The Good Part

WORST. BLOGGER. EVER. I'm sure there's an award for that. There's an award for everything in the blogging world. I've been writing about twice a week (sometimes way more in the midst of my first IVF cycle) and just about dropped off the face of the earth. I also timed this right after I promised a follow-up post. Genius, just genius. I've been on this major personal campaign to remind/convince myself that my life is about much more than getting pregnant and now, when I'm forcibly kicked off the TTC wagon, I can't muster up the strength or creativity to write a single post?!?! Oh no. This must change.

Here's the long and short of what's happened. Very importantly, I finally completed this damned miscarriage. 6 weeks, folks. That's right. 6 weeks from the day that Dr. Robot told me there was no heartbeat to the day I stopped bleeding and my HCG levels settled back down to zero. What does a six week miscarriage look like? Well, one bout of bleeding after trying to go "au natural" (I didn't get pregnant naturally, not sure why I thought I could get unpregnant naturally) followed by spotting, then elevated HCG levels and a cancelled D&C. Boom, sister pregnancy announcement. Cue curtain of darkness. Freako rising HCG levels (more pregnant! with nothing!) and a shot of methotrexate in the ass. HCG levels gradually fall, bleeding resumes and eventually ends several days after HCG reaches 0. All in all I had 3 major bouts of bleeding, never stopped spotting in between and wore pads or pantie liners for a total of 8 weeks (plus 2 for Endometrin leaks post transfer). I win again. That's a second award. First for worst blogger, second for most obnoxiously drawn out miscarriage of 2013.

The worst, my dears, is over. The sun is shining - it really is. I'm on an airplane flying over the desert and it's basically blinding - and I am on the other side of this. My sister remains pregnant and healthy and we are figuring it out. Life is moving on and so am I. Once I get my period again J and I will decide whether to do another round on that cycle or the next. That I am willing to wait another second to try again is a testament to how far I've come in the past few weeks. A big part of me still feels like a successful pregnancy is the only way to completely heal the heartache of the miscarriage and I do want to be pregnant yesterday, but I also want to be able to relax and not run around like a madwoman during the next go round. Let's give this all we got. I'm not seeing that kind of R&R happening this summer.

Here's the promised follow-up to the post I wrote about the conversation with my sister. The Good Part of all of this. Somewhere along the way - and well before all this infertility junk - I stopped being the creative person I've been since I was a little kid. I stopped drawing, dancing, writing, and most other creative outlets. It started slowly sometime around graduate school, where I needed to focus single mindedly on academics, and continued through this career-building phase of my life. Infertility put a nail in the coffin. Here's the real downside of being a Type A: when life gives you something to focus on, you focus like hell until it's achieved, often to the detriment of everything else. Relationships included. Like many others I've talked to, fertility feels like my full-time job. My miscarriage was a lesson that single-minded obsession would not get nor keep me pregnant. Creating a life is not like writing a master's thesis. There's a little more science, magic and something far beyond my cognitive reaches. You cannot force those cells to divide and thrive.
Thankfully, I had begun blogging this experience a few months before and in doing so, remembered why I used to love writing. It's fun, it's cathartic, it's both distraction and expression. One creative activity back on the map. I also have begun to take on a lot more interior design work at my job. I'm loving it so much. Everyday I have this perfect diversion thinking of nothing but aesthetics (oh right, and function too). As soon as I felt that I had "failed" at the job I had set forth for myself - fertility and pregnancy - I got this perfect reminder that it was not my job, more of a side project, and that my life could be far more full with activities and people that I love. And so, I am making a promise to myself to be more creative. Creative in what I wear, what I eat, what I write. I will resume dancing around the house and doodling in the margins. Because that is who I've always been and it's time to scoop the old me back up. She's what will get me through the next cycle and beyond.

Love to my ladies.

It's been a week since my last post. I'm getting lazy in my old age. Life has been continuing, progressing, despite my frequent desire to drop into the fetal position and roll under the nearest piece of furniture. My lows are still frightfully low but thankfully getting farther and farther apart. Some things have been very good. This past weekend, I got to luxuriate in the company of two of my dearest friends, S and L, in Boston. I travel to Nantucket for work fairly frequently (a hearty "thank you" for crying me a river and playing tiny violins) and make it a point to schedule weekend-long layovers at S's house in Boston. Whenever possible, L drives up from New York and we make a high school reunion out of it. This weekend we laughed a lot, ate great food, and drank a little too much. It was glorious. Where last week in Wisconsin I was reminded of who I was outside the hamster-wheel of infertility; this week my oldest and truest friends reminded me that we have all stuck together through very hard times before. In this pack of 6 girls - some of us who have been friends since grade school - we have seen each other through a sibling's fight (and win) against cancer, a bunch of shitty breakups, bouts of depressions, big and small family issues and a thousand difficult episodes in between that have faded into the past. I am so grateful to have their support now as always. I only wish I got to see them more often. I'm holding out for advances in the time-space continuum and Harry Potter chimney travel to increase the frequency of our visits.

This week also brought relatively good news on the miscarriage front. I have a hard time mentally framing any news about my miscarriage as positive, particularly in the face of my family's recent pregnancy pact a la Gloucester High, but anything that suggests that this could be over sometime in the next fiscal quarter can't be all bad. On Monday, 4 days after my methotrexate shot, my HCG levels dropped from 300-something to 93. On Friday, the date of my 7-day full blood panel, I learned my liver had gotten through the methotrexate with flying colors (hence the weekend cocktails) and my HCG went down to 57. That is barely pregnant. Just a little bit pregnant with nothing. Were I not consistently lightly spotting and still nodding off at work at 4 pm, I wouldn't know anything was amiss. My next beta is scheduled for this Friday. Come on single digits!

It has been a great relief to know that this miscarriage is finally on its way out the door. It will be an even greater relief when I stop spotting, perhaps ovulate on my very own (look ma, no trigger shot!), and get my period. Then we can get this show on the road and I can finally step out of limbo. When that time comes, I'll have to decide whether I want to start another round of IVF or hold off for one more cycle. Let me get this straight. I absolutely 100% want to do another round of IVF immediately. Preferably 5 minutes ago, however, I have to flush this foul methotrexate out of my system and wait for my period which in the past has never come when I called. For my first round, I was so careful. I cut dairy, gluten and alcohol out of my diet. I rested whenever I felt tired. I treated myself really, really well and I believe that it helped result in a pregnancy. My period and next shot at IVF will most likely come in early summer. Between work, personal obligations and lots of travel, June and July are going to be slammed for me. Should I be patient and wait for the perfect window (um, never?) or push forward with this next cycle? Ugh. I hate being a grown up. Why couldn't I get knocked up at some inopportune time like the other kids? 

Wait, who's going to remind me to stop planning for things (uterus, I'm looking at you) I have absolutely no control over? Anybody?

Emerging from the Depths

It has been exactly one week since my sister announced her pregnancy and I officially dove off the deep end. Diving is perhaps not the verb to use. Really, it was more like a belly flop. Designed for maximum impact, searing pain, and the general discomfort for those around me. I can see the anxious looks on everyone’s faces as I emerge from the water.  Awkward. Well, I’m alive. Still here, still kicking.

I attribute three things to my quickly surfacing from what was certainly one of the darkest, deepest mind fucks of my life:

1)      J, who went miraculously from being baffled/annoyed by my grief to the most amazing, supportive, understanding husband ever. I don’t know what happened. I’m not sure I care. I’m just incredibly grateful and more in love than ever.  I have loved J deeply for the past 10+ years and he has been there for me through this whole fertility business. But this never-ending miscarriage plus familial pregnancy boom combo has been the moment where he’s proven himself as my partner and constant champion. I never needed him to “prove himself,” but my God has he done it.

2)      My girlfriends, who reached out, listened and affirmed that I had been dealt a shitty deck and that a mental breakdown was entirely warranted. Hearing that things are as just bad as you think they are and that your behavior is permissible is somehow very comforting. Despite the fact that they’re sprinkled across the country, I feel like they’ve been emotionally spooning me this whole time.

3)      The state of Wisconsin. Well, not the whole state. Just the southwest corner. This past weekend, I dragged my very sad and angry ass up to my parents’ cabin to half-heartedly celebrate my friend Vlad’s 32^nd birthday. Maggie and Vlad are our very best “couple friends.” They share our love of escaping the city for the wild farmlands of Wisconsin and do so with us as often as possible. While I initially decided to go through with the weekend for the sole purpose of avoiding lying on the couch and crying for two days, a strange thing happened. I actually enjoyed myself. What’s more, I felt like myself. I remembered that my life was made up of more than a series of tragic ultrasounds and the relentless, tiring pursuit of pregnancy. It was a tremendous relief to simply relax and laugh for two days. I got a brief reprieve from reporting my condition to my mom on an all too frequent basis. I refreshed.

On the way home from the cabin I called my mom. She has been endlessly supportive throughout this rollercoaster. She sprang into action when I fell apart at the seams last week. And then she said one thing, one simple thing last Wednesday that made me furious at her. It doesn’t even matter what it was. In grief-addled mind, I think I felt she had it coming. Who did she think she was, this formerly Fertile Myrtle creating one equally fertile kid and one reproductively-challenged misfit?!? I didn’t express my anger that way nor did I conceive of it as being  that ridiculous. It felt very real and well-reasoned at the time. I thought she was choosing my sister’s elation over my pain. She wasn’t. She was being a mom. She was trying to take care of us both. Having two kids can at times mean having your heart ripped in two different directions. This is one of those times.

So at any rate, the call. The sweet Wisconsin dairy air cooled down my blinding anger and lifted just enough of my sadness that I was able to call and apologize. We both cried all over again. Once again and as always, my mom was wonderful. She let me explain what I could and said she understood. Last week I could not grasp how someone so sad could participate in a family that was bursting with so much new pride and happiness. I’m still not entirely sure how though it appears that my family is willing to figure it out with me.  It feels sad to write that. Never in my 30 years have I felt such a disconnect from my loving and sweetly co-dependent family. Regardless, the gulf is lessening. I'm feeling more and more human and therefore inherently hopeful.

I write to you on a second tear-free day.

 

A Special Update from a Special Girl

A quick update post.

First, this little blog has over 1,000 views as of today! I know a chunk of that is from spam sites but I feel confident that there are infertile spammers that have benefitted from my wit and wisdom.
Second, I had my follow up blood work after my cancelled D&C. On Monday, my HCG was 323. Today, Thursday, it was 334. What? I don't get it. I'm increasingly pregnant with nothing. Tomorrow morning I will be given a Methotrexate injection to put an end to all this. With my luck I'll still need further intervention. (A tip: don't google 'methotrexate' because it will scare the poop out of you.)

Third, for those of you who have found me via the blogosphere and are embarking on your IVF journey please know that this is not normal. There's very little chance that any of this will happen to you. Sadly, you may get pregnant and miscarry just as normal fertile ladies do, however there is virtually no chance that you will 1) fail to miscarry naturally, 2) schedule and cancel a D&C, and 3)have to medically induce a miscarriage. For a typical first trimester miscarriage, it's just one of the three: natural, D&C, or medical. I'm just very special and have gotten a taste of all the flavors. Don't steal my thunder.

Finally, in honor of National Infertility Awareness Week (which admittedly was last week), I recommend you pass out condoms and birth control laced sweets to your overly fecund loved ones.

The Biblical, Country Song Post

In the past 24 hours, I feel like my life has made a turn towards maudlin country lyrics. The current plot trajectory is such that, were I to read it in a novel, I would roll my eyes and criticize the author's obvious choices and overly dramatic, hit-you-over-the-head-with-an-attempt-at-irony plot twists on Goodreads.com. This is some bad, grocery store checkout aisle non-fiction.

Here's the good news: my D&C was cancelled. It was cancelled as I lay pants-free in the stirrups. During a pre-procedure ultrasound I requested, my doctor found that my uterus looked the way that he'd want it to after a D&C. My uterine lining was a svelte 6mm with no gestational sac or obvious pregnancy tissue. Apparently I've passed it. Some tissue is hanging around giving me elevated HCG levels but they expect that to pass on its own. I left that appointment feeling pretty good. My body handled this miscarriage all by itself. I didn't need intervention. Maybe this was just a completely normal, random miscarriage like anyone else's as opposed to another locust in a forthcoming plague.

Nope, totally a locust. As I'd taken the day off work and it was 80 and sunny in Chicago, I decided to continue playing hooky and had brunch with my mom. She had been scheduled as my anesthesia chaperon. We then went back to her place and hung out with my sister who had a half day of work. We sipped limeade, my family's summer beverage of choice, watched the dogs play and enjoyed ourselves. And then my sister spoke up.

"Is it okay if I ruin your day?"
"Yeah, sure." (Thinking the only thing that could possibly ruin my day was to find out that my little sister was pregnant.)
"I'm pregnant."

And then basically the world stopped. It was one of those times where all ambient noise ceases and all you can hear is your heart beating. I then started breathing again and recovered. I think it took all of 3 seconds. I told her I was happy for her. I actually really am. I want my sister to have kids. I want us to have kids around the same age. That could happen. My mom, sister and I then spent the next few hours talking about names, nursery themes, her HCG levels and her litany of pregnancy symptoms. They are many. I reminded myself to continue breathing and did so successfully.

J came over after work. After perhaps the longest afternoon and evening known to mankind spent smiling with my family, we got to go home. I cried the whole way back. Went to bed. Woke up crying. Got myself together, put on a cute dress and new sandals, and then cried on a public city bus. Cried on the walk from the bus to the office. I called my mom and made her cry. Made one of my best friends cry last night. J alternately looks at me with helplessness and then holds me. At one point last night he told me to stop being negative and I ate him alive. Now he just holds me.

I'm not sure what else can happen but I'm pretty sure something will. Two of the three women of child-bearing age in my family announced their pregnancies in the last 48 hours. I expect my mom to announce that a miracle has occurred and that she, at age 65, is pregnant. My dogs might get hit by cars. I might get mugged. At the very least my car might breakdown. I'm not sure what else can happen. I know that it all sounds very dramatic but this feels so dramatic. Miscarriages happen to so many women all the time. That I can accept and deal with. I felt like I was really dealing with my sadness over that and was ready to look towards the future. And then my cousin. And then my sister, the hardest, most confusing blow of all. There is something innate that forces you to feel happiness towards a sibling's pregnancy.  I have no idea how to store that alongside my grief and anger. It's simply too much.  

JK. D&C.

Omigod you guys! I was totally kidding when I said I wanted to avoid a D&C. You thought I was serious?! Hilarious.

Got my first HCG beta back and it's higher than my doctor would like to see. Dr. M, who had been a big champion of my miscarrying naturally and advised against a D&C due to the inherent risks, now more or less insists on a D&C tomorrow. Things have changed. He is concerned that my HCG levels suggest that I have abnormal tissue growth and have failed to completely miscarry. I anticipated the incomplete miscarriage part. It just hasn't been the blood bath I expected.

It's not like me to sign up for a medical procedure without researching until I feel that I could perform it myself in a dark alley. I really don't know much right now. Would I eventually miscarry completely on my own? I'm sure I would though "eventually" doesn't feel like a time frame I can work with. I don't know the risks of not doing the D&C, aside from the emotional fuckery. Right now I'm putting my faith in Dr. M. I really do trust that he's looking out for my best interest. Throughout my IUIs and IVF cycle, I've felt a driving need to exhaustively research every single possible answer for my infertility. I know an absurd amount about medications, various freakish disorders and complications not seen in the western world since 1978. I've diagnosed myself with all of them. At this point, I need to give up just a little bit and put my trust in the establishment that Blue Cross and I have been investing in so heavily. I'll learn more tomorrow and I'll write when I'm sobered up from the anesthesia.

Not Okay. Plan Fail.

Hmm... how to write this post. I suppose I should begin with the obvious statement that pretty much everyone knew but me: I'm not okay. I said I was okay. I was quite convinced of it myself. But things started sneaking up on me, things that I didn't plan, and my iron-clad plan of being totally-okay-at-all-times-no-matter-what started to fail. I should provide a week+ in review.
After Dr. Robot delivered the news a week and a half ago that there was no heartbeat, I didn't cry. Instead, I went back to work in a complete daze and, a few hours later, left with my coworker for a quickie business trip. Emotions? What emotions? Instead of thinking or feeling, I had no choice but to enjoy the company and the state of Michigan. I suppose I could have called off the trip but I opted for distraction. That was Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, my first unoccupied day, I crashed. I was hugely, impossibly depressed. I laid on the couch, watched Hoarders* and, when the spirit moved me, cried and made more tea.

*Hoarders is an incredible show to watch when you're feeling sad. It is the only place where you can watch truly mentally ill people on television. It makes you feel like you have your shit together. I kept telling J that I was going to start collecting things. He was only somewhat amused by this.  Hoarding: Buried Alive is a pale imitation of Hoarders and is generally a total crap show. Avoid.

Sunday I felt much better and life resumed. Monday I began "positive bleeding" and was actually quite proud that my body was figuring things out for itself. I was relieved to not have to make a decision about a D&C. Work was insanely busy and left me racing through the week, changing my maxi pads (it's like the 1950s in my pants, no tampons), and answering thousands of emails. At moments where I got to pause, I even felt happy, reminding myself that I did indeed get pregnant. I do still focus on this positive aspect. On Saturday, as with the previous Saturday, I crashed again though not quite as hard. Picked myself up on Sunday, had a lovely day where I laughed and felt very nearly normal, and then life intervened. My cousin announced her pregnancy. I realized with horror that my whole "okayness" scheme hinged on nobody getting pregnant ever again. Perhaps not a fool-proof plan.

Here's the thing. My cousin absolutely deserves to get pregnant. She has spent much of her adult life helping her parents care for her developmentally disabled brother and thought for many years that his was all the care taking she could manage. She met and married an incredible guy who has wholeheartedly accepted that her brother is an integral part of their marriage, and all of a sudden having a family became a possibility. And now she's 12 weeks pregnant and that is wonderful. Only a year and a half of infertility and actively miscarrying has sucked out my soul. I have almost no ability to share in other people's joy over pregnancy. I can intellectually acknowledge that happy things are happening to them but simultaneously I feel completely and heartbreakingly empty. Unbearably sad, envious and furious with the universe. It doesn't feel like the me that I know. At horrible moments in this difficult journey, I completely lose myself. I know that I need to give myself a break. Nine days is not a reasonable amount of time to expect to heal from losing the first glimmer of a baby you've ever had. There's just no speedy recovery from losing a second heartbeat that you've grown yourself. I think I need to reframe my "okayness" plan. From now on okay is a relative state. Time will heal and my anger and disappointment will fade. The me that I know will come back, perhaps a little wind beaten and with any luck, stronger.

Story Telling

As soon as J and I started "outing" ourselves as (please whisper the following) *INFERTILE *, everyone and their sister began sharing stories. I totally get the impulse, I do it too. It's human nature to share similar experiences, be they yours or anecdotal, to demonstrate empathy. However, the stories were always along the same lines: My coworker/friend/sister/college professor tried to get pregnant for THIRTY YEARS and they had totally given up when they became pregnant at age 75 with healthy twins! Implication being that that could totally be me! I'd love to slog through this for years and years on end! Actively trying to get pregnant for more than (enter your threshold here) is generally hellish so the thought of the experience lasting for several more years is not appetizing. This is the lens of infertility. The stories that seem so encouraging to the reproductively blessed or those not proven otherwise, are nothing but nails on a chalkboard to you. It's too hard to see the larger picture, that in the end things will be okay, because the only way to get through this trial is to trudge through the daily emotions and physical challenges with your head up. Ten years later your friends concieved naturally? All I hear is ten years, lady.

Once we began doing IVF, the stories changed to couples who had done multiple rounds of IVF with no success and then, once they had completely given up, (Notice a theme here? You have to abandon all hope and live as though you have stage 4 cancer) they got pregnant naturally. Another miracle! Despite statistics posted by reproductive endocrinology clinics boasting otherwise, science apparently does not work. Only magic.

Getting pregnant really did feel like magic. And miscarrying like an unfair roll of the genetic dice (we hope, as opposed to across the board chromosomal problems from here on out). But once again, people have more uplifting stories to share with us. You miscarried? My grandmother miscarried SEVEN times before she had her children. The worst part of that story is that it came from my own husband. He told me not once but twice to encourage me. While communication surrounding fertility has been somewhat trying with my usually emotive J, this miscarriage business has proven especially difficult. He doesn't get it and doesn't know what to say. He's torn between feeling incredibly sad and very hopeful, just like me, but can't relate to the physicality of it. How could he? I couldn't before this happened. I am in a fertility support group full of amazing smart and funny women. Like in most other aspects of my life, I can't stop talking at those meetings. Until the subject of miscarriage invariable comes up. And, in meetings past, when other women cried, I sat staring at my hands knowing what they were saying was sad but with no ability to relate. It's just one of those things in life where you just can't grasp it until you've gone through it yourself. And thank God for that.

J's grandma really did lose 7 pregnancies. And did go on to have healthy babies. But all I hear in that story is, "You think this is bad? It's going to be so much worse the second, fifth, and seventh times!" I have thought about the fact that if I'm lucky enough to get pregnant again, that it could end the same way. It is what I think about the most now.
I've decided to filter out everyone else's stories. They mean well but they are keeping me from moving forward which is all I want to do. Eye on the prize. Instead, I'm thinking of all the women I know who had one miscarriage and went on to have successful pregnancies or "live births" as they call it in the biz. So far, I've thought of 5 including my aunt and my own grandma. I welcome all just plain happy stories.

Is my story just plain happy? A simple test. If it includes the words, "and just when they had given up all hope..." then no.

Wolf.

It's taken me a long time to finish this post. I started Thursday and it's now Monday. I had some really dark, sad moments in between and writing came in starts and stops. I'm feeling much better now, ready to move forward.
So, here's how it's gone...

My body responded to bad news in what I believed to be rapid fashion when I started bleeding Wednesday evening. Not spotting, but full on bleeding. Yes, it felt sad but on the heels of that day's crappy ultrasound but I felt ready and even a little relieved. If it's over, let's get it over with. J and I laid in bed, awake because of an epic thunder and lighting storm, and told each other how sad we were. And eventually, fell asleep. I woke up the next morning to no blood. Nothing after a night of Niagara-esque flow.
I called my doctor's office and they had me come in for another ultrasound. I saw another doctor from the practice, one I hadn't met before. She confirmed that there was no longer any heartbeat. She was incredibly thorough, zooming in on the gestational sac, listening for a long time with the audio function. When she was certain there was no heartbeat, I was able to feel the same. Completely sure. And then the doctor became an emotional robot. She had obviously been trained for this moment.

Dr. Robot: I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat.
Me: Ok, I suspected that was probably the case.
Robot: Yes, but it is one thing to suspect and another to actually find out.

This is, by the way, the correct thing to say. It's just that she said it in a complete monotone without eye contact. Just super awkward. And then it got way more awkward. Mind you, I'm still lying on my back with a wand in my vagina. Me and Dr. Robot are just hanging out, having this conversation.

Robot: (Angling the wand to show the gestational sac) So, there's still STUFF in there.

What? Stuff?!? There's STUFF in my uterus? Like what? Loose change, lint, crumpled receipts? A note to all the future gynecologists, obstetricians, and reproductive endocrinologists of the world: Please do not refer to a non-viable embryo as "stuff." It's a super icky robot thing to do.

Me: What?
Robot: There's still a pregnancy in you that you'll need to pass.

At that point she got into her comfort zone and explained my treatment options. I could wait and let it happen naturally, take medication (methotrexate and misoprostol - not recommended due to a relatively assured side effect of blinding pain and deluge style bleeding), or have a D&C. I opted to wait for a natural miscarriage with the option of scheduling a D&C. Dr. Robot told me to call Monday if I hadn't started bleeding. It is Monday. I haven't.

My doctor, Dr. M, who is an actual human being with real emotions and children that presumably began life as embryos, called me and was completely wonderful. He said I could wait up to a couple of weeks to miscarry naturally though frankly that sounds like torture. If, after weighing the risks, I do opt for a D&C, I will definitely schedule so that he does the procedure. No more robots.

Yet another option was presented by my witch doctor acupuncturist. She has herbs that can assist with the natural miscarriage process (ie. cause uterine contractions). I may go that route and then, should nothing happen, opt for the D&C next week on Tuesday, Dr. M's procedure/surgery day.

Taking acupuncture herbs to cause a miscarriage makes me feel like a character in a grim movie set during Prohibition. Raised in the backwoods of Appalachia, I have found myself in the family way after a regrettable encounter with the film's villain. Under cover of night, I run barefoot to a shack where this mystic with cataracts is boiling sticks and rodents in various pots in her dimly lit cabin. She gives me a filthy mason jar filled with translucent liquid, I drink it and run back into the woods where, as depicted in a series of emotional but bloodless frames, I miscarry. Obviously my face is smeared with dirt so as to highlight my tear tracks. The end.

These are my options. I get to choose my own adventure.

(I wonder why I don't get many messages on my blog. Clearly it's because I'm insane and nobody knows how to respond to my movie plots and such. The fantasy is so clearly spelled out, I leave almost no room for comments.)

6w3d or 5w5d. Wolf?

How many times can one cry miscarriage until people start to roll their eyes and shrug? Well, I'm going to find out. The ultrasound this morning went really shitty. The upside: there was a heartbeat. The doctor saw it, we didn't. Ultrasounds look like Rorschach tests. The downside: the embryo is measuring at 5 weeks 5 days instead of 6 weeks 3 days, my actual pregnancy stage.

First the resident was fumbling around down there, enjoying what appeared to be his second trip to a woman's vagina (last week was his first). The doc identified a faint heartbeat and then took over the wand. Then it got really quiet and serious. He took a measurement. More quiet, more serious. Then he turned the lights on and broke it down.  "I am concerned. Based on the measurements, this is very likely not a viable pregnancy. I suspect you will miscarry." Something very close to that. This kid is measuring a full 5 days behind and apparently that is far from okay. It didn't occur to me to worry about the size. All I wanted was a heartbeat.

As advised, we made another appointment for a week from today and then walked back to the car. I texted everyone who needed to know and then I cried and cried. J is staying positive. He says he's convinced that "Lucky" is a fighter and is going to hang in there. I don't know. How many bad signs (low beta, epic bleeding, slow embryonic development) can I get before reality sinks in? Hopeful was last week. This week...I don't know. I'm only a few hours in. Somehow I don't see this week as the week of rainbows and glitter. I think this will be my week of getting by.

Friday I get to visit my client who has NINE children. So that should be fun.

After all the "trying" and failing, the multiple IUIs and one IVF, this is the first time I've been really angry. I'm pissed. Pissed in a grand scheme of things, universal kind of way. Millions of people have sex, get pregnant and deliver healthy babies every day. I want that. It's not fair. It's an immature way to put it but that's my all-consuming feeling right now. I just want what most people get without trying.