Where do we go from here?

Merciful things: my hcg is below 5. I did not have to use my DIY Uterine Evacuation Kit. It is over, and was pretty painless.

That was my last shot on insurance. I have no idea what comes next. Crazy Al's IVF Shack? He has a clutch of my embryos from when I was a mere slip of a girl at 34. They're probably in better shape than my creaky miscarrying 38-year old eggs. Although it's possible the uterus is just broken. On the other hand, Al froze them in a second-hand popsicle maker, so the thawing attrition is likely going to be ugly. Al's documented success rate with frozen embryos is like 13%. If I wait until January I could have one more cycle covered at Al's, and out-of-pocket cycles are likely to be cheap because hey, Al.

From the clutch of 9 at Big Shiny Fertility Factory, I have three left. I could do at least one more cycle with them.  It would be out of pocket, and expensive. I'm a bit resentful about how expensive, considering that I now know exactly what the insurance reimbursement they received for the same cycle was, and believe me, it's less than half the amount I'd be shelling out.

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secondary infertility guilt
secondary infertility grief
secondary infertility giving up

I don't know what's next. I didn't honestly believe that I'd be here. I somehow trusted in the narratively satisfying ending of my third attempt succeeding.  I am beginning to suspect that my uterus is not all that invested in my narrative satisfaction.

I would like to tag this with "moving on" but I'm not at all sure where I'm moving on to.

It's all over but the bleedin'.

Hcg 115. Game over.  Not too surprised -- after the bleed on Thursday night, on Friday I passed something suspiciously... embryo-like.  I had this wild fantasy that maybe it was one of twins (really, self? With those betas?) but yeah, no.  Honestly, I knew it was over then.

At least the timing is actually pretty good. I'm about to go to Vegas for a week for a conference, and now I won't have to bring shots. And I can drink coffee, and take the antihistamines I've been denying myself for the past two weeks. And it is blessedly not dragging me through beta hell, meandering across and down in a laggardly fashion -- that's a damn good sharp plunge.  Almost as if I'd, you know, passed the entire sac on Friday.  So I hope that's a sign that this will be over cleanly.

If not, though, I'm going to Vegas equipped. In my cosmetics bag I have a DIY uterine evacuation kit, leftovers from the last round: misoprostol, Zofran, painkillers. If this drags on in a painful way I can take care of it quickly. I probably won't use it, but I find it incredibly comforting that I have it.

Well goddamit.

Lots of bright red blood. I don't like this.

Beta #3: still truckin' along

952, for a doubling time of 44.23.  No complaints.

Ultrasound a week from Monday..

from 19dpo-22dpo:

from 16dpo-22dpo:

 

gulp.

19dpo: a surprise comeback?

Recap: After coming out of the gate strong with good pee-sticks, she managed to muff the first fence, scraping over beta #1 with a score of less than 100. Her form has improved considerably between the first and second fence. Beta #2 came back at a very respectable 308, for a doubling time of 44 hours.  She's clearly rattled by the first fence, but let's not write her off just yet. This one may yet have a chance.

Okay, I'll... stop talking about myself in the third person as if I were a horse now. I'm a little punchy and adrenaline-y. My heart was pounding as I clicked open that email.

So! Here I am. Her Indoors is going away on a trip and then I'm going away on a trip so I get to learn how to give myself IM injections. Thank goodness my bum's mostly numb by now.

I'm grateful. What I wanted was either

1) A clearly good results, like this, or
2) A clearly bad results.

And, of course, I rather preferred #1.

I dreaded getting a 180, a 200, something like that -- not quite low enough to pull the plug immediately, but far too low to be healthy. So I'm damn grateful.

Next beta on Thursday.

Various Items

Item: After finding the not-so-bad 60%, I then found this which puts it at 25%. Humph.

Item: As far as my personal statistics go:

Pregnancy #1, 16dpo beta = 120. Outcome: miscarriage.
Pregnancy #2, 16dpo beta = 224. Outcome: Small Boy.
Pregnancy (?) #3, 15dpo beta = 8.  Outcome: chemical.
Pregnancy #4, 16dpo beta = 144. Outcome: miscarriage.
Pregnancy #5, 16do beta = ~320 (calculated). Outcome: post-hb miscarriage, twins.
Pregnancy #6, 16do beta = 98. Outcome ?

Jeez, when I put it like that it doesn't look so great, does it.

Item: when I google "accepting secondary infertility" I'm deeply ticked to find out that almost all the hits are to articles/ posts written by women who struggled with secondary infertility... before going on to have their second or third child. Gosh, thanks, guys. That really helps.
  
Item: I once heard someone say "when someone dies, a library burns down."  I guess when someone isn't born a library isn't even built. I feel like I'm staring at a field, a space where a library will never be built, will never fill with memories and experiences. It will always just be... quiet. 

I don't feel like it's a horrible loss to the world. The world has plenty of people. I wonder how much of a loss it will be to Small Boy. He's occasionally expressed an idle desire for a sibling but nothing serious, and I don't think there's any reason that an only child can't have a perfectly delightful life. It's just me, mostly, maybe. I wanted to get to know another child. Small Boy has been such a revelation for me. I wanted to know what other revelations there were, to feel my heart stretch once again.  I guess I wanted to know how much richer life could get. A greedy wish, but mine.

16dpo beta

98. Not a complete disaster, but not great. Average is about 200 at this point. Assuming perfect doubling (ha! ha!) best-case scenario is a 15dpo of 75ish, which translates into about a 60% chance of live birth, 40% miscarriage/chemical according to my favorite oracle. It's not chasing unicorns, but it's certainly chasing... something that runs away, but is sometimes a catchable. A chicken? Fine, a chicken. Chasing chickens does have a certain "going in circles over the same ground" quality that seems appropriate.

I am so sick of this bullshit, I can't even tell you.

So now I'm passing the time until Monday. I was really hoping not to use the tag "beta hell" for this cycle.

The day before beta

Jest passin' the time. Every now and then I pee on a piece of cardboard, squint, and alternately decide

a) it's wayyy darker omg must start googling strollers now! now! how are we going to afford daycare? should I try for a VBAC?
b) it's wayyy lighter and I wonder if I'll get all the way to misoprostol, now my preferred abortifacient, or if it'll poop out on its own.

Neither of these reactions is either warranted or helpful.

I'm just not very good at sitting and waiting.

I'm going to be in a meeting for most of tomorrow. I've asked the nurse to email me the beta results. Probably my favorite thing about this practice is that they don't mind emailing results.  I have some serious PTSD from the hold music at my last REs. I'd be waiting and waiting and listening to the loop and my heart pound and pretty soon my blood pressure started to shoot up as soon as the music started. Plus I'm always afraid I'll hear something wrong or write it down wrong or something. With email there is only the barest pause between seeing that I have the email and seeing the results. 

So. Tomorrow.

6dp5dt (11dpo)

Annnnnnd we have a line!

Faint, but there. And while such a faint line is bad news at 14dpo, it's okay at 11dpo.  Just have to see where this one goes, if this little thing has what it needs to continue its journey.

Trying to stay quiet. Keep breathing, keep living, and if I do a bit of hoping, that's okay. One of the things I think I've learned on this journey is that almost nothing can dislodge a good pregnancy and absolutely nothing can save a bad one.  The coin is still flipping in the air as to which this one is -- but it hasn't landed yet, which means we're in with a chance. 

FET #5, the night before

This cycle has flashed by strangely. I haven't done acupuncture, and my wheatgrass intake has been quite erratic. I still got scanned with the best lining I've had since pre-Small Boy, so that's nice. I think it was the fruity pills.

I feel... quiet. Very quiet. Usually I'm frantically consulting auguries by now, but I haven't looked at a single set of entrails.  This is the last round for a while, at least. If it's not going to work, I don't want to know it quite yet.

Her Indoors can't come with me to the transfer tomorrow, as she'll be trapped at work. I actually feel fine about that. I'm not sentimental about the process at this point.  I'm just going to go in, have a couple of embryos transferred to my uterus, continue with my life. It sort of matches with the quiet I'm feeling now.

FET #5: estrogen day 4

Final grade for the NuvaRing: B+. It did eventually engender in me a certain amount of irritability (ahem) and sore breasts. The most distressing side effect was a cystitis-y bladder irritation. I was annoyed enough that I took it out on 2 am of the day I was supposed to remove it. Overall, though, a solid performance. OCPs get a straight D.

I think my favorite thing about the NuvaRing was the way it did not require me to do anything every day. I couldn't feel it, and for those 21 days  I could just forget about the whole TTC thing. Good stuff.


I'm now on intramuscular injectible estrogen. It's a small quantity, but since the carrier oil is very thick it still hurts sometimes. But it's only every three day, so no biggie.

I am also, following on the lining success of my past two cycles, taking via-oh-god-please-don't-spam-me-gra. Except when I ordered it from my grey market Indian pharmacy I did not order enough for three cycles. I guess I thought it would be... negative? Pessimistic? Evidence of a disturbing lack of faith? Anyway, I got enough for two cycles. But for various reasons, I have just enough now to scrape thinly over the third cycle provided I use the bonus "buy some get a free gift!" tablets, which were a higher dosage. I'm cutting them with a pill cutter, so fine. The funny part is that the free ones? Soft chews. So the ones I am cramming up my nether regions are fruit flavored.

Lining check on the 11th.

Three

Last night I dreamed that I was pregnant with triplets. I gave birth and as each one came out, I found out that it was dead. I kept thinking "surely the next one will be okay" and at the end I was sobbing with grief and anger and disbelief.

Three means a lot of things. My family as it is right now is three. This is my third FET at Big Shiny Fertility Factory. My insurance allows three attempts per live birth. I have had three miscarriages. When I was little, I always thought I'd have three children. I wanted to have my children three years apart. Small Boy has three donor siblings currently in utereo.

It's just a number. My fave bit from Foucault's Pendulum -- actually the only bit I remember much -- is when the protagonist's girlfriend, mother of his child, gives him the big ol' eye-roll for his numerological conspiracy theories.

We move on to the magic numbers your authors are so fond of. You are one and not two, your cock is one and my cunt is one, and we have one nose and one heart; so you see how many important things come in ones. But we have two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, my breasts, your balls, legs, arms, buttocks. Three is the most magical of all, because our body doesn’t know that number; we don’t have three of anything, and it should be a very mysterious number that we attribute to God, wherever we live. But if you think about it, I have one cunt and you have one cock, shut up and don’t joke and if we put these two together, a new thing is made, and we become three. So you don’t have to be a university professor or use a computer to discover that all cultures on earth have ternary structures, trinities.

She moves through all the numbers, the point being: all and none of them are sacred.

I'm on the NuvaRing now, getting ready for FET#5. It's all happening quickly, so quickly that all the bills from FET#4 haven't rolled in (and been disputed by the insurance company) yet. High, high marks for the NuvaRing so far. Only side effects are mild nausea and sore breasts, and vague irritability. Birth control pills give me severe nausea, migraines, and constant blinding rage towards the universe. It's better this way.