And this is why I stay off Facebook

Within 5 minutes of scrolling, I am presented the very pregnant bellies of two friends from my high school class (one with #2, one with #3). People I really like. I wish them nothing but the best.  It's still a kick in the gut.

No, actually, I stay off FB because I suck at keeping up with it, I feel compelled to drink from the firehose and then get frustrated when I fail. But cripes, the constant stream of bellies and babies doesn't make it easier to go back.

On the other hand, my existential angst was nearly balanced out by  my genuine guffaw at this, also encountered via FB:
 






FB giveth and taketh away?

Two years later.

A lot of women who miscarry have problems with anniversaries. Sure, I remember some dates -- the very first time I was pregnant, the due date was supposed to be December 21; for my second miscarriage,  August 1; July 31 for the third and June 3 for the fourth.

I remember these dates but they really don't have any heat in them. I thought I was pretty impervious to date-ghosts. But the other day Her Indoors mentioned this year's Christmas Tree Festival. Now, I'm Jewish, but I love a good Christmas tree festival as much as the next girl, and of course Small Boy adores it.

And it was like a sock to the gut. 'Cause the last time time we were at the festival, I had a backache and was walking slowly because I was easily winded in that weird early-pregnancy way. That was what turned out to be the Sea Monkeys, miscarriage #3.

Why hasn't the date of my miscarriages bothered me before? Because duh, I've always managed to be pregnant again. First miscarriage, 5/08; in 5/09 I was pregnant with Small Boy. Second miscarriage, 12/11; by 12/12, pregnant again, although to no avail.

But I timed it wrong this round. By all rights I should have put off the transfer for another six weeks, so I could have been pregnant on the miscarriage-aversaries and then had that miscarriage at the traditional time of year.  But nooooooo. I had to do it early, so this year's miscarriage was in October, and so for the Christmas Tree Festival I'll be walking around not only not pregnant, but not even in the middle of a cycle.

I can't believe I'm here a year later, not only not having made any progress but having made negative progress. I have fewer embryos stored and I'm at higher risk for miscarriage, having had three in a row.

But I guess in a way I have made progress. I'm further along the road I'm going down, and I know that road is not endless. I'm closer to the point where I give up and start to Deal. If I'm going to subject myself to years of this pain for nothing, at least those years are drawing to a close.

Right now I feel like I'm grieving in slow motion. Not really, just kidding, maybe a little, if I mourn properly does it mean I'll then get what I want? I don't know whether to hang onto hope or just let it go. I wish I knew which the operative cliche was.

 I find myself reassuring people, friends, medical professionals. "It's okay!" I chirp. "I got my little guy!" And it's true but it's also not true. It's what good infertiles say, grateful ones, ones who don't think I should get to have what so many other people have. I am grateful, every day, grateful beyond breath for Small Boy and how he's spun my life and heart right around like a record, baby, I am, I truly am. But at the same time I'm angry that I'm supposed to be grateful and content with what it seems like practically the whole fucking world takes for granted.

The other day I walked past a box of First Response Early Result Pregnancy Test with FREE Keepsake Due Date Calculator! And I audibly scoffed. A keepsake due date calculator, after the first pee stick? Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aintcha?  And that's assuming it's positive. How many of those suckers get bitterly tossed into the trash?

But then I realized it's not that ridiculous. Most pregnancy tests are probably purchased by women who already suspect they're pregnant. Most positive pregnancy tests result in actual children. A keepsake due-date calculator on a two-pack of FRERs is utterly laughable from my point of view, but my point of view isn't representative. It's just my reality.

Small Boy is four, and we're going on lots of kindergarten tours, meeting lots of other families. This is the age interval when most families are mid-spawn, or have recently spawned. Lots of babies, lots of newborns, lots of big bellies, lots of brothers and sisters. I suppose in another five years or so it'll all simmer down other than the occasional "oops". That will be easier.

Not 12 weeks

Today I'm not 12 weeks. 12 weeks, the last week of the first trimester, the time when most people start sharing the news. I'd be scheduling my nuchal screen.

I'll stop this self-pitying countdown eventually, I'm sure. I'll just forget one day, and not remember until Thursday or Friday or something. I'm not trying to be mopey about it. It's just Wednesdays are hard not to count.

My body is apparently remembering by offering a fresh bright red bleed. I guess it's good? I mean, action is good, right? And maybe it'll help my beta come down, in case there's a wee clump of trophoblastic tissue somewhere generating hCG.  My pee sticks aren't notably lighter, which makes me grumpy. Last Friday my beta was 467; recheck in two weeks.

Here is my riddle: how is a BFN different than a chemical pregnancy different from a 6 week miscarriage different from an 8 week miscarriage?  After all, they all end up in the same place: unpregnant.

I am not sentimental about embryos. With eyes focused on the bottom line (i.e. chances of success) I have always pushed for the production and cryopreservation of as many embryos as possible. If we have any left over, I will cheerfully donate them to Science.  If I am not sentimental about embryos suspended in cryoprotectant, then why be sentimental about embryos in my uterus, or no longer in my uterus?

There is a difference, and that difference is the difference between missing a bus by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks. How hard my heart was pounding, how much I thought I'd make it, how ferociously I clench my fists and dig my nails in frustration.

A BFN is missing the bus by weeks, I think. A pre-heartbeat loss is missing it by days, and a post-heartbeat loss is missing it by hours. I can only pray with all my heathen heart that I never experience missing this particular bus by minutes or seconds.

Yep, nobody home.

Had a scan this morning. You know, I don't much think about the costs of scans on the other side of IVF. We socked away the money, whatever, when the bill comes we pay it. But I resented the hell out of every dollar this scan cost.

It was pretty useless, too. Not much of interest to be seen. A thinnish lining of 7mm, I guess I just get to wonder what that means. Was it my lining that borked this up, after all? Seems unlikely, though. Embryos are pretty robust where linings are concerned; otherwise extrauterine pregnancies wouldn't be half so common. A bit of fluid in the uterus, a smear of something that might have been a gestational sac with a fetal pole but clearly was never going to call me mama. A giant corpus luteum/cyst on my right ovary. No fluid in my abdomen, so that's good.

My pee-sticks are dark, dark, dark. I hope that things turn around during the weekend and start to lighten up. Otherwise I get to go back to "empty the uterus". I do not think that sounds like a particularly good time. Rechecking bloods on Monday.



Things are okay, I guess. I'm frankly sick of crying. Sick of tissues and snot. I've got a rotten cold, too, and I feel like I've been in an achy-headed stupor for a week now. Thick, sore, foggy.  I think I'll feel a lot better once this thing is actually out and my hormones can settle down. The moodiness, sore boobs, fatigue and intermittent nausea aren't half so fun when there's no prize at the end.

Today's beta

560. Progesterone, 23.

Since it's not going down in an orderly fashion, I'm going in tomorrow for a scan. Hopefully, we will get some reassurance that whatever cellular clusterfuck is happening in my pelvis is occurring in my uterus, not in my tubes.

I'm just so goddamned sad. I didn't really think that things would turn around with this beta. I mean, I may have had this very complicated scenario in my head involving a disappearing twin, but I didn't really believe it. I just. hoped.

CD 11, stims day 9

Not so great an appointment. My lining has somehow magically shrunk to 7.5. Where did it go? A few follicles around 14.

I don't understand why I'm getting the craptastic linings lately. I hate this. I hate the rollercoaster. I hate the endless appointments, waiting and waiting and waiting in the doctor's office (40 minutes this morning, an hour and a half on Monday) and then waiting and waiting at the lab, I hate waiting for the phone call to see what my lab results are, I hate slipping into work after unexplained disappearances and hoping that no one noticed, blood draw after blood draw, I hate this, I hate this.

sigh.

It's okay. I know I'm actually lucky, super lucky that this is a torture I can freely choose, and have chosen. I just wish it sucked less.

E2: 648
LH: 7.7 (elevated)

Fertilization Report

The good news: 8 were mature.

The bad news: only 4 fertilized, even with ICSI.

Heading for a three day transfer, if one makes it.

God this cycle sucks. Do I have to chose between being having OHSS and barely/not making it to transfer?

I'm sure my mood will come around but right now I just feel so goddamn sad. Sad that this all has to be so painful and difficult and scary and expensive. Scared of what will happen when we run out our last covered cycle and have to look at raising (read: borrowing) the money.

And of course the chances are that we won't have multiple high-quality embryos, which will greatly up the pressure to transfer more than one, and I've already decided that we can't do that, we just can't. But it will make it all the more painful knowing that our chances are farther reduced from last time, and will torment me all the more if it doesn't work. 3 day transfers are less successful (possibly because people who do 3 day transfers generally have fewer embryos to choose from, fewer eggs, lower quality).

I don't know. I'm sore and I'm sad and I just don't know what to do.

#$^&^%$

Warning: it's Self-Pity Wednesday

It is now day twenty fucking five of this cycle and no sign of ovulation.

CD5: E2 33
CD18: E2 48 (LH 4.6)
CD24: E2 36 (LH 8.2)

That's right. It went DOWN. I'm waiting for it hit 100 before we can be reasonably sure that I'm on the path to ovulation. I had been encouraged by the fact that it rose a little between CD 5-18. But now it's practically down to the start. Those E2 levels are right about normal day 3 values. This means we are weeks and weeks from any action.

I just want to get started again. I just want to move on. I am unreasonably furious. I hate this. June, July, August. The world is speeding along and I'm waiting and waiting just to get another chance. Time moves differently for those who are pregnant, for those who have children. Time is not my friend.

I'm tired, I'm bored, I'm sad, I'm so, so angry. I guess the anger should be a clue that on some level I feel entitled, that I deserve this. Really I know that I don't, any more than I deserve my good health or ludicrous wealth. All the grazillions of people who conceived since I started trying, they don't deserve it, but neither do I. There is no desert, just dumb, dumb luck. Fertility rains on the just and unjust. I've been on the right side of dumb luck for health and wealth, so naturally I feel entitled to be on the right side of luck for this too.

Huh. I just looked up the "just and unjust" quote. It's originally from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament, to wit:

...He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

I'm not Christian (nor well-read in such matters), so I wasn't familiar with the original source -- I knew it only from the Victorian jingle

The rain it raineth every day
Upon the just and unjust fella,
But more upon the just because
The unjust hath the just's umbrella.
(somewhat uncertainly attribute to Lord Bowen)

I'm pretty sure that the rain in the New Testament quote is meant to be a good thing, in a agricultural sort of way, whereas by Bowen's time it's clearly an urban annoyance.

There's some philosophical nutmeat there but durned if I can be bothered to pick it out.

In conclusion, I still don't like Wednesdays.

still in the game

Monday's beta (12:30pm): 45
Wednesday's beta (8am): 74
Doubling time: 67 hours

not great, but not a disaster. i'm still in the game.

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.

Emergency doctor's appointment yielded: ovaries are the size of potatoes, are touching, are so big that they're pushed up into my intestines which are in turn pressing on my diaphragm. This is probably the source of my stomach cramps, nausea, and breathing problems.

in good news, the uterine cramps are still occasional but are low-key, and the spotting has slowed right down.


No new beta until Sunday. In a word, ARRGH. anyone know where I can get a black-market quantitative beta?

7dp5dt: watch me not freak out

cramps. spotting. three fainter peesticks tonight. more dilute urine maybe? maybe? please?

did get blood drawn for a beta today, so we'll see.

also, have myself an extremely uncomfortable case of OHSS. can't stand up straight, can't inhale deeply, can't bend over, can't walk quickly. it'll be worth it, unless it isn't.

big presentation tomorrow morning for a project we've been working on for months. my brain could not be less present -- and oh yeah, i'll be curled over the podium. that won't look weird.

gahhhhhhhh.

gah gah gah

Just talked the RE's office. Dr. S is going to be away and between one thing and another my egg retrieval and transfer will likely not be until April.

I can't stand this. I mean, I will stand it, it's hardly the worst thing that's ever happened to anyone ever. But right now I feel like drumming my heels. I am sick, sick, sick of waiting, listening to time pass while everything goes on around me, bellies swell, children grow, the world is moving and I am. waiting.

I need a word that isn't infertility, I don't know if I'm infertile or not, I've barely been able to try. But there still needs to be a word for extended unsuccessful TTC. EUTTC, how's that?

The thing about EUTTC is that it is and isn't infertility. I've never been an infertile straight person so I can't say, but I don't feel the same grim resignation that I see on the faces of infertile straight couples in the RE's waiting room. They feel entitled to have their babies by joyful sexing, and cheated that they can't. And I don't feel that my body, or my husband's body, has let me down.

Nevertheless, I think that infertility and EUTTC have a lot in common, including this feeling of being frozen in time, outside the rhythm of reproduction, left out, left behind, looking through the window at the cozy fire in a house that isn't yours.