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.

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.

Pills and newborns and ramblings

The first step to an IVF cycle is the taking of birth control pills, and believe me, the irony of this is lost on no one.

I hate this bit. They make me depressed, they make me nauseated, and I have the sneaking suspicion that they're not actually necessary. But I'm also apparently not interested in fighting it, so the little yellow pills I do pop.

I just got back from a solo cross-country visit with my best friend and her family, which consists of a husband, two preschoolers, a two month old baby, and an adolescent dog the size of a Shetland pony.

I had a great time. I was a bit nervous that my Crazy would boil over and get all over the newborn's sweet fuzzy head -- this is the baby that BFF was pregnant with while I was (briefly) pregnant with the Sea Monkeys, and I had so fondly imagined us being the mothers of newborns together.

But it was better than fine.  There was a certain leaning-on-the-bruise aspect, but it was far outweighed by the sensory delight of handling a tiny baby again. I got to wear him a good deal, and I love wearing babies. I smelled his head and stroked his wee crumpled hands and gave him bottles and it was not even bittersweet, just sweet with a side of wistful.

The only really painful moment was an unexpected one -- I was wearing him on my back and BFF and I were picking up the two older kids from nursery school. One of the other moms was chatting and airily said to BFF, upon being told that I was visiting "Oh, my best friend doesn't have kids either, it's great because they can help out, huh?"  It was a perfectly innocent thing to say, but I was just overwhelmed with ouch and couldn't say a thing back. I just froze. What felt like a year and was probably a few seconds later, BFF firmly corrected  her and said "no, she has a little boy at home with her partner".  And the world started again and everything was fine.

I mean, it wasn't a crazy assumption. How many mothers can just take off across the country to visit a friend? (Mothers of one who have a tolerant partner, that's who.) And how was she supposed to know, looking at me, that I am a mother? She couldn't see my c-section scar. I wasn't wearing a pin that said I gestated a child, ask me how!

I don't know why that spiked my grief, or why even remembering it now is so painful. Maybe because just for a minute it dangles me over the cliff of how close I came to not being a mother at all. It's becoming clear that my body doesn't love producing babies. Maybe our little guy was a complete fluke, a one-in-a-million. Maybe someone is going to show up and tell me that it was all a mistake and I don't get to keep him after all.  Nope. I don't care. I'm not giving him back.

This morning I was telling my boss about my trip and seeing the new baby. "It didn't give you ideas, did it?" she joked.

"Hahaha!" said I. "Ha! Ha."





It was a lovely trip. We ate stunningly good food, got massaged, got manicured and pedicure'd, and engaged in plenty of the activity I've missed most: chatting aimlessly with my best friend within hugging range. I'm awfully glad I went.

Okay, breaktime's over.

I'm ready to start again.

It's been a good extra month. I am hypertensive, and there is a rather short list of pregnancy-safe medications (which of course I've been on temporarily for, oh, two years now while TTC). I was on a high dose of labetalol, which worked okay but made me super tired all the time and also dizzy whenever I bent down.

At the start of last month I thought "fuck it, I have to start living my real life, baby or no baby." So as part of the reclaiming-my-life project, I marched down to my GP and told her I wasn't happy on labetalol.  I've found an alternative (nifedipine) that appears to be working, and omg how much do I love not dreading buying something from the bottom shelf at the supermarket. I hadn't realized what a drag constantly trying to not squat or bend down was. I feel freeeeeeee!

My energy has come back, too. I'm in a positive feedback loop right now where because I'm not so tired, I'm getting a lot more exercise, which in turn energizes me. I've also put some major effort into upgrading my diet. Her Indoors was away for a whole week and I was rather afraid I'd starve, and so bought some meal-replacement spirulina-peatmoss-whatever protein shake mix.  That got me started on a smoothie kick,and I discovered that having breakfast and lunch smoothies seems infinitely easier to me than preparing and packing breakfast and lunch. I got a one-serve portable blender and have been going wild. For breakfast this morning I had coconut milk, soy butter, kale, and strawberries.  Lunch was avocado, kefir, spinach, cilantro, lime.  Nommm! I don't really do the protein powder shakes any more, but it's comforting to have them as a backup in case I just can't be arsed to cook (in the past, when I couldn't be arsed I'd just eat whatever random crapola came strolling by my desk). I haven't eaten this well in years, and I am actually approaching a so-called-"normal" BMI for the first time in about a decade.

And yeah, did I mention more energy? I've been taking Small Boy to the playground every day, which is awful good for both of us. Small Boy is an awesome small boy, and does something side-splittingly funny at least four times a day.

I dunno, things have just been good.  The last miscarriage is far enough in the past that it all seems like a dream now. Come on, what was I thinking? Pregnancy seems mysterious, remote, something that happens to other people.  Remote feels much better than just-outside-my-reach.

So of course, now that I'm feeling calm and happy and healthy, what I need to do is fuck it all up. Get back on that crazytrain of tests, hormones, appointments, waiting uncertainty, peeing on strips of cardboard, squinting at lines.

I'm expecting my period to start in the next few days. Between days 5-15 I'll have an HSG. If that looks okay (please) I'll start another FET cycle.

Really, with that much fun? How could I stay away?