When it rains...

Sorry I didn't get to update you after my big appointment the other day. We ended up staying at work until late that night, and then the next morning we got a phone call at 4:45 am. You know that it is never good to get a phone call so early. Well anyway, my father-in-law was rushed to the hospital with chest pain, and we ended up going between the ER and babysitting our niece all day. (It ended up not being a heart attack, but he does have a Pacemaker that seems to be causing him a bit of trouble).

So. My latest beta was 27.2, proving that this pregnancy is failing. No surprise there. Here is the doctor's conclusion based upon our test results and such:

1. The losses are genetic, not hormonal or blood clotting or implantation or such.
2. All of my tests came back normal, so far. We are waiting still for a real cycle for a new FSH draw, and for our genetic karotyping to come back.
3. If we continue to try without any assistance, we will succeed eventually. However, since we are now at 4 straight losses, our chances of carrying to term once we confirm a pregnancy have gone from 70% (normal couple) to 35%. Not great odds. He thinks we will have more losses in the meantime.

So, this is his recommendation:
1. We do a sonohystogram, to be sure my uterus is normal. I'm pretty sure it is, but I'll do the test for the sake of completeness. I've had plenty of ultrasounds which all have been perfect, but it can't hurt. I don't know what we do if this shows a problem, I didn't really pursue it since I don't feel like this is the cause.
2. If the genetic test shows a balanced translocation, we go straight to IVF. He says only 3% of couples have this problem, but hey, probably the same percentage have so many miscarriages and no success, so I wouldn't rule it out. We have no family history to suggest it, but it is possible. We should know in a week or two, that test is sloooooow.
3. If my FSH is high, we go straight to IVF, as time is running out! The draw I did have was normal, but a pregnancy tends to lower the number. And I was pregnant. Hopefully this is not it, especially since high FSH can make it hard to find a clinic to help out. I don't have any symptoms of early menopause or anything, so cross your fingers for me that this isn't it.
4. Shitty ovulation. He seems to think this is our problem. If the other tests all come back normal, we go to Clomid. If after 3-6 months, I don't respond, or I don't get preggo with a keeper, we move on to injectables. Then IVF.

The doc also put me on baby aspirin, and I'm already taking a prenatal.

All this talk of IVF made me call my insurance company. You see, we live in a state that mandates coverage for IVF, but unfortunately there is a loophole, and our company doesn't cover it. So I pleaded our case to my boss (we work together, so it's not like we can just use his insurance instead of mine). Hopefully they come through for us, if we need it.

So as you can see, it was not very enlightening. No answers at all really. But now we can't try for at least two months (one for this miscarriage to resolve, and the next for the sonohystogram). We're looking at August, at best, for our next attempt at this point. Grrrrrr.

Maybe the Fifth Time's the Charm...

Well, I started spotting today. Despite just finishing my period last week. This whole pregnancy is definitely the most bizzare. But I am just hoping for it to be a miscarriage at this point, and not an ectopic, or some kind of crazy molar or something. If any of you out in blogland find this, cross your fingers for me.

So I think we can chalk this up to four miscarriages now. It can't just be bad luck at this point. The first I thought was a fluke, the second was so close to the first I thought it was my fault. Then the third seemed suspicious, but now there's no doubt. I'm broken. I kill my children. I entice them to my uterus, coax them to implant, and then WHAM. My body spits them out like garbage.

Hopefully the specialist was able to find something amiss in my bloodwork. Though I fear that much of it was tainted by this pregnancy, I know that the genetics tests will still be ok. I'm not sure of what to hope for at this point. And I'm beginning to believe that this may not happen for us. I mean, we got pregnant four times since last July, and I still have no children.

In short, this totally sucks. Suckity suck suck sucks.

In other news, the guy we hired to put our fence up has finally arrived, and started. Egad, we may just have a fence before next winter.

I hope your weekend is going better than mine.

Uh, what the fuck???

OK, so I am now officially a medical mystery. Let me explain.

I've been having some pain on my left side, for about a week. Not excrutiating, mind you, but nonetheless, pain. I have complained to B, or Mr. Duedates, and left it at that. Of course, I consulted Dr. Google. Everything I read about my pain was scary, and always included the possibility of ectopic pregnancy. Now, we all remember that I just had my period on May 9th? Good. It was a completely normal period. At the expected time in my cycle. And my temperature dropped to proper pre-ovulatory levels. Everything normal. I didn't bother with a pregnancy test, as my body was telling me that it was not pregnant.

I have had abnormal bleeding due to pregnancy before, and this was not it. I was sure. I had my day 3 FSH level drawn, and scheduled my appointment at the maternal fetal clinic. All good.

But this pain, it isn't going away. It could just be gas, but who has gas for a whole week? And the next suspicious thing, I took an OPK test yesterday morning, and it was positive. On the morning of cycle day 11??? Weird. Maybe not for some, but since I have been ovulating around Day 15 or later, definitely weird. But B and I shrugged it off, and like the troopers we are, tried anyway.

So. This morning I take another OPK test, and once again, positive. I bet you know where I'm going with this, right? So I of course, like any true pregnancy-test-aholic, have a stash. I know there is no way I'm preggo, but I have some dollar tests, and this odd pain, and very early positive OPKs...so I did it. I peed on that dollar test, and you know what? POSITIVE. Sonofabitch.

Well, this can't be good. There is no way I've ovulated by cycle day 11, and I've had a normal period since my last egg left the nest. And of course, this pain. So I wake up B, and show him the preggo tests, and say "I think we're in trouble". Ah, the pregnancy announcement of any girl's dreams. I call my sister, Dr. C, next, and break the bad news. She is actually doing rounds when I call, so I get off and call the OB's answering service. Dr. Douche calls back and has the nerve to suggest that it is a false positive, on TWO BRANDS and an OPK. Well. I tell her that, in fact, after close to a year of trying, and 3 miscarriages, I know a freaking positive when I see it. So she tells me to go to the ER.

As expected, there is nothing on the ultrasound, and my beta is a whopping 56.5. Don't laugh, that's the highest confirmed beta I've had to date. But clearly not very good if the last egg I released was on April 26th. And since there is no way for me to be anything but 3 days or 3 weeks since my last ovulation and sexcapade, I'm sure this is very, very bad. But nobody is giving any consideration to this being ectopic. They all think I'm some twit who must've gotten my dates wrong, and congratulations!

We'll show them. I bet it is abdominal, just to show off how absurdly bad I am at this.

Idiots...

UGH! My OB/Gyn is really the worst. I hand delivered the request to forward my records to the clinic running my tests, and they still lost it. I called on Monday to be sure that they had been forwarded, I figured that a week was enough time. Nurse Nice didn't answer, so I left a message. It turns out that she was on the phone getting the results of my bloodwork, and working on my chart. She said it was uncanny that I called (when she returned my call 30 seconds later, unbelievable). Anyway, she asked me to call them, and I said that I only can get through to some voice messaging system, and that they aren't nearly as responsive as she is. So get this, she was like, don't worry about it, I'll call. I already love this clinic, and I haven't even been there yet!

Well she calls, and eventually I have to fax over a request to them so they can release my records. Nurse Nice said the woman in medical records over there was complaining that my file was too thick. Meanwhile, I've only been there like 3 times, all in the last year, and all related to my losses. I don't get it, they referred me to this clinic, and said that they work with them all the time. Maybe I'm just getting the worst treatment there, ever.

I still have to call and be sure the records got there, but Nurse Nice assured me that they would see me next week, even without them. She said that my losses were so early that they would be looking for problems in my bloodwork, not from my records anyway. Not to mention that I had an ultrasound at the hospital where the clinic is, during my ER visit for miscarriage #2. They should be able to pull the records from that night, no matter what. So I guess it's really happening next Tuesday! I'm a bit scared to know what is wrong. Also, I should be ovulating that day, how ironic is that.

A hard week...

Tomorrow, when I am visting my mother, I am going to have to plaster a smile on my face and get through the day. B and I will probably also take his mother out for lunch, and I'm sure that we'll get bombarded once again with talk of when I will be celebrating a Mother's Day of my own. You see, our families don't know what we are going through, yet. We have only told a couple of people, including our bosses (I know it's a bit sick and twisted, but we spend more time at work than anywhere else and they were going to start noticing the absences. Also during my last miscarriage I started spotting at work, and of course got upset. Better that they know than fire me for missing time, or think I'm on drugs for crying out of the blue). None of our friends or family know. It is too painful to talk to them.

Also this week is the due date of my second pregnancy. Really it was more like my first pregnancy, since that one was so short I deluded myself into thinking that the HPT was wrong. I of course at least hoped to be pregnant by now, and those dreams were recently crushed after I lost my third pregnancy.

I had my day 3 blood draw on Thursday, did I forget to mention that my period showed right on time? So now we are just waiting, and I assure you that this wait is harder than any other two week wait.

And finally, Cancerbaby, or Jessica as we have recently been told, died this week. I would say that she lost her battle, but she particularly hated that term. I am glad at least that she is no longer in pain. And I'm surprised how much it can hurt to lose someone whom you've never met.

It's going to be a tough week.

A tribute...

I'm so new to blogging, and to the blogosphere in general, that I probably have one of the smallest blogrolls ever. I only read a select few blogs. These few have all touched me, and I look for updates almost daily.

Most of my online reading, for the past 10 months or so, has been related to baby-making, baby-having, and baby stuff in general. The last few months or so it has started to focus on fertility, and what could be causing my seeming lack of it. As my situation has become more clear, I will also admit to searching for "miscarriage" more than a few times as well. So the first blogs that I stumbled across were all by infertiles, and women trying to have babies.

Among the blogs of infertiles, I stumbled across Cancerbaby. I was drawn to her blog by her honest voice and her strength in the face of cancer. I found it only a few months ago, right around the time when she stopped posting. As I read her archives, I got to know her. Cancerbaby described being diagnosed with cancer as a process of loss. In one instant, you lose your perception of yourself, and of the life you thought you had.

Yesterday, after months of silence broken only by Cancerbaby's friend, we were told that she would no longer be posting. It seems that Cancerbaby is not doing well, that she is losing her battle. I didn't want to comment on her blog, there just aren't words to express how sorry I am, how unfair it is, and how sad it makes me. And, seeing how I'm not a religious person, I can't offer my prayers. I hope that no matter what happens her blog is kept online, so more people can see what true strength and courage are. So many people have been touched by her already. Today, I mourn for my cyberfriend, a woman I have never met, but will also never forget.

And they're off...

So we got the packet from the clinic that will be doing our pregnancy loss evaluation. I'm going to call the nurse coordinator of the program Nurse Nice, because she is just the best. I've filled out the ten page questionnaire, which seems like a lot but is nothing compared to what some people have to fill out, especially to adopt. Today we go (I say "we" loosely) for our first blood draw. From me, this is what is being tested:

Chromosone analysis
Lupus comprehensive
TSH
B2 Glycoprotein I
Inhibin B
Insulin (hence I've been fasting)
C-reactive protein
Ribosomal P Protein AB

I have no idea what the B2, and protein panels are for. Everything else I understand, but I'll definitely ask the doctor when I meet him.

Today B just gets drawn for a chromosone analysis. He was playing around with his vein in the car yesterday, rolling it between his fingers, and playfully saying what a shame it is that my veins are like buried treasure. So while he'll be in and out, they'll be drilling for oil in my arm. I'm sure that won't leave a mark.

When my period arrives, as it most certainly will, I go to have blood drawn on day 3 to check my FSH. Then we wait for our appt., which is May 23. I'm pretty nervous, and B doesn't quite grasp why. This is going to sound crazy, but when you don't know what the problem is, there is always hope that it was some flukey type thing and the next pregnancy will be fine and normal. But once you know what the problem is, it could be something untreatable. While I want to know, so we can fix the problem, there is some comfort in the unknown.

Uncomfortable Silences...

B and I had a barbeque yesterday with a bunch of close friends from college. This particular group of friends are mostly single, or what you could call "dinks" (double income no kids). Only one person there had kids. And yet, somehow the conversation kept ending up back at other people's kids, and who is having kids. One of the group, that didn't attend and tends to be more peripheral, just announced she is pregnant. She was a bit surprised, as she always had an irregular cycle before going on the pill, and had spent the last decade on birth control. She figured it would take a while, so she chucked the pill and ended up preggo the first month.

That comment about her being so sure she wouldn't get pregnant hurt. Of course, I on the other hand, avoided the pill for fear it may hurt my fertility, and have always been regular. And after nine months of fertility charting, I can tell you I ovulate every month, even after a miscarriage. And clearly my husband's swimmers are functioning, at least on some level, since we've been pregnant 3 times. It just isn't fair. But then, I guess most things aren't.

Then, one of my good friends corners me, and asks (without any tact) when we are starting our family. I just gave her a short "I don't know". She asked again, to get the same response. And then there was silence. We haven't decided to tell anyone yet. I hope she understands my short response later.