 babies on the list. At one point in the summer, 5 of them were born within 7 days. I'm not proud of having kept a list. It was and obsessive way of keeping track of what others had that I didn't, and maybe couldn't. It added to the stress with envy.
I love my friends. They have all made adorable babies! And I couldn't bring myself to be around them very much during this time. Holding their beautiful babies, seeing their pictures on Facebook, going to another baby shower after shopping for baby gifts. It was just an overload. I had to take a break from Facebook, and I saw those friends less as they moved on into parenthood together.
 |
| Yep...logging off now... |
In April, Michael had another knee surgery to fully restore function to his leg. Poor guy had been on crutches from Thanksgiving until early March. It felt like he had just gotten off of them to now go back for another surgery. Thankfully, this one was easier than the last one. ACLs have become fairly standard and minimally invasive since even our high school days when they required a 12 inch incision. He bounced back quickly, considering everything he had gone through up to that point, and while physical therapy would go on for several months to come, he was through the worst of it. Michael is the toughest person I know. He rarely complained from his pain or felt frustrated or sorry for himself in his limited mobility. He was making jokes and keeping positive the majority of the time. I admire him so much for that. Watching him go through two surgeries and rehab after rehab gave me renewed strength and focus.
 |
| Michael's knee after 6 screws and 3 surgeries. |
I was happy to have a new tool in the fertility tool box. Clomid. I had read about it already. It would help me ovulate by stimulating certain hormones in my system to help ensure a mature follicle develops and releases an egg. It sometimes results in multiple eggs...so the risk of twins goes up, but not by much, and at this point, we were very ready to take on as many babies as luck might throw at us. Clomid is cheap to try (I think ours was $20/mo, a full IVF cycle can cost 1000x that, so definitely worth a try), and I would take it on day 5-9 of my cycle. Doing this felt like the right step. It gave us new hope, plus, the Clomid path was short (only 3 more months at the most!) before we could feel confident in taking the next step from there.
Clomid wasn't fun. It wasn't awful either, and we have done harder things since, but it wasn't a cake walk. I had awful headaches that pain killers just wouldn't help. Light hurt, breathing hurt, noises hurt. My desk at work was in an open area (noise) and faced a big window (light), and the shades were programmed to retract every 2 hours. So every two hours, I would jump up and push the button to get them to go back down before my head split open. I read some more about it and started drinking lots of water. Water water water...as much as I could swallow. It helped make the headaches manageable, and kept me from doing a full out Dracula hiss every time the shades started to rise. Thankfully the headaches tapered off each month after the 5 days of pills were finished.
On Clomid, I could feel it more. It was working. The fertility monitor said so the first month, so I put that away after that. At 5:30 every morning on days 6-20 of the last 4 cycles, I had peed in a cup, then dipped a test stick for exactly 15 seconds, which I then put into the computer for 5 mins of analysis. I did this even on weekends and on an international business trip where I did it on a plane both coming and going. I only spilled it once, and no, it wasn't one the times on the plane. It was at home and it went all over my sink area. Fun. Cleaning it up, I thought about it being a preview of things to come with babies. This time, for the first time in a while, this idea made me smile. Technology and control were overrated at this point. We focused on our "schedule" instead, and I put the computer away.
3 months of Clomid went by quickly and unsuccessfully, and then we were told to call in reinforcements. Sigh...I made an appointment with the specialist, or RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist). I had wanted to find out what was "wrong" for so long, but now I was feeling some fear. We had hoped it wouldn't come to this...pulling out the "big guns". Was this really our path? Michael had been tested...it wasn't a new thought that what was wrong was likely with me. It was September of 2015, and I was about to find out what was "broken" inside me, and ultimately give up control of the process to someone else. There was a combination of fear and relief in the pit of my stomach when we walked into that office and met our new doctor.
Some History - 2014
In January of 2014, we decided we were as ready as we could ever be. I had been off "the pill" since August 2013, when I had some walking pneumonia. Two rounds of antibiotics later, it struck me that the pills wouldn't work that month anyway...plus, I only had a few month's supply left.
We were still in Papua New Guinea that August, but knew even then it wouldn't be for much longer (we ultimately packed up and moved back to Houston in December). The last time I had seen my doctor, he had recommended being off birth control for a few months before trying to get pregnant, just to let the cycles regulate back to normal. I have since read this strategy is arguably not all that important, but there were several factors pointing toward just stopping. After a discussion, we decided it was as good a time as any to stop the pills. I started tracking my monthly data and taking prenatals, so I could be prepared...
So in January 2014, we were excited about the next step, and pretty nervous that it could happen at any time. But then a few months passed, then a few more. At first it was a little bit of a relief, honestly, that we weren't taking an immediate plunge into parenthood. Our relationship and life has been in a wonderful, comfortable, predictable state...throwing a huge change into the mix was, indeed, pretty scary, so the fact that things didn't go quickly at first didn't feel that bad.
After 6 months of trying, and 10 months of data tracking (days, basal body temp, etc), I was a little concerned. Getting that indication of another unsuccessful month started to feel disappointing and worrisome. I got some basic blood tests done to be sure there wasn't anything obvious going on. Michael was tested, too. All seemed normal, so we just needed to keep trying.
We started to joke that at least that means another month of restful sleep...postponing the diaper changes and late night feeding just a little longer. Michael always knows how to cheer me up and say encouraging things, when I'm getting worried or down. After all, all sources of wisdom say to try for a full year before starting to worry! It's only a 20-30% chance of getting pregnant each month for the average 30-something, so maybe it just hadn't been our month yet.
I was a mild pee-on-a-stick addict. Not as bad as some I have seen in fertility blogs, but I will admit I had a stash of pregnancy tests hidden in a drawer at work, just in case I felt particularly pregnant and needed to check at work so that I might have a prayer of concentrating during the remainder of the day. I was also packing sticks when I went on business trips that would overlap the second half of my cycle. Since you can test and find out with reasonable certainty a solid 5 days before your expected period, I would imagine I went through 2-3 sticks a cycle in 2014. I couldn't wait to find out the good news...any month now, right?
That November, we went on a nice vacation. Work had been stressful, I was commuting 2.5 hrs a day out to Katy, and on top of that, I had become fed up with data tracking. The "schedule" was starting to wear us both down, and we needed a break. Takes a lot of the romance / spontaneity out of it when you're doing the sex schedule math every day..."Ok, so it's day 10, now we need to do it every 48 hours until day 20 in order to have the best chances!" Ugh. Michael had been so supportive and such a good partner through all of this, so we decided to take a vacation from all of it We knew where we were in the month, don't get me wrong, we just weren't on a military schedule, and we were ok if it didn't work out.
We went to the Harvard - Yale game at Harvard for the first time in a few years, and then... Michael broke his leg. The day we were to fly back to Houston, which was also the Monday before Thanksgiving, we stopped for a quick lunch at one of our favorite college spots. As we left, it had been raining, and there was a step down from the door he didn't see. He was trying to hold the door for me, being the gentleman he is...and he slipped and fell. I could see by the way he fell and the look in his eyes it was bad.
Long story short, we got back to Houston that day thanks to wheel chairs at the hotel and airport, and Michael just being super-human tough. He knew what was wrong, and going to the local doctor wasn't going to help anything that day. So we got home, and after seeing his orthopedic doctor, we found out he needed surgery. The day before his surgery, after I had not been feeling well, we found out I was pregnant.
As tough as the next few months would be with the knee surgeries and recovery for Michael, something just felt so right about it. I had to cancel a trip to India to be there for his surgery. A trip that would have required I take some anti-malarial pills not conducive to being pregnant. I wouldn't have known about being pregnant in time not to take them! Not only that, but after trying so hard for a year, to have conceived where we first met was a pretty amazing story. It was meant to be! Right?
We were so excited. So happy! The awful leg accident, the surgery in early December, and working through all of the recovery didn't seem so awful since it came along with this wonderful news. After confirming blood tests, I scheduled an 8wk ultrasound with my doctor, which would fall between Christmas and New Years. Then I miscarried. I started to bleed heavily the day after Christmas, and they confirmed it was a miscarriage at my 8-week ultrasound, two days before my birthday. A day before we were meant to go spend time with family, one of whom was coincidentally very pregnant.
Michael was on crutches, sitting in the exam room. We had just seen the ultrasound with nothing...no evidence of pregnancy. The doctor spoke kindly, says this happens all the time, though people don't often talk about it 20% of pregnancies end in early miscarriage. Pregnancy tests now show positive results earlier than ever before...why not, right? It's a very exciting thing! This does result in more couples finding out they are pregnant only to be disappointed soon thereafter. Something that wouldn't have happened 15-20 years ago. He said this is likely a sign of a low-quality egg. One that wouldn't have resulted in a health pregnancy anyway. He went on to say that this was "good news!" "At least it was an early miscarriage" (NOTE: THIS IS NOT A HELPFUL THING TO SAY) We knew now that "things were working the way they should...that we CAN get pregnant, and it's just a matter of time". He didn't think it was time to go the specialist route yet, so we left the office determined to give it more time. I did my very best not to cry in the office, but I fell apart when we got in the car and headed home.
We delayed going to our family gathering for a day. We both needed to grieve and pull ourselves together a bit. The last thing we wanted to hear was, "So when are you two going to have kids???". I knew I would just not be able to hold it together if we had to talk about what we just went through.
We went, and it was fine. A bit of a blur to me now, really. Some of our family who arrived early were kind enough to let people know what had happened so we didn't have to and so we wouldn't be put on the spot. We did the usual things and visited with the usual people, and it was nice, but I felt hollow as we rang in the new year.
We were still in Papua New Guinea that August, but knew even then it wouldn't be for much longer (we ultimately packed up and moved back to Houston in December). The last time I had seen my doctor, he had recommended being off birth control for a few months before trying to get pregnant, just to let the cycles regulate back to normal. I have since read this strategy is arguably not all that important, but there were several factors pointing toward just stopping. After a discussion, we decided it was as good a time as any to stop the pills. I started tracking my monthly data and taking prenatals, so I could be prepared...
So in January 2014, we were excited about the next step, and pretty nervous that it could happen at any time. But then a few months passed, then a few more. At first it was a little bit of a relief, honestly, that we weren't taking an immediate plunge into parenthood. Our relationship and life has been in a wonderful, comfortable, predictable state...throwing a huge change into the mix was, indeed, pretty scary, so the fact that things didn't go quickly at first didn't feel that bad.
After 6 months of trying, and 10 months of data tracking (days, basal body temp, etc), I was a little concerned. Getting that indication of another unsuccessful month started to feel disappointing and worrisome. I got some basic blood tests done to be sure there wasn't anything obvious going on. Michael was tested, too. All seemed normal, so we just needed to keep trying.
We started to joke that at least that means another month of restful sleep...postponing the diaper changes and late night feeding just a little longer. Michael always knows how to cheer me up and say encouraging things, when I'm getting worried or down. After all, all sources of wisdom say to try for a full year before starting to worry! It's only a 20-30% chance of getting pregnant each month for the average 30-something, so maybe it just hadn't been our month yet.
I was a mild pee-on-a-stick addict. Not as bad as some I have seen in fertility blogs, but I will admit I had a stash of pregnancy tests hidden in a drawer at work, just in case I felt particularly pregnant and needed to check at work so that I might have a prayer of concentrating during the remainder of the day. I was also packing sticks when I went on business trips that would overlap the second half of my cycle. Since you can test and find out with reasonable certainty a solid 5 days before your expected period, I would imagine I went through 2-3 sticks a cycle in 2014. I couldn't wait to find out the good news...any month now, right?
 |
| They don't actually flip you off, but sometimes it feels like it. |
We went to the Harvard - Yale game at Harvard for the first time in a few years, and then... Michael broke his leg. The day we were to fly back to Houston, which was also the Monday before Thanksgiving, we stopped for a quick lunch at one of our favorite college spots. As we left, it had been raining, and there was a step down from the door he didn't see. He was trying to hold the door for me, being the gentleman he is...and he slipped and fell. I could see by the way he fell and the look in his eyes it was bad.
Long story short, we got back to Houston that day thanks to wheel chairs at the hotel and airport, and Michael just being super-human tough. He knew what was wrong, and going to the local doctor wasn't going to help anything that day. So we got home, and after seeing his orthopedic doctor, we found out he needed surgery. The day before his surgery, after I had not been feeling well, we found out I was pregnant.
As tough as the next few months would be with the knee surgeries and recovery for Michael, something just felt so right about it. I had to cancel a trip to India to be there for his surgery. A trip that would have required I take some anti-malarial pills not conducive to being pregnant. I wouldn't have known about being pregnant in time not to take them! Not only that, but after trying so hard for a year, to have conceived where we first met was a pretty amazing story. It was meant to be! Right?
We were so excited. So happy! The awful leg accident, the surgery in early December, and working through all of the recovery didn't seem so awful since it came along with this wonderful news. After confirming blood tests, I scheduled an 8wk ultrasound with my doctor, which would fall between Christmas and New Years. Then I miscarried. I started to bleed heavily the day after Christmas, and they confirmed it was a miscarriage at my 8-week ultrasound, two days before my birthday. A day before we were meant to go spend time with family, one of whom was coincidentally very pregnant.
Michael was on crutches, sitting in the exam room. We had just seen the ultrasound with nothing...no evidence of pregnancy. The doctor spoke kindly, says this happens all the time, though people don't often talk about it 20% of pregnancies end in early miscarriage. Pregnancy tests now show positive results earlier than ever before...why not, right? It's a very exciting thing! This does result in more couples finding out they are pregnant only to be disappointed soon thereafter. Something that wouldn't have happened 15-20 years ago. He said this is likely a sign of a low-quality egg. One that wouldn't have resulted in a health pregnancy anyway. He went on to say that this was "good news!" "At least it was an early miscarriage" (NOTE: THIS IS NOT A HELPFUL THING TO SAY) We knew now that "things were working the way they should...that we CAN get pregnant, and it's just a matter of time". He didn't think it was time to go the specialist route yet, so we left the office determined to give it more time. I did my very best not to cry in the office, but I fell apart when we got in the car and headed home.
We delayed going to our family gathering for a day. We both needed to grieve and pull ourselves together a bit. The last thing we wanted to hear was, "So when are you two going to have kids???". I knew I would just not be able to hold it together if we had to talk about what we just went through.
We went, and it was fine. A bit of a blur to me now, really. Some of our family who arrived early were kind enough to let people know what had happened so we didn't have to and so we wouldn't be put on the spot. We did the usual things and visited with the usual people, and it was nice, but I felt hollow as we rang in the new year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)