24w3d

Hallo, internets!

I suppose it's kind of boring the way I start off all of my posts with "forgive me, internet, for I have sinned. It has been {insert staggering length of time} since my last post."

So I won't do that this time. Except that I kind of just did.

The news in a nutshell:

Things are good. They're really, really good. Can't ask for much more. My blood pressure has been low; a second-trimester dip is normal, and I got it. It will undoubtedly start to creep up again soon, when I enter my third trimester (kinnehorah-knock-wood-god-willin-and-the-crick-don't-rise).

We are having a wee boy. A boy! The 18 week scan was a story unto itself, which I'll type up soon. Suffice it to say that there are indeed minuscule boy parts attached to the minuscule boy. After reeling and having a few minutes of whaaa? what do I know about boys? we have plunged into an enthusiastic study of baby-boy-hood. And I figure anything else we need to learn we can google.

I am continuing to be enormous. We thought that maybe I'd plateau and end up a more normal size. Nope. My combination of wicked shortwaistedness + unimpressive abdominal muscles = spherical me. Of course I'm just as delighted as most people who have spent two years willing themselves into precisely this state would be. I am starting to feel a bit... unwieldy. My darling darted away from me in the supermarket the other day to go and grab the peanut butter (my peanut butter, that I craved). As I saw her slim, graceful frame slipping 'round the corner into the next aisle, I felt an impotent rage. I lumbered, huffing, behind her. "Don't just run off like that," I snapped irritably. With her usual vast good humor, she assessed my rolling, panting figure, petted me and gently said "okay, I won't."

Hey I got a new layout. In case there are any of you who actually aren't reading this through an RSS feed... I dunno, I'm a bit conflicted. I absolutely love the look of it, but is it less readable? Please feel free to weigh in, I won't be offended.

This day in history. One year ago today, I had just gotten the results of my second beta for my first, ill-fated pregnancy. They weren't great but weren't awful; 74 at 14dpo, with a doubling time an unimpressive 67 hours. I was heading into the really painful part of the OHSS.

OHSS symptoms: completely miserable. Can't walk, eat, or breathe properly. My stomach looks like I'm six months pregnant. In fact, when I got my blood drawn today (for the second time today, third time this week) the technician thought I was six months pregnant.

One year later, here I am, actually six months pregnant. The word "grateful" does not suffice. I am not just full of gratitude, I am saturated with gratitude. I have been pregnant for 157 days (okay, technically, for five of those days the lab down the street was pregnant). Every single freaking one of those days I have felt again the pure shock of gratitude at my own outrageous luck. Even more so, now that we're (just) past 24 weeks, and each day that passes represents a tiny incremental increase in our guy's chances of survival.

I would never say that the two years, three IVFs, miscarriage, untold number of dollars (I refuse to calculate it) and loss of so many other things from my life were "worth it". But I do wonder if, had this pregnancy not been prefaced by all of the above, I would feel my gratitude so very keenly and continuously.

I've had some severe mood swings, and when I say "severe" I mean "full on snotty hysterical sobbing." Usually accompanied by my wailing "I don't even know why I'm cryyyyyyinnnnnngggg." But even when I am full of dread and misery I am strangely aware that This is not real. My reality is happy. Soon I will be back to reality. And you know, I always am.

My weekend

Saturday
All day I kept eagerly rummaging in my nether reasons to see if I'd begun to bleed. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Saturday night we went to Target. All week I'd been planning a trip to Target after the Friday ultrasound, after we heard a heartbeat. I was going to do a victory lap around the maternity clothes and even walk casually through the baby department.

Well, I love Target. I was not going to miss my Target trip just because I was suddenly unpregnant, dammit.

We went and had a good time. Bought dog biscuits and I'm suddenly unsure what else, but I know there were like five bags, so we must have bought some other stuff as well. Had a good time despite the fact that they clearly made a mistake letting me in the door, because every other woman there was visibly pregnant. One of the men looked a little suspicious, too.

When I stopped at the bathroom on the way out, I had begun to bleed, just a little.


Sunday
Woke at 7:30 cramping like a mofo. Hobbled to the bathroom and realized that I was beginning to bleed in earnest. The next four hours or so weren't pretty. I guess I'm lucky in that with my period I don't usually cramp that much, which is to say that I had no idea that cramps could be this painful. Naproxen and heating pads didn't make a dent. I had to just breathe through them. The nice part was that in between cramps, when they stopped, they were completely gone and I felt totally fine, until the next one hit.

Bled heavily until around 11:30. Being up and walking around made it somewhat better. B made us delicious buttermilk pancakes and bacon and we took it out on the porch.

The next part I am putting in invisible ink for my more sensitive readers, or anyone who simply does not desire to read about the contents of my uterus. Select the text with your mouse if you wish to see it, you gross thing you.

While eating breakfast, I felt something utterly unlike a period cramp -- a sharp lancing pain that made me gasp. I went upstairs to the bathroom and passed three clots each about half the size of my fist. Then I suddenly felt much, much better. Not just physically but emotionally. Can't really explain it.

After that the flow slowed right down. I've had intermittent cramping, but nothing like this morning. That can't be it, there wasn't enough, too easy -- but I feel like something happened, and for whatever reason I have been feeling much better, even a little peaceful. My sweetie's practical explanation is that my ridiculously high hormone levels have finally settled down. She might be right about that. Whatever the reason, I'm grateful.

Edited to add: I'm the luckiest girl in Girlville. Just walked into the bedroom to find that the woman I am blessed to call my own prepared us a spontaneous Beltaine feast, to be served in bed. Now she knows that I love eating in bed like I love ... well, there just isn't anything I love that much.

The food is so lovely I had to take pictures, which will be posted shortly. White wine, beautiful beets, this interesting clam-potato-fresh dill-homemade lemon mayo salad with avocado curls, and the prettiest fruit salad you've ever seen.

I am the luckiest asshole ever.

Gotta go eat.

Important Items of Business

Item #1: a praise-song for my sweetheart

My completely self-involved blog has paid insufficient attention to how really really great my beloved is, and it's time for me to remedy that.

For the past week-and-change, my darling has nursed me and catered to my cranky immobile self literally night and day (and when I say "literally", I mean literally). I'm tottering around the house now, but at the worst of it all I could do was ease my way to the bathroom and back -- and yet I was supposed to eat every single hour during the day and drink constantly. How did this happen? My darling running up and down the stairs dozens of times a day, bringing me iced Ensure and V8 and SmartWater, carting down armfuls of dirty glasses, making me endless scrambled eggs (mmm albumin!). I think I've put about a thousand miles on that girl since this started.

Oh, right, and if I don't eat every 2-3 hours throughout the night I wake up with hideous piercing stomach pains. So what does she do? She somehow magically (without setting an alarm) wakes up many times during the night to feed me and shove a straw between my sleepy lips. I barely remember it, but in the morning I remember that I didn't have stomach pains last night.

Other greatnesses of her:

1. She has a special gift for stuffing pillows around me in a way that suddenly magically makes me comfy when I would have sworn to you that there was NO WAY I could be comfy;
2. She has been entirely gracious about my incredible bipolar mood this past week, calmly handing me V8s as I skyrocket between elation and despair;
3. Since I've had to sleep sitting up I wanted a neck pillow -- you know, one of those airplane-style U-shaped ones -- and when we didn't know where to buy one, she went downstairs, whipped out her sewing machine and made me one. Yeah, she's crafty too.

She's done all the housework, done all the grocery shopping, looked after the dogs (and the three of them need a lot of looking after), cheered me, soothed me, nursed me, fed me, administered all my shots with skill and grace, and generally been a hero of the most heroic sort.

A lot of women with OHSS do end up in the hospital, and I firmly believe that her care has kept me at home, kept the OHSS from getting worse, and kept me from being a total emotional wreck.

This one's for you, sweetie. Couldn't do any of this without you, wouldn't even be trying.

Item #2: Today's 96-hour beta came back at 1,111. Besides being a cool number, that is a doubling time of 42.5 hours. HELL YEAH THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. Something in me is relaxing a little, maybe even starting to believe.

Item #3: Today is 5wks 1 day. I have an ultrasound scheduled for next Friday, 6wks 2days. Can I just say: holy crap.

4AA

One 4AA partially-hatched blastocyst, hopefully burrowing into my endometrium right now and not into my underwear. Made it back to work in time for my 3pm meeting. I don't believe in that bed rest stuff.

Things I didn't like about today:

1. No cute embryo pics like other people have posted on their blogs. Although I guess they all look the same -- I could just right-click one of someone else's. Here! Behold Junior:
2. RE did not use ultrasound to guide the catheter for the transfer. One of the few clear results from studying IVFs is that clinical touch (no ultrasound) is inferior to ultrasound-guided transfers . I'm not happy about that at all, and it may be what prompts me to leave a doctor I otherwise like very much.
3. The paperwork the RE brought out was all filled out for the transfer of two embryos, despite having mentioned in every single conversation on the topic -- including our initial IVF consult -- that we only want to transfer one. When we stuck to our guns he gave us the "this is your best chance" spiel, although he did add "whatever choice you make has to be right for you." Additionally, his presumption of two gave the embryologist a heart attack, since she had to toss #5 in the freezerator at the last minute to get it started in time.
4. Never learned the embryologist's name, never talked directly to her about how the embryos were doing.
   

Things I did like about today:

1. The fact that we have 5 embryos on ice, with more hopefully joining them tomorrow;
2. The transfer room was very homey, not like a hospital, just a room with a fancy split-legged Laz-E-Boy;
   
3. The transfer was painless and relatively swift;
4. RE warmly shook our hands and wished us luck at the end;
   
5. Lying in the twilit room afterwards, holding hands with my darling, stroking each other's faces, dreaming of all that could be;
6. It's over, everything went well, it's over, it's over, it's over.

So yeah. Nothing to do now but keep shooting up the progesterone, and wait.

done!

At home!

Preliminary count = 21 eggs "so far"; they were still looking through the fluid when he gave us the report. Doubtless many of those won't be mature (at the last ultrasound he counted 15 likely-looking follicles), but it's a lovely (lucky?) number to be starting out with.

The anesthesia was a trip, I've never had it before. Man, that stuff works. One minute I was lying there under the huge light, legs strapped into leg-elevator things, thinking about alien abduction. The next second I was someplace else entirely. I couldn't believe it. The very first thing I mumbled -- no fooling -- was "Anesthesiology is a noble profession." The anesthesiologist looked startled and said "thank you". I was just floored that it was all over, just like that. Floored and grateful.

Then I noticed OW OW OW OW. I am not shy and I communicated OW OW OW, and was rewarded with an IV of some narcotic (Diludid?). Unfortunately, it only took the edge off, and it took another few minutes to figure out that a big part of the pain was that I desperately needed to pee. Sadly, we have no pictures of My First (and hopefully Last) Bedpan.

All hospital staff extremely nice. Nurses rock.

The bad part is that now I feel like utter shit -- I can barely hobble half-curled to the bathroom. My list of woes: breathing deeply hurts. Laughing hurts enough that I had to turn off Scrubs. Moving hurts. My shoulder is randomly cramped and hurts as much as my abdomen. Gas pains keep bubbling up. I'm just sort of skating from one moment to the next, convinced that I am moving in the right direction because time is passing, and nothing will fix this but time. Every half-hour is an achievement. Who the fuck are these maniacs who go jogging round the block after their egg retrievals? When the nice nurse dropped her voice and advised me no sex, I could only stare at her in disbelief.

The good: my beloved is taking wonderful care of me, hovering with SmartWater and homemade chicken soup and pillows. I have this neat microwavable heating pad that feels really great on the shoulder. And I know all this is temporary.

Right now, though, right at this moment, I can't imagine ever choosing to do this again. Though I know that if we did this whole process again we'd rack back on the stims, I wouldn't get as many eggs, and thus would not feel so shitty. I'm told that there's a direct relation between the number of eggs and how wrecked you feel afterwards.