For the Flavor

And They Lived Happily Ever After

2010-01-19T20:16:00.002-05:00

Thank you to everyone who has commented, supported me, cheered me up after bad news, given me a reality check, made me laugh at myself, made me laugh at the hysterical things that can happen when you mix hormonal women, sharp needles, dildocams and floundering but well-intentioned husbands/partners/REs. Thank you to everyone who has listened, who has held onto hope for me, who sat next to me on the roller coaster, who cried with me and even those who sent me virtual *hugs*, whatever they're supposed to be. Thank you especially to everyone who shared their own journey with me, the heart wrenching and raw pain, the unstoppable tears, the emptiness, the anger and unfairness, the nervous joy and trepidation, the hopefulness, the power of a heart's desire, the joy and jubilation. Thanks for your insights, your kindness, honesty, wit, humor and snark; your often beautiful writing, your open hearts, and all the other incredible, amazing parts of who you are and where you've been and what you've seen. Thank you, and fare thee well.

The end.

Feelin Lucky

2009-12-14T13:57:00.010-05:00

Gosh, you guys sure are nice to want to hear about the little family. I honestly haven't been withholding anything, there's just not much to share. I will continue to focus mainly on infertility here and naturally there isn't much new in that department with a 10 week old at home. But I do think its important to include the children, the happy outcome of successful cycles, in the whole infertility story. Even when I had no hope whatsoever for myself, it was important to me to read about others' successes and know that somewhere out there, someone was going to get lucky.

It's been a busy 10 weeks! First there was the mad scramble to finish Piper's halloween costume. She wanted to be a cupcake and I couldn't find one I liked anywhere so I decided to get crafty (i.e. crazy). It came out pretty cute but weighed a TON so she couldn't keep it on for long...

Then there was the mad dash to get ready for Piper's birthday party. I can't believe I have a two year old! The best part about her party was that it required a trial run on the birthday cake, just to be sure it was edible of course. When I asked Piper if she wanted a cake she said "brown!"

Then the four of us went to San Diego to visit my sister. There were some great moments but it was a rough trip because we all passed around a nasty stomach flu which basically meant far less time with my sister and her family than I had hoped for. Here are Piper and Isla chillin in the hotel room while we tried to recover:

She bounced back just fine though. At the end of our trip we checked into a swanky place for a few days. When we got there Piper cozied up into a cushy chair overlooking the ocean and said: "Nice, Mom. I comfortable!"

Isla is, like Piper, a very easy baby. She's a great sleeper and nursing has been easy. I thought it was easy the first time but this is really a piece of cake by comparison (is it just me or does this post have a dessert theme?). My milk came in much faster which meant no pumping, which in turn meant a much better supply from the start. She's gained weight much better than Piper did too, doubling her birthweight from 5 pounds to 10 by two months. Both girls were born at the 3rd percentile 3 weeks early, but while Piper jumped to the 20th and stayed there, Isla is on track to hang around the 40th percentile. So she's still a tiny little thing. She's now in the smiley stage which is just the greatest thing ever, melting the hearts of everyone who holds her with a coo and a huge grin.

Piper at two is....well they say easy babies are often tough toddlers. I guess we all pay our parenting dues eventually! She's doing her job of staking out her independence and gaining confidence from all the new things she's learning. She counts things and knows her colors, can draw a smiley face and hop on one foot. At her two year check-up she was off the charts on all the developmental questions, especially language. Her best friends are both almost two and a half so I think she picks up on things a bit early by following their lead. I'm glad she has that because you often hear that is the case with second siblings, so it's nice to feel like she's getting her own dose of it too. It helps a lot with her to have activities too; in warmer weather she had a great time with her adorable Lil Kickers "soccer" class, and now she absolutely LOVES gymnastics.

Christmas with a two year old is awesome. This is the first year she's kind of getting it. Decorating the tree was so fun; every ornament I pulled out of the box was met with "WOWWWWW Mom, soooo prettttty!" The first snow was a delight, although there was an unexpected disappointment. When she woke up in the morning she was at first excited to see the snow out her window, but then very sad when we came downstairs. It took me a minute to figure out what was wrong when she said "No toys?" with the saddest look ever on her face. She thought that Christmas had come with the snow but Santa hadn't brought her anything (probably because of all the "Santa is watching!" threats she hears). Excited as she is to get presents, she is completely unwilling to sit on Santa's lap. When I ask if she wants to tell Santa what to bring her for Christmas she says "Sure mom, no lap!" She'd prefer to just shout her list to him from across the velvet rope I guess. Really makes me regret not sticking her on his lap when she was a baby for the classic Christmas Cry photo. But I did get a nice one of her crying when I tried to make her pose with "snowface":

Despite the typical two-year-old frustrations, this is definitely the most wonderful Christmas I've had. Funny how it feels like just the other day and a million years ago all at once that I struggled through this time of year. It was the Christmas season that finally lit the fire under us to go ahead with IVF after a long road of disagreement and uncertainty about how to deal with infertility. My heart is with my friends whose homes still feel empty. Warm holiday wishes to all of you, to all your different forms of family, to the children I've "met" through your blogs, to the mothers to be and all the mothers at heart. May 2010 be a wonderful year for you!

Lesson Learned

2009-11-18T05:42:00.004-05:00

Well I'm officially a terrible blogger. I'm smug and obnoxious if I post about how life as a family of four is just grand and I'm a drama queen if I only post to tell you about the minor catastrophes. This one, though, seems worth telling because I learned something that could help someone else, and that I found very little info about online.

It happened in Target. I'd gotten my Starbucks, chatted with a friend in the holiday aisle, and was well on my way to finishing my errands for Piper's second birthday party. I could feel the clot come out. And then the gush. I hoped the jumbo pad was enough while I headed to check out. I realized pretty quickly it wouldn't be and while I waited behind the woman whose card was declined five times, I tried to disctretely check that at least the leak was small and well hidden. It became clear it wouldn't be as I grew faint and queasy. The baby was crying in her carseat so I picked her up with her blanket draped down in front of me to help cover up. I managed to pay and push my cart to the car with her in that position but by now I noticed people noticing. No one offered to help the crazy bloody woman with the crying infant.

At my car I saw that the leak had expanded to roughly the size of a red diaper over my khaki cords. I got us all in the car and returned a call to my sister. She lives in another time zone so as I felt fainter I hung up and called my husband and told him to stay on the phone with me while I drove home and to meet me there. In my garage I stayed in the driver's seat to avoid passing out while I pulled the still crying baby up front to nurse her and called my OB. There is a lot of multitasking with a newborn.

My OB said I should have a sono to check for retained products of conception. I remembered that the placenta hadn't delivered naturally and the OB had to reach in and yank it out. J was home in minutes and with the baby fed, we left her and Piper with the sitter and went to wait in the ER for 12 hours. My heart rate was very high when we got there because of the amount of blood I'd lost and had been losing for weeks. They put me on IV fluids and I fought to keep from passing out.

Eventually I had the ultrasound in the same room where I'd had so many during my hospital bed rest. It revealed a rather large peice of placenta still in place. When we realized they would keep me there until they could remove it, J went home and got my pump. Pumping in triage wasn't exactly the sort of "me time" I'd been dreaming of. About 9 hours in they got us ready to head to the OR. On the way in for the D&C a nurse asked if I had kids and their ages. When I said five weeks I could tell she thought I was confused about the baby she assumed I'd lost and felt sorry for me. I figured they don't have many post-partum D&Cs and after fretting all day about having to leave the infant I was still nursing every few hours, I counted my lucky stars knowing my baby was safe at home.

There is a lesson here. I should have known. I should have called my doctor weeks before. When your doctor tells you to call if your bleeding continues heavily for several weeks, do it. If you pass a softball-sized clot after leaving the hospital, call. If you're going through 5-6 pads a day a month after delivery, this is not normal. Be particularly suspicious if there was anything abnormal about delivery of the placenta. It's true that postpartum cramping is much more intense with subsequent pregnancies, but this doesn't mean you should have excessive bleeding. You may feel perfectly fine, but If you continue to have large clots for several weeks, just call. Maybe it's nothing but at least ask. Don't be the crazy bloody lady with the crying baby in Target. Lesson learned.

Home

2009-10-20T12:11:00.005-05:00

Oh my, I sure didn't mean to go 20 days without updating but the time has flown by! After 17 days of hospital bedrest, baby Isla was born at 7:29am on October 1st, weighing 5 pounds and measuring 18 3/4 inches.

She has been nearly identical to Piper in every way I can think of from the delivery to her size to eating and sleeping (which is pretty much all that's happened so far). As with Piper I had to supplement feedings with formula in the first week or so just to help her gain weight but she is nursing fine now. My milk did come in much easier the second time. The recovery has been about the same although the cramping was much worse which my OB said tends to happen with successive pregnancies. It still catches me off guard some days so I have learned to keep ibuprofen in my bag. I am really tired of wearing pads but I think the end of that stage is near. Thank GAWD.

J has been working from home and we're all just hanging out enjoying the new baby phase. Piper maybe slightly less so. She can be very sweet with the baby and seems excited about being the big sister but after having mommy in the hospital for so long it's hard to finally have me home but still not fully accessible. She mostly behaves like an overtired child, breaking down easily over fairly small things that would normally roll off her back. She is testing the limits too, and will occasionally pop the baby on the head or squeeze her too hard. We definitely have to watch her closely and I feel like I'm walking a very fine line between over- and under-reacting. There needs to be zero tolerance for anything that could hurt the baby but I also don't want to blow the adjustment period out of proportion because I think we'll all settle into our new family roles and rules soon enough.

It's been busy, with family and visitors and all the little things I want to do before I'm working again. But J does a ton around the house and with both kids and Piper's nanny still comes to play with her for a few hours four days a week. I have all the help I could need and only feel stressed by all the things I want to do with my freedom now that I'm out of the hospital and before work sucks me back in. I do have to remember to take it easy - it's easy to underestimate what bedrest takes out of you. My sister came to visit and it was too short and our time and attention was too divided but it was great to see her and now I can't wait to go back to San Diego to see them again.

So with the visits over, now we begin to get back to some sort of routine. J is going to try to continue working from home but we'll see how that unfolds. I work from home anyway and will be easing my way back in over the new few weeks. I'm really glad we got Piper into her routine with our awesome nanny a few months in advance, so she's already used to me disappearing into my office for the few hours before her nap while she plays. It was a little hard sometimes to hear her having so much fun with the nanny when I was stuck in the office but now I'm grateful she has that time to herself, not shared with the baby, while the baby sleeps or nurses in my office.

In a lot of ways I think we're in the honeymoon period and the more difficult days lie ahead (when work gets crazy, when the baby realizes she's been born and starts waking up, when I have a crawler and a toddler...), but for now I'm enjoying it! Of course I feel grateful every day that we made it this far. It's so hard to believe we're a family of four. A few years ago I really expected to end up childless and divorced, torn apart by infertility. I definitely feel like I hit the lottery somehow; that I just can't even believe my good luck. If this is all just a dream, please don't wake me up.

Birth Day Eve

2009-09-30T11:42:00.003-05:00

Or eve eve. After two weeks in the hospital and a very bad blood pressure day yesterday they've started me on Cervidil to get things going. I'm not dilated at all and cervix is still very long so cervidil stays in for 12 hours and Pitocin starts at 11pm tonight. If this is like my induction with Piper, I can expect a baby about 22 hours later, or sometime Thursday night. It wasn't a super long labor last time, just took a long time to get labor started, so this being the second time around won't necessarily go any faster as you so often hear about successive labors. Whatever happens we're on our way and she'll get here when she gets here.

Which presents a small dilemma: we have no idea what to name this girl! I seriously need help, throw everything you've got at me. I want another spunky, spirited name like Piper, but that doesn't sound new or made up. For example the old fashioned Sadie sounds just right to me but my husband hates it. Piper's middle name is Harlow, which means from the hilltown, chosen because J and I met when we were neighbors on Capitol Hill. For this baby we're considering the middle name Eve, a reference to the place where we married (called evelynton). We think Eve as a first name sounds weird with our last name. Anyway, that's what I've got for you to go on. Some of you will understandably not be in a place were thinking about baby names is even a remotely pleasant idea, but for those who are please send any and all suggestions my way! And a deep thank you to everyone who has been so supportive all this time, thank you so much.

Day 250: One Week In

2009-09-24T08:10:00.003-05:00

I've been living in L&D room 19 for a week now. It's gone by surprisingly fast, which is not to say it's been easy. Yesterday was a bad day. I'd had some problems overnight after sort of falling through the cracks between the nurses shifts, and then when I finally got a nurse around 10am, she said "So the plan is still to keep you here until 37 weeks?" I burst into tears. It wasn't particularly shocking information but no one had specifically said that before and in that moment, the idea of being away from Piper for another week and a half after 6 days away already hit me hard. My nurse was upset about having upset me and became very defensive. I tried to swallow the tears but they kept sneaking out over the next few hours.

Eventually my OB came by to talk to me about the u/s I'd had the day before and a plan. I'm mainly here for low fluid and over the past week it is holding pretty steady. My mfm still feels the pregnancy is basically just done and wants me here monitored until delivery. My OB made a case with him for sending me to bedrest at home with bi-weekly monitoring but the mfm didn't go for it. I knew he wouldn't, he told me when I left his office last week that I would not be going home pregnant. I had accepted that, and set my sights on making it to 36 weeks in this miserable little room. That's two days from now. The idea of tacking another week on that was unbearable.

Both the OB and mfm had previously mentioned their comfort level with delivering at 36 weeks which was what put that number in my head. While 37 weeks is considered full term, babies' lungs are typically developed at some point between 35-37 weeks and it just varies by the individual baby. It's very encouraging that we've seen practice breathing on u/s for over six weeks now. Basically the expectation is that the baby would be fine if I had to be delivered today, but could face some significant NICU time based on it's lung development, weight (ability to maintain body temperature), and suck reflex (ability to feed itself whether bottle or breast), which is the last thing to develop. The longer we wait, the less likely NICU would be necessary, and as my OB said, the longer you stay stable and everything looks good, the greedier we get about wanting to give this more time.

So when my OB said we could plan an induction for his next hospital on-call day a week away (next Wednesday 9/30) I felt relieved. That's 36w4days, just a few days before full term. But a week away felt manageable too, having just made it through one week already. So it seemed like a reasonable balance of caution and expedience. I may be plotting my escape after a few more days, but right now it's just great to have an end point.

Greetings from Hospital Bedrest

2009-09-19T07:44:00.002-05:00

Two weeks ago everything looked so good at the mfm. The next day at the ob I had my first major bp spike: 150/102. It came down and I got to go home but readings at home have been high ever since. I knew the mfm wasn't going to like the bp but I didn't expect to be sentenced to immediate hospital bedrest, where I have been since Thursday. Apparently when gestational hypertension causes deterioration of the placenta, things can begin to go downhill quickly. So while the cautious OBs continue to try to get to 36-37 weeks, they are on board with the mfm who wants me here, monitored, and ready for an induction at the first indication.

In addition to the high bp, growth dropped from 32nd percentile to 16th in two weeks, the placenta which was so healthy last time has rapidly matured, and the fluid is low. Low fluid is the main reason my OB is keeping me here. Apparently that can also be a rapidly worsening situation. A nurse told me about a woman who came in the day before me with low fluid at 34 weeks and by the time she got here the baby had died. So I'm okay, maybe this is the best place for me to be but it's still pretty miserable being stuck here.

It was just such a shock at first. The mfm practically pushed me out the door and across the street to the hospital saying it was time to get the baby out. This happened several times last time and each time all monitoring came back normal and the OBs sent me home until I was within a few days of 37 weeks. I was so sure I'd be here for just a couple hours Thursday, especially as they gave me all the lab results, all normal. But the low fluid was the kicker. Thursday night I was on heavy IV fluids to see if we could increase the fluid level, which would have bought me a ticket home. No dice; they told me when that amount of IV fluid doesn't help, you're not just dehydrated, it's a sign that things are not functioning properly.

So at any time they could decide it's time to induce, but for now I'm just living on a hospital bed, in my fancy gown, strapped to two monitors, a bp cuff, and an IV. Although I can't image another week in this bed, I'm still hoping we get another week in before baby (I'm 35 weeks today). The hardest part might be being away from Piper all this time. I left for my appt during her nap and expected to be home before she even woke up. She's been to visit each day but it's hard for her to be here and I think might make it even worse than missing me at home. I had all these things I had in mind that I was looking forward to enjoying with her in our last few weeks of her being my one and only. I'm done being sad about that now, it's clear I am not going to get to go home for even just the day or two I was hoping for. I've accepted it and moved on to being sick of being stuck on a hot vinyl bed, not getting any sleep, monitors that fall off and beep constantly causing me to feel like I can't move, so I'm constantly sore and uncomfortable. And I'm only a day and a half in! How will I ever make it another week?

Day 230

2009-09-04T05:04:00.002-05:00

50 days to go according to my iphone, 82% through. This baby will be term in four weeks (37 weeks), the point at which I was was induced with Piper. Very hard to imagine. I'm tired and uncomfortable and I'm sure I'll be getting anxious to get on with it in another month but right now I can't imagine not being pregnant. I'm trying to savor this last bit of time with just one child. With #2 neatly packaged away and all its needs met. It sleeps, it wakes, I hardly notice. It's fed whether I'm asleep or awake and I'm only changing one set of diapers. My back is sore but my arms are free. And I never have to feel bad about dividing my attention between the two. Piper and I just returned from visiting my sister in San Diego. Traveling alone with a toddler will really make you appreciate not traveling with a toddler and an infant.

IUGR was diagnosed at week 32 last time so yesterday's MFM appointment was a big one. At this point I'd already been to the ER a number of times for high blood pressure and so far this time it's stayed just on the right side of the upper limit (132/88 yesterday). My OB sees this as a good number, safely below his danger level (140/90), but the MFM reminds me this is hypertension because it represents an increase of over 20/10 points from my normal pre-pregnancy levels (1-teens/70). So far though, it doesn't appear to be having a negative impact on the baby. At around 4 lbs. the baby measures in the 32nd percentile. The IUGR diagnosis means that Piper at this point was at or below the 10th percentile. Because this wasn't identified until 32 weeks, we really don't know at what point her growth began to slow and fall off the charts, but so far we don't seem to be on the same path. The baby was 36th percentile at the last visit so there may be a slight drop-off but I think it's within the margin of error and certainly still in the safe range.

Better yet, at 32 weeks last time the placenta already showed signs of deteriorating, caused by the hypertension and the cause of the growth restriction. It was smallish, thin, and heavily calcified. At delivery it turned out to be even smaller than expected and fragmented. This time he said it still looks fine. The MFM said his gut feeling is that I may be walking the line all the way to the end, but at this point last time he was already putting bets on early induction.

For all the good news, he did mention a few reasons to remain concerned. He clarified what my OB had told me about only 15% of gestational hypertension cases repeating in successive pregnancies: this statistic is related to pre-eclampsia, which I never had. In discrete hypertension cases, it's more like 90+%. And the main reason is because when the problem is only gestational hypertension, not related to kidney problems seen in pre-eclampsia, it is really the emergence of an unknown underlying problem causing the blood vessels not to expand properly. So, we stay on top of it. Back in two weeks for more monitoring.

28 weeks - Moving Right Along

2009-08-06T14:34:00.006-05:00

Saw the MFM and the OB this week; good news all around. My blood pressure continues to increase steadily (138/85) but they are in agreement that with no impact on either fetal growth or the placenta so far, there's no need to medicate. Whatever. The MFM still expects to put me on something eventually but as frequently as I'm being monitored I'm fine with it. Not excited about appointments every two weeks but here we are.

The baby is moving non-stop now. Sono measurements indicate it's around 2 pounds 6 ounces which is right on track. I take Piper to most of these appointments to try to convince her there really is a baby in there. It's not working. Sometimes when we talk about it she happily chirps "Nope! No baby!" and continues playing, at others she looks worried and refuses eye contact, and at worst she throws a "no baby" tantrum. She's insisting on being held and carried A LOT, which I just can't do, and on lots of cuddling, which I adore. Seriously, who has advice for me, doesn't even have to be good advice, on easing the transition?? I'm especially concerned about how she's going to deal with nursing time.

Piper is very excited about her "big girl" room and wants to hang out in there more and more. We haven't moved her into that bed yet because I've got to get bed rails first. I'm not using a box spring so the mesh ones that go in between won't work. I'm ordering the ones that attach to her bed, and I may be procrastinating just a little.

She loves her new nanny, and just in time! I'm starting to get busy with Fall work already and eager to crank as much out as I can before I have to throw in the towel. To anyone else on the nanny hunt, I had a great experience using sittercity.

Glucose test was oddly fine for me this time. Last time I really felt impending doom as the sugar syrup took over my body. I lost peripheral vision, got all shaky and fainty, could hardly stand up without passing out. This time, it just tasted kind of gross but otherwise was completely fine. And my result came back about the same both times (completely normal). Weird.

Note to Self & the Third Trimester

2009-07-13T22:45:00.006-05:00

Dear Mothers of Teenage/Adult Children,
Please don't feel the need to stop me in Starbucks on a daily basis and tell me how fast the time goes and to enjoy it. I could cry about this all on my own on a daily basis, thankyouverymuch. The only thing stopping me from looking you squarely in the eye and telling you that after waiting five painful years for this you're damn right I appreciate every single moment and yes it is heartbreaking to feel it slipping so swiftly through my fingers is that I understand your compulsion is based on the little ache the passage of time has left in your own heart.

Dear Future Self,
Please try your best to resist stopping new mothers to tell them this. If they don't already know how how fast it goes or to appreciate their babies, your words would be lost on them anyway.

----------------------------------

I can't believe the third trimester started last weekend, and right on cue with the back pain, belly pain, leg pain, knee pain, etc. I'm feeling stretched and heavy and believe me, I wouldn't trade this status for anything in the world but it is starting to wear me down. I'm getting slower and I can't keep up with all the gardening I'd hoped to finish before anyone mentions the word bedrest. At the same time, things are getting busier. A friend pointed out the other day that if this baby arrives at 37 weeks like Piper did I have only 10 weeks to go. Holy shit! Two main things to get done:
- getting Piper's "big girl" room ready, so the transition isn't on her all at once when the baby arrives. There are already signs that this isn't going to be easy, like when I held a friend's baby recently and she promptly tried to swat it out of my arms. Or the major "no baby!" protest she put up when we went shopping for a gift for another baby. (Any advice on preparing a two year old for a sibling greatly appreciated!)
- ramping up my nanny search. The plan is to have a nanny start in the next month or two, again to ease Piper's transition, and have her ready when #2 arrives. One nanny is cheaper than two daycares and since I work from home, this would (ideally) allow me to nurse the baby on breaks from the office.

My blood pressure continues to spike, I've tested it as high as 146/85 at home, but it always goes down to the 120's or lower after resting. I see the MFM Monday and I'm almost certain he will recommend meds at that point, which my OB said he would be on board with. He was very skeptical that it would actually help which is why the OB practice hesitates to do it, but having been reassured that the right drug choice poses no serious risk, and certainly far less risk than IUGR, I don't see why we wouldn't at least give it a try. Especially since "bedrest" is hardly a realistic option with a toddler running around the house.

Nasty Glucose test Thursday. Wish me luck that I don't wreck my car after falling into a sugar coma on my way home.

Marmaduke*

2009-07-13T21:29:00.003-05:00

I recently read this short story on the impact of infertility on relationships and enjoyed it so much I just wanted to share it (thanks Rachel).

I've been feeling so grateful lately for where our particular infertility experience has taken us and this story just reinforced those feelings. I have no idea what my marriage would look like today if we hadn't been so lucky with Piper. Now that she is here, I'm pretty sure we would have found our way through if it hadn't worked a second time, but I still can't believe our good fortune. I do still struggle with survivor's guilt but not as much as I did before Piper. It is important to me now to appreciate what we have and focus my attention there. I never want to feel like I've forgotten the struggle or left less fortunate friends behind, but letting go of some of the unfairness and "why me?" must be a part of my natural evolution in this process, of the sort I hope we all eventually find our way to one way or another. That may sound either very Pollyanna or shallowly asinine depending on your level of cynicism (or clomid dosage), but I'm damn glad to find out there does seem to be room for evolution for infertiles with a wide range of experiences and outcomes. I can't imagine living trapped forever in the prison of all the terrible feelings that dominated the first several years of our infertile experience. My heart aches for my friends who are still there.

*one of the names meaning "lucky" suggested by my sister after IVF #1, although i have not seen that given as the name meaning elsewhere so i suspect she was just trying to trick me into using it

And the confusion begins

2009-07-07T12:44:00.003-05:00

Another nice scan at the MFM yesterday. No pictures though, the sonographer printed some but I think she forgot to give them to me. There was a nice profile shot too. Oh well. The upside to frequent checks with the high risk doc is plenty of pictures.

Everything was measuring on time (1lb 7 oz), and if this baby is going to drop off the growth curve like Piper did it isn't happening yet. Which makes sense since my BP is still normalish. The MFM noted the slight upward trend I mentioned at the last OB visit and asked why they don't have me on medication yet. So the confusion begins. I told him about the convo with the OB I saw last and he said I was absolutely right about starting medication BEFORE we see a problem. He strongly disagreed with her avoid-medicating-at-nearly-all-cost position but said let's give it four more weeks since all is well and then he will probably recommend to them to put me on medication. He also said to call if I ever feel like I'm not happy with what I'm being told at the OB practice.

So here I am again, feeling like it's up to me to make decisions I'm not qualified to make. But the OB I saw last time was also the one who screwed me all up with the previous pregnancy, and I only saw her because the doctor who we decided I should see exclusively (it's oh so intimate you know) was on vacation. When I'm back with my regular guy next week I'll talk to him about both visits and I feel very comfortable with his relationship with the MFM, and ultimately I have tremendous trust in the MFM and will defer to his advice. It makes a huge difference that he's gotten us safely through this once before so it does feel a bit easier this time. I can only hope the outcome is just as happy. So far so good.

blah, blah, blah, pregnancy induced hypertension, blah, blah, blah

2009-06-22T11:49:00.006-05:00

A long post that will really only be compelling to those interested in pregnancy induced hypertension or the general category of scary pregnancy stories: abbreviated version - things are fine.

Had a good OB appointment on Friday. My BP was up ever so slightly (hopefully just because I was late and raced up the stairs to the office). But it gave me a chance to ask some questions--and I actually got some good answers!

I don't know if I ever accurately reflected how stressful the hypertension issue was last time. I originally made my blog public with friends and family who knew we were doing IVF as a way of letting them know what was going on without having to ask questions that might have been difficult (or me having to give difficult answers, particularly when I didn't feel like talking about bad news). I didn't want to scare anyone too much and those of you to whom the pregnancy-induced hypertension issue is important already knew enough to be scared for me. It's also just my nature to be weirdly level and pragmatic about things I can't control, so I tended to share key details but might not have really expressed the sense that we were always right on the edge of a dire situation.

I'd actually been dealing with hypertension for five or six weeks last time before I thought much of it myself. I was admitted to the hospital for monitoring several times, during which my BP would always eventually drop, usually after two hours or so of lying still connected to the monitors. It never rose much above the danger mark of 150/90 and I never had any other signs of preeclampsia, so it didn't set off major alarms with my OB.

But when I went to the MFM at 32 weeks it was another story. The IUGR was detected, and I started to learn about all the risks facing growth restricted babies (including stillbirth and motor and neurological disabilities). This was a big shock since all the time I'd been monitored for hypertension by the OB, I was repeatedly told the baby was very healthy. She looked great on the monitors but the fact was her growth had slowed and dropped from the normal curve. It is possible that small babies just run in my family (I was about five pounds) but IUGR was consistent with the drop off in development at a late stage after hypertension had set in, and finally with the terrible condition of the placenta at delivery - very small, fragmented, and calcified. The connection to hypertension is that the blood doesn't flow well to the placenta and so the baby doesn't have as much nourishment as it should.

The worst part was in the final weeks before I was induced - I hadn't expected so much of that decision to fall on me. I thought there would be some sort of medical standard for assessing the risk/benefit trade-off, but because the MFM and the OB have different ideas about how much risk to tolerate, it all culminated in a conversation with me stretched on a gurney in the hospital, my OB explaining the risks of underdeveloped lungs, and asking me if I wanted to go through with the induction. I decided to trust the MFM, who I adore, and who had said to me "I just really think this baby is going to thrive when we get her out of there." And of course she did.

Anyway, all of that is a long way of explaining why I'm a bit hung up in trying to understand this whole hypertension thing this time around. Of course my main focus has been on whether there's anything that I or the medical team can do to prevent a repeat performance. My primary OB said to me at the first appointment: "Basically the only way to be sure this won't happen again is to not get pregnant. That's not to say you shouldn't get pregnant, but the fact is this is your body's response to pregnancy, and its not your fault and not something you can necessarily control." But the interesting fact I learned on Friday is that pregnancy-induced hypertension only repeats in a second pregnancy about 15% of the time. Now of course I have found myself on the short side of the odds before, but that's still nice to know.

My normal BP is in the one-teens. I think it was 112/75 at my first OB appointment this time. It was at 126/something at the second and 130-something/80 at this latest appointment. All of these are very much in the normal healthy range, but the fact is they are higher than normal for me and they seem to be creeping up. So I asked about medication. This was another tricky thing last time, some docs thought I should medicate, others disagreed, saying we didn't want to "shock" the baby by suddenly dropping my BP, afterall, the baby appeared to be thriving in the high BP conditions until we saw the IUGR in the final weeks. So I had wondered if it would be wise to start medication earlier this time, at the first sign that BP was increasing, to maybe somehow head it off before it was so high. I've asked this question before and keep getting answers like "We just have to keep a close eye on it and see," but this time I got a clear answer: no. We don't want to medicate unless we absolutely HAVE to because there are some risks with medication. We need to keep monitoring it, but the hope is that I will be in the 85% who don't have to go two rounds. I am to stay well hydrated, watch my salt, and not get overly worked up about it. Which all sounds good to me.

Halfway

2009-06-06T05:56:00.002-05:00

Hard to believe it's 20 weeks already, where has the time gone? I'm feeling fine and everything seems to be on track so far. Next scan to check for IUGR is about four weeks away. Piper's "sprained ankle" has continued to bother her and two weeks later she still has a limp so we saw an orthopedic specialist and it turns out she has a tiny fracture in her shin. My poor baby has been hobbling around on a broken bone. It's apparently not a big deal, very common and healing fine on it's own. They expect it to be sore for a while, thus the limp. We go back in four weeks just to be sure its healing properly.

She's a trooper and otherwise doing well. Seems like such a big girl to me lately. When J comes home she says: Hi Daddy! When I give her a much-requested pretzel she says: Thank you Mommy! Yesterday when she was playing in the tupperware cabinet and I said it was time to get in the car she first put it all back and closed the cabinet before meeting me at the garage door. (Don't get the mistaken impression that we are the center of calm and order. This was a fluke, related to the fact that kids her age do enjoy take-it-out, put-it-back games. If they happen to quit the game after a put-it-back rather than a take-it-out stage you're just lucky.) Despite our fair share of tantrums and time-outs, she's been a happy girl lately. She learned the word on Sesame Street and when I picked her up from her nap yesterday she started beboppin and dancin around saying "happy happy happy."

The passage of time has been on my mind lately. These 20 weeks have flown by and I see Piper's babyhood quickly escaping my grasp. Last weekend I bawled through my niece's two hour dance recital. This was her third year and since I don't see her dance in between, comparing it to her first recital at age 5 and even last year's was unavoidable. How did she ever get to be seven?? There have been some unsettling family events lately that have me appreciating how nice my life is right now, while nervously awaiting the fallout and how it will affect us. As when Piper was first born, I find myself wishing I could just freeze time and keep everything just as it is. I keep thinking of a line that stuck in my head when I read The World According to Garp as a teenager - I can't shake the ominous feeling that the "undertoad" is lurking.

Four doctors in two days

2009-05-22T19:34:00.003-05:00

I should start by saying everything is fine. I had an OB appointment yesterday and the Peri today - all completely routine. The excitement began yesterday when Piper had a little tumble and then was limping around for the rest of the day. We went first to her pediatrician and then to radiology for an x-ray. Holding down a screaming 18 month old for an x-ray is HORRIBLE. Thankfully Daddy was there to do the dirty work. Turns out to be just a sprain, but I guess they have to be extra cautious with little growing bones. She still limps and has some pain but she'll be fine.

The perinatologist appointment was for the anatomy scan. Funny how imaging and measuring every important bone in a growing fetus is tremendously easier than taking one little ankle bone picture in a toddler, but I guess the size of the challenge is proportionate to the size of the girl: Piper is roughly 42 times the size of her little sister in ounces. They don't say anything very definitively this early but it looks like sugar and spice in there. Most importantly, everything measured just fine and right on track. Because of the IUGR history, we go back in 6 weeks just to keep an eye on things, but my blood pressure is still completely normal so all's well around here tonight.

Milestones

2009-05-04T06:20:00.010-05:00

I almost broke down in Red Robin. Walking out of the restaurant behind Piper, seeing her silhouette in her jacket with her little hood up, she looked so much her own little person. Just as I was thinking she is getting so big, she paused and turned to wave goodbye to the giant Red Robin statue. "Bye bye" she said in her sweet little voice and then blew him a kiss. I held her hand and walked her out trying to hold back tears until we got outside then picked her up and hugged her tight all the way to the car. Then I realized it was her 18 month birthday.

And so long first trimester! A far less bittersweet milestone. I won't miss it one bit. A list of reasons why, if for nothing else than my own record: the constant nausea from week 6 to 11, the four straight nights of inexplicable, excruciatingly itchy hives that kept me awake for nearly 96 straight hours, the trip I took solo with Piper when we didn't sleep for three nights and concluded with me wretching bile in every planter, trash can and dark corner of the airport while carrying our luggage, carseat, stroller and Piper by myself through rental car return and security, and finally the two week long sinus infection complete with fever chills and shakes which wrapped up right on time at 13 weeks. Whew.

This pregnancy is so different. I believe in babies now. I have seen one go from day three follicle check to 18 month old and I can see a possibility of it happening again. What I find impossible to imagine is Piper not being the only one. She is the center of my universe, the love of my life, and I can't imagine sharing it with another one. I know when there are two your heart makes room and I'm not afraid it won't work, I just can't possibly imagine it.

So in honor of her 18 month milestone, here's a little snapshot of Piper these days:
-She's gone from social butterfly to discovering shyness (partly due to daycare I think). She used to wave and say Hi to everyone everywhere we went, now she clams up when strangers talk to her, although she does always say thank you to the checkout people in stores. More like a sing-songy little "juke ooo." She is a big time talker at home. She had over 100 words at 15 months and communicates pretty much all her needs verbally, although as she adds more I'm having a harder time keeping up and understanding them all.

-She's VERY busy. She can't stand to be restrained in a high chair, car seat, stroller, etc. She HATES to lay still for a diaper change. We take the stroller to the zoo and she just wants to push it the whole time. She will sit in a high chair or booster seat long enough to eat two bites of food before she works herself into a tantrum and will nearly fling herself over backwards. She likes pretty much anything we give her but is generally uninterested in sitting still to eat. California rolls and broccoli are current favorites, there are just a million other things she'd rather pay attention to.

-She loves to be outside exploring. She wants to walk, run, pick up rocks, follow bugs, play in her water play table and LOVES the playground. The Itsy Bitsy Spider song makes her laugh her head off. She has a funny little sense of humor, a great little giggle and an adorable dimple to go with it. Other than the dimple she looks just like I did at her age, still with hardly any hair.

-She's in a major mommy-centric mode. When she's not racing around outside she wants to be held constantly, and only by me. When I don't pick her up she throws herself into the limp noodle position and falls over backward crying her heart out. I simply can't hold her as much as she likes but when its practical we both love it. She's my little buddy and loves to ride around on my hip, checking things out and asking what everything is. She also loves to sit in our laps and read books.

back in March, looking all grown up...

big girl riding a dinosaur at the park a few weeks ago...

and my sweet girl just this past weekend at the Air & Space Museum, posing under a Piper Super Cruiser that circled the globe back in 1947...

Don't get me wrong, there are days that feel like they will never end, but it all just goes way too fast.

Really Good News

2009-04-10T06:21:00.003-05:00

The first trimester screening went great yesterday. The NT measurement looked fine and we saw all the major parts that were supposed to be there - arms, legs, hands, feet, stomach, eyes, nose, mouth, regions of the brain. The nasal bone was present, also a good sign. Baby floated around and waggled it's tiny limbs but did none of the crazy cartwheels Piper was doing at that scan, so I'm hoping this is our calm child? I'll have my risk number in a week when the bloodwork comes back, but so far, so good.

But the best news: my blood pressure was completely normal. Doesn't mean I won't develop gestational hypertension again; I probably will, it would be really unusual for it to set in this early anyway. But it just means there's no reason to think there's anything wrong now, and gives us time to monitor and take action whenever, if ever, it becomes appropriate.

I'm just back from a couple of weeks of hectic travel. Here's how much time I've spent in airports lately: washing my hands yesterday I held them under the faucet at home waiting for the water to come on automatic sensor-style. If ever my BP should be elevated it's now. Although watching the scan on the big overhead monitor (nice touch!) was very relaxing. J was there holding Piper who at one point climbed up on my lap. What an incredible feeling sitting with her on the same table where we'd first seen her at 12 weeks gestation, all big now and grown up.

And The Complications Begin

2009-03-25T06:09:00.004-05:00

As many of you know, my pregnancy with Piper was not entirely smooth. I developed gestational hypertension at 27 weeks which resulted in IUGR (in my case, growth restriction caused by inadequate placenta due to hypertension). I was induced three weeks early to hopefully mitigate potential grave outcomes for both me and baby.

It was an incredibly stressful time. My OB constantly assessed me for pre-eclampsia, which never became an issue, so they were mostly unconcerned. But then I'd see the MFM who was jumping out of his skin over the situation. He talked about things like a stroke in either me or the baby, the quick decline a baby with mild IUGR can take, and the potential risks when severe IUGR develops (which include long term growth problems or stillbirth). The MFM talked very excitedly about early induction while my OB kept saying things like "We'll see, things look fine..." They come from such different perspectives, the OB seeing thousands of perfectly normal deliveries and just a handful of serious complications, while the high risk MFM may see the inverse.

In addition to complete confusion over the extent of the problem between the two practices, seeing a different one of 15 docs at my OB further complicated things. For one thing, I had to explain the situation at each new appointment and there was no one person keeping tabs on the reports from the MFM. In addition, I got conflicting advice each time; one would prescribe medication and the next week another doc would say it can be dangerous to suddenly drop the baby's blood pressure - don't take it. And on and on like this for 10 weeks. In between there were visits to the hospital for monitoring when my BP spiked, off and on bed rest recommendations (depending on the doc), and a general sense that no one was managing my situation - that was left to me.

So my main goal for the first OB appointment was to review this and talk about seeing just one doctor this time. Based on the conversation I would consider whether to stay with them or move to a new practice. That part went really well, I saw the guy I have the best relationship with and he completely agreed I should see just him. He also has a good relationship with the MFM so I feel like we will stay on top of things. I have an appointment in two weeks for the first trimester screening with the MFM, including a hypertension/IUGR consult. Since we know in advance this time, we should be much more prepared to manage the situation.

But the bad news is the hypertension has already returned. Last time at the 8 week appointment my BP was 112 over 60 (normal for me). This time it was 138 over 80. That's not in the danger zone (150/100) but it's approaching it much more quickly than last time. The MFM will probably recommend medication but I remember him saying medication is not likely to bring my BP down, but rather to keep it from elevating further. I don't know if this means we're already screwed and I guess you never know how you'll respond to medication until you try it anyway.

In other news, I just got the worst haircut of my life. Between the too-long side fringe and the too-short bangs that pouf straight out, I look like I could join Spinal Tap. All things considered, that one seems like an easy problem to solve. Taking off for a few days, look forward to catching up with you all soon.

This Time

2009-03-16T14:19:00.002-05:00

Thursday was my graduation scan. A little heart still beats away in there so off I went to meet with a nurse who unceremoniously shoved some papers at me in the hall and sent me on my way.

Last time my nurse sat me down in an office. She pulled out the mysterious OB wheel and gave me a due date, in came the sonographer with a picture in a silly paper frame congratulating me. She had written on the image "Here I am, the littlest (Last name)." The picture terrified me last time. I was afraid we'd made way too big a deal of something that wasn't yet real. Surely when I miscarried this picture would become the symbol of terrible heartbreak. I didn't mind at all the lack of ceremony this time. It was all very second-timer. The main thing was that J couldn't be there with me.

Last time I was terrified also by graduation to the OB. The idea of not being able to see what was going on in there on a regular basis was so unnerving. I couldn't wait for the OB appointment and scan, but I wasn't ready to leave my little comfort zone at the clinic where I'd learned my way around so well in the previous two years. I hated to leave my beloved sonographer and the nurses who had been so kind over the years.

This time I'm thrilled to be done with the clinic, and in no hurry to get to the OB either. I couldn't be happier to have no regular monitoring on the horizon. I'm ready to have a normal life. I'm sick of waiting rooms and lab coats and paper-covered tables. I don't want to spend my every moment wondering what's happening in there, if it's sticking around, or where the roller coaster goes from here. I want to be off the roller coaster.

Having Piper around surely helps redirect my attention, and strangely enough, so does the "morning" sickness. Graduation day was also the day my innards sought their revenge against all that's been foisted upon them. I was never this sick last time. Just getting through the day takes all my energy lately; I have very little left to spend thinking about the cause of all the queasiness. However I do manage to waste at least an hour or two a day googling vacation ideas. OB appointment is Thursday.

Undecided

2009-03-10T13:52:00.002-05:00

I've been cripplingly unable to decide what to do for months now. The problem is that what I want and what I want are two different things. No that's not a typo. I want to be able to do a good job at work and continue to provide the best I can for our little family, to make the most of the incredible opportunity I have with my job, and to not feel like I'm losing my mind or failing at everything because Piper is at home with me. But I also want to continue to enjoy my days with her, playing outside when it's nice, reading books, taking her out and seeing her smile and say Hi to everyone, enjoying her hearty giggle all throughout the day.

Piper had a stay at home day until she was 10 months old and it was great. I work from home and my hours vary enormously so there were days when I could spend the whole day with them and days when daddy was on duty (and pulling his hair out) all day. At 14 months I took her out of day care when she got on the one-nap/day schedule. With the economy tanking I wasn't sure how busy I'd be and I could easily get my then-current workload done during her 2-3 hour nap, with a little catching up after bedtime. J is often able to "work from home" if I've got really important meetings.

But lately life has been crazy. Not being available in the office all morning is taking a toll with my boss. I'm getting busier and I'm soon going to need to be much more available for phone calls for an upcoming project. I'm also hitting the super-tired stage of early pregnancy when I'd rather be napping through Piper's naptime than working. I also think she would benefit from some time with other kids. And a big concern I have is that when (fingers crossed, can you believe I'm talking this way?) the next baby arrives, I want Piper to already be well established in her own routine so she's not being sent off someplace at the same time her little sibling arrives. I also assume this sibling will have to go right to daycare, at least part time, since he/she won't have the luxury of a stay at home dad. Heartbreaking.

I think I've decided against having a part time sitter/nanny because I really do think time with other kids would be great for her, and also because of her penchant for banging on my office door whenever she can't have my attention. I've talked to a center nearby and really like them. Piper is going for a trial day on Thursday. I had thought I'd send her part time, just mornings, then pick her up for lunch and a nap at home. But now I'm thinking maybe instead of five half days, we'll do three full days (I really only need help Monday-Wednesday). That will give me some flexibility if I have work commitments later in the day but I can always pick her up after lunch if I want to. I just don't know. I feel like we can make it work keeping her at home, but at a certain cost to my business and my sanity. On the other hand, I absolutely hate the idea of spending money to not have her here.

The problem is that my assessment of the trade-off fluctuates every day with my fluctuating workload. Today I'm all caught up in the office and had the best giggle fit I can remember so it seems like a no-brainer to just keep her at home. Someday very soon I'll be drowning in lapsed commitments and kicking myself for not finding a solution.

Three Three: Updated

2009-03-02T20:00:00.004-05:00

The ultrasound is tomorrow morning, March 3rd. The anniversary of the Piper's ER. We had the first u/s with her on what would be today of that cycle and we saw a heartbeat. I know that was early, so I'm trying to prepare myself not to be too alarmed if we don't see it this time, since we seem to be just behind on everything else this time around. Hopefully 3/3 will continue to be a lucky day. I could really use some good luck.

Updated to add: we saw an egg sac, a yolk sac, and a healthy little 120 bpm heartbeat. Instead of a grain of rice, this time it looked like a tiny lentil bean. At some point I'm going to have to believe this is really happening. The RE who came in to monitor the scan said "So you're batting two for two, pretty great odds." Indeed. I know there will be bloggers out there who, even if they hoped for the best, figured I was due for a turn at failure. Let me put your mind at ease: so did I.

Next step: another scan next week then graduation to the OB.

It's a Boy!

2009-02-25T10:58:00.007-05:00

Isn't he adorable? My sister delivered the little guy yesterday morning so Piper and I are headed to Boston and can't wait to see them all. I will probably be away from blogs until next week but will be thinking of you guys and crossing fingers and toes for everyone cycling.

Is it the economy? The waiting room at my clinic has been empty lately. Usually when they call my name, at least one other Sarah gets up and we have to check last names. Monday and again today I was the only person there at all when they called me back.

Beta is 4529. My nurse said they were looking for a minimum of 4500 so once again we eek by with incredible mediocrity. At this point though it's clearly an increasing number and that's enough for me. I can do a scan any day next week and believe it or not I don't mind at all waiting until Thursday when J can go with me. I know, nutty. We'll see what we see when we see it.

Doubling? Middling.

2009-02-23T13:03:00.004-05:00

Beta today was 2641, just barely above the threshold they were looking for. Doubling time is 55.43 hours. A little slower than last time (48 hours on the same day) but I'm not worrying until I have something real to worry about. I remember it slows down as it increases, and this is in keeping with how everything else this cycle has been; ever so slightly less promising. They want me to come back for another beta on Wednesday before we schedule a scan. I'm not especially worried, I'm just not particularly enthused either.

This whole post-beta period has been so much easier than last time. I'm not walking around a nervous wreck, hovering on the edge of 20 different emotions all at once, elated and terrified at the same time. Maybe I've been too distracted with baby vomit and the stacks of work that are piling up (along with the dishes, toys strewn everywhere, massive barges of dog hair adrift on the sea of living room carpet...).

But mainly it's just not the same when that sense of total disbelief you will ever have a baby is gone. When I no longer believed anymore, the bfp only meant that surely something even worse than endless miles of negative peesticks was coming my way. I didn't really truly believe everything would be okay until several weeks after Piper was born. I definitely felt an immediate bond and indescribable love for her, but I held her and looked at her and thought this can't really be happening. She can't really be mine. I'm infertile, I don't have babies.

She's completely real now. Real as a crib full of baby puke (again this morning). Whatever happens next, my overwhelming thoughts are no longer all tied up in the outcome of this cycle. What rules my heart now is that I feel so extremely lucky to have her every moment of every day.

No Beta

2009-02-20T12:08:00.003-05:00

Thanks to all who have checked in on me; there will be no repeat beta today since I woke up to a crib full of baby puke for the second day in a row. I can't leave Piper with her friends as planned and get them sick too so I'll just go in tomorrow when J will be home. As I said to the nurse in my voicemail, I assume with those big doctor brains they can still figure out if my levels are rising as they should after an extra day.

Endometrin? NOT a fan. ICK. Crinone was messy but this is ridiculous. It's like I've constantly peed my pants. And I pee Mylanta. A liner is not enough, it takes a whole pad. Several a day. After this first box I may even use up my leftover PIO.

Lesson of the day: blueberries may make the baby vomit slightly more attractive, but they will also stain the sheets.

**Updated to add: weekend bloodwork appts are saved for cycling patients so i have to wait until Monday for an hcg appt. argghhhhh.

Thank You

2009-02-18T20:32:00.005-05:00

Another crazy dream. This time, that the hpt would change depending on what Piper was eating. Over the course of the dream I noticed that if she ate cheerios or these strange gigantic frosted cartoon-like o's I would get a bfp but if she ate anything else it would be negative. At 4am she woke up in pain from the 12 teeth that are coming in all at once (after six months of having just two) and I used my usual trick, handing her a pretzel stick and going back to bed (works for us both everytime). Except this time I couldn't sleep because since she wasn't eating o's I just knew the beta would be bad.

It was 589. A little higher than Piper's on this day (512) and pretty solidly in the singleton range. Thank you so much for all the congratulations and well wishes. It's been so wonderful to have you my friends, old and new, checking in and cheering me on. Thank you thank you.

So I've taken my last PIO and not a moment too soon. After a couple of good weeks with it after getting the spot right, I had a couple that were just awful. Last night's was pretty close to crippling. Instead of the Crinone I used last time, I'm on Endometrin caplets which are certainly easier and less messy. I wasn't overjoyed with the disclosure in the info sheet that efficacy hasn't been established in women 35 and over, but I bet this is the case with all the progesterone support. Anyone else had experience with Endometrin? The stuff is pricey: $160 for a 10-day supply. If all goes well and I take it for the next five weeks, that's $560. Maybe we should have just had sex afterall.

I Peed (and a dream analysis)

2009-02-16T07:00:00.004-05:00

I was up all night Saturday. I kept waking up on the heels of crazy dreams about testing. There was one where you had to mix all these powders in tiny vials which went into a larger jar that filled with liquid as it rolled across the floor and when it stopped the vials filled with powder turned red if it was positive but you were only pregnant if it stopped rolling and landed with two tiny vials lying side by side, making two red lines. In another one, I had to run from a tent across a lawn scattered with dog shit to a final area where I could get the result. I woke up when I stepped in poop. So obviously I wasn't waiting any longer; I tested Sunday morning.

It was positive. Two nice bright pink lines. Before the test my heart was pounding and I was trying to mentally coach myself not to fall apart at the sight of just one line. Since transfer I couldn't help being disappointed that we didn't make it to the big beautiful blastocyst stage that we had with Piper and I was convinced those little slow-growers would never make it. In a weird way, to have these little five-cell embryos get anywhere made it seem even more of a crapshoot. Like rolling tiny vials across the floor hoping they land a certain way.

I recovered somewhat from my shock and of course am happy and grateful to be in this spot right now (please just let it stay!!!). But the news was slightly bittersweet because I shared my box of hpt's with a friend who got a negative the same morning. She was testing a bit early so she still has a chance. Also she didn't have to pay $10k to sleep with her husband or shoot oil into her ass. Odds are it will work for her in the next 2-3 months if not this one. She doesn't have to walk through all the shit we go through for IVF to get her two lines.

Gotta Pee

2009-02-13T16:01:00.005-05:00

Well I've made it to 10dp3dt. This week was mercifully jam packed busy and I'm glad its over. Having been pregnant once, I'm finding all the "symptoms" much harder to take. I know that with all the progesterone and estrogen we're pumping in me they are bound to occur either way, but now that I've been on the other side there's no denying it feels like pregnancy. Some people relish these symptoms, but I really don't care for all the potential false hope. And the crazy dreams and lack of sleep are not helping anything.

I had originally thought I'd POAS on Sunday, 15 days past ER, but now I'm wondering if that's too early. I got my positive peestick with Piper on the day that would be Monday of this cycle and it was pretty faint that day. I am NOT a pee-every-day-until-it's-positive kind of girl. I just don't need to see any more negative tests than necessary, so I tend to be conservative. I usually pee the day before beta just so I know what I'm walking into, but this time I wanted to do it on the weekend when J would be home and work isn't beckoning. I don't know what to do. So I decided to ask you guys, when do you all think I should pee??

Sunday 2/15 - 15 days past retrieval (and get to share the news with the husband)
Monday 2/16 - 16 days past retrieval
Tuesday 2/17 - 17 days past retrieval
Wednesday 2/18 - 18 days past retrieval (Beta day)

What's your vote?

Blah

2009-02-10T07:27:00.004-05:00

Nothing to freeze. I'm not surprised since we didn't have any last time either and this cycle has across the board looked less promising than the last. From follie counts to the fertilization report, basically every way you might measure it (other than the rescue ICSI), this cycle falls short. I generally have a vague sense of impending doom, which sounds gloomier than I feel. I just have no expectation this will work. I'm more in fear of the doom and gloom to come rather than experiencing it now. In fact most of the time I feel like this whole cycle hasn't really happened at all. Maybe it's because I've been keeping very busy, but it's gone by so fast and it just all feels so non-eventful compared to the first one. I can't make myself believe that I really went into the OR or they really put two embryos in. I don't feel even remotely PUPO. Every so often the possibility of twins causes me enough agitation to shake my blah mood, but I think of it only in very pragmatic terms (money, gear, bedrooms).

I think maybe this is just what 7 days past transfer feels like for me; I posted something similar last time. I think I was right back then that I have a harder time with the progesterone/estrogen phase than I do with the stims. Oh and speaking of PIO, here's something that didn't cheer me up at all: starting the day after my retrieval, all new cycles at my clinic are switching from PIO to crinone 3x/day. If I'd complained after that first shot when my nurse was out of the office I probably would have been switched. At this point I don't even feel like making the effort to call in another prescription and now that we're in the right spot it's not bothering me at all. The only part that bugs me is the idea that it's all for nothing.

The Shuffle: Take Two

2009-02-04T19:15:00.011-05:00

The thing about having been pregnant is that I know what it feels like. Seeing as how implantation wouldn't even happen until maybe today or tomorrow, and since I'm shooting up mass quantities of the same hormones that cause all the symptoms in a natural pregnancy, I know better than to read anything into this, but I do have a few faux symptoms already. The crazy dreams, the charlie-horse leg cramps, all manner of twitches and cramps down there, and this.

So once again to pass the time, the infertility version of the shuffle game. Set your music player to shuffle. Skip through your randomized playlist, and each consecutive song that comes up is the answer to the following questions in order:

1. The song for the you that existed before you ever thought about your fertility:
Kissin' by the Mistletoe - Aretha Franklin (haha, the good ol' days!)

2. Would you really want to go back and be that person again?
Sailin' on to Hawaii - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (i guess this means what's gone is gone)

3. The song for when you first started fertility treatments:
Obviously 5 Believers - Bob Dylan (those godawful days of dashed hopes and broken dreams)

4. What did infertility do to your sex life?
Crabbuckit - k-os (ewwwww. but really, if you listen to the song, the crab keeps trying to climb out of the bucket but never gets anywhere...sigh)

5. What about superstitions and fertility rituals?
Star Eyes - Bill Evans (don't care for stars in my eyes, i'd rather just see the truth)

6. How about "alternative" treatments, from cough syrup and pineapple to accupuncture and 'body workers'?
Take Me As I Am - Wyclef feat. Sharissa (i'm mostly* against these things)

7. How do you feel about coming out of the IF closet?
Here I Am (Come and Take Me) - Al Green (yep, all the way out)

8. Your song for other people's baby showers:
Get Down Tonight - KC & the Sunshine Band (i can get down with a baby shower. i like to throw them so i don't feel like the infertile freak in the room)

9. What about our scary friend hope?
Canary in a Coalmine - The Police (don't really like the sound of that...)

10. And lastly, the theme song of your fertility journey:
The Underdog - Spoon (well i sure was last time with the rescue ICSI! great song by the way, i'll take it!! "You got no fear of the underdog, that's why you will not survive..." a little scary, but actually this is a good theme song for me. i'm all about low expectations and preparing for the worst - better to be happily surprised than crushed. i could not survive IVF if i had the "just think positive" attitude. barf)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with, so copy and repost with your own songs! Now how can I kill the next 30 minutes??

*Okay full disclosure: I DID eat pineapple. I HAD to! I had eaten it with Piper so I couldn't not this time, right?! I'm almost certain it makes no difference at all, but if I get that BFN I just don't want to wonder....

Two for The Third

2009-02-03T13:59:00.015-05:00

Today, February third is my husband's birthday. My birthday is also on the third (October) and so is Piper's (November). ER with Piper was on 3/3. So I always say the third is our lucky day. I hope I don't have to pick a new one.

At first my RE thought we might transfer three but when he got the updated progress report and they looked a little better than they had in the morning he suggested two: a 6-cell grade 1 and a 5-cell grade 3. The conversation he had with the embryologist was a little odd, made it sound like a bit of a crapshoot: "Eh, let's take those two. No how 'bout those two?" They didn't actually say that but it just all sounded very subjective. I like to imagine all sorts of high tech science involved. Beta is scheduled for 2/18, or 18 days past ER. I'm guessing I'll poas around 2/15, or 12dp3dt. I'm mostly against pee sticks but I just don't like to get the news from a random stranger over the phone. I'd rather be prepared.

And lastly, good news: Last night we figured out the PIO! I knew we were doing something wrong because it was just so much worse than before. We had the wrong spot, too close to the middle. Going further out closer to the hip made a HUGE difference. I won't say it was fun but it was really not a big deal and that spot is not sore today (the other two still are). To all my fellow IVF graduates thinking about going back...DO retake the injection class!

Six

2009-02-02T13:59:00.007-05:00

Two didn't make it. I know this is expected but this time around I'm sadder about it. Partly because I've seen what one of those little dots can become, but mainly I just feel a bit more nervous about losing any since we have fewer this time. At this point last time we had twice as many - my dozen eggs.

My clinic doesn't give gradings as some others do but they did give me cell counts. Of the six, three are 2-cells, one is a 3-cell, and two are 4-cells. Transfer is tomorrow. My guess is that if things stay about the same we might transfer the two 4-cells. After the growth restriction issues last time, I am extremely nervous about the possibility of carrying multiples and putting them at risk, but I also can't bear the thought of what if we'd only chosen one last time and it wasn't the one that turned into Piper? I had nothing to freeze so her beginnings would have been discarded. Shudder.

I have no signs at all of OHSS this time, yay! I know this is why we have fewer embryos than before and it's considered clinically a good result, but I can't help feeling my odds are down a bit.

My nurse isn't in today so I didn't get to ask about the PIO. Basically I feel like I have to stick with it because if for any reason this cycle is a bust I'd be filled with regret that I didn't do everything I possibly could. I know many people have had success with suppositories and Crinone and there are studies saying they are just as good, but my clinic believes PIO improves success rates. I just wanted to ask the question and hear more about why.

I actually feel a bit better about the PIO today. Last night wasn't as bad. I think lying down really did help so thanks t (and congratulations!!). It still hurt like hell but afterwards I was left feeling I'd survived another shot and the world didn't end and I lived to blog about it, so ultimately I can do this. Ugh. No doubt my resolve will fizzle out around 9pm tonight but I will do it.

Thanks again everyone for all the well-wishes and checking on me!

Eight

2009-02-01T11:09:00.004-05:00

Of the 15 eggs, 11 were mature and ICSI'ed. Today we have eight two-cell embryos. More details tomorrow. Transfer will be Tuesday or Thursday.

The PIO last night was hell. I don't know what we're doing wrong, it wasn't so bad for the first week or so last time. I'm going to whine about to my nurse tomorrow and see how she feels about starting Crinone now (my clinic usually switches to the gel after 4 or 6 weeks or something). I can do it tonight if I tell myself it's just one more night.

I caved and took the Vicadin last night. I was very sore from the retrieval but mainly it was the PIO that sent me over the edge. I realize a pain-pill addiction doesn't fit well into my family planning so my big hopes for tomorrow: good news about the eight and no more PIO!

Fifteen

2009-01-31T14:06:00.009-05:00

I didn't document this part too well last time and in preparation this time around I wished I had. So this may be a bit boring, but here are the key things I recall in my post-anesthesia stupor...

For starters, the IM hcg wasnt bad at all. The anticipation was brutal; I had a few smallish tantrums each time I tried to get into position, but by the time I yelled at my husband "just get it over worth already for fuck's sake!" he rolled his eyes and told me it was already done. There was a dull ache later but the next day I was fine. I know the cumulative effect of PIO will eventually be torture but at least I'm ready to be brave for the first few days anyway.

Earlier in the week my nurse asked if I felt like I had a bag of rocks where my ovaries should be and that was EXACTLY how it felt. By yesterday it was more like a smallish cannonball hanging off each fallopian tube. I'm wishing I had more than two pairs of reasonably presentable sweat pants.

In 2007, I was very nervous about the anesthesia since I'd never been under before. This time my big fear was that I was going to shit on the operating table. Piper has had some diarrhea the past day or so, but probably just from teething and all the extra drool. Still. Sometimes the gravity of a very remote possibility outweighs the unlikelihood of it happening and renders it very much worth worrying about.

But really, like last time, my biggest fear of course was that they wouldn't get anything. In 2007 I harbored a secret fear that after all the failed IUIs my follicles had actually been empty all along. Again it didn't matter much to me that this was not a very well-founded fear. This time around since I stimmed for so much longer (12 days versus 9) and had an extra dose of hcg (15k versus 10), I was afraid of the also unlikely possibility of ovulating before retreival.

Our timing was just fine, AND I didn't shit on the table. So a very good result so far. ICSI will happen this afternoon and of course we'll know more in the morning. I feel a bit different about those 15 tiny little potentials after having followed the journey of one from embryo to walking, talking little person. The news tomorrow may be a bit more emotional this time around. Please let it be good news!

I was pretty uncomfortable when I woke up this time. At first I told them I was a 7 on the 1-10 scale but when I started climbing toward 8 and then 9 they gave me some extra IV pain drugs and a vicadin to take home which I haven't taken yet. At the moment I'm doing okay and intend to try to sleep it off, but very willing to ammend that plan as necessary. The IV pain drug was AWESOME though! It was that floating away feeling I recall from the rare occassions when my husband and I have shared a pitcher of strong margaritas, times 10. The picture above is of the throws of my drug induced ecstasy... CHEERS!! The nurse joked "What's going on in here?" when she came in and my gown had fallen from my shoulders unbeknownst to me. I said, "We're trying to make a baby, what does it look like?!!" and Jay pretended to zip up his pants. Future offspring, should we be so lucky, will no doubt be horrified. Which is as it should be.

Trigger

2009-01-29T13:51:00.006-05:00

Today they measured five follicles per side from 14-24 mm, mostly around 18-20. I'm still waiting for the call and E2 levels but I'm almost certain they will have me trigger tonight. My RE expects to give me a bigger shot of hcg (joy) so I had to go ahead and buy extra but may not use it. I kindda like having extra around for next time; using everything up feels like a jinx.

Thanks for all the input on IM versus subQ hcg. As I mentioned, my clinic always gave me Ovidrel (subQ) for IUI's but prescribed Novarel (IM) for IVF. For my last cycle I asked for subQ and my nurse told me they were moving away from IM anyway so I got it. When I asked again this time I found out that in the two years since, they did a study of patients who had IM versus subQ and found a statistically significant difference in outcomes between the two. I know subQ worked for me before, but if I argued for it this time and the cycle was a bust I wouldn't be able to let go of feeling my own choice may have done me in. One more shot in the ass is not going to kill me. If I'm lucky enough to make it to transfer, tell me that again in a week or so! I remember the PIO being just tolerably uncomfortable for the first week or so but after too many pokes back there I was crying out and almost unable to let my husband give me the shot. All he had to do was say "fine, if you don't want this to work" and I would eventually give in, but it really was that bad. Even with ice and a heating pad.

So ER will be Saturday. It will be nice to have the weekend to chill out. Now I just have to figure out what to do with Piper for the retrieval. I didn't want to tell my family about this cycle. For various reasons I don't feel like having to discuss it or especially having to discuss a potential negative outcome, and I also thought I might like to make the old fashioned "guess what" announcement this time around without everyone having followed every plunge of the syringe. Either I devise some elaborate cover story or I find a babysitter who's available at 6am on a Saturday morning?

PS - E2 was 1379. Triggering tonight at midnight.

Happy Lunar New Year!

2009-01-25T21:34:00.008-05:00

Wow, you guys are great! Thanks so much for all the encouraging words! Things do look a little better today. E2 has taken a tiny jump up to 322. Nowhere near the ideal 150-200 per follicle, but then we're still growing those suckers. Today they measured five per side, ranging from 8-15mm but mostly around 10-12mm. I do seem to have slow and steady working for me, and it's a HUGE relief not to have to worry about the potential work conflict anymore since I will certainly not trigger before Tuesday night and probably after.

I do see the positives, but it still sucks to hear the nurse say she's not surprised my response is so much lower than last time given that my eggs are two years older. I liked last time. I want another last time. Can someone please stop the clock from ticking? Meanwhile another milestone passes as we ring in the Lunar New Year.

So I'm off to a day of meetings tomorrow and I'll be wearing my super comfy maternity pants since I'm still not back into my old suits. Hope it's not a jinx! Best luck to all in the year of the ox.

Ready to call it

2009-01-23T16:06:00.003-05:00

I know. I shouldn't. But I'm ready to place my bet on this cycle. I'd put money on a bfn right now. On day 6 my E2 is still only 129 and they measured only 7 tiny follicles. I should feel good about the seven, they're all pretty close in size around 9-11mm. Maybe this is the slow and steady we we're hoping for, but after kicking up the meds two days ago and dropping the Lupron it just doesn't seem like anything has happened.

We're bumping the meds up again to 375iu Gonal-F and 150iu Menopur. I've got to order more drugs but I almost feel like it's a waste. I will get to use the leftover Follistim that's been in my fridge for 2 years and expires in April. No doubt I will spend quite some time in the bathroom tonight trying to figure out how much of this and that adds up to the right number and trying not to completely screw things up between the pen and the syringes and the Qcap.... It's a recipe for disaster.

And yes, I know. I'll wait to see what Sunday's recheck brings before I give up completely, but let's just say I'm not particularly optimistic.

Kickin it up a notch

2009-01-21T14:52:00.003-05:00

At this morning's monitoring appointment the sonographer saw at least four follicles per side with the largest measuring under 10. She said there were definitely more little ones hiding so I wasn't too concerned. Ignoring previous nurse's advice, obviously I was going to compare this to last cycle, when there were five per side all under 10 at the day 4 scan. So this didn't seem too far off to me, but they just called with E2 levels less than a third of what they were in 2007 at 58.3 (182 in 2007). I see now why the scan is not enough info and blood work is so important.

So we're increasing Gonal-F and Menopur and dropping the 5iu Lupron. In 2007 I was borderline for hyperstimulation. I didn't need to be hospitalized but I had some trouble breathing and other symptoms and went on a strict peanut butter, tuna fish and gatorade diet for three days. That combined with the fact that I had 16 eggs after 9 days of stims convinced my RE we could back it off a little this time and aim for a slower but steady pace, understanding that if monitoring revealed less than ideal progress, we would ramp it up a bit. And here we are. Increasing Gonal F from 225iu/day to 300, and Menopur from 75iu/day to 150. (This is now higher actually than my 2007 doses although I'm not sure how closely Gonal-F compares with the Follistim I used then.)

This further strengthens my belief that all those failed IUIs back in 2005 weren't just a waste of time afterall. I could have passed on the 3 Clomid cycles and three ensuing cycles cancelled due to cycsts (due to Clomid), but I really believe we got the meds just right on IVF #1 because we'd already learned a lot about my response on the IUI/injectable cycles. It turned out we needed ICSI to fertilize, but having the right response from the start certainly helped a lot. If we hadn't had such a great follicle response we might not have had enough eggs for the rescue ICSI to have saved the cycle.

I'm fairly confident that increasing the meds will do the trick, especially since she definitely saw more than four per side already. Now I'm just hoping we don't go too fast because I don't want another brush with hyperstimulation. Also, I'm still very much hoping not to have ER before a major work commitment on Tuesday, so let's take it slow and steady in there okay guys?

American Association of Reproductive Problems?

2009-01-18T07:27:00.008-05:00

I can live with the penis enlargement spam. Clearly, it's not personal. But just how did the AARP know my reproductive functioning rivals that of a 55 year old? You've got to admire their data mining, but do you really think they'll let me get away with the restaurant discounts for the next 20 years?

Baseline looked good this morning. Stims start tonight. The nurse said "Now try not to compare this cycle to your last one too much, because your last one was quite good. It can be hard to get your hopes up." Uh huh. Got that particular worry covered, thanks.

I think I know what I'm doing tonight. I see they have improved Gonal-F (put the diluent in a syringe, brilliant!). Very annoyed though to see I have an IM hcg shot. At the suggestion of the internets, I complained about the IM shot in '07 and my nurse switched me to subQ saying the clinic was moving toward subQ hcg anyway. My new nurse is much less available for whining about such things so I may be stuck with it. I know it's just one but dammit those PIO shots are so gawdawful one less is a big deal. Just curious, how many of you cycling now have IM versus subQ hcg?

"When I Was Big..."

2009-01-14T23:51:00.005-05:00

When my sister and I were about 8 and 10 years old and we talked about all the "cool" big kid stuff going on in our lives, our little cousin who was about 3 would say: "When I was big, I did such and such too..." Charming in a 3 year old. Not so at 30-whatever.

I was out with girlfriends and a conversation about pregnancies arose. Even still the topic is usually avoided, either because friends have been scarred by the years of it being too raw and difficult or because they just don't want to invite my latest ramblings about IVF and other circumstances they'd rather not have to think about (and who can blame them?). But tonight was different. The topic came up, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world I said: "When I was pregnant with Piper..."

My words rang in my head later that night in the bath. I kept looking down at my toes (in severe need of a pedi) poking up out of the water. I knew it was me but it felt like I must have been invaded by some other person's consciousness. Me? Pregnant? My fertile friends might say the better question is why is it so hard to imagine? I gave birth for the lord's sake! Has it been too long? Has mamahood killed those brain cells? Or is it because the before part, the infertile years, were so much longer? Pregnancy flies by in the blink of an eye, so maybe even fertile types feel this disassociation with it. But tonight I talked about it as if it were the most normal ho-hum, it could happen to anyone sort of event. Friends and family would rejoice to think I'm finally letting go of all that infertile crap, but now on the eve of this next cycle is not the time!

I guess what this comes down to is that it's a little odd being a mom and an infertile at the same time. It happens that way for lots of people but from the vantage point I held for several years those two things were always worlds apart. All my defenses against the most grueling parts of cycling are built around my non-mom status. Piper has opened my heart back up and I don't want it to be broken again.

Better start building my new fortress now. The bitch showed up today. Lupron check on Sunday and if all's clear I'll start stims Sunday or Monday.

Like riding a bike

2009-01-13T14:18:00.011-05:00

Any concerns I had about the drugs making their way through all the excess belly fat this time around are assuaged by the grueling Lupron headaches. Grrr. But that's about the only familiar part. Well except the shooting up; that came right back to me. Like riding a...you know.

This is so different the second time around. I'm at the same point today that I was when I posted this almost two years ago: Lupron day four, took my last BCP last night. Just waiting for CD 1, which would be Thursday if it goes the same way as before. In 2007 I was going crazy ready to get started, thinking of hardly anything else. This time around I'm much more consumed by nap schedules and diaper runs to Target and having dinner ready before a meltdown. Oh yeah and that job thing that used to rule my life, before I quit daycare suddenly (last Monday) and started keeping Piper at home. If I have a spare moment I'm trying to catch back up with business and maybe shower every few days.

Also, when I do allow myself some worry time, I tend to think about how Piper will feel about having a sibling, will she feel displaced, should we start working now on not calling her "the baby" anymore, etc. Can you imagine the gall? My 2007 self would never have dared to imagine such end-game scenarios. I may be in for a big fall if things don't work out according to my neat little plan. Is it just me or do most biking accidents happen once you think you've got it down?

Post Script - just realized I completely forgot to start children's aspirin. I'm sure it's not a huge deal to start it a week late, but let's have this be the last of my sophomoric cycling accidents anyway!

Playing Doctor

2009-01-09T07:27:00.003-05:00

I was supposed to start Lupron yesterday but I've decided to hold off for a couple of days. I have a really important work meeting - a pitch for new business we really really need - scheduled for right around my estimated ER date. I feel pretty confident messing around with the schedule because I sort of unintentionally screwed it up to begin with. I called my nurse and told I was on CD1 and she prepared the protocol based on that day, but it turned out to be a false alarm, just a bit of spotting, and CD1 was two days later. When I told her that she said it didn't matter much and rather than redo the whole protocol she wanted me to just stick with the original one. I'll go ahead and take the not-really-extra two BCPs, which I happen to have because it took me a week to get around to picking them up so I started them late anyway (how cavalier we get after a successful cycle!). That should put the next CD1 back two days, so it makes sense to me that I'd start Lupron two days later right? Of course with all the variables in there (how long until CD1, how long I need to stim) I'm not really in charge of anything but I'm going to pretend I am and hope for the best with this meeting! Lupron starts tomorrow - oh joy!

Here we go...again

2009-01-01T20:56:00.023-05:00

In the big box:
5 vials 450iu Gonal F..........$1792.50
10 vials 75iu Menopur........$ 659.00
Lupron 2 week kit...............$ 199.00
10,000iu IM HCG...............$ 39.90
20 50MG PIO (ugh!)...........$ 57.75*
60 tablets 2MG Estradiol....$ 15.75*
2 500 MG Azithromycin......$ 16.99*
Grand total........................$2780.89

See what I paid in 2007 here. I did slightly better then with no insurance and taking advantage of discount programs than I did this time around with prescription benefits, paying over $200 less for the Follistim I used in place of the Gonal F. Only the drugs marked with an asterisk were covered (which actually may have been the case in 2007 too).

Protocol:
On BCPs through 1/10
20iu Lupron each morning from 1/8 through CD 2 or 3 (around 1/16)
After CD2-3 Lupron evaluation, drop to 5iu Lupron each morning plus 225iu Gonal F and 75iu Menopur each evening.
ER estimated around 1/27, ET around 1/30-2/1

We've got to show up and sign consents in person in the next week or two and then we're ready to start bruisin the belly. This is going to be super attractive on top of the stretch marks.

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Thanks

2008-11-21T14:29:00.002-05:00

I had the mock transfer on Wednesday. Again they said everything looks just like it did in '07 which I find strange having had, you know, a person grow in there in the meantime, but I'm certainly glad it was all fine and normal. And there's more to be thankful for: we have IVF coverage this time around! In 2007 we had no coverage at all so we paid $20k for shared risk. When the financial coordinator I met with noticed we lucked out on our first cycle she actually snickered. Sorry, she says, that's just funny. Under her breath I'm pretty sure I heard her say "suckkkkker." Whatever. Totally worth every dime. This time around we have 80% coverage for three attempts per live birth, which I think might be the mandate in Maryland. Not sure about meds. With the coverage come the hassles, minor by comparison, but we have to wait for pre-approval before we can write the protocol since the coverage will determine which drugs, etc and approval can take 2-6 weeks so we still plan to start BCPs in December but I guess there's no guarantee we'll be ready for stims in January.

Today I ran into a friend who just got a BFN on her fourth IUI/injectable. She's an acquaintance really and I couldn't say anything because I'm not sure if I was supposed to know. I had the baby with me and I felt like such an ass, knowing that's the last thing she needed to see. I wanted to ask her to have drinks and talk but I couldn't intrude on our mutual friend's confidence. I think she's knows I'm about to start IVF again but I remember being where she is and feeling that those people who had crossed over to the other side were not my people, or I wasn't one of them, or something else isolating like that. I remember so clearly that last IUI we did, when we knew we'd exhausted that route and had big decisions to make about where to go next. I wanted to adopt and J wanted to do IVF so we took a year off. It was such an incredibly hard time and I can feel it like it was yesterday. I feel so much sympathy for this person I don't really know and wish her the best. I hope in a year or two she will be looking back at this time while her baby naps as I am right now.

I've mentioned that I secretly harbor hopes that this cycle will go down pretty much like the last one, but infertility truly is not the same pain when you have a little family member snuggled up in her room, and I'm so very thankful of how different this cycle is because of it. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

One

2008-11-17T11:19:00.004-05:00

I went in this morning for a baseline. Very happy to see the same sonographer I've had since 2005. My uterus is still there. RE said everything looks the same. Which is kind of amazing considering what went on in there since the last time they had a look, but I liked the sound of it.

Piper is one. She walks and talks. She calls me mama, throws fits and likes to cuddle. I'm ready for another, but it's very weird to think of her not being the only one. She's the center of our universe. She has her own stationery.

(thank you notes from her birthday party)

Vampires & Pumpkins

2008-10-31T11:18:00.004-05:00

Just in time for Halloween I had my date with the vampires for bloodwork. A few days ago I had my recent pap sent over to the clinic. I'm all set until CD1 when I schedule day 3 bloods and a mock transfer. And the way the end of the year always flies by, I'm going to be playing with needles again before I know it.

And now for the pumpkin; the part that makes it all worth while:

Happy Halloween everyone!

Dr. Change

2008-10-27T12:45:00.002-05:00

As a first-time infertile all you want is change. Any kind of change might be just the change you've been needing. In the beginning, whatever I could change that might somehow change the outcome of each cycle was worth a shot! There are the changes in position, diet, exercise, mindset, changes into lucky underwear; pretty much almost anything you can think of has been touted by someone as a magic ticket to fertility. After a while I got too frustrated with any sort of magical changes that only led to disappointment but whatever changes my clinic threw at me were still welcome. Injectables? Sure! Up the dosage? OK! Slow the progression? Whatever you say doc, let this be the thing that finally makes it work!

But this time around I'm not so keen on change. It worked last time afterall. Somehow I had forgotten about the excitement of zero fertilization and the depressingly low odds for rescue ICSI. I walked into my clinic last week with half my thoughts devoted to planning Piper's birthday party, another 49% on work, and the remaining 1% split between all manner of various other distractions including the passing thought that hey, I think I'll do IVF again.

Silly me. I sat down in Dr. Chang's office. He says: "So I see you had a very unusual case last time." He's a friendly guy but he says it all serious-like; gets me sort of nervous. Me: Huh? He gently reminds me. Naturally the clinic is very pleased about the pregnancy outcome, but he clearly did not think zero fertilization was good news. I guess I had brushed it off because I assumed we'd just go straight to ICSI next time and it wouldn't be an issue, but it turns out it's not so simple. There are two reasons for zero fertilization: egg prematurity and sperm problems. The sperm always looked fine in analysis but this doesn't mean they can do their job. I had loads of eggs and they were the usual size at trigger, but I stimmed for only 8 days so that could have been the issue.

So onto a new protocol this time around. Lower the doses of stims by 25% aiming to shoot up a little longer like maybe 10 days and possibly have fewer eggs as a result, but better quality, more mature eggs, all of which will then be ICSIed. Any immature eggs will simply hang out a day in the dish until they can be ICSIed. Rescue ICSI was performed on day 2 anyway so this would be essentially the same deal. The fact that all the eggs fertilized after day 2 rescue ICSI is an indication that egg maturity might have been the issue, however the five years of trying before including the year of IUI's would tend to implicate the sperm. It makes for a happier household if we just assume it's both.

I think we've got the right plan. I trust my doctor. And we can always up the dosages or bag the cycle if we don't like the response. I just sort of like the idea of repeating the past because the past worked out for me. As much as I try to prepare myself for the worst and remind myself that I'd have to be ridiculously lucky to get an encore performance on the first try out of our dysfunctional reproductive matter, I secretly hope it all goes down pretty much the same way. I left the office feeling much less cocky but nonetheless ready to start BCPs in December. I definitely feel the slow and ominous upward clicking of the roller coaster.

In the last 10 days...

2008-10-14T19:49:00.006-05:00

* Celebrated my birthday

* Lost my last living grandparent

* Sent invitations for Piper's first birthday party

* Attended a 20 year reunion for my old summer camp

* Which happened to be across a river from where I got married

* Made an initial consult appointment to get back to IVF

This sort of intersection of events, seemingly engineered to give one perspective on our scope of time on earth, feels more like some cheesy Nicholas Sparks type novel than real life. In other trite observations, I keep mistyping my appointment with Dr. Chang next Tuesday as with Dr. Change. Oh yes and today is CD1.

Happy Eggspiration Day!

2008-10-04T06:58:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I turned 35. I called my clinic to make an appointment for a consult but of course there is some administrative hoopla that has to happen before I am reinstated and can get in. My hope is to get the initial consult, financial crap, and testing done this Fall, not think about it over the holidays, and get ready to start shooting up in 2009. I just want these next few months to be about Piper's first birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas without having to divide my thoughts and time between her and the clinic. But the clock keeps on ticking and the desire to have another go at it before my last egg shrivels is growing.

Post Baby Infertile-hood

2008-08-15T11:10:00.003-05:00

Because I think post-infertile motherhood is just like anyone else's motherhood. And because there's no such thing as being post-infertile.

I have to admit there was a time, early on, when the pain of infertility was raw and new, that I really didn't get secondary infertility. Even at the time I knew it was unfair, but I would read posts from secondaries on the IF boards and think to myself they should just can it and appreciate what they've got. I think most of us have a had a weak moment when we hated the anonymous pregnant woman in the grocery store for instance and it was the same thing. In the beginning the unfairness is a huge deal. As you accept the reality of infertility, you accept the unfairness and move on.

When I started reading blogs I got a better understanding. I read a post from a secondary about the insensitivity of random strangers asking when little so-an-so would have a baby brother. Having the pain of infertility unintentionally rubbed in was something a primary could relate to. I've thought about this a lot ever since the positive beta. It's kind of like how I would keep telling myself "If I can just get a good follicle report I'll be happy. If they can at least get a few at retrieval that's all I ask for. I just want a couple to fertilize." There was no way I could bear the weight of the whole process so I focused only on the next step. Well if I'm being honest, I never really wanted only one. I know it sounds ungrateful but I guarantee you I will always be more grateful than I can describe for Piper. But I've wondered about when I'd be ready to head back to the baby factory again since very early in pregnancy. I think the time is approaching.

I am still infertile. I have nothing frozen so I will have to start from scratch. The process will be the same but it is very different now. I get very hung up on worrying that failures might be so much harder to take. It was one thing to detach from the little cells that didn't make it when they were just cells. Now there is no escaping their potential. Before I also thought I would be able to be fairly pragmatic faced with choices about what to do with leftovers (ha!) or even more terrible decisions like selective reduction. That would be so much harder now too.

Funny how I can manage to turn success into new things to fret over. Part of my self-preservation mantra that has served me fairly well I guess. But fears about what could lie ahead are really not the big difference this time around. By far the two most significant changes are how a successful IVF has affected our marriage and that it removed the big question of whether it ever will work. The years it took for J and I to get on the same page about what infertility meant to us are over, and the big focus in our lives now draws us together instead of driving a wedge. Knowing it can work for us is a double-edge sword, I hate to allow that sliver of optimism and face the terrible disappointment, but it is nice to know that at least it was possible once. Those have got to be the most difficult obstacles I faced and they're out of the way. Hopefully that means whatever the process throws at us this time, we'll be much better prepared to handle it.

100

2008-06-21T18:26:00.008-05:00

Alone at home with a sleeping baby and an icy gin and tonic - finally a moment to get to this post which has been in my head for long enough that it's now just sort of a mess. I never thought I'd be typing post #100 while an almost 8-month old baby slept in her crib upstairs. MY 8 month old baby! Course if I'd been posting at all regularly it wouldn't have taken me a year and a half to get to 100 and that wouldn't have been the case. But still.

Funny how I feel compelled to say something meaningful with 100. The main thing in my head is just how weird and unexpected it's all been. When I started blogging I was heading into my first IVF cycle. I was sick to death of babydust and the ttc boards and finally discovered Julie. I think I read her blog from start to the latest post in about three days. My husband kept checking on me since I was glued to my computer well into the wee hours. After a year of failed IUIs interspersed with delays and another year off, and having read Julie and then all of Tertia, I fully expected at least 4 to 6 goes at IVF with major bumps in the road along the way, quite possibly never finding success. I could not even begin to imagine being pregnant, much less having an infant of my own. I had long since grieved anything happening "the old fashioned way" and had been ready to adopt for some time (trying IVF first was more important to J).

If you had told me back at post #1 that I would have a baby within the next 100 posts I would have laughed my ass off and then perhaps decided not to be your friend anymore. I certainly could not have begun to fathom it. Granted it's been over a month since my last post so I've arrived at 100 rather slowly, but you get the idea. I was jaded, cynical, with the lowest possible expectations, and it served me very well. It was all so much easier once the hope was gone. Never thinking of the "end game" (I couldn't even say pregnancy, much less baby). It still doesn't seem real; feels much more like a strange and wonderful dream (although caring for a baby feels incredibly real 24/7). I look at her and I can't connect what I see to the experience of how she arrived...

At the baby disco (six months)...

Out to dinner at a restaurant fancy enough that there was no changing table in the restroom (hurray!)...

First day at the pool (seven months)...

She still practices the back float on occasion...

On the plane to Boston...

Showing off her dimple in Boston...

Beboppin to John Coltrane over breakfast at Starbucks just yesterday...

First ice cream cone, also yesterday (these almost belie what a challenging day it was!)...

Happy 100 to me. It was all so worth it. Every shot, every dollar, every time I insisted on continuing despite the vast expanse of pure white in the window of another peestick foretelling failure. And that from the anti-hope poster child. You just never know how things will go.

The Fertile Friend

2008-05-15T14:06:00.007-05:00

So I have this friend. No really, I do. And she has a friend who is in that brutal stage of infertility where you're beyond the naive newbie days full of hope and optimism (denial?), but not yet jaded and cynical and enjoying the ridiculously low expectations that are only earned after a certain amount of failure. Remember the horrible days when you made your first appointment with the fertility clinic? She's there.

And the fertile is a really fantastic friend so she's doing it all right: supportive, but giving her space, trying to be educated but not giving assvice. But she has a dilemma: she is ready to try for #3. Although they've been friends since well before the first two kids, this is the first attempt since the infertile got married and discovered the problem. At first the fertile put her plans on hold waiting to hear good news from the infertile friend, but now her daughters are almost five and six and she really feels like the right time is approaching. Because she is such a great friend, she asked my advice on how to handle things with the newly infertile.

I told her she needs to tell the friend. It might suck, and it might be tempting to just say nothing and then something apologetic like "I'm so sorry, I didn't want it to happen this way, I was hoping we'd be pregnant together," etc. I told her something like that would only make me feel worse. The last thing you want to hear is the oops announcement. On the other hand, if I knew a friend was trying I would be hoping along with her, invested in her hopes, and would be happier for her when it happened. This particular fertile is of the sort who really does seem to get pregnant at the mere thought of it, after three consecutive pregnancies on her first potential cycle. What do you guys think? What would you want a fertile friend to say? What's the best way to protect the friendship?

We all know just caring and sympathy isn't always the answer. Fertiles have to walk the fine line between not knowing what to say, worrying about saying the wrong thing, and actually saying the wrong thing because in fact they don't always understand (and can't be expected to). So to help her understand I sent the fertile Tertia's famous "How to be Good Friends with an Infertile" post. One of Tertia's main points is that the rules change all the time. Not just based on where you are in the infertility abyss or minute by minute if you're on Clomid as this particular infertile is, but also from person to person. Which is why I thought I shouldn't be the only one to answer the question, so please comment: What would you want your fertile friend to do/say? Had a positive experience? What made it so? And the easier one, what NOT to say?

Six Months

2008-05-08T07:33:00.003-05:00

We did something really cool for Piper's six month birthday. We participated in our local Relay for Life which is a 24 hour event to raise money for the American Cancer Society. We took turns pushing the jogger (I highly recommend this one) around the track with all the other supporters, lit luminarias in honor of a few cancer survivors and victims in our lives, and won a Crate & Barrel ice cream sundae kit in the silent auction. It was a very moving event. The survivor's lap around the track and the team "Siblings of Survivors" really got to me. A great way to mark the 6 month milestone, I hope to continue doing things like this with her so she grows up with these experiences.

At the six-month check up she is still growing just fine, hanging in there around the 40th percentile (60th if adjusted for being early). She's 16 pounds and 26 inches long. This was good to hear since feeding has become extremely difficult now that she gets distracted and wants to be seeing/doing/chewing on everything around her. Vaccines suck and they seem to be getting worse each time. It's the saddest cry imaginable when she looks up at you like "How could you? Why are you doing this to me?" Of course that's my guilt-ridden translation, to her it probably just means "Oh my freaking lord that hurts like hell!!!"

I've started thinking about weaning now that feeding is becoming so challenging and things are going well with solids. I want to wait until she sleeps longer at night though, it would seem like a shame to make this far nursing only to have to make bottles in the middle of the night. I can make it a few more months I guess. It does get me thinking about heading back to the IVF clinic though. It was always in the back of my mind that since it took 5 years for Piper, we'd get back in there as soon as I was done nursing. But then I was thinking I'd nurse for a year. And ideally it won't take 5 years again now that we have that whole long "figuring out there's a problem/what should we do about it?" stage behind us. Still my 35-year egg expiration date looms this Fall, which makes me feel a bit of urgency.

Work is ridiculous right now, I barely have time to brush my teeth and we still haven't finished unpacking boxes from our move. I am really wanting to check in with all my blog buddies much more frequently than I've been able to. I am thinking about you all!

Five Months

2008-04-03T09:58:00.004-05:00

Today is Piper's five month birthday. That makes at least three months that I've been meaning to post an update on her life.

At two months I went back to work and kept meaning to post about it. The fact that I haven't been able to yet gives you some idea how that's going.

At three months we made the spur of the moment decision to sell our house and move all in three weeks. This is either the best decision of our lives or a total disaster; it remains to be seen. At three and a half months Piper started teething. I expected some fussing and pain, but didn't realize it would completely interfere with her ability to eat and sleep, which means it disrupts our entire lives. She's not likely to get a tooth early, but some babies are more sensitive to the earlier movement. Yay.

The fourth month was full of changes. Piper made major adjustments to her sleep habits and it took some effort on our part to decipher them and figure out what she needed. It felt like things were completely falling apart, but according to the sleep bible "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" she is right on schedule. At four months they are supposed to begin to "organize their sleep patterns." In addition to our confusion about her changing schedule, teething has been a complication and so has her increased awareness of the world and unwillingness to let it drift off for a bit when she gets tired. We now seem to have a bedtime in place as well as two naps a day. It's not without trials and now we are slaves to the schedule, but it's making it a lot easier to plan our days. The issue is far from solved, but I definitely see improvement. The key has been not letting her get overtired before we try to get her to sleep.

These days Piper is a happy girl (provided she's well rested), very curious about the world, intensely interested in what's going on around her, quite sensitive to her environment (reacts strongly to even slight noises, etc.), eagerly open to new people, toys, etc., who responds vigorously and definitively with a total-body laugh, a strong cry, a big smile, or wide-open eyes. Her personality reveals itself more and more every day, and I'm getting the impression I'm going to have my hands full with an engaged, alert, active child with little tolerance for boredom. But then that's most kids I've ever met.

Happy Spring everyone. Happy five-month birthday, baby.

Happy Easter

2008-03-24T08:58:00.005-05:00

Shifting Addresses, Aligning Priorities

2008-03-05T08:52:00.005-05:00

So I mentioned moving day a few posts back. That wasn't real moving day, that was 'moving lots of crap out of our old house so it could look presentable on the market' day. Shortly after that, we had a new mattress delivered to the new house, and we're basically living there now with no furniture. It's a total mess, but leaving our furniture in the old house while we try to sell can make a big difference in the price we get for it, and being able to camp out here makes it much easier to keep that place presentable and not have to pack up the baby and dog anytime someone comes through. It was an insane couple of weeks getting ready to be on the market - all sorts of cleaning, fixing, shopping, staging, etc. had to be done in just a week or two.

We weren't really looking for a new house. We were fine in our townhouse, but I knew down the road I wanted something with a bigger yard. Our housing market is so down right now, although it's not the best time to sell our old place, it's a fantastic time to get a deal on a new house. We happened onto a brand new home that was built and ready to settle but the original buyer fell through, and it was being offered way below the original price and what it's neighbors paid for theirs, so we snapped it up.

It's a very nice house and there are plenty of things I like about it, but I had major concerns with buying it. Sure it is always nice to have a bigger fancier house, but I just felt like it was totally out of line with my priorities. I had visions of us being happier with less, versus more stressed and more pressured to work harder and buy more furniture and keep extending the rat race if we moved into this big house. In the old house, it was conceivable that one day I could back off my work load a bit. In the new house I feel pressured to continue working nonstop for the rest of my life. Ultimately I agreed with J and others that this place was too good of an investment to pass up, but I just hate the idea that I traded in leisurely time with my baby for a big fancy house. I know I'm lucky to work from home and have as much time with her as I do, but that's because my husband is still home with us, which adds to my stress about the house - it's all on me, at least right now, to pay for it.

yael naim new soul clip

2008-02-20T22:29:00.001-05:00

piper's new favorite song...she dances when the Mac Air commercial comes on. So I've taken to reminding her that she is, after all, a new soul in this very strange world, lalalalalalalala....

Moving Day

2008-02-16T08:53:00.002-05:00

just a quick post to let you in on why i'm not blogging lately. this is all very last minute; crazy hectic. meanwhile i'm swamped at work and since i work from home, its an office move too. all while caring for an infant, of course. more on the new house later, and why i feel like i'm choosing a big shiny house over quality time with my daughter.

Piper's Favorite Thing

2008-01-27T16:39:00.001-05:00

As you can pretty much see from these crappy stills grabbed from a video, I put her in a full bath and let her float on her back. My hand is just there to keep her from turning her head side to side too much and getting a face full of water. She floats up to the tub wall and kicks off gliding backwards like you might do in the pool. She'll do this over and over again, laughing herself silly. It's basically a horizontal version of those jumpy seats you hang in a doorway, but when she really gets going her arms start working and she looks like she's practicing her backstroke.

My favorite thing to do in the bath: lean back and feel my back fat create a suction against the back of the tub. Ewwwwwww. As such I've decided to join My Reality in her weight loss challenge and have added it to my sidebar. Not that I'm doing much to make a dent in it. Maybe I should be working on my backstroke.

Two notes: The bath water is not green, it's a reflection of the lime green paint on the walls. And close observers may notice her belly button looks a little weird. It's an umbilical hernia. If you press lightly on it you can feel (and hear) the intestines and juices squishing around. Freaky.

For Baby

2008-01-14T08:47:00.001-05:00

A friend asked me the other day if I was still being ridiculously pragmatic about this whole baby thing, now that she's actually here. Once you leave the hospital, there is the reality of constant daily care, so the denial of pregnancy is no longer an option. There is no mistaking that you did indeed produce an infant. Sometimes I say to myself: "She is your daughter. You are her mother" and it's becoming more natural as time goes on. Which makes sense, because it took a while for "You are infertile" to sink in too.

During pregnancy I remember reading other bloggers' posts about how they already loved their baby in utero so incredibly deeply and thinking I definitely did not relate. On day two or three of her life, I remember my husband holding her up and saying to her "I just love you so much!" I was touched by seeing this in him, but I remember thinking to myself "Hmm, I do not feel like I'm in love with this strange little alien. I wonder when it will hit me." At this point I'm clearly very much in love with the whole thing. I love the baby, I love at least a million little things about her, and I love being her mommy. I tell her I love her several times a day and kiss her as often as possible.

Generally I still bury away any big gushes of emotion. But the passing of time and all that it means is the one thing that really gets to me. I remember early on, my mom was holding Piper asking her "Who will you be?" and pondering aloud about the person she would become. "Don't you wonder?" she asked me. I said that no, I never thought about it. It will all be here soon enough. I just want to enjoy who she is now. In that moment, I choked back almost a year's worth of denied emotions, from the hope I should have carried into the cycle, to the joy I should have had at the positive beta, to the excitement I should have relished for nine months, and insisted on stoicism. To think about the life that lies ahead of her unfolding, of how we will grow closer as she grows away from me, is way too much for me.

I celebrate the little milestones, but do not wish for them to get here. I stare at her and think of how wonderful she is and try to soak it all in. Sometimes I wish I could just freeze us in a perfect moment, cuddled together. But babies have a very smart design, the next new thing is always wonderful enough that it makes the passing of time okay. She is now in the big smiley stage, which distracts me from the speed at which her life is flying by.

So with all this emotion I have related to the passing of time, it's no surprise the thing that finally opened the floodgates for me was coming across the lyrics of a lullaby my mom used to sing to me. It took me right back to who we were then, and the enormity of everything in between, and the knowledge that I will blink my eyes and Piper will be singing lullabies to her daughter (or where ever it is she goes in life). It doesn't hurt that it's also an incredible description of motherly love:

For Baby (For Bobbie)
John Denver

I'll walk in the rain by your side,
I'll cling to the warmth your hand.
I'll do anything to help you understand,
I love you more than anybody can.

And the wind will whisper your name to me.
Little birds will sing along in time.
Leaves will bow down when you walk by,
And morning bells will chime.

I'll be there when you're feelin' down,
To kiss away the tears if you cry
I'll share with you all the happiness I've found;
A reflection of the love in your eyes.

And I'll sing you the songs of the rainbow;
A whisper of the joy that is mine.
And leaves will bow down when you walk by,
And morning bells will chime.

I'll walk in the rain by your side.
I'll cling to the warmth your tiny hand.
I'll do anything to help understand.
I love you more than anybody can.

And the wind will whisper your name to me.
Little birds will sing along in time.
Leaves will bow down when you walk by:
And morning bells will chime.

Recovery

2008-01-08T08:32:00.000-05:00

This post is seriously belated so no doubt I've forgotten some of it now, but since I started it six weeks ago I decided I might as well finish it.

Pregnancy Brain
My theory is that the incredible dumbing-down during pregnancy may be an important evolutionary adaptation, allowing pregnant women to become accustomed to their reduced mental capacity and make necessary adjustments BEFORE they have a tiny infant in their care. Forgetting where I was driving whenever I approached critical intersections and completely blanking on what I was saying (and to whom) in the middle of sentences was gud practices four my currrnt condishen. Afterall, losing my cart in target with my wallet and keys in it was far less distressing than losing it with the baby strapped in would be, and I'm thankful to have learned that lesson before her arrival. But a high degree of skepticism is warranted in evaluating any brilliant new theories of mine these days.

The Fickle Scale
I'm definitely still in maternity clothes and probably will be for a while. They don't look nearly as cute without the nice high bump. The low sagging flab is just not the same. It's basically like being back to the fat or pregnant? stage of early pregnancy, except fatter. I gained 35 pounds during pregnancy and lost 10 pounds at delivery (this is low since she was just under 5 pounds). I dropped another 5 pounds in the first two weeks, but decided not to worry much about losing weight until after the holidays. After those first two weeks I stalled out completely, until the few weeks before Christmas when I actually started to GAIN a few pounds! Sooooo not fair, I thought the pounds were supposed to disappear when breast feeding!

The Crimson Tide
In further unfairness, that wretched bitch who serves virtually no purpose in my life but whom I've nonetheless had to tolerate on a near-monthly basis for over twenty years now is paying me a visit. I thought I'd at least get a couple months reprieve while breast feeding, but this visit is actually her SECOND appearance since delivery, two months ago. She showed up like clockwork 4 and a half weeks after delivery. Apparently she is not up on her new-baby etiquette, and really, I shouldn't have expected any better based on our past history.

The Other Crimson Tide
The first few days were very weird. In the fog of the epidural, lack of sleep, sheer exhaustion after delivery, and tiny new person consuming my attention, I really wasn't aware of much physical pain. No doubt it helps that I delivered such a tiny baby. Another thing that made it easier for me is probably that I was prepared. I knew from my sister's experience to expect the bloodbath my first trip to the bathroom. It wasn't painful but it did look like a sizable battle had been fought there. The worst moment was when I found myself on my hands and knees, with baby in one arm, trying to clean blood and pee (I didn't realize the floodgates had opened before I was ready) off the bathroom floor at 3am. Not that clock time means anything in a hospital. If you find yourself in this situation RING FOR YOUR NURSE to take care of it. Marie-Baguette perfectly described the alarming post-delivery blood clots with one word: steaks (that link by the way takes you to a fantastic account of what induction is like, no gory detail spared). For me the bleeding continued for about two and a half weeks. I have a friend who dealt with it for eight.

Weirdness "Down There"
That bizarre pregnancy symptom I'll always think of as Watson's hanging beef jerky did in fact return to it's normal spot in the deli drawer within a week or two.

While we're in the processed meats department (and while I'm busily mooching off Watson instead of coming up with original thoughts), you might remember her discussion of the bologna nipples. I didn't exactly have that symptom, but that weird darkening did fade in the first week or so also.

For a good six or weeks or more after delivery, it sortta felt like I could feel the catheter again at times. Pee still seems to gush out at a higher volume than it used to, but maybe I'm imagining that? I didn't have much trouble with leaks, but there have been a few sneeze-related incidents, pretty much the same as during late pregnancy.

I had only a tiny tear and required just a few stitches. It never really hurt and seemed to heal quickly, but when I wipe it seems like that skin is a little thicker, like scar tissue. The whole area is just.....different.

Speaking of tears, I had a huge problem with this unfortunate symptom. It seems to finally have resolved itself, but it was extremely uncomfortable for at least seven weeks to the point that I would cry out in pain and be unable to sit after, you know, going. It was by far the most difficult painful thing I dealt with (during labor, as well as in the aftermath).

Two Months

2008-01-03T17:02:00.000-05:00

Got more to say than time to say it, but here are a few notes:

-At the two month checkup today, Piper weighed in at 9 pounds, 15 ounces. This brings her from the 3rd percentile for weight (4 pounds 12 oz at birth) to the 60th!

-Thank GAWD because breast feeding is NOT easy, so at least this makes it feel rewarding (she would no doubt have grown just as well on formula, but at least I don't have to worry that she's not getting enough).

-Giving shots to a two-month old is absolutely HORRIBLE. I can tell they still hurt and my heart breaks for her, but on the upside she's sleeping a LOT today.

-A few weeks after we brought her home, we got a letter in the mail from our insurance provider informing us they have changed our benefits and will now be covering IVF. Hahaha...aha..ha...ahem. I have decided to overlook the fact that their idea of a good joke would have been a lot funnier thirty thousand dollars ago, and instead feel relieved about coverage for number two, whenever we get there.

-I'm back to work as of today. We'll have to see how it goes easing back in, but I work from home so I'm lucky not to have to leave her all day. Presumably I'll be spending more time in front of my computer, which of course means keeping up better with the blogosphere. Aren't you so excited?! Hello? Anyone there??

Hope everyone had a great holiday and LOADS of good wishes for the New Year!!

All is Calm, All is Bright

2007-12-05T15:05:00.001-05:00

It's so peaceful here today. Watching the snow fall with a sleeping baby is absolutely perfect.

Not like yesterday. Yesterday she decided she HAD to be nursed the entire day. If she fell asleep between feedings it was on the boob and if she was removed she got pissed off and had to nurse again. If she wasn't nursing she was having a gassy fit. This went on all night and then all day. I had about 20 minutes free during which I folded her tiny laundry. I was near tears by the end of the day, but thankfully today is a new day. A perfect hot chocolate day.

A Day in the Life

2007-11-30T06:16:00.000-05:00

Can you believe it's the four week birthday already? Here's how we got there...

6am - I hear Pip stirring in the bassinet next to my bed. She's not crying yet but we've been asleep since 1am so she's definitely up for her feeding. I take the opportunity to go pee alone before picking her up. As soon as she starts nursing there's a series of farts without any screaming at all, and by 6:30 she's done the first side and passing out. Breast feeding has definitely gotten MUCH better! A diaper change wakes her up enough to finish the other side and we're back in bed around 7:00.

I know this may be controversial, but at this point I put her in our bed with me. The reason is pure laziness. If I put her down in the bassinet she has to be totally sound asleep or she'll cry until I pick her up and she's too young still for the "cry it out" sleep training. If I put her in bed next to me we get to fall asleep together with no crying.

10am - She's stirring again and this time we're awake for good, for a total of close to 8 hours sleep - not bad. She's a little fussy but latches right on and nurses until the poop explosion (they no longer happen at every feed). She tenaciously keeps latching on and trying to nurse, but she's dropping latch and wrenching up her little face into a very unhappy shriek, so I think it must be her belly and give her some Mylicon drops. Seems to do the trick. With all the fussing it takes almost an hour to get through with one side before the diaper change. Hiccups mean we're in the home stretch though. By 11:30 we're done.

Meanwhile J has made us breakfast and brings it to me in the chair. When I say the constant feeding isn't so bad, a huge part of it is that my college student husband is around to help out in so many ways. The division of labor isn't actually all that different than it's been since he quit working two years ago to finish his degree, we've just both got this new element. So many women do all of this alone at this point, and I shudder to think of how anyone manages while caring for older siblings.

Noon - I put the sleeping baby in the Pack N Play and sneak off to run some errands.

2pm - I get back to find Pip's been awake since 1pm when she woke up with a wet diaper. J changed her and played with her and she was just running out of patience when I got back. I feed her while I eat my lunch. Afterwards we weigh her - I can't believe she's up to 7 pounds!!

3:30pm - She's fallen asleep in my arms. It takes a while for her to go soundly to sleep, but then she's back in the Pack N Play. I start addressing birth announcements while she sleeps.

4:40pm - Tiny cries from the Pack N Play. In the last week or so Pip has decided to become a dainty little girl and cry whenever she has a wet diaper. Easily solved, but a pain having to nurse her back to sleep an hour after almost every feed. J changes her diaper but she's still shrieking.

5pm - Mylicon drops to the rescue and she's back on the boob. Within 15 minutes she's fallen asleep on me again. She's rooting around with her mouth in her sleep so I wake her up and get her to latch back on. She's fussy but hse's back on soon enough. Then a big belch does the trick.

5:30pm - She's back to sleep and putting out some loud farts. Jay's making dinner. I actually get to eat with my arms free tonight while she lays in the bassinet! As soon as I put my fork down she's crying though, wanting to be held. In minutes she's passed out in my arms and she sleeps on me while I catch up on all your blogs.

7:30pm - Furious screaming precedes diaper change and a particularly trying feed, wherein she yanks my nipple all over the place as she squirms around, apparently in pain. That makes two of us. After burping her she settles (sort of) into more productive nursing, with only occasional cries on her part and a bit less pain for me. Her tenacity and determination is very endearing. Its a very basic problem: she needs to eat to survive. She works very hard at it despite the fact that it hurts. Looking at it as something we're both working toward together helps me through it.

8:30pm - Has it really only been an hour? It feels like much longer. I'm exhausted and she's nearly asleep when we have a pee overflow. She's starting to outgrow preemie size diapers. A quick diaper change and back to the boob.

9pm - Sweet Jesus she's sleeping. I make the handoff to J and give my arms a rest.

9:30pm - Why is she chirping already? J is instructed not to so much as look at her. Thankfully she stays asleep.

10pm - J tries putting her down but it doesn't take; she wants to be held. Back on the boob. She latches fine but she's so tired and keeps falling asleep. If I feed her later it means we probably only get up once in the night instead of twice, so I snuggle her up to me and let her sleep while I rest too and watch TV.

11:30pm - 1:30am - Our last feeding before bed. It takes a long time before she's ready to drift off to sleep, but then she stays asleep until 5am.

In 24 hours, I got 8 hours of sleep and spent 8 hours nursing. What happened to those other 8 hours, I don't remember doing anything else?? At least I did get the birth announcements done. Maybe tomorrow I'll make room for a shower!

Shopping

2007-11-27T20:52:00.000-05:00

First I want to pass along this fantastic idea from the Queen of fantastic ideas, Mel: Click here to shop for all sorts of cool things which will help fund other infertiles' journey to parenthood.

This rest of this post will be particularly annoying for those at that certain point in the cycle when you just can't stand to see a pregnant woman or pass by a baby boutique, but I feel compelled to give a shout out to this fabulous vendor of great baby stuff: Babysakes.com

A while ago I fell in love with a beautiful, award-winning baby book, but it was too early in the pregnancy for me to feel bold enough to buy it (i.e. anytime before 34 weeks). Then I was on bed rest and found myself pining for it but couldn't get to the store, and once I finally was able to get out it had sold out not to be restocked. After searching everywhere and hours of googling, I found the perfect cover design (pictured above) on the manufacturer's website, but couldn't find the book anywhere. Finally I asked the wonderful people at Babysakes if they could get it with this cover and they've decided to stock it, so now it's been added to their online store. AND at a better price than I've seen anywhere. You can see it and loads of other great designs here. Be sure to check out the beautifully illustrated inside pages (see below).

There's lots of other great stuff on their website too for anyone looking for cool baby gifts, and I can definitely say the people there are wonderfully helpful and responsive. Check it out!

Pictures

2007-11-26T18:09:00.000-05:00

I have a bunch of things in mind I've been meaning to blog about. What I don't seem to have any of lately is time. If I could figure out how to feed her and type simultaneously we'd be good to go, but so far I'm not getting anywhere typing with one index finger. In lieu of any of that, here are some pictures, as requested.

Here you can see how tiny she is. This is from her first week home, when she was around 5 pounds. Now she's probably approaching almost six...

She still loves to be swaddled but she's enjoying more time unwrapped now too. Even the tiniest preemie clothes are huge on her, but she's growing into them quickly...

As you can see, she's quite pensive...

But she doesn't take herself too seriously...

This is her Yoda face...

Finally, a Christmas to smile about...

The First Two Weeks

2007-11-17T21:23:00.000-05:00

So I mentioned delivery was the easy part. And I seem to have a pretty easy baby. So far.

The biggest challenge is definitely feeding. The baby had a great latch right from the beginning, but starting the very first day I was forced to give her supplemental formula feedings from the bottle every two hours. The pediatrician required it due to her small size, and it was either comply or risk having her admitted to the NICU if she lost too much weight after delivery. The formula feedings were a huge success and she lost only 2 ounces before being discharged, which was a record for the hospital lactation consultant.

The down side was that she then HATED the boob. Screamed bloody murder whenever I tried to stick it in her tiny face. It took about five days for my milk to come in and the colostrum couldn't hold a candle to the formula she was downing, plus there were nipple problems too. Nurses kept telling me not to worry, that my milk would be in any day and then we could quit the formula and eventually things would work themselves out. We do seem to be getting there, but it has NOT been easy.

We've been on breastfeeding only for a little over a week and it's still a challenge, but getting much better. I think our issue now is more digestive than boob-related because she basically screams and drops latch constantly until she has a big explosive poop, after which she settles down and sucks easily until she's done. The pediatrician explained something about a gastro-colic reflex that goes away at about one month, so hopefully we have just a few more weeks of the screamfest. It probably doesn't sound that bad, but it lasts anywhere from 5 or 10 to 30 or 40 minutes or crying and screaming before the poop explosion. And this is something I do every 2-4 hours, 24 hours a day. I basically spend about 10-12 hours a day feeding her, of which at least 3-4 hours are spent watching her push out her lower lip in the saddest little frown ever, furrow her tiny brow, turn beet red, and eventually wail her little heart out. Meanwhile she's frantically clawing away at my chest, practically ripping my nipple off, and kicking me in the opposite side boob.

My sister says I'm lucky that her cries don't really upset me. I hate that she seems so miserable, but it's true I do stay pretty calm. For one thing, I know that sometimes babies just cry. It's the only way they have of communicating with us. It doesn't always mean there's something tragically wrong that must be fixed. I think a lot of new moms feel like they're doing soemthing wrong if the baby cries, or at least not doing something right. I'm pretty convinced that the feeding cries are related to belly discomfort, and that frankly seems worth crying over. I've got some tips from the pediatrician on how to help ease it and I do what I can, but it seems to be mainly something she needs to grow out of.

I can see why people give up on breastfeeding and switch to formula. It is really hard and really draining, and if you have any problems at all, formula can be much much easier. I think what's helped me most is that I was prepared for it not to work well. It's my infertile training serving me well yet again. I went into it knowing it might not work, and that there were interventions and options that would be fine if the natural method failed me. I was pretty committed to making breastfeeding work, but willing to accept the alternatives if need be. But the key thing was that my sister had said to me something like: that's all fine and good that you're willing to accept alternatives, but you should know this: at some point, it probably will be really hard and you will want to give up, but if you stick with it for a few more weeks, it gets much, much better.

We seem to be getting to that point. There's less and less crying and the feedings seem to be becoming more productive. At her weight check yesterday, she was up to 5 pounds and 5 ounces (from 4.12 the week before), so the pediatrician was finally satisfied and we don't have to go back until her two month check up. Other than the feeding issue, she's really easy so far. She sleeps for usually 3-4 hours between feedings and I only get up once or twice in the night. And really, eating, sleeping and feeding her are the only things I have to do, so its okay if one of those things takes some extra effort. Even with the difficulty we've had, it's all in all much easier than I was expecting. Part of me is still waiting for the shit to hit the fan. Some people tell me that these little early babies take a couple of weeks to really "wake up" and become more difficult. For now, I'm enjoying it while I can.

Birth Story

2007-11-11T12:53:00.000-05:00

Here, finally, is the long and short of it. For the short, just scan the headlines...

November 1
8:30am - Appointment with the perinatologist
We were sitting in the waiting room when the peri came out of an exam room. He took one look at me and from down the hall said "Still pregnant?!" He'd expected me to be delivered when he sent me to the hospital on Monday. When my scan was done he said the baby was measuring smaller for gestational age than before and he believed placental dysfunction was becoming a more serious concern. Before he told me what he his recommendation was, I saw him type "deliver within 48 hours" into the computer. He had me wait in his office while he called my OB. He said they couldn't get me in that day but to go home and wait for a call to schedule an induction for the next day. When we got home, there was a message from the OB's office telling me to go directly to the hospital, and that my doctor would let me know what the plan is when I got there.

We got our bags ready, I wrapped up some things in my office, and off we went. On the way there I asked J "What are we going to name this baby?" He said "Well I think we have to think about that." Me: "How about now?!!"

11:30am - Admitted to triage
No one knew what was going on when I got to the hospital. The OB at the office had called the OB on call at the hospital, but he was in surgery when we got there. I hung out in triage yet again waiting to hear what was going to happen. I was beginning to get so irritated with being sent back and forth to the hospital, especially after the 24 hour stay just two days before, and with the back and forth between all the doctors different opinions, that I was feeling a little more like maybe it wouldn't be so bad to get this over with. I'd been sent home with discharge papers four times now that read at the top "Discharged with: no babies."

When my doctor got out of surgery he came to talk to us about our options. He explained that they (the OB's) prefer to wait until 38 weeks; they just feel it's safer. He explained the potential risks of delivering at 37 weeks. It was a little frightening because I'd understood that 37 weeks was considered term, but here was the head doc from my practice explaining that no one really knows when between 34-38 weeks each individual baby will really be term, so at 37 weeks there are still risks like "blowing a hole in the lungs..." and other stuff too scary to remember. On the other hand he said, it was hard for him to recommend going against the peri's recommendation, since he's the expert. He asked me what I wanted to do. I said I didn't want to be the one to decide, I wanted my doctors to tell me what they thought was best. He said he leaned toward doing the induction. Ultimately I have had the most trust and confidence in the peri all along, so at this point I was comfortable with it.

2:30pm - Admitted to Labor & Delivery
Three hours after checking into the hospital and laying on that stretcher in triage, I had my own room. It didn't have the ugly wallpaper of the room I was in Monday and Tuesday, but it also didn't have the window that had allowed me to get a web signal on my iphone - bummer.

3:30pm - Started Cervadil
An hour later the doctor came in and inserted the cervix-ripening Cervadil, since I was still only 1cm dilated and 50% effaced. Not comfortable! He explained we'd let this work for 12 hours and then I'd have an hour off before we started the pitocin. During the whole 12 hours of Cervadil I'd need to be on the monitors.

It was a long afternoon. I watched TV and finished my Carl Sagan book - the one I'd been reading on the stretcher at the fertility clinic when we did egg retrieval back in March. J went home at some point to take care of the dog and I got a half hour nap. He came back around dinner time and we played gin. At some point he told me he was ready to agree to the name Piper, which for some reason I've loved since I was about 12. We still hadn't settled on a middle name though. We talked about some options but we really weren't sure.

My mom came by soon after and we all hung out until I decided I needed to sleep, which never really happened. They went home and I continued to have nurses come in every half hour and stick me, ask me questions, and who knows what else. Sometimes they came in just to introduce themselves after shift change. Great, thanks. Please go away.

November 2
12:00am - Contractions
I didn't realize what they were; thought I was just missing my fabulous body pillow. I'd been getting uncomfortable and kept switching positions, knocking off my monitors, trying to find some way to sleep. I'd shift around and get more comfortable, then need to shift again. It took me a few hours to notice the pattern and realize it was my position changing making me more comfortable, it was the contractions ending. At this point they felt about like bad menstrual cramps; those months when you've had way too much chocolate and wine and haven't exercised in way too long. More discomfort than pain.

3:30am - Done Cervadil
At the end of the 12 hours, the nurse came in to remove the Cervadil but it was already gone; fallen out. Not a problem she said, but I was still only 1cm dilated despite the contractions. Annoying. I was given an hour off the monitors during which I took a shower, which felt fantastic. Also good thing I took advantage of it because I wasn't up to taking another one the first day or so afterwards.

4:30am - Started Pitocin
I was started on a low dose of the pitocin. My contractions were about 1 minute long every 5-8 minutes at this point. They pretty much stayed this way for the next five hours while the nurses continuously ramped up the pitocin amount.

Although the contractions stayed about the same frequency, I started getting more uncomfortable. It was still not really painful, but it was now like my worst ever menstrual cramps; the kind you might have every few years that make you need to spend a day in bed. I asked the nurse when it would be time for an epidural. I had thought there would be a point when they came and offered it. I remembered something about waiting until you're 4-5cm or something, to let your body do it's thing first. She explained that they don't really do that with pitocin inductions. For one thing, pitocin contractions are notoriously much more uncomfortable, and also since it's not your body in charge anyway it doesn't matter, they will still be controlling things with the pitocin regardless of what you're feeling.

So basically she said most doctors would let you have the epidural whenever you wanted. I told her I still wasn't sure when I should ask for it. She suggested getting it early, before you feel like you need it. It's easier to have the actual proceedure when you're in less pain and everyone takes a different lngth of time to respond to it, plus you never know when the anesthesiologists will get booked up. I told her I'd like to request it as soon as it was allowed then, and the guy was there in minutes.

9:45am - Epidural
I had been pretty calm about everything up until this point, but I was nervous about the epidural. The anesthesiologist came storming in pissed off at another doctor for rescheduling some other procedure and fuming about it to my nurse. She calmly had me sit on the edge of my bed with my back exposed and hunched over while he continued to rant and rave about "how DARE he ask such-and-such..." He scrubbed the iodine over my back with a vengence and may have removed a layer or two of skin. The nurse gently whispered instructions to me "hug your pillow in front of you, and when I say so, tuck your head and chin all the way down and push your back out towards him...okay, now." And it was done. It felt sore going in, but went away quickly.

I tend to be pretty sensitive to drugs and the epidural kicked in immediately. I felt warm and tingly, but I also got major jitters and felt like crap. I started to regret asking for the epidural so soon since I wasn't yet really in pain, but those side effects had subsided within 20 minutes and ultimately I think it was best I had it early and had loads of time for it to sort of settle in. Just like I'd been told I would, I had to laugh at the monitor when I saw the next contraction and felt nothing. Ahhhh. Then nothing happened for basically the rest of the day. Oh except the catheter, which SUCKED. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me I'd need one of those, but eventually I didn't feel that much either.

7:00pm - Water broken
After 14 hours of pitocin, contractions were still 3-4 minutes apart, as they'd been pretty much all day. I was now 2cm. A different doctor now on duty (the third since I'd arrived), decided it was time to break my water. It really does look like a crochet hook. For some reason I decided this was it. There was no turning back now! It was beginning to look like I might actually have a baby. The doctor gave her guess: 7am. She asked the nurse what she thought. "You may be right but I'm not going to say 7am, just because that's too cruel. I'll say 2-3am." Sounded like they were expecting things to get more painful from here on in. And that's basically the idea with breaking the water, without that extra cushion each contraction can put more pressure on the cervix. Hopefully things would advance a little more quickly.

10:00pm - Feeling contractions
Twelve hours after starting the epidural, I was still numb but the contractions were now strong enough that I could feel them through the epidural. Again they were more uncomfortable than painful, but I was aware of them, and I'd finally made it to 3cm. J and I fell asleep.

November 3
1:00am - Active labor
Around midnight the contractions became strong enough to wake me up, and they got stronger over the next two hours. Around 1am I started trying to wake J up from his nap on the very uncomfortable bench in the room. He's a heavy sleeper and kept opening an eye to check on me then dozing off again. By 2am he was finally awake for good. By then the contractions were strong enough that I has having to try some of the breathing techniques from class. I hadn't been big on all that stuff because I knew I was planning to have an epidural, but there was an exercise in class where we had to push with our hands against force with and without focused breathing and I was amazed at how much difference the breathing made, so I gave it a shot. It really helped. This will sound so corny but with each breath out I was envisioning my cervix widening a bit more, as if I was blowing it open. I don't know if I was actually making any progress with that, but it made all the difference in getting through them.

This went on for about 20 minutes before I started feeling like I wanted to push. More specifically, it felt sort of like I wanted to poop. At that point I was fighting the urge to bear down, so at 1:30 J went to let the nurse know. The contractions didn't look any different on the monitor so they weren't aware anything had changed. At 1:45 she checked my cervix and I was fully dilated-she said it waqs time to push. My nurse was amazing (thank you Staci, where ever you are!), and walked me through exactly what I needed to do; taking a huge breath in at the start of every contraction, then holding it in while I pushed as hard as I could before exhaling--about three of these during every contraction.

3:06am - Delivery
We kept going like this for probably another 30 minutes, not more than 10 contractions, before she went to get the doctor, who was stunned that I was ready already. When the doctor came in, I pushed just a few times before the big one. I felt the head pop out and I could tell it was tiny. The doctor and nurses were exclaiming things like "oh it's a TINY one!" I looked up at J's gaping dropped jaw, staring down at the baby half way in and half way out. I think they might have suctioned her nose and mouth before I finished pushing her out but I'm not sure.

Next thing I knew they put her right on my lower belly and were wiping her off. I was staring down at her and thinking "No I'm infertile. I don't make babies." I was looking at her, knowing she had just come from somewhere inside my body, but not remotely able to absorb the idea at all. I was happy, I was proud of myself, I felt excited and relieved, but I did not have this sudden magical moment where I finally Believed. It wasn't that anything was missing. It all felt perfect. It was still just so unreal.

They picked her up and washed her off and did the usual stuff (all very fuzzy now). I think it was during this time that they delivered the placenta. Finally we got the answer to the big question: the placenta was very small and not looking good, so the early induction was very much justified. The perinatologist had been right, and the OB confirmed it was a good thing we delivered when we did. She would thrive much better out in the world than in there dependent on that thing. Whew, major relief. But then the doctor had a problem stopping my bleeding. There was talk of sending me into surgery if they couldn't stop it. After a bit longer pressing on my abdomen, another peice of placenta came out, and the bleeding finally stopped. I'm not really sure what this means but will ask more about it at the 6 week check up, but basically we're felling really good about the induction decision.

They brought her back to me swaddled and with a hat on. This time I got to hold her close and have a better look and she was the most beautiful thing ever. It was still a few days before the reality of it began to set in and I'm not sure I still totally believe it, but I can say for certain that I'm loving every day of it.

And that's how we got our third 3rd (J and I also were born on the 3rds of our birth months), eight months after egg retrieval which, incidentally, was on 3/3. All in all, labor and delivery was really easy. I know, I know. I too have smirked at women who say this and whispered sideways to a friend that people with a story like that should just keep it to themselves. No doubt delivering a 4lb. 13oz. baby is a walk in the park compared to what most women go through. I also think getting the epidural early (thanks Holly) was key. The next few days were anything but easy, but I'll save that for another post.

And Delivered

2007-11-07T08:09:00.000-05:00

Thanks to all who have already sent congratulations, and so much love to everyone who's supported us throughout this journey. So many of you know too well how much that support means. I hope this little bundle gives hope to those who need it. IVF really can make a baby, even if you refuse to believe it until the very last moment. More details when I can.

And Readmitted

2007-11-01T09:41:00.001-05:00

Headed back to hospital now. Was told induction is scheduled for tomorrow, but then told to go directly there now--I assume to get the cervix-ripening stuff. Hope to be released while it does it's thing, but who knows? Will post updates when I can, but looks like today or tomorrow theoretical baby will become actual real-life baby.

Hopefully I've fixed the comments thing. Thank you all so much for your support!!!

Admitted

2007-10-29T15:14:00.000-05:00

quick update from the hospital - I was sent over for monitoring by the peri this morning after an especially high BP (160/110). They have decided to admit me overnight to do another 24 hour urine collection to check for protein. A full panel of bloodwork came back completely normal, so if there's no protein I'll probably be discharged tomorrow afternoon. My blood pressure has remained pretty high all day despite the medication I started last week though, so an induction sometime next week (37 weeks) is still likely.

It was very weird going home and getting our stuff together to come over here. We knew there was a chance of induction. The peri told the on call to check everything and if she had any concerns to just go ahead and deliver. I am so not ready for that. I know i'm taking the whole pregnant infertile disbelief thing to extremes given that i know an induction in the next two weeks is likely, but I just still can't believe I (me!) might actually have a baby. I'm still working on buying inyo this whole pregnancy notion. Luckily it sounds like I've got at least a few more days to get used to the idea.

And I can't wait to go home. Its so uncomfortable in this bed, not to mention boring. I didn't get to eat or drink anything all day until around 3pm in case I had to be induced or anesthetized. Now I have these weird inflatable cast things on my calves which are plugged in and puff up and down to prevent clots. The only upside is maybe now I'll have some time to catch up on your blogs.

I Suppose Its Not a Good Sign When the High Risk Doc Says Come Back in Two Days

2007-10-25T13:57:00.000-05:00

But that's what he said this morning. Then he said "Tell them to double book me if they have to," so he's rather serious about it. He says the placenta is looking a bit "old." The report he sent to my OB says "indications of early placental dysfunction." Apparently when it begins to look like things may be headed downhill placenta-wise, it can happen fast, thus the speedy recheck. It was such a bummer compared to last week, when we found out the baby is growing at an okay pace, as it continues to hug the 18th percentile curve. They can't check that again until next Thursday, since it takes two weeks to grow enough to outweigh the standard error in the measurements.

I have my first pelvic exam with the OB tomorrow. With things seeming more urgent at the Peri, I'm eager to hear how things "down there" might be progressing, if at all. I've had occassional Braxton Hicks for months but they have gotten stronger and I sometimes wonder if some of the adjustment I'm feeling is dilation. Mainly I think it's the baby head butting my cervix though--not too comfortable.

Bed rest pretty much blows. It's been over three weeks now, but sure feels like months. We all have enough whining and complaining in our lives so I won't go on and on about it, but the thing I didn't really anticipate is the fact that lying around all day saps all your energy without ever getting you tired enough to sleep. In a way it's a good thing that I've been so swamped at work I haven't had much opportunity to notice I'm not going anywhere. Since I already worked from home, it took minor adjusting to get me lounging a bit mopre at my desk with my feet up, but I have been working at reducing my workload. Instead of the routine 10-12 hour days with a few 14 hour days per week, I'm now down to regular days of 8 hours or less with a few 10 hour days here and there. In two weeks, I'll have everything wrapped up. If Imake it that far.

So I'm very sorry I'm behind on all your blogs. I've missed them and been thinking of you all, but between the race to get work done and the need to rest as often as I can, I feel so trapped irtyng to balance it all that I haven't dedicated much computer time to non-work activity. I'm going to try to catch up a bit later today, and hoping to find lots of good news out there!

Looking Good, Just Not All That Photogenic

2007-10-12T07:32:00.000-05:00

The scan yesterday went well. It is too soon to measure growth again since the the margin of error for the measurements is greater than how much the baby might have grown in a week, so we'll have to wait until next week before we have an idea of how well the baby is growing. This time they checked all the organ functioning, breathing motions, and blood flow.

The main problem with hypertension is that it constricts the blood vessels, so the baby gets less blood and nutrients through the cord than it should. This is what causes the growth restriction. The baby compensates by reducing blood flow to the abdomen so it can direct enough to the brain, and this is happening properly. They've talked about putting me on blood pressure medication, but apparently the baby becomes accustomed to a certain level of blood pressure, and as long as the baby is handling it well, it's not a great idea to suddenly change my blood pressure. It appears that so far the baby is handling it well, we just have to keep monitoring it closely.

The other major problem which I'm still being evaluated regularly for is preeclampsia, but there are no further indications that I'm headed in that direction. That would be much more dangerous to me and the baby, and even the chance of it is one reason why I may be induced early (it tends to spike suddenly late in pregnancy). The Peri said we'd know more after next week's growth check, but that he thinks I'm going to make it to 37 weeks. If the growth looks really good, he said maybe 38.5, but I might as well give up on my 40 week due date.

And since full time bed rest is pretty much definite until delivery, three or four more weeks is sounding a lot better than six.

In this picture from last week's scan, you can clearly see two evil eyes glaring at me, displeased with this whole blood pressure situation, I presume:
Is it just me or does anyone else see a resemblance to Dr. Finklestein from The Nightmare Before Christmas?
Although I go back and forth, sometimes I see a very clear "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" face in the scan.

Actually we did get to see some cool stuff yesterday. At one point when we were looking at the profile view, we saw the mouth open and swallow amniotic fluid. Later, we saw it holding it's foot. Maybe there really is a baby in there afterall.

And Definitely Restricted

2007-10-08T17:29:00.000-05:00

Last week I met with the OB to follow up on the scan. Actually it was a series of confusing visits with different people and different interpretations. My regular appointment was already scheduled with the physician's assistant. She explained to me it's not just a matter of the baby being small as I had hoped; it is considered growth restriction because of the hypertension, since we know that hypertension definitely restricts fetal growth, especially in mom's over 30. She showed me a chart with our 17 week anatomy scan on a grid and you could see that it has dropped from just above 20th percentile then to just below (18th). It was a little frightening to see that, although it is still not in the teensy tiny dangerous less-than-10th percentile range.

I left that appointment feeling a bit more concerned and thinking this situation was a bit more serious than I had thought. I had flashbacks to my tiny neice born 3 pounds 15 ounces at 34 weeks, which sounds like about the pace of growth we are on. I remember visiting her in the nicu and her head was smaller than my fist, about the size of a tangerine. It was amazing to see her but scary too, and I remember what a horrifying time it was for her mom, who was driving more than an hour a day after a C section (not advised) so she could go visit her baby in the hospital. She was there about two weeks and is now a thriving 5 year old, but we'd certainly prefer not to repeat that scary nicu stay.

The next day I came back to see an OB since the physician's assistant thought I should follow up with one of them. The first thing she said when she walked in the room was "Your scan looks fine to me." Irritating. I didn't even know what to say. What does that mean? We've just readjusted our entire lives around strict bed rest. I even missed a family funeral that was important to me, and she's telling me everything's fine?! I may have just stared at her blankly for a while, blinking. Eventually we got around to the part where she said "Look at it this way, you're 33 weeks. If we have to deliver your baby tomorrow, it will be just fine." That's when I realized she wasn't telling me I'd had a perfect scan and there was no growth restriction and bed rest was totally unecessary, she just had a very different definition "fine."

And now mine is somewhere in the middle. I'm aware that bedrest is important because we need to keep my blood pressure under control as much as possible and try to keep the fluid levels as high as possible, but the baby seems pretty healthy and there's nothing to do but wait for the next scan before we start guessing about whether I'm going to be induced early. Every week I'll be going back to the Peri for another check, and every week they'll be evaluating whether the baby is better off inside or out. Kind of familiar, the old weekly wait for the next check. I thought I'd graduated from that class already.

So the inevitable question everyone's asking us now is if we're ready. In the most basic sense, all we need is an infant car seat, a place for the baby to sleep, and a pair of stocked boobs. We've got the car seat, a bassinet loaned to us by a friend is next to our bed, and I've been leaking colostrum for two months now, so I guess we're ready. It doesn't even matter that we've got a pretty well stocked nursery ready to go, but it will be nice not having to worry about that until we're ready to use it. We've got some basic diapering essentials, but we'd have to buy preemie size diapers. Basically, we're ready.

There are a number of things that aren't as completely ready as I'd like. We still have one last baby class and a lactaction class I'm hoping we'll attend. I've got loads of work to wrap up before going on maternity leave but it's getting there. I haven't packed a hospital bag but I may get to that after the scan on Thursday depending on how that goes. I haven't pre-addressed birth announcement envelopes and other things like that but we'll see what I get around to.

From the time I had a due date, I've been trying to prepare myself for being late. It seems like everyone I know has been at least a week late and they go crazy waiting for those last few weeks to go by. I decided to be excited about the idea of being 10 days late (12/3) so the baby could be born on the third of it's month like me and J. This was my silver lining if it started to drag on forever. Now this whole thing has me thinking about delivering by 11/3 (37 weeks). If we are lucky enough not to have a preemie, the flipside is that it WILL drag on forever, so I guess there's no perfect answer to mentally preparing yourself. Of course the key thing will be hoping for a healthy baby, but the other thing I'll be checking the tea leaves for at each scan is some clue to just how much longer we have to go. Patience has never been my thing.

Restricted

2007-10-02T17:52:00.000-05:00

It's been interesting around here since my last post. I did go to Boston and had a great visit. When we got back, the dog took another turn for the worse, had to go back to the vet, and we were asked to decide between putting him down and another expensive surgery. We decided to go forward with the surgery because there is one last treatment option that hasn't been tried, and it didn't seem right to give up without trying everything. If this last option (steroid drug therapy) has no affect of his intestines' habit of attacking themselves and dying off, it's the end of the line for my pup. So far, so good post surgery, but it will be some time before we know if the drugs are working.

Next I went in for my regular OB visit and high-strung newbie doctor freaked out about my blood pressure, decided strict bed rest was in order, and instructed me to come back a few days later for a recheck. When I went back last Friday, the OB I saw agreed with all the other docs who had previously said basically that my BP is worth keeping an eye on, I should take it easy and continue regular monitoring, but bed rest wasn't indicated since everything else looks good and the baby always does great on the monitors. Phew. Minor freak out over.

Until Monday, when I went to the Perinatologist for my "final" ultrasound. Now I don't know if being in the business of dealing with high-risk pregnancies makes the Peri's naturally more inclined to be cautious and nervous, but this guy was much more concerned about my BP. Then again, he was the first to have real evidence of a potential problem: even though the baby looks very healthy, it's measuring about a week and a half behind. He looked at the blood flow through the umbilical cord and it looks perfect, as well as the blood flow in the heart and brain, so that's very reassuring. Also reassuring that the stomach is displaying breathing motions. But since this was the first scan since week 17, we don't yet know if we've got a smallish but healthy baby, or if we're seeing the onset of growth restriction caused by my hypertension (a top reason for small for gestational age babies).

So I have to go back to the Peri weekly now so we get an idea of the pace of growth as well as to continue to check the blood flow to the baby. And I get to be on strict bed rest. Maybe I'm in denial or maybe I'm an idiot, but I am honestly not very worried at this point. A week and a half behind just doesn't sound that horrible to me, and everything else about the baby is very, very healthy. There's a family history of small babies (I was 5lbs something, my sister was 6). I don't mean I'm not taking it seriously, I have done plenty of googling on the potential risks to small for gestational age babies. I certainly don't want a tiny little preemie to have to fight for her life and spend weeks in the NICU, but it also seems like there's reason to believe things are still going pretty well.

The Peri is talking in terms of "hopefully making it to 37 weeks if nothing worse develops." Something worse would be:
- further signs of preeclampsia (my giant jug of 24-hours worth of refrigerated urine remains LOST at the lab but so far no other problems detected)
- next week's scan shows baby is not just small but growth has significantly slowed
- doppler indicates abnormal blood flow to baby
- no doubt there are other unimaginably awful things I have neglected to google

If any of these things happen, they will weigh the risks of preterm delivery against the risks the baby faces in utero. They may do an amnio to determine lung maturity, though it bodes well that the belly appears to be making breathing motions. If none of these things happen, it sounds like the Peri would still make a case for inducing me at 37 weeks once the baby is considered term. Incidentally, 37 weeks would be 11/3. J and I both have birthdays on the 3rds and the egg retrieval was on 3/3, so that seems somehow fitting. My birthday is actually tomorrow, I guess I'll spend it working from bed. Yay me.

I'm weirdly unphased by all this other than being highly irritated with bedrest one day into it. Partly I think I do have good reasons to feel okay about things. I could have left the Peri with way worse news than she's just a little small. But partly I think I'm so accustomed to things not going as planned after all the years of infertility that it just seems like par for the course. And throughout the process, I've gotten pretty confident in what can be accomplished with a combination of frequent monitoring and medical intervention. We'll just take it one step at a time and see what makes sense as we get more information. Bed rest on the other hand, is just damn aggravating.

----------------------------------------

Further googling tells me that if we're a week and a half behind, we're in about the 25th percentile for 32 weeks. Clinically small for gestational age babies are below the 10th percentile. If we stay in the 25th percentile, that would be just under 6 pounds at 37 weeks or just under 7 pounds at 40 weeks. This all seems pretty good as long as growth continues at a normal rate. We'll find out next Thursday at the next appt. with the Peri. Meanwhile baby is kicking me in the ribs and pelvis at the same time with a vigor that feels pretty healthy to me.

Quick Update

2007-09-20T19:27:00.000-05:00

* I might be a little over-extendeded. Yesterday I ran up a curb on the side of one of our major highways going pretty fast. Sitting on the side of the highway while my husband came to my rescue and changed my flat was one of the most relaxing moments I've had in a while.

* As the above might suggest, my blood pressure check today was not impressive. 151/100--my worst yet. I was sent directly back to the hospital for monitoring, where again it dropped back down to more acceptable levels as I lay in the bed for a few hours. Baby looks great and all other labs are normal, so this is probably just a case of pregnancy-induced hypertension, and not the scarier pre-eclampsia. They will continue to monitor me regularly to make sure it doesn't get worse, but they don't seem too worried.

* In addition, I have to do a 24-hr pee test, where I collect ALL of my pee in a 24 hour period and then drop off the whole big refrigerated jug of it for analysis. Having a giant collection container around kindda reminds me of the IVF cycle, and I find it weirdly reassuring.

* We had a fun moment in the hospital. We'd been there for hours waiting for the OB to finish a C section before he could discharge me. We were alone in triage and J was getting agitated. Practicing my parenting instincts, I said "Go see what you can do with one of those rubber gloves." See photo above. It was taken moments before the OB walked in. I couldn't believe he didn't stop when the door opened, but he couldn't hear it with the glove over his ears. The doctor was standing there grinning at him when he took it off his head, and said "I've obviously left you all waiting WAAAY too long!"

* I GET TO GO TO BOSTON!! Check in with you all when I get back!

Resting

2007-09-18T20:41:00.000-05:00

Or well, I'm suppossed to be. Doc was not happy with my blood pressure again at today's biweekly check, so I'm to take it easy all week, work extra hard on getting lots of fluids, rest on my left side as much as possible, and get it rechecked on Thursday.

If that doesn't help, they're going to recommend I NOT go to Boston this weekend for one last visit with my sister before baby. Which I was SOOOOOOO looking forward to. For many reasons, not least of which was the phone call from my five year old neice the other day that went like this:

Me: Hello?

Her: Hello Sarah. What are you doing?

Me: Nothing. What are you doing?

Her: Umm, I miss you. When are you coming to visit me in Boston?

Me: *tears springing to eyes* Very soon I hope.

If they tell me it's still too high to recommend travel I think I will just go anyway. Is that insane? There are lots of hospitals in Boston, afterall.

Battling with allergies lately is making it way harder to stay hydrated (although never realized there was a hydration/blood pressure connection before? guess it fits with the whole salt thing). Also, when they told me before to rest on my left side as much as possible, I thought they meant when I rest, do so on my left side as much as possible. This made sense because I know resting on your right side or back can smush some arteries or something and restrict blood flow. I didn't realize they actually meant to go lay down (on my left side) as often as possible throughout the day. I work from home and it would be feasible to go lie on the sofa for a few minutes every so many hours, but that's seriously going to add to my 10-14 hour work day. And no I really can't lighten up my work load, but I will try to take more of it lying down.

Wish me luck at the recheck on Thursday! I'm off to go lie to the left now....

I'm an Extra Large Boy!

2007-09-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Highly embarrassing pregnancy photo follows at end, escape now if you choose to do so. But first, my thoughts on our childbirth class yesterday...

I LUUUUUV baby class! It was so worth it. I had two main reasons for going:

1) to figure out where I was supposed to go etc. when the time comes

2) to get my husband involved and give him some preview of what we're (I'm) in for, so he can be prepared to help and support me.

Side benefit I wasn't expecting:

He had to give me a back rub for about fifteen minutes and we're supposed to practice this "relaxation technique" for the next few weeks! He does not EVER do anything like this for more than 30 seconds, certainly not an entire minute. I didn't even mind when he told me he was surfing his iPhone during the massage.

There was a part of me that was considering not going. I'm not real big on controlling the experience, I sort of want to leave most of that in the hands of the professionals. I read through some of the things you can include in your birth plan (How do I want the lighting? I want the docs to be able to see what they're doing!), and a whole detailed plan is not for me. For one thing, so much will just be up to what happens when we get there, so I'm going in with no expectations or set ideas of what I want to have happen.

I was also unsure about the class because I didn't want to hear some long preachy sermon about natural childbirth and minimizing medical intervention. Pain medication? Bring it on! You only get offered the good stuff legally so many times in life. How do I feel about a C section? I might need one. Hopefully I won't. Who knows? It doesn't seem worth getting hung up on a preference at this point. My feelings about what I want out of the experience are very basic: healthy baby, healthy mom. How we get there is not entirely up to me. But the class wasn't all preachy and high-horse about it.

It is true that (as another blogger recently said), most of the information I got out of the class can be found in the various books I'm already reading, but I found it really helpful to have all the key stuff in one easy digest. For one thing, I will never get my husband to read the books. I could maybe give him a highlighted paragraph and ask him to read it, but this is pretty much the only vehicle for the level of information we heard yesterday. If nothing else, I feel much more confident that he will have an idea how to be supportive of me over the next two months and during labor.

My one complaint: I have to have my hospital bag packed in two weeks! We had to take this class a few weeks early because of a couple of holidays coming up which cause the class to be every two weeks (for a few hours each Saturday, over three Saturdays). Part of the second class is everyone brings their packed bag and they discuss what you need or don't need, etc. Normally you'd have your second class around 34-35 weeks so it kind of makes sense to be packing by then I guess. But at 30 weeks? It's way too soon! If I feel like my bags are already packed and I'm ready to go, the next 10 weeks are going to drag on FOREVER!! Not the worst problem I could have, I realize.

On to the photo...I have been wanting footed fleece pajamas forever, so when I found extra-large girls size at Target I thought...mayyyybeee..... But no. Way to small. Way too short from the crotch to the armpits. I was so disappointed. Had such high hopes for snuggling in them. When I returned them I noticed the extra large boys size. Boys are taller, right? So maybe....YES! They are a little snug and now I'm enveloped in race cars, but I love them!

Let's Get Physical

2007-09-09T09:03:00.000-05:00

I haven't talked much about preganacy symptoms so far, mainly because they're not very interesting. Also in the beginning with all those early pregnancy symptoms I was still in such a state of disbelief. Now that I'm into the third trimester it seems worth mentioning, since other pregnant bloggers' recounts helped me know what to expect.

* By far my biggest complaint is what I refer to as my ring of fire--a band of itchy, burning, yet strangely numb skin about an inch or two wide that runs along the bottom of my bra. I think this is caused by the nerve endings beneath the skin being all scrunched up and smashed together where my belly sort of comes in to meet my upper rib cage. It's hard to explain, but it's miserably unformfortable. It makes wearing a bra torture, so I use my bra back extenders and wear them super loose. This has been going on for months now and has driven me to the always-flattering muumuu look.

* My bladder has returned to its first trimester competency. I have to pee all the time again, but also I seem to have a little less control. After I go I have to sit there for a second to make sure I'm really done, otherwise there's a tiny trickle when I stand up. Also, a tiny squirt when I sneeze. Spending the third trimester in the heat of allergy season should be entertaining.

* I'm practicing sleeping in 2-3 hour intervals. I used to go a good 5 hours or so before I'd have to get up and pee, then go back to sleep for the rest of the night. Last night, I peed five times between 10pm and 2am, then slept until 5am before I had to pee again, then finally got up for good around 8. In addition to the bladder issues, the back and belly pain is getting really uncomfortable. I got this maternity pillow and it helps a lot, but it's sort of hard to climb in and out of for all the pee trips.

* Speaking of that, my back and belly discomfort has been there for some time but it's definitely increasing and I suppose it will just continue. If I'm active for more than an hour or two, running errands, etc., I get pretty sore and really need to sit or lie down. Then again, if I sit in one position for more than an hour or two I need to stand. But that never really helps. The only place I'm really truly comfortable is my bathtub where everything kind of floats, so I spend a few hours there each night.

Incidentally, if you ever need quick passage through a crowded mall during pregnancy, simply hold your belly for support with a look of slight agony and exhaustion on your face and huff and puff a bit as you go. Shoppers will avert their eyes and cling to the furthest edges of the corridors to avoid being called upon to help deliver a baby. I didn't do it on purpose, I was just really uncomfortable, but it worked like a charm.

* The latest symptom (and the strangest) is the pelvic stretching and expansion. It's a very weird feeling and it makes walking a bit uncomfortable. Also, the same hormone that loosens your ligaments to allow for the stretching is loosening things everywhere causing soreness in all my joints, mostly hips and knees which get flexed the most.

Honestly I've had it pretty easy, with no morning sickness or serious complications. I even passed my glucose test (thank god!). I think this is all just the normal discomfort you have to expect when you've got another human growing inside your body. Luckily though, I'm 70% bionic (click in the lower right to find out how bionic you are):

See What You're Made Of - Visit The Official Site

Entering the Third Realm (NOT in the meditative sense)

2007-09-05T07:10:00.001-05:00

Phew, work has been INSANE lately! I've missed all the blogs and look forward to catching up with you all; no doubt it's going to take a while! Thanks to those of you who emailed to check in on me. Things are fine, just working my ass off and haven't had time to update. Here's what's happened in the last few weeks:

I had a minor terror when I got one of those annoying emails announcing that I was about to enter my third trimester and better make sure I have a car seat ready, etc. I was NOT ready for that! Logistically we are very ready. Car seat is ready, nursery is ready, any last necessities could be purchased last minute if need be. Even though I know the third trimester can stretch on seemingly forever, I wasn't mentally ready to accept that I was there.

That weekend my sister came for her week-long visit culminating with my baby shower. The shower was amazing, like a dream party from a magazine or something, everything gorgeous and coordinated and perfect (can you even believe the cake she MADE? of course it matched everything AND was delicious). But the best part was having them here for the week; my sister and her two kids. It was busy and flew by way too fast, but it was so great too. And then the shower...I can't believe how many people showed up and all the fabulous stuff they gave us! It was quite a haul, and since I'm pretty much the only childless person I know, all these experienced moms gave me really great useful stuff. It was a bit overwhelming, but wonderful too.

Then a weird thing happened. Somehow over the course of spending the week with my sister, then the shower, and then putting away all the great gifts I sort of got a little excited. Like we might actually have a baby and it might actually be really cool. I've been making these tiny steps away from utter refusal to hope and believe (thanks, infertility), but this was definitely a HUGE step. All those people who showed up at the shower didn't seem to be playing along with this imaginary pregnancy in my delusional mind; they actually seemed to think it was real and they all seemed so excited about it. And the crazy thing was, that didn't seem odd to me for a change. It was finally real to me too.

They say you need your first trimester to accept the fact that you are pregnant, your second to convince you that there is an actual baby in there, and the third to make you actually want to push it out. Maybe infertiles arrive a little late to each level of acceptance, but the good news is we get there! I'm working my way towards that third one now. These days having the baby in utero seems pretty damn convenient. I take her with me everywhere I go (hands free!), feedings are taken care of, diapering is a non-issue, and it hardly makes much difference whether she sleeps. There are no hours-long crying jags in the womb.

I am of course eager to meet her and hold her and play with her, and I LOVE babies, but I just know too much about what lies ahead. I have seen the dark side, when things get really difficult after a few weeks, babies have a colicky or fussy stage, moms are sleep deprived, breastfeeding is a struggle, and a million little daily challenges drain the life out of you. All around the time I'll be expected to start paying attention to work again and my husband, finished with school at the end of this semester, will start a new job. I know we'll get through it and the highs will outweigh the lows (at least in time), but if there's one thing infertility has taught me its to expect the worst and hope for the best so I guess I'm just preparing myself.

So for now my feeling is, bring on the pain and misery and discomfort of the third trimester. That's the only thing that's going to make me want to push this baby out!

100

2007-08-16T17:12:00.000-05:00

Just as twirl was saying recently, I'm not sure why I was excited about the 100-days-to-go mark, except that I guess it's just nice to pass another milestone. 100 days still feels like a LONG time, although 14 weeks sounds almost scarily soon. What I'm most excited about at this point though is that my sister is coming this weekend and staying for a week. She's here to host my babyshower on the 26th. I'm not too keen on being showered in general, but having her back home really makes it something to look forward to.

So thanks for all the understanding comments about my weak moment buying the stupid fetal heart monitor. I did get some reassurance listening to the heartbeat at my regular OB appointment yesterday. And then some. I ended up being sent to the hospital for additional monitoring and got to listen to the heartbeat all day.

My blood pressure was high at my appointment so they wanted to have me monitored a little more closely. Over at the hospital they hooked up the fetal heart monitor (a REAL one, not some lame-o playskool microphone jacked up to look like a maternity product) and a blood pressure thing that went off every 15 minutes. They ran a bunch of lab work which all came back normal and eventually my blood pressure mellowed out too.

So it turned out to be a great day in the hospital:
* Got to listen to the heartbeat for hours, plus some hiccups (too early to feel them yet so that was a first), and all the kicks and little swims around in the fluid were picked up by the monitor too
* Got out of having to take a business trip next week while my sister is here since I'm due back for more monitoring in a week
* Found my way around the hospital to labor & delivery (no small accomplishment)
* Husband was there and seems to finally have noticed that there is a baby in there that may warrant taking an interest in this whole pregnancy thing

Not a bad way to start off the 100 day countdown.

I Caved

2007-08-13T19:15:00.000-05:00

And I feel like such a loser. I bought one of those stupid fetal heart monitor thingies. Apologies if you have one and love it, but I always thought they were lame. This is probably more my Tom Cruise aversion that anything else (yes I know they have a million dollar doppler or u/s machine or some such thing and not the cheesy $20 glorified microphone I got), but I also thought the heart monitor would only fuel obsession and paranoia and was basically the last thing I needed. I was content with just my monthly OB appointments, and kind of liked not worrying about it and feeling "normal" in the maternity department for a change.

Until last night, after a day of weird belly pains and a late night call to my doctor. The pains were very intense and came in waves, lasting for a count of 3 or 4, disappearing for just as long, then again, off and on like that three to five times in a row, then nothing again for an hour or so. Earlier in the day they happened every few hours, but as the night wore on it was happening as often as every 20-30 minutes. Kind of sounds like contractions in timing and duration, except that it was isolated to a very small area, size of a silver dollar, about midway between my public bone and my belly button. The pain sort of radiated out, but didn't feel like a tightening or hardening of the muscle. It was probably round ligament pain, except that you normally feel that on one or both sides, not there in the middle.

Dr. Google had led me to worry about placental abruption, wherein the placenta separates from the uterus, potentially cutting off oxygen to the baby. Of course Dr. Google shared with me only the most gruesome stories of women who had not gotten care when they had the symptoms and whose babies might have been saved if only they'd gone to the hospital but were sadly found to be dead much later when the woman finally saw her doctor and there was no heartbeat. She just thought she was having normal pregnancy pains. Scary.

So I called my doctor and he never suggested placental abruption, but did mention preterm labor. He said I could come in and be monitored for contractions, or see if I could get the pain to go away at home. If changing positions, Tylenol, or a heating pad did the trick, it wasn't labor and was probably nothing to worry about. I really did not want to spend the night hooked up to monitors in the hospital, my gut was just telling me it wasn't preterm labor, and the doctor agreed it really didn't sound like it, so I decided to stay home and see if the pain would subside.

I have felt it only a few more times and much milder, but in the morning I was worried again when I didn't feel the baby move for several hours. Usually I feel it as soon as I get up and especially after I eat, but this morning nada. So I decided to give the fetal heart monitor a try, thinking I'd be far enough along that it would be easy to hear and wouldn't freak me out and would at least reassure me that placental abruption hadn't killed the baby.

I am so irritated with myself for being so lame. What you can't tell until you buy the stupid monitor and read the manual inside is that it's not suggested until the third trimester (three more weeks, how did that happen??), and even then you may not hear anything unless the baby's spine is pressing back against your belly button. I swore I wasn't going to cave to that thing, dammit! So I can't hear anything but my own heartbeat, but on the way home from the ridiculous purchase, I also got a caffienated frappucino (I know, terrible) and the baby's been kicking ever since. I got a lot more reassurance from my overpriced $4 coffee drink than that stupid microphone.

Next OB appoitment is Wednesday, so unless anything more dramatic happens in the meantime, we'll just discuss the weird pains more then.

24 weeks

2007-08-05T06:59:00.000-05:00

Or, Holy shit! We might actually have a baby!

I got a bit emotional yesterday morning when I read my email from one of those annoying pregnancy sites. It goes on and on about how my uterus is now the size of a soccer ball, 1.5 pounds of my 15 pound weight gain is now attributable to the baby, and that I likely feel the need to urinate frequently. Then it says, dryly:

"With modern medical technology, your baby would have a chance to survive if it were born now."

Other bloggers have talked about this being a moment when it became more real for them and I was really hoping to feel some of that too. I had lost track though and didn't realize I was there, so the line in the email took me by surprise and really got to me. Kind of makes me think about your comments on why not knowing so much can be really nice. Of course I don't want to go into labor anytime soon and plenty of babies born that early won't make it, but the point is for me to even be thinking of going into labor and that there could be a baby who makes it is a major leap forward.

Things continue to be pretty normal and boring. We're still in the Outer Banks, although everyone else is leaving the house today and we have the place to ourselves all next week. J's cousin is here with his three-week old baby Noah, which has mainly served to remind us to enjoy our unencumbered time as much as possible in these last four months but did lead to one interesting moment. I was holding Noah and felt the now-frequent kicks in my belly, and Noah moved in response so he felt them too. Kind of a neat thing to tell the cousins one day. No doubt they'll roll their eyes and groan, but it will be neat for me to tell them anyway.

Jack is here too, and doing fine. We went through a very rough period after his $10,000 vet stay (in spite of the initial $30 fee to the pound, it seems all of our dependents must come with at least a $10 grand price tag), when he had a neurological reaction to his medication, couldn't get up or walk, and behaved exactly like my grandmother after her major stroke, except that his eyeballs were literally spinning and jumping all around in the sockets. I think he actually believed the rest of the world was spinning but that he was fine. With those drugs out of his system, he returned, thankfully, to normal within a few days and has settled in to the beach house just fine.

I still remain completely opposed to belly shots (of me that is, it's fun to see others'), but for those who've asked I'm compromising with this picture that illustrates my expansion nearly as well, without all that hideous rolling flesh:

Okay this actually makes me look a bit smaller because my hand is sort of in front of part of the belly, but close enough. And there's J too, showing a little more skin.

For Fun

2007-08-03T07:23:00.001-05:00

It was fun coming across this on a couple of blogs this morning. I used to teach Myers Briggs and now occasionally use it in my work. My results haven't changed at all in the last 15 years since I first took the test, and they are very much in line with my purpose in blogging (to inform others irl and to share with all of you bloggers). It makes sense that my blog has been very public from the beginning, and that my style has never been heavily introspective or cathartic, rather more oriented around putting the infertile experience out there, from the medical processes to the emotions, with the intention of supporting the infertile community and informing the fertile world around me.

From the test website: "ENFPs are introspective, values-oriented, inspiring, social and extremely expressive. They actively send their thoughts and ideas out into the world as a way to bring attention to what they feel to be important, which often has to do with ethics and current events. ENFPs are natural advocates, attracting people to themselves and their cause with excellent people skills, warmth, energy and positivity. ENFPs are described as creative, resourceful, assertive, spontaneous, life-loving, charismatic, passionate and experimental."

This makes me sound MUCH more perky and chipper than I am, but otherwise rings mostly true.

And for even MORE fun, here's my husband, my complete and total opposite:

"ISTJs are responsible, loyal and hard working. They have an acute sense of right and wrong and work hard at preserving established norms and traditions. Because of their deep sense of duty they are dedicated to everything they do and are very dependable. ISTJs care deeply for those closest to them."

This is totally J, and I'm so lucky to have him. Sounds like the makings of a great dad too, doesn't it?

The things people say

2007-08-02T07:10:00.000-05:00

A vaguely connected family relation keeps unloading pessimism on me. Each time I see her she begins by telling me how HUGE I am and asking (again) if I'm sure I'm not further along or having twins. You might remember I have already given her a stern look in the eye and told her: "We saw it happen in the dish. We know exactly when it happened. We are 100% certain there is only one." Or something like that.

But that's not the worst part. She also insists on the belly rub. Why does anyone do this? I have never in my life had any desire to touch a pregnant woman's belly. But that's not really the bad part either. All of this is just the usual stuff that goes with the territory.

What really bothers me is how she always follows the belly rub with some awful story about a tragedy that happened in someone else's pregnancy at this same exact stage. "Oh you're five months? So and so lost her baby at five months, but that was because of such-and-such completely weird freak thing that could happen to anyone at any time but I'm sure you'll be fine." Or if there's not a horrifying story to correlate with my current stage, I get awful birth stories about babies who died, mothers who suffered miserably, or new parents who got unexpected and devastating news of some kind.

This woman's step-daughter is currently visiting while we're vacationing at a rental house in the Outer Banks. We had a little chat on the beach yesterday that finally gave me a possible explanation for all the pessimism. Ages ago, Ms. Negative lost her first baby just after delivery. I'm not clear on the details but there was some sort of trauma, the baby went into a coma, and died within a few days. The woman was very young and I'm sure totally shocked. It must have knocked her entire world upside down. Maybe she wished she had known more about what could go wrong so she might have been prepared.

Infertiles do not need to know more. We know more than enough. I think the entire world knows more about these things than we did 40 years ago, which is a good thing, but I'm not sure whether I'd prefer to be prepared or blissfully niave if I had the choice. Throughout all the years of infertility I've maintained a "prepare for the worst, hope for the best" approach. I actively searched out information about all the possibilities so I wasn't blindsided. I guess this is a normal reaction to the shock of finding out it wasn't going to happen the way we always believed it would. I guess I forgive this woman for the way the remants of her awful experience still affect her. We all cope in our own weird ways, and they're not necessarily in synch.

We often say we envy those stupid fertiles their naivete. Would you REALLY rather not know what you know?

Pregnant Infertile at Half Past

2007-07-21T06:06:00.001-05:00

You know, sometimes I feel like I don't have much blogger street cred. I started my blog in February, and found out I was pregnant in March. I've now been a pregnant blogger for about five months, after just six weeks of blogging before that. It's amazing to me thinking back, because that first six weeks seemed to stretch on so much longer. The last five months have seriously flown by.

It's also very bizarre because of course I've been dealing with infertility for five years now, and compared to that this pregnancy feels like one amazingly lucky sliver of time in what still seems like an endless enternity of disappointment. The earliest years, around 2002 through 2005 were the hardest, when we were coming to terms with the fact that it wasn't going to happen the old fashioned way and still battling with hope and loss every month. I wish I had known about the blogosphere back then. I was so alone in dealing with it all. As we've all experienced, often the people closest to me who I tried to confide in were the ones who said the most (unintentionally) harmful things. My husband didn't understand. He tried, but most of you have had the same experience with boys just not processing things, especially in the beginning, in the same way. For years he maintained that it would just take time, and there was no one who seemed to understand the crushing loss I was dealing with.

By early 2007 though, we had thoroughly covered the five stages of grief that the loss of our fertility subjected us to, and arrived at the same point, both of us ready to try IVF. I had pretty much given up hoping anymore; it was just too hard. I blogged about how strange it felt to hand over the big IVF check for something that I didn't really believe in, because of course we would never just give away that kind of cash if we really thought we had no chance, but at the same time I simply could not imagine it working. Scarred Bellybutton recently blogged about the difficulty she had following her accupuncturist's instruction to visualize herself pregnant (she's starting IVF #1, go give her some love). She has the same defense mechanism many of us do. She's shut down that ability in order to protect herself.

Mine hasn't really come back on yet. At first I struggled with believing I was pregnant. I was certain everyone could clearly see that I was a fraud who did not belong sitting there in the waiting room of the perinatal doc, or shopping in maternity stores. Now that I'm definitely filling out the maternity mediums and the larges are starting to look more comfy, I feel a bit more entitled to be there. Now it's the baby stores, trying to navigate the stroller quagmire. Other pregnant women give me knowing looks and I can tell they think I'm part of their club but I'm not. I'm not all happy and excited and smiley and optimistic. I feel grateful and appreciative and lucky, but also guarded and wary. They shop for baby products with loving visions of their future children snuggled down in the various gear, and I sometimes wonder what I'm going to do with this stuff because I certainly can't envision a baby at the end of this story, despite the fact that I now feel something wiggling around in there every day.

I know a lot of other pregnant infertiles feel this too. Obviously what it took to get here has taken its toll on us, but also we just know too much. We see so much loss. We have studied all the things that can go wrong. As Kate said recently, any pregnant woman has fears and doubts and moments of disbelief, but it's different for an infertile. We still wear some of our protective armour. I still remember that for our particular situation, the IVF pregnancy rate was 15%, but the live birth rate was just 7%. Half didn't make it. At this point, there's every reason to believe we will and I no longer walk around in terror, but I'm wary.

So now I'm back to being in a weird place no seems to understand. Real life people are happy for me, but they want me to be smiley and happy and excited too. Usually the best I can manage is "So far, so good!" with a genuine smile, because that's what I'm comfortable smiling about. They roll their eyes a bit, understandably, or get all uncomfortable until I say something perky like "We painted the nursery!" Kind of like the dumb things I used to say to make people feel more comfortable if our childlessness came up and was met with a silent chill. Even some infertiles have suggested that perhaps I should just move on. Maybe I should. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to embrace the loss of hope that made it all so much more bearable and now makes it so unbelievable. But it was just what I needed to do to get through it.

And I'm still going through the process, just at a different point. Every week further along gets me closer to this actually being real. I do try to savor each new milestone becase it is going by so fast, but I'm also always looking forward to the next thing: When my husband can feel the kicks from the outside, then it will be real because I'll know I'm not imainging it, right? In same way I was always able to hold out much more hope for every other bloggers' cycle (sending hope your way, Sticky Bun), I am able to get much more excited about others' pregnancies (congratulations Adrienne!). I still feel much more at home with the bloggers than I do with that other club.

Fluff

2007-07-20T14:25:00.000-05:00

I have all these thinky thoughts rolling around in my head but with everything that's been happening in the blogs lately I just don't feel I can do the big stuff justice right now. So here's a fluff post for a Friday afternoon...

The good pregnancy book (pictured) says things like "It's hard not to get big all over when you're growing another person. Try not to obsess if your butt gets big. What goes up will come down (in time)." Even if they're lying to me I'm fine with it.

The bad pregnancy book says things like: "Pregnant women should consume more phytochemicals by eating more fruit, doubling the normal serving of vegetables, and eating absurd quanitites of radishes, cucumbers, endive, cabbage, and onions. Otherwise you are a horrible parent already." Okay that last part is only implied, but still.

A quick update on Jack: we're still not sure what's going on with the systematic dying-off of his intestines and are still awaiting test results, but he is home with us and recovering well from the surgery. Thanks for all the thoughts and well-wishes.

I'm hoping for good news from all of you in the 2ww or dealing with scary uncertainties. I'm hoping for peace and comfort to all those who have been dealt a horribly unfair hand. My thoughts are with you all.

My dog could be on House

2007-07-14T07:52:00.000-05:00

So I've mentioned Jack is in the hospital. This is day 6 of his stay. They're still trying to figure out what's going on. You may be getting tired of hearing about this, but I'm just finding it kind of facinating.

First let me tell you this is not your usual vet. We got referred to a special vet hospital; I never even knew places like this existed. In the lobby(!) there's a board listing all the departments and specialists: Oncology - Drs. such-and-such and such-and-such. Radiology: Drs. so-on and so-on. It goes on like this for the better part of a wall, like those boards in medical center buildings. There must be a couple hundred people working there including all the techs and other staff. There are often 20 or more people in the waiting room; many waiting to get their pets into triage(!) so they can be admitted, others just visiting, like us.

Jack has a team of five doctors trying to figure out what his problem is. They called us yesterday after rounds(!). They gathered at his crate and discussed his symptoms and postulated theories. Because this is a teaching hospital(!), with a strong intern program(!), they are very excited to have a patient like Jack. They get to look into all sorts of weird and rare conditions that the interns aren't likely to see again in their training. One of the doctors on Jack's team did her internship on a fungal infection affecting the digestive tract and suspects this may be the cause. This would be fantastic news because it could be treated easily with a one-shot cure.

Other possibilities are inflamatory bowel disease, which could be either of a type treated primarily by a change in diet and a Pepcid a day for life, or of another type treated by a course of steroids for life. Either way, we're excited these possibilities include a "for the rest of his life" mention. A less likely cause is parasitic. When he was rescued almost four years ago we were told he was "full of worms." Of course he went through all the usual deworming before we adopted him and routinely since so this doesn't seem as likely, but it would be another easily resolved scenario. A dark horse possibility is Cancer, either lymphoma or carcinoma (will be goggling the difference), but since previous biopsies have found no evidence this is less likely.

The main thing is we're excited to have all these people looking into every possible cause so we can get him well and not have to do this again in another six months this time. We're pretty hopeful that the veterinary version of the Dr. House team will figure something out. In the meantime, he's still there because he still needs to be on an IV, but we're hoping to bring him home tonight or tomorrow. We'll probably still be waiting for answers into next week, but it will be so great to have him home. Thanks for all the well-wishes.

Nature in Balance?

2007-07-12T09:56:00.000-05:00

Never underestimate the power of maternal instincts. USA Today is reporting this story of a dog who had such an intense hormonal reaction to an orphaned kitten in her home that she began producing milk and is nursing the kitten.

We infertiles are so accustomed to nature failing us in this department. It's nice to hear a story of the amazing power of those mysterious instincts when they actually work wonders. Cheers to everyone fighting so hard against infertility to fulfill those instincts. Have a great weekend!

Surprises and Well Wishes

2007-07-12T08:40:00.000-05:00

Two friends had babies in the past week. My friend Holly delivered a gorgeous little boy on Friday. She was induced three days after her due date although to her I know it felt like YEARS since the doctor had been telling her for weeks it would probably be early. Now that's just mean. She looks amazing though!

The other was my husband's cousin, who delivered on Sunday. They were expecting a girl but got a surprise! I ran out and did way too much emergency boy shopping and can't wait to give them the outfits. Because they live in a small apartment in the city without a separate nursery, they probably don't really have TONS of inappropriately frilly pink things to return, so I don't think they'll be too bad off. Their main problem was coming up with a boy's name, which they'd tried to do all along as a back-up just in case, but never quite settled on.

In less happy but not entirely surprising hospital-related news, Jack ended up needing surgery a few days ago. Just like in February, they removed a section of necrotic (dead or dying off) tissue from his intestines and resectioned together the healthy parts. He's recovering well from the surgery but we still don't know the cause. The first time it could have just been a freak thing since nothing was found when the tissue was biopsied, but this reccurance points to either some sort of progressive disease like cancer, or perhaps some kind of treatable digestive condition. Of course we're hoping for the latter, but I guess we won't know for a few days. We're hoping to bring him home tonight but not sure yet. It's awfully quiet around here, and just not the same without his greetings at the door. There's nothing like the way your dog loves you. He's only five, and I'm hoping we get many more years of it.

Halfway

2007-07-09T09:30:00.001-05:00

Yikes, I'm in trouble! I haven't been checking in for about a week and I have so many blogs to catch up on it's going to take me forever to get to them all. I'm looking forward to catching up with you all as soon as I can.

Last week my 5-year old neice came from Boston to stay with us. We had such a great time doing loads of fun stuff: minor league baseball game, the zoo, huge fourth of July family picnic, hanging at the pool, playdates, favorite restuarants, getting ice cream. It was a busy week and it sure feels quiet around here now. Not only is she back at home, but Jack (the dog) is back in the vet hospital, hopefully not for a repeat of his surgery in February, but it's looking kind of that way. Poor puppy!

Saturday was my halfway point, 20 weeks. I spent it riding the train with my neice to NYC where we met her mom, did some fun stuff around town, and then they drove off to Boston and I hopped the train back to DC. It was kind of a challenging day physically, and I can say for certain at halfway through, I sure do feel pregnant.

Tagged

2007-06-28T15:56:00.000-05:00

Thanks Rachel, for the tag! The Polarity Meme is 10 things you hate followed by 20 things you love. In no particular order...

10 things I can't stand
1. inconsiderate, disrespectful people (i'm with Rachel on that one)
2. chain restaurants like applebee's and bennigans
3. the mainstream news media. why do they not tell us what is actually going on in the world? if they have time for stupid celebrity gossip (totally NOT news), they could seriously be talking about the world beyond the atlantic and pacific coasts
4. Wal-Mart (how is it target can be so much better for the same prices?)
5. racism, discrimination, and prejudices. the world is not fair and we can't do much about it. at the very least we can treat each other fairly and with respect.
6. dusting
7. selfishness. from butting in line to people who don't recycle. we make our world what it is in everything we do, from the smallest gesture to the grandest acts. we all have a responsibility.
8. other people's food noises, esp if they're lip smackers or chew with their mouths open. GROSS!
9. poor grammar drives me INSANE!!
10. the bush administration

20 things I love:
1. travel. esp new places.
2. when the plane takes off
3. or going by train
4. the ocean
5. thunderstorms
6. ALL kinds of foods
7. walking around my hometown (DC)
8. camping (more the idea than actually doing it)
9. local fairs, the kind with funnel cake and those questionable rusty old ferris wheels
10. fresh fruit pie. okay all kinds of pie. all kinds of dessert, really.
11. old movies. esp bogart and bacall. i love those moody scenes where someone's smoking under an awning on a hot rainy night with the wet pavement steaming all around. so cheeze, but i love it.
12. gin and tonic. or vodka tonic. mojitos, bloody mary's..shit it all sounds good to me right now. beer, wine, even fruity island drinks have their place.
13. cities. at night, with all the lights. gives me so much energy.
14. shady pool halls with nothing but cheeze whiz on the menu and guys named "road kill*" at the bar, or upscale martini bars with sparkling decor and even more sparkling clientele (the latter only in moderation)
15. going to the movies with my sweetie. we give a thumbs up or down to all the previews.
16. the first lightening bug of summer (i just saw it!)
17. juke boxes. love pretty much ALL kinds of music, but very particular at the same time.
18. the first perfect days of fall
19. cooking
20. how Jack shakes his butt when he's excited (jack the dog, that is)

I tag Reproductive Jeans, Sticky Bun (even though she is too busy), and Adrienne

*i really did have a bar buddy named road kill at the now-defunct crow bar in downtown DC. he was a 40ish biker who would come in to shoot pool and mainly kept to himself but loved to show me pictures of his little daughter. i guess that would have bugged me during the IF years but this was ages ago.

Pink is the New Room

2007-06-25T22:03:00.001-05:00

NEVER would have thought i'd have a pink room anywhere in my home, probably not within a few miles if i could help it. i was never a girly-girl and never wanted to reinforce those sterotypes, but knowing it's a girl has done weird things to me. suddenly all the pink things in the baby departments look wonderful. very strange.

you might think we've gone nuts putting together a baby girl nursery in record time, but all that furniture and the hand-me-down toys had to come over last week when my sister moved, so really it was just painting. note that i went for the palest, least pink choice possible. but i have to say i love it. i'm hoping that eventually i can begin to imagine someone living there. i guess going pink is the first step in that direction.

i'm doing better with my sister's move. i went a whole day without sobbing and only got slightly teary when i had to order just one cookie at mrs. fields in the mall. that felt almost as weird as oohing over fluffy pink baby blankets. two huge elements of my life, both solidly in place for the last 5 years, are suddenly turned inside out at the same time. it's like i'm living someone else's life.

the sister part has me thinking of infertility in a way i haven't in years. at some point around year 2-3 i just went numb. i quit hoping for two lines, much less imagining a baby in our future. and it got a lot easier. sometimes it still stung, but for the most part i just detached from it. i quit thinking about how unfair it was. it was just my reality. but now that i'm so keenly aware of what i won't get to share with my sister (at least not in quite the same local way), i find myself feeling cheated. if it had worked for us back when we first started trying, our girls would have been only a year and a half apart instead of six. they would have spent the past four years next door to each other. and i would have had the best mom in the world living right next door to show me the way. at least she trained me well while she was here.

i do feel very grateful that IVF worked for us and i hope this doesn't sound extremely insensitive to everyone still trying. i could have far worse problems than being pregnant five years later than i had hoped to be, but today i'm feeling sad about that. it's just that same old deal we all know too well: infertility sucks on many levels. i'm going to go sit in my pink room and get over myself. i'm so touched by all your heartfelt congratulations on the anatomy scan. i'm thinking of so many of you and hoping for good news.

It's a...! (the anatomy scan)

2007-06-24T06:32:00.001-05:00

...Well, see for yourselves. First here's a full picture of the baby from the level II ultrasound:
All the anatomy looked good: two kidneys, four heart chambers, appropriately sized cerebellum and other brain parts, healthy spine, limbs at the right length, hands/feet all had five little fingers/toes (very cute). They estimated the weight at 7 ounces which is right on track. The scan took about half an hour with the sonographer and then the perinatologist came in and took another quick look.

Here's the face (lower right corner, lying sideways):
The top of the head is to the right, the two dark circles are eyes and the bright white area is the palate.

I feel a little odd about posting pictures of fetal poontang on the internet, but all the sonograms I had seen on other blogs really helped me understand what I was looking at the whole time.

In the top picture, there's a tiny arrow pointing to a couple of white lines in the upper right quadrant. These are the girl parts, so this is not just a case of there not being boy stuff. Below the arrow you see the left thigh. The second picture is more of a butt shot, with her girly bundle in the middle. So there you have it, a baby girl.

This was predicted by my 5 year old neice. I had a dream last week that everyone thought the baby was a girl, except for my neice who was certain it was a boy. In the dream, I went to the scan and she was right: boy. The next morning I told her about the dream and she said: "Umm (being delicate with me), I don't think that dream was right. I think it's a girl. Maybe everyone else thinks it's a boy." Later she drew me some pictures ("moving cards" she called them), before she left for Boston. There was one for me, one for J, one for our dog Jack, and one for the baby. Inside the baby's card, she drew a family portrait. It showed me, J, the big sister (the one that's in the belly now, she says), and two little babies (twins!). She drew herself next to the big sister holding hands (because she's coming to visit). We can only hope to be so lucky.

Wednesday (Clever title, I know)

2007-06-19T13:15:00.000-05:00

Thanks so much for all the nice comments yesterday. The moving truck is still here so unfortunately moving day drags on. Not that today would have been all better anyway. Whatever, I'm tired of crying about it. It's like one of those heart wrenching breakups where you know things are unfolding as they should, but you're still just so sad and you can't imagine ever not being sad. How many of those have I had that I never thought I'd see the end of? By this afternoon my nephew's nursery furniture will be all moved in here and I hope the sight of it brings me a little joy mixed in with the sadness. Thank gawd I have the level II ultrasound to look forward to tomorrow. I'm hoping it brings us lots of reason for joy and excitement. I told my husband I need a happy project to distract me IMMEDIATELY to fill the void so we may paint the nursery this weekend if all looks good at the scan.

Cibele gave me another distraction in the meantime. This would also be a fun little game for those in the 2ww (sending some love to Tammy). So, what you do is google "[your name] needs" and post the first 10 things that come up. So I googled 'Sarah needs' and this is what I got...

Sarah needs a cold shower
Sarah needs you (the blogosphere, i assume. and i do!)
Sarah needs us
Sarah needs to hand him one of those weapons that went off without warning (yikes!)
Sarah needs to skip through all the blogs listing their 'Sarah needs' findings in order to see what else Google comes up with (hahaha, this is how common my name is! not only do i get a bunch of other 'sarah needs' blog posts--i skipped over them--but i even get a post about how there are already so many sarah needs posts!)
Sarah needs your manly vote (ummm....?)
Sarah needs your help
Sarah needs to blog more (i doubt anyone was thinking this)
Sarah needs to play
Sarah needs to kick him in the nuts (sorry hun, you know the pregnancy hormones make me crazy!)

Thanks to Serenity and all the Boston bloggers who promise my baby sis has good things to loook forward to up North. I look forward to visiting!

I Hate Today

2007-06-19T08:08:00.000-05:00

Any minute now there will be a moving truck out front. They came yesterday and started packing up my sister's house. Today they'll come back and pack up the truck. Then they'll just drive away, with my sister, her husband, my 5 year old neice and 2 year old nephew following behind. I've mentioned they live next door. Did I tell you we're in row houses, literally attached? We're practically in the same building.

Very short list of things I will miss:
- At least once or twice a week, spending the better part of the day with them, having lunch, running errands, dragging the kids around the mall, etc.
- Seeing my neice and nephew almost every day. How she calls me Saradee and he calls me Sah.
- Passing stuff we share over the deck, like when we need extra chairs or dishes for parties.
- Passing the kids over the deck for a visit.
- Knowing exactly who to call if I need to "borrow" some salsa.

Partial list of things that haven't even happened yet but I miss already:
- Maternity shopping with my sister.
- Shopping together at the baby store so she can tell me all the important stuff you only learn from experience.
- Decorating the nursery together.
- Letting my neice feel the kicks when they get strong enough.
- Cashing in on all that free babysitting I invested in the last five years.

Moving day sucks.

4 Months

2007-06-13T05:07:00.001-05:00

A couple of random thoughts at this stage:

* Funny how in the beginning of pregnancy time seemed to move so slowly. Every day dragged on forever, full of fear and waiting for bad news or to find out it was some weird delusion. Now it feels like it's flying by. I can't believe it's been four months already. November still seems like a long way away, but in another three and a half weeks I'll be halfway through. I think it helps that time always seems to move a little faster in the summer.

* The second trimester has definitely been the happy stage. Weeks 5-10 were the worst, even though I didn't really have morning sickness or get nauseous, I just felt crappy all the time. Now my appetite is back and most of my energy (although I could easily still nap a few hours each day and sometimes do). The fear is pretty much gone now too, although sometimes I catch myself thinking maybe I'm a tremendous idiot for letting it go.

* While I'm enjoying being pregnant much more now, I am pretty uncomfortable. I've mentioned that I had to move into maternity clothes early on and that I'm huge already. People are still taken aback that I'm not due until late November and ask me things like "Are you sure you're not further along than you think?" and "Are you sure there's only one in there?" Sometimes if they're particularly irritating about it (especially if they've rubbed the belly while saying these things) I may snap back with something like "We saw it happen in the dish. I am sure." and that usually shuts them up. I think part of it is the weight I put on during stims. People keep telling me this is the time to eat ice cream and not worry about it, but it makes me nervous that I'm this uncomfortable already, I really fear what lies in store. I have signed up for prenatal yoga and a water aerobics class so I hope that helps.

* I have bcome a total idiot. The fetus is leaching away all my brainpower. I forget really important things, I bump into stuff all the time, and when I type my letters come out all out of order. I'm not smart enough anymore to even express this very well or remember many of the absurdly vacuous things I've done lately as examples. I just looked up vacuous because I got totally confused for a second that I was using the wrong word. I'm aware that I'm not keeping it all together and I don't even care much.

* The stroller business is just insane. The models, the options, the variety, the prices...it's overwhelming. Picking out a car is easier.

* Staying hydrated is a serious challenge. And I used to be a really good water drinker. My doctor has had to lecture me that my pee should never be brighter than the sun.

* Since that first movement I felt a couple of weeks ago things stayed quiet until just the past few days. I've found that if I lie on my stomach, pressing on my uterus, I can feel the little flutters. I guess in a couple of weeks I will be able to feel them without lying on the baby, which is good because I'm not going to be able to do that for much longer.

* In less than 10 days I will know the gender. Or not. But at least I will get to see what's going on in there again!

Picture Pages

2007-06-09T08:43:00.000-05:00

I love the Picture Pages idea Reproductive Jeans and My Reality have put together, but since they are running into issues with storage space and since I've been pretty public with my infertility, IVF, and blog, I decided to post mine here and save the Picture Pages cache for those not out of the IF closet. You can see everyone else's Picture Pages on Google Groups after following JJ's sign-up instructions here. I love seeing all your pictures and how they reveal that there is so much more to your lives than infertility. Here's a bit of my life beyond IF (click for larger images)...

First, Here I am with Jack:

A better one of just my pup:

And here are I am with my wonderful husband J. We're stuck in an airport in this photo, about two years old. It's a good "us" picture because we love to travel (meaning lots of quality time together in airports):

This is our favorite picture of us, before we were married, in the good old days when we lived downtown, playing pool with our buddy Lewis (we reenacted this picture with the guy who married us a few years later, it's pretty funny because he has the same surprised laugh on his face as Lewis does here):

This is our wedding:

And where we honeymooned (Pinks Sands on Harbour Island, Bahamas, a tiny island smaller than central park):

This is my squeeze as a babe, I hope ours looks just like him:

Here's a picture I love because his love for me really shows. Not just the cute look he's giving me (he always looks cute to me), but because he got up early in the morning to volunteer at this race to support me, when he is the furthest thing in the world from a morning person:

This is my absolute favorite thing in the world. She is my 5-year old neice and she lives next door to me (but only for the next two weeks, very very sad). In this photo (about a year old) I am tossing her up in the air. In the original you can see her mom in the background giving me that "you're getting her all wound up" glare (I get that a lot):

This charming picture of her was taken in Central Park and makes her look so small and sweet and childlike which is a good reminder to me that she IS only five because her personality is so ginormous compared to her size:

This is her baby brother, who is giving up his nursery furniture for us (kind of a crappy cell phone pic but I just love it, is he not the cutest little guy ever? mopping floors at krispy kreme...ummm..donuts...):

Here is what I think is so wonderful about kids; in the chaos of a NYC street, she stops to examine a flower:

This is my favorite place I've traveled (not this veg stand per se, but Buenos Aires in general):

Here is where we're going in August (yes I know it will be bloody hot and I'll be 7 months pregnant, but we're going. so there). The OBX:

This is what I always say is my fave photo of me because it's blurry enough I can imagine I am cute (plus I appear to have cleavage which actually did not exist until a few weeks ago). It's a fun reminder of a good time out with my GFs (that is my sister, best friend, and soon to be not-next-door neighbor to my right, but I have cropped her out with respect to the drunken visage she may not want shared):

But this one of me drunk on my anniversary last year is probably more the real me:

First Purchase

2007-06-08T13:23:00.000-05:00

Okay, I FINALLY went ahead and bought something baby related. I got this cool print for the nursery from Land of Nod. It's kindda hard to tell from the picture, but it's an alphabet with a different city around the world for each letter (Agra, Bangkok, Cairo, Dakar, Edinburgh, etc...)
I still have two weeks before we find out the gender at the anatomy scan, but I just love this and can easily plan either a boy or girl or completely neutral decor around it.

It took until the second trimester for it to really sink in that I was pregnant, but it still feels more like something that's just happening to me; a strange physical condition causing all the various symptoms. I am really enjoying it now, but find it very hard to think of this condition resulting in a separate little human being; even after seeing it bounce around at the NT scan, it's still impossible for me to imagine bringing home a baby. At some point in the last five years I turned off that ability to envision a baby in our lives and instead began to just focus on each little step in the cycle. Once I quit thinking of each step as another failure/success in making a baby, it all became so much easier to deal with. Each step carried much less weight.

So now each step brings us closer to being able to envision a baby in this house. J started clearing out the dorm room and next week we'll have a crib in there. I'll figure out where to hang the new print, and a week later the rest of the furniture will arrive. By the end of that week, we'll have the full anatomy scan and find out the gender. At some point it will surely begin to seem real...

Have a great weekend everyone.

2007-06-01T16:29:00.000-05:00

I loved Bumble's post about buying the little romper for Sureshot and how she brought it home to Mr. Bumble and they both got all teary and emotiomnal and it made it all real for them. This seems like a great idea considering it can be a little difficult to believe in after all the years of disappointment, so I thought maybe I'd give it a try, but still haven't gotten around to it. However, I did get our first gift of baby clothing, this adorable red and white dotted stocking cap from Baby Gap:
My sister found it on the sale rack for 97 cents so clearly it had to be purchased. The due date is about one month before Christmas so it will be a fabulous holiday hat. And when I brought it home to J he did seem to get a little choked up. Of course then he tried to put it on the dog and wear it around himself but there was a tender moment in there somewhere. So cute. I can't wait to have a nursery to put it in.

About that. We have two empty bedrooms. One is the guest room and one sat empty for years as the future nursery. When J quit working a year and a half ago to go to school full time, I snuck in that empty room one day and set up a dorm room for him, complete with girlie pictures from Maxim and all sorts of other testosterony stuff. It became his sanctuary. But it's gotta go. He is done with school for the summer, but finishes up his last three classes in the Fall. We're going to have to share an office for that last semester. I'm just waiting now for him to get motivated to move stuff out so we can start getting the nursery ready. It has to be empty in about two weeks when the nursery furniture arrives. My sister, who is also my next door neighbor, is moving to Boston :(((( and she's decided to hand down her 2 year olds' nursery furniture to us rather than move it and have to sell and replace much of it soon anyway. So I guess we'll have a nursery soon enough. It's been a long time coming! I'll post pictures as it comes along. Happy weekend everyone!

14 weeks: Baby's First Party

2007-05-28T09:52:00.000-05:00

Party #3 down; one more to go. Yesterday's Memorial Day Party is probably the most challenging of the four because it's the longest, most active, and the one where I'd most like to be drinking with everyone else. We survived it though and afterwards, lying on the sofa with J before bed, I'm pretty sure I felt my first kick. More like a little one-two punch, an inch or two below my belly button. Considering how much I LOVE party day, it seemed like the perfect occassion. I've decided he/she was trying to tell me: "Everything's fine. I'm still here. Thank you for that tiny sip from the Machine!"

Next weekend is baby shower #2. Everything is basically all ready. Most of it will be a repeat of shower #1 except in pink instead of blue. So with all the major party stuff out of the way, I will have to come up with some new ways to distract myself from pregnancy. I'm planning to update our photo albums (it's been almost a year), and finish our half-completed album from our trip to Belize earlier this year. But maybe I will also start to embrace it. Or maybe I'll wait a few more weeks. The anatomy scan is in about four weeks. That seems like a good time to start shopping and planning, right?