Let's Generate

July 11

2010-07-11T13:11:00.003-04:00

Julyeleventh. Today is the sixth anniversary of my first due date. Of the seven boys I conceived, only two were born to me. But they will all live with me forever in my heart.

I have no grave sites to visit, no true way to mark the passing of babes who never breathed. I heard the heartbeats of a couple. But I never saw any of their faces, only their ghostly white profiles lit up by ultrasound. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, ghosts to ghosts.

I am so grateful for the two who crossed to this side, who bless me daily with their smiles and tears, the sweet soft comfort of their living flesh.

The new baby is nine months old now, a great strapping boy with a heady giggle and a loud squall. He taught himself to sit up on Friday.

Turtle was at the table eating a peanut butter sandwich while the baby performed elaborate contortions on the floor. All of a sudden his exertions ended with him sitting happily on his hind legs.

Turtle beamed with sheer delight and pride. What a gentle, selfless, joyful nature he has.

Turtle," I said, "it's amazing that you and I were both here watching at the very moment the baby learned how to sit up. It's as if we were watching very patiently and saw the exact instant that a flower bloomed." I thought this would go over Turtle's head. Did he even understand about buds and blossoms? And could he stand to see so much sentimental excitement being lavished on his little brother for something as mundane as sitting?

"Mama," he said, "let's pretend to be flowers blooming!" He crouched on the floor with rounded back, then unfurled his arms like petals. I joined him in bloom and then we both just laid there for a minute, keeping the baby company, basking in the square of afternoon sunlight that shone on the floor.

I Am Typing This With One Hand...

2009-10-23T00:44:00.003-04:00

because the other is cradling my newborn as he nurses! For anyone left reading this much-neglected blog, I'm here to report that rarest of IF outcomes: a genuinely happy ending. Why pregnancies number 4 and 7 produced beautiful boys, while numbers 1, 2,3, 5, & 6 produced doomed 46XY fetuses, I will never know, barring new discoveries in reproductive medicine. For now "miracle" will have to serve as the most scientific explanation. Hallelujah!

Deliverance Not Delivery

2009-08-12T22:03:00.003-04:00

A quick update at the 30 week mark:

This pregnancy has continued to be highly stressful. At 27 weeks, I was told that my cervix was 80-90% effaced. My OBs debated an immediate steroid shot, then decided to await the results of a fetal fibronectin test. Oddly, when they reexamined me 24 hours later, my cervix was back to only 50% effaced. Thankfully, the FFn test came back negative, which gave me a nice two-week interval of confidence that I wouldn't go into labor.

Low and behold, at my check up this past week, I once again had a cervix that was 80-90% effaced and the baby was in pelvic station -1, quite a bit lower than you'd expect at only 29+ weeks. Lather, rinse, repeat: negative FFn test and mysterious return to 50% effacement one day later, baby's head up around rib cage again. The conclusion? I have an irritable uterus. Frankly, the old ute is not the only thing that's irritable at this point, but I shall strive to contain myself!

The real good news is that I am all but guaranteed to make it at least as far as 32 weeks, a key milestone and an exceptional degree of reassurance for this anxious recurrent miscarrier.

Meanwhile, the running hypothesis is that the uterine irritability was caused by dehydration secondary to fasting for glucose tolerance tests. Tests plural, because I failed the first one. But, this afternoon, the result came back negative for gestational diabetes. Icing on the cake I will now be allowed to eat! And, for the final frosted flower, my test for Group-B Strep (which was positive in my pregnancy with Turtle) also came back negative. So, it would seem that I am in the clear all round.

Deliverance...

Insomnia still going strong. Tonight the babe keeps kicking my bladder with the result that I have to pee every 1/2 hour or so. I don't want the baby out any time soon, I just want the time until 40 weeks to pass fast!

And on the topic of the little one on the outside: at just over three, Turtle is so adorable I want to swoon. Tonight he asked me, "why are teeth white?" We have been talking a lot about how the good things in food leave our bellies and go into our blood to bring our bodies what they need to grow and be strong. (The corollary, of course, is that the unusable parts of food turn into poo--an endlessly fascinating subject as we are deep into potty training.) I asked him if he could think of a drink that's white, and he came up with "milk!" So then we talked about how milk has calcium that goes into our teeth and makes them strong and white. This led to a discussion of bones and skeletons. I showed him my Webster's dictionary diagram of a skeleton and asked him what it looked like. I thought he might say "a person." But he said, "bones!" It really seemed like he got it. Then we took a break from heavy discussion because he wanted to sing, "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands." He is just such good company. I loved his babyhood--all the delicious, soft, warm, chubbinesss of it--but he is turning into such a fascinating little person. It's great fun to watch. And I may turn into a mommy blogger yet, just to capture these memories.

Night Owls

2009-06-12T04:24:00.003-04:00

Insomnia, 4 a.m.
Baby's kicking
Together we pace the night
Energy sapped from the day floods in
That cabinet can be set to rights
We crave the crunch of a green apple
There are those thank-you notes to write
Our hearts are pumping hard
And my eyes fill
This blessed night, this blessed life

Whew

2009-05-20T10:52:00.003-04:00

All OK with the FISH results. A huge relief. I simply did not know how we would face, much less make, any decisions and I'm so glad there are none to be made. It's not going to be easy but I am going to try my level best not to spend the rest of this pregnancy vigilantly patrolling for problems.

Tomorrow I go to my new doctor, Dr. Friend, for a check up, but as I can feel some movement I am feeling confident things are OK. Doing the amnio with Dr. Madame capped the decision to switch practitioners. When he finally swanned in after the endless twenty-five minutes with the tech, I said, "you know I'm feeling really apprehensive about whether doing the amnio is the right thing." He replied, "that's to be expected," turned on in his heel, and left. He returned a few minutes later with an ultrasound doc (who manned the machine during the actual procedure). While prepping me for the needle, he proceeded to enjoy professional banter with his fellow M.D., including some jokes about "vaginal rejuvenation." Yo, rejuvenate your mouth, dude. My mother now thinks he must have Asperger's...she has at least the first two letters right!

PISseD

2009-05-16T10:05:00.004-04:00

I think I have Post Infertility Stress Disorder. I cannot relax in this pregnancy at all. I feel I am constantly bracing for the next disastrous event, anxiety strafing across my consciousness at every corner. I have grown so used to the need to be stoic, to bend without breaking that I'm now chronically emotionally stooped.

If told that there's a 99.5% chance that the baby they're expecting will have a normal complement of chromosomes, most people would rest easy at night. I can't and neither can my husband. We felt compelled to do the amnio even though we felt sick at the thought of the (also vanishingly small) additional risk and unsure what we would do with the information. The first problem, of course, is that we're not expecting a new baby; we're expecting the next catastrophe.

I cried silently through the whole ultrasound. It took the expected 25 minutes and we were directed to notice every finger and toe, each chamber of the heart. The ultrasound tech seemed very rattled by my silent tears, so I gather this is not the standard response of women undergoing amnio. At the end, she gave us two souvenir pictures, the clearest shots we've yet seen of the fetus. My husband asked afterward, "do you think she was Pro-Life?" But I'm sure she was just following procedure.

We are the ones so desperate for life, for normal life, for the country-song happy ending "we'll have a boy for you, we'll have a girl for me." That outcome once seemed not a privilege, but just what would happen to any two people in love.

I cried in that ultrasound with grief for the thought that I could be hurting my precious baby, no matter the number of chromosomes it carries. Despite my firm pro-choice politics, I cried with true moral revulsion at the possibility of terminating a much-wanted life. And I cried at the thought of what it would mean to devote our limited time, energy, and resources to the difficulties of raising a child with special needs. I cried with grief that 6 seemingly endless years of infertility and loss mounted up so quickly in the end, making me old enough to merit this invasive procedure.

I went home and drank the recommended glass of wine and slept for hours. Wish I could sleep till Tuesday when the FISH results should arrive, till October, when the baby is due. Wish I could wake up finally from this nightmare of repeated miscarriage, happy and whole. Wish I felt no need to glance continually back over my shoulder while alternately squinting to scan the horizon ahead.

FISHing for Trouble?

2009-05-13T12:54:00.003-04:00

I seem to live life on the statistical edge. One half of one percent is the percentage of women who have recurrent miscarriage for which no explanation can be found. It's also the risk that the baby I'm currently carrying has Down's Syndrome. My nuchal results were great, but the news has gotten progressively worse. My odds are now 1/190, worse than my age-related risk of 1/287. The odds of miscarriage due to having an amnio are 1/400. What's a five-time miscarrier to do?

I feel absolutely whipsawed by this latest twist of events. What are the chances that fate could be so cruel as to let me hold a pregnancy with a chromosomally abnormal fetus after I've lost FIVE chromosomally normal ones? You might think the odds are slim. But given the improbable bad luck I've already experienced, I find little comfort there.

I'm currently scheduled for an amnio on Friday, but I'm scared and ambivalent. I just don't know how much more I can take...Suffice it to say that this is doing nothing for my efforts to get back into a work writing routine. Somebody stop the bus. I want to get off.

Good Gossip

2009-05-06T19:20:00.002-04:00

Turns out that finding a birth practitioner is a lot like looking for a suitable life partner: very hard to find the right fit.

I interviewed a midwife and she was not bad. I found her very down to earth and I liked how reassuring she was about the prospects for my next birth. Turtle came relatively quickly and easily and she thought that a second delivery would be the same only more so. On the other hand, she took multiple phone calls during our half hour interview, then trotted me out the door just on the dot of 30 minutes. Plus, during one of those calls, she seemed to be blaming a new mother a bit for her trouble with nursing. So I left thinking, yeah, she's someone I could work with. But I wasn't in love.

Next I went to meet a woman OB in an all-women practice. We'll call her Doctor Friend because I felt right away that under different circumstances she could be a friend. She won me over right away by snorting in agreement when I said that Zofran really didn't seem to help me. Everyone else has touted it as a sure cure, but she was like, "look, that was developed for chemo. We don't know that much about pregnancy nausea, but there's no reason to think it works exactly them same way as the chemo-induced kind." She said she'd never seen anyone with true hyperemesis helped by Zofran. I just felt vindicated. Everyone else made me feel like an ingrate for not appreciating the wonder drug. There were lots of other good moments and Dr. Friend delivers at the hospital with the lowest C-section rate in the city. So I'm sold.

I did feel a little bit bad about dumping Dr. "I refer to women as 'Pregnant Ladies' and address them as 'Madame.'" But that was before he scared the daylights out of me for no reason, insisting that my anatomy-scan results merited an amnio when in fact the hospital geneticist assured me that there was absolutely no cause for concern. So that'll be it for him, though I still haven't placed the call...

I am eating everything now and going off the pump was no problem. Still very tired, but I guess that's what you get for taking to bed for two months.

Ciao!

Damned Mobs of Scribbling Women

2009-04-29T15:36:00.003-04:00

Addiction or Adaptation? There's been a lot in the news lately about the "problem" of mothers who spend too much time on line, who have developed what the DSMV is apparently going to call internet addiction. Rachel Mosteller wrote about it on parentingdotcom and the New York times picked up the story.

I do know what they mean. There have certainly been times when I've surfed the web rather than getting down to work. There have indeed been occasions when I've wondered where the hours went. On the other hand, I tend to think I might well have spent quite a few of those hours crying into my shoes if not for the existence of the internet and its ready-made community of women going through just what I was going through at just the same time.

Mosteller quotes experts who advise that one should chart: "what was going on each time you decided to sit down at the computer. Was it right after a fight with your husband? Were you bored? By figuring out the triggers that send you seeking refuge online…you can come up with alternative activities that help you deal." I seriously wonder if there is an activity that could better have "helped me deal" with infertility and loss than writing, reading, and commenting on blogs. I have just one real-life friend who has gone through the level of difficulties I have. We're very close, but frankly, sometimes we like to take a break from ruminating on reproduction and remember the aspects of our friendship that first brought us together. I joined an in-person grief support group for those with pregnancy loss at one point and it was very helpful. But, none of our experiences were as closely matched as the self-selecting community of bloggers. For one thing, none of them went on, as I did, to cap primary infertility with secondary infertility.

Here in the online world, the support is infinitely customizable and instantly available. Primary infertiles can skip the whining of secondaries like myself when it gets to be too much. Those who would give anything just to conceive don't have to read the miscarriage memos. Having a black day? Log on. Feeling sunny? Skip it. There is a flexibility and immediacy to online contact that can't be matched in the real world.

People have been complaining that "America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women" since Hawthorne. But I for one am proud to be a cyberscribbler. I don't plan to give it up--especially not at the suggestion of scolds who are themselves posting their warnings on line!

Melissa Ford Has 2,000 Readers Per Day

2009-04-27T11:25:00.003-04:00

I am currently averaging about seven readers per day. Many of them were sent my way by Melissa and her great "Lost and Found and Connections Abound" column. The day Melissa featured my blog in LFCA was tremendous. I received an outpouring of support at a very low moment (ultimately false report of diminished ovarian reserve after my 4th miscarriage). I could not believe that she even knew Let's Generate existed. So this is a post to say thank you to Melissa and to encourage all seven of my current readers to check out her forthcoming book, *Navigating the Land of If*. If infertility is one of the world's rockiest emotional coastlines, Melissa has been a lighthouse for many of us.

Now, as to my seven readers, thank you all from the bottom of my heart. From new friends like Hillary to old ones like Thalia, the support of the internet IF community has made a crucial difference to me for 6 years now. (Not that I've blogged that long, but I've been lurking since 2003!) To hear an update from a long-lost friend like Sonya is just fabulous. So you *and* Tertia can recommend #7?! I find this very encouraging. Meanwhile, Bugs is a rock star and I can't believe she sometimes stops by my shop.

To all the people who find me by googling for info on thyroid disease and miscarriage, I can only say that I am humbled to know how many of us are out there. I am now, two miscarriages after the birth of Turtle, a lot less cocky about having solved my infertility puzzle than I was in 2006. But adequate thyroid supplementation certainly can't hurt.

I am to start weaning off the Reglan pump (the anti-nausea meds) today and I am a little bit nervous. Only over the weekend did my complexion finally lose the green cast I've been sporting for months. But, hopefully I'm ready and it will go well.

No regular doctor's appointment this week, but I am going to consult a midwife and another OB. The fabulous OB I used with Turtle has quit practicing OB to focus on Gyn and the new guy is not my cup of tea. (Among other things, he calls me only "Madam"-- like it would be so hard to read my name off the chart.) Back when I couldn't even swallow tea I wasn't in shape to be choosy about my practitioner, but now I'm thinking that maybe I should find someone I'd actually want to deliver with! Anyway, next week is the bog 16-week scan. I will keep you posted.

Well, hello there

2009-04-23T16:29:00.003-04:00

Hi. I'm sorry I've been such a terrible blogger. What can I say? Round-the-clock puking does tend to sap the will to live, let alone the urge to write.

But. I am 14 weeks pregnant! We still have a live fetus. And of my seven (seven?!) pregnancies to date, only one prior one--the successful one-- made it to the second trimester. So I am cautiously optimistic--audaciously hopeful--that this pregnancy could be the real deal.

I have very little to report, having just spent two straight months puking in bed. I can tell you that the weather from the window was not good in those months. There were thunder storms in March. And lightening made me puke so I was extra miserable.

Also, there are very few novels out there that include realistic characters and thematic depth, yet convey an upbeat outlook. People either gave me Misery Lit like Rohinton Mistry's A FIne Balance or Harlequin romances. For a long time there was nothing I could eat and nothing I wanted to read. At a low point, I resorted to Laura Ingalls Wilder, *The Long WInter*. That played a big part in getting me through, actually.

In other news, I can say that my body appears to have gotten the memo bout the second trimester and I am feeling much better. It feels miraculous just to sit in the living room; going outside is a wonder. I took to my bed in the winter and lo, spring has sprung.

So, I am rusty, so rusty at posting. And, as I may have mentioned, writing non-fiction is key to my day job (from which I took emergency leave). So I suppose it's good to face my inarticulateness here on the old blog. But sheesh. My very brain feels arthritic.

Well, maybe I will write here more frequently if only to try to limber up. I am still on the anti-nausea meds, but off the home iv. Hope that when I am med free and up to 16 weeks the gears will start to turn again. Anyway, thanks much to the few still hanging in there with me.

Twelve Weeks

2009-04-10T10:33:00.002-04:00

sorry for the long silence. Hyperemesis has made posting impossible. But. I am still pregnant! I've only made it this far once before- and that was with Turtle. So I am very hopeful. There will be more silence. A home iv for hydration means I don't get use of my right hand ( except like today between insertions). But I will update when I can.

Drifting

2009-03-11T13:27:00.001-04:00

I am adrift on a sea of nausea in a rudderless oarless boat. But I am not alone. There is another passenger aboard

Just So

2009-03-02T09:46:00.003-05:00

I feel too tired and overwhelmed for eloquence or style. We had a scare yesterday and my dear Dr. Cookie Pie came in to see me on a Sunday. Not only was the scare a false alarm, but we had a good strong heartbeat in an embie measuring 6 weeks, 3 days, exactly to dates. Of my 5 prior losses, 2 had heartbeats at this stage, so I am by no means out of the woods. But guess what, my 1 live birth had a heartbeat at this stage...

I am overwhelmed by hope and fear. And soo tired. All this is hard on Turtle; I am sleeping about 13-14 hours a day. He seems so puzzled that I keep falling asleep again just when he wants to play. And vomiting is of course very upsetting to watch. But if we're home alone together it seems worse to lock him out. So there he is by my side, querying after each retch, "what's that Mommy, what's that?" He summed the whole thing up well when he said, "Yucko, Mama!"

I finally decided to level with him. I told him, "Mommy's body is working very hard to make a baby. Babies are very hard to make, and it might work or it might not. We are going to have to wait a long time to see. But right now my body is trying and that's why I'm so tired and sick." It seemed pretty heavy stuff for a non-yet-three year old. But he actually looked very relieved to get the information. Like, "I *knew* something was going on, thank God someone finally told me." A couple of minutes later he said, confidently yet clearly also anxiously, "my body can't make a baby." And I said, "No, your body can't make a baby, you don't have to worry. Daddy's body can't make a baby. Only mommies' bodies can make babies." He nodded as if to say, "Just, so" and went about his business building a block park to surround his train tracks.

Long Live Greek Yogurt with Honey

2009-02-25T18:02:00.002-05:00

I am pretty much never going to stop missing Get-Up Grrl. I still cannot believe she hasn't come roaring back from anonymity with a book contract, but what are you going to do? Her humor got so many of us through dark days, but perhaps her single best piece of advice was more basic: get yourself some Fayeh yogurt. Savor the honey on your tongue. Good for what ails you. Hunger, heartache, or stomach ache. If you have all-day morning sickness (yes I am still pregnant, it would seem) you might want to stock up. Passing on that there piece of advice is my good deed for the day... now I am going to dance with Turtle (but I will *not* twirl or fall down).

A Mother's Eyes

2009-02-21T08:48:00.009-05:00

In some ways, my husband has great vision. Whenever we're in the car, he keeps up a constant running commentary on everything he sees. He'll glance casually out the window and say, "see that line of spray paint? That means they're going to add new electric lines there and that means they're going to build there and given the size of those sewers it's definitely going to be multi-family housing and..." Even if I take the time to look up from my book and peer out intently, I can never so much as glimpse what he's talking about. The man has never had a proper nom de blog and he deserves one. I hereby name him Hawkeye.

Hawkeye, however, cannot really see color. Oh, he's not color blind in the technical sense, only in the practical one. When he dresses Turtle, he sees nothing wrong with matching the lime green shirt with the forest green pants. "How can green not match green?" he'll demand indignantly. To me it's like listening to someone hit a flat when singing the national anthem: too cringe-inducing for words.

Take another example. Once on a long road trip we passed a huge billboard for a china outlet right off the highway. They carried our brand and we'd just broken two plates, so I badgered Hawkeye till he turned around and took the exit. Sure enough, the warehouse had our pattern prominently displayed on a front table. But I immediately realized that there was something off about the colors in the glaze. They weren't so much the beautiful cobalt of my dish set as some kind of muddied off-denim blue. "Never mind," I said, "these are clearly seconds." My husband stifled a sigh at being dragged off route for nothing and reasonably pointed to the sign that said, "all china first quality."

I kept arguing with him about the ineffable color of cobalt until he fetched a salesperson who agreed with him that the dishes on display were the genuine article and that I was either crazy or seeing things or both. I wandered the rest of the store in frustration until by chance, on a completely different display, I saw a vase in the same pattern as our china with our blue glaze, the right blue glaze, and I bore it over to them in triumph. With that, the salesperson agreed to bring out every plate she had from the back room and we went through them one by one. Half way through a pile of 30 plates, we found a single one to match my cobalt.

When we turned the plates over, Hawkeye realized that the logos on the plates were subtly different (a point I myself would never have noticed). The muddy denim plates had the logo written in slightly italicized font. In fact, the objectionable plates turned out to be slight update on my older--far superior--version of the pattern. So we bought the last old-style plate they had in stock. And even though I was still one plate shy of a dozen I crowed to Hawkeye for the rest of the trip about my incredibly refined color vision.

I have never known to what possible end nature could have endowed me and my foremothers with this extraordinary gift of color perception. To spot the ripest berries on the Savannah? But now I know.

The whole point of acute color vision is to allow me to engage in minute scrutiny of my toilet paper, scanning for any trace of blood each and every time I wipe. In the absence of any other scrap of information about the state of this pregnancy (all symptoms having vanished) I am left screening shreds of toilet tissue for hints of embryonic tissue. Thanks to my UTI (yes I have another one) I have at least one opportunity per hour for this joyless performance. So far, we're all clean. But it's gonna be a long 10 days...unless it all ends shortly.

For now, if you're looking for me, you'll know where to find me: crouched over in the bathroom, swiping, squinting, praying.

Trying to Keep from Cracking

2009-02-20T15:16:00.005-05:00

Well, I went in to get wanded this morning and the news is decidely mixed. I am 5 weeks 1 day today. There was a visible amniotic sac measuring 4 weeks 5 days and a yolk sac measuring 5 weeks 2 days. Dr. Cookie Pie said the yolk sac had a "hat" ( a tiny white line on the border that indicated early growth of the fetal pole) and that such a line does not develop before 5 weeks 2 days. She said that the am sac measurement was within the margin of error and that I just should not worry. But I feel like I am going to crack from anxiety. I am sitting here pecking at my mobile device and trying not to cry. I just don't know how to keep enduring these losses. Worst of all, I can't go in again until 3/3 because she is away next Friday and Monday. So next scan will be at 6 weeks 5 days (unless I start to bleed first).

Half-Expecting

2009-02-17T18:33:00.002-05:00

Don't you think that would be a great new name for my blog? As in, I'm on my 3rd pregnancy in the span of 9 months and I still half-expect the arrival of a live baby? Of course, I also half-expect to wake up 6 inches taller and ten pounds thinner. Regular pregnant ladies get to say, "I'm expecting." But we recurrent miscarriers daren't do more than half-expect.

Beta was 300-somethingish. Can't even remember, but double what it was with the blighted ovum at the same gestational date. V. sore boobs, crazy fatigue, no sick yet (knock would, cross fingers, toss salt, etc.). So um, 1st ultrasound to look for sac is Friday and I think I'm just too stupified with fatigue to write anything else.

Thank you for the comments, my loyal old friends on the internet. I go back and forth on whether to tell the world at large about each new pregnancy. Last time I told everyone who so much as said hello to me, but this time, it's just you Nets. SO *thanks* for the support and good wishes.

Seven

2009-02-12T16:40:00.002-05:00

You guessed it. I'm back on the blog with number seven on board. In an unusual display of self control, I waited until today, the actual day my period is due, to test. Reward: a nice dark pink second line. By yesterday, I was pretty confident of the facts and cocky enough to enter the day of my last LMP into the handy due-date calculator at Bby Ctr. They actually provide the result by saying "your baby will be born on..." WILL BE BORN? Can I sue them for malpractice if/when this one goes south?

Anyway, feeling good, feeling hopeful. Irrationally exuberant one might say. I blame the hormones--for which I also blame the decision to place a partially open bottle of Fizzy Lizzy into a purse full of library books on the way to the doctor's this afternoon.

Mostly feeling pretty proud of myself for having the sheer guts to try this again. Lucky # 7 (yes, I'm hoping to steal a page from Tertia's book) would be due just before my 37th birthday. Sure would be nice...

Will post Beta when I get it. Cheers!

Snowy Day

2009-01-19T13:52:00.004-05:00

You can't always get what you want, and if you try sometimes, you just might find, you don't need what you get. In my head, the perfect snowy day involves snowballs, snowmen, sledding, snow angels, snow shoveling, and maybe after all that some hot chocolate for the little ones. In reality, my perfect snowy day involves a brief brisk walk in the sunshine, followed by a nap for Turtle, a "nap" for mommy and daddy, then a nap for daddy, and then blogging,coffee, and a brownie for mommmy.

I thought I wanted a puppy, but what I really want is a baby. And it turns out that a yipping, nipping, pissing, pooping machine that needs clean-up baths three times a day and walks ten times a day does not begin to fill the baby-shaped hole in my heart. So the puppy, through no fault of her own, has been sent off to foster care at my parents' house (bless their hearts). I've been shocked by the level of resentment/indifference I wound up aiming at the dog. I never understood, until now, the expression "harden you heart." Even strangers on the street melted into puddles at the sight of the puppy. But while I could observe her little doggie merits clinically, I could *not* expereience them emotionally. I felt no rush of nurturing feeling whatsoever. Instead, I felt a regular desire to throttle her.

My negative reaction to the OMD shocked me all the more because I experienced every second of Turtle's infancy as sheer magic. I discovered myself to be remarkably maternal, a delightful surprise given that back before I knew how hard it would be to have a baby, I had thought that I didn't really want one all that much. Yes, I was covered at one time or another in every bodily effluvium known to womankind. Yes I nursed for a cumulative eight hours a day around the clock. Yes my nipples cracked and bled and yes I thought my body would shoot clear to the ceiling from the pain. But my God, I was so grateful to feel it all, after the numbing sorrow of infertility. I just walked around all day with Turtle snugged to my chest in a kind of dreamy blissful stupor. In fact, a friend told me the other day that she and all my other friends found me nauseating in all my dewy joy and that they came to a collective agreement to put up with me only because they knew how hard the road to motherhood had been. So when I told her I was sending away the OMD, she laughed and said, Anne, *finally* you're getting your taste of post-partum (post-canum?!) depression!

All of this is to say, that we are still actively trying for a second child the old-fashioned way. (My repeat FSH levels were an age-appropriate 9.9. Not fab, but definitely not catastrophic either.) But instead of feeling crushed by my latest negative pregnancy test this week, I felt strangely peaceful. Turtle is so adorable, such a big boy. I have a great flexible job*, good childcare, and a marriage making a comeback from parent-shock on the strength of a rock-solid foundation. I want a second kid, I think. But I'm prepared to be philosophical if I don't get what I think I want.

*Tomorrow, for example, I won't be working, but rather cheering wildly at the TV round 11:30 a.m...

Everything or Nothing

2008-12-12T20:49:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posts. I have not been able to get a moment to myself. We are currently stalled out waiting for the arrival of our brand new OMD, who missed her flight and is now not arriving until 10:30 PM. Who/ what is OMD, you ask? That would be Soper's coinage from way back: Obligatory Miscarriage Dog. OMD, you know the pet you get in order to have a sentient object on which to dump all your unfulfilled maternal longings. The one you buy toys and cute sweaters for and dare anyone to call a mama's pup. I actually signed up with OMD's breeder last August after my fourth miscarriage. Turns out to have been a prescient move, since she's now arriving just in time to console me on my fifth.

Did I just say fifth? They're mounting up so fast now. I got the dread call from Dr. Cookie Pie today. They weren't able to culture any cells for analysis, so we'll never know whether my latest loss is related to my prior ones or is a random chromosomal one. But all signs point to it having been chromosomal, your garden variety blighted ovum. The million dollar question is: was this a random event, sort of thing that could happen to anybody? Or is this in fact more circumstantial evidence in the mounting case for pre-mature menopause? This latest loss could mean everything or nothing.

New day three testing as soon as practical. I'm now enjoying the exclusive no-hope edition of the fabled two week wait. Glad to have OMD arriving any minute now.

I'm OK

2008-11-30T13:09:00.003-05:00

I'm OK. More OK than I would have thought. Much more OK than I was after last summer's loss[es]. Turtle sang "Happy Birthday" to me on my birthday, and it was truly the most wonderful sound on earth.

I am humbled to realize how much of my emotional response is hormonally mediated. I had an easy pregnancy and an easy miscarriage and I simply don't feel tragic. I feel kind of bemused.

I don't know where we go from here. Dr. Cookie Pie prescribes: "soul searching." We are trying to do cytology on the bit of tissue I manged to collect and we are planning to do day 3 blood work next month (which could be difficult over the holidays...).

I am not sure how far I am willing to go in the pursuit of a second child...the ethical questions swirling around all non-standard options are so complex, the risks, financial, emotional, physical are so great. I think I need a break from thinking about all this... Today's NYT's magazine cover story and all the attendant comments were thought provoking to the point of being headache inducing!

Easy Come Easy Go

2008-11-22T13:21:00.001-05:00

I am currently miscarrying. My first spontaneous miscarriage, no D & C needed. Unfortunately, this is most likely chromosomal and is entirely consistent with the lousy FSH reading. I feel bleak. And bloody...

No News Is Good News

2008-11-18T18:20:00.002-05:00

Hi. Five weeks here and to all appearances still pregnant. I have in the last week weathered a bout of flue AND a UTI. I did not think I needed antibiotics for the flue-ish thing, but had this persistent sore throat that wouldn't quit. Upside # 1 to the UTI is that I scored some antibiotics that seem to be kicking the throat thing as well. Upside # 2 to the UTI is that I've only had one once before during pregnancy--and that was the successful one with Turtle. So I am choosing to see this as my lucky UTI, not so much a bladder infection as a benediction. Also, I an not queasy yet, whereas I was one day pre-vomit at this stage last time. I have a theory on this, but I'm not going to jinx it by telling at this point!

Many thanks for the well wishes. I am not going in to get wanded until next Wednesday, one day before Thanksgiving AND my birthday. Trying not to make anything of the timing...I will update.

The Audacity of Hope

2008-11-12T20:18:00.004-05:00

A quick update. First of all, thank you very much for your comments. It means the world to me to have this support. I quite honestly do not think I could face doing this again without knowing than an online community of fabulous women with more than their share of fertility awareness has my back! Also, when I took Blogger up on their seemingly innocent offer to upgrade my templates, I lost my site meter, so I now have NO idea who or how many people are reading, apart from the evidence of the comments. (I did make a teensey ineffectual effort to address the situation by visiting site meter. But they had a long log-in process with lots of questions and passcodes and email address queries. And since I first set up the dang thing years on years ago, my email has changed, I don't remember any of my old passcodes etc., the whole thing seemed like more than I could handle and I gave up.) I'm driving the old blog without headlights.

Not the update you were looking for, eh?

Well, I am really only officially pregnant as of today. Last week on cycle day 25, something like nine days post-ovulation (I *think*) I saw a big red spot on the toilet paper and thought--oh no, foreshortened cycles, classic sign of perimenopause. But, because my hope addict* rules the roost, I also started thinking about how the boobs were sore, I felt a little dizzy, there'd been that nose bleed and, well, you know the drill. So I took a pee-stick test. And because, after years of practice at squinting at these things, I've now developed near x-ray vision, I was able to see the ever so faint second pink line. I went over to Dr. Cookie Pie's stat, where a blood draw revealed that my HCG level was 14. Dr Google quickly confirmed that anything under 5 was not pregnant, anything over 25 was pregnant, and a number like 14 was, well, interesting. But, being the eternal optimist I went with "the opposite of not pregnant is--pregnant!!" And duly reported the news here.

I spent the weekend on progesterone supplements and tried to ignore the very occasional light red spotting.

I then waited until yesterday to do another blood draw, the first official day of my "missed period." And, the office took their sweet time getting back to me, but, I learned this morning that my HCG is now an entirely respectable 123. So. I am now, as of today, 4 weeks pregnant. Which, if you think about it is insane. I've already logged nearly a week of anxiety and yet I am still only ever so barely pregnant. You can see how a girl might turn to the internet for support, a stiff drink being out of the question...

I have to say, I was absurdly pleased to see that faint pink line. I said to my husband, "you know, the silver lining to all these miscarriages, is getting to experience the joy of the positive pee-stick so many extra times." Seriously, I know I really am getting warped. But. I am irrationally hopeful. And I'm carrying around that foul little peestick in my purse like some kind of good luck token. At least it proves I still can get pregnant, lousy FSH to the contrary. I'm still in the game...

*With a tip of the pee-stick to the ever fabulous Tertia...

What a Wonderful World

2008-11-06T16:00:00.003-05:00

On the micro level, I am dreamily amazed to report that today, three weeks to the day before my 36th birthday, while waiting to repeat the day-3 bloodwork that caused me so much anguish, I have discovered that I am pregnant once again.

On the macro level, I am thrilled to have just lived through one of the most important events in U.S. history, the election of our first black president, a man who, as a constitutional scholar, fully understands the enormity of that accomplishment as well as his obligation to undo the widespread damage of the Bush-Cheney years.

Very sleepy, very happy, not yet pukey...

Thank you

2008-10-28T22:19:00.000-04:00

I am so moved by all your support, practical and otherwise. Thank you. Thank you.

Big Boy/ Little Boy

2008-10-28T21:48:00.006-04:00

A couple of months ago, very shortly after he began speaking in sentences, Turtle became interested in the idea of privacy. Where he learned the term I'm not sure, as his Dad and I seldom if ever use the word. It may be that his babysitter is more modest than we are. In any event, his conception of privacy delightfully betrayed the two-year old's basic belief that there is no division between mommy and me. "Go away, daddy," he'd order, "I need privacy with Mommy."

Tonight, for the first time, he asked for privacy for himself. I was giving him a bath and he began to splash. "Stop that," I said, firmly but calmly. "Sorry, Mommy!" he yelped almost before I could get the words out. We had just made it through a block-throwing incident, and he knew, I thought, that he'd better not push things. But we'd hardly resumed our boat race when he began to splash again. "I know it's fun to splash," I said, "but it's only fun for the one in the tub, the one who's already wet. Mommy's wearing clothes and she wants to stay dry." "Sorry, Mommy," he said. Then he thought for a moment.

"Mommy, I want privacy," he said. "Really?" I asked, shocked at this new development. "Mommy go away," he clarified. "OK," I said, looking for a compromise that would not involve leaving him unattended in a good 6 or 8 inches of water, "I'll turn around and I won't look again until you say I can." The boat race resumed along with the splashing.

And in that instant, I saw all the other separations he'll demand over the years, the privacy he'll want for illicit pleasures so much more dangerous than a simple splash in the bath. How will I protect him from himself, and from me, from my demands for perfection? "I can hear you splashing," I told him.

Later, on the way to bed, in his uncanny two-year-old way, he began to take stock of his own maturation. "Mommy, I no have a crib," he announced. "That's right I said. Can you tell me who has it now?" Not to be distracted, he repeated, "Daddy took da crib." We'd given it away as a hand-me-down fully four months ago and I was surprised to have him bring it up. "That's right," I said, "and now a new little baby sleeps in it, right? It was too small for you." I felt good about teaching him empathy, the importance of giving to others. "I climb out and Daddy took it away," he insisted with unflinching accuracy. In fact, Daddy did confiscate the crib for good one day about a month after the big-boy-bed had been introduced, a day when the nap-time stall tactic of requesting transfer from bed to crib devolved into the nap-strike tactic of climbing out of the crib.

"Well," I said, opting for perfect honesty with this small exacting boy, "it is true that Daddy took the crib away when you climbed out of it. That was a dangerous thing to do and you could have gotten hurt. But it was time to give the crib away anyway. We didn't give it away because you climbed out. We gave it away because it was too small for you. You were so big you had to scrunch your legs up inside it. You didn't need it any more and until we gave it to the new little baby, he had no place at all to sleep." I nattered on about all the space for playing we'd opened up in his room. He launched into a scientific catalog of all the changes in his room since his infancy. "No changing table, Mommy. That's a dresser." "Man brought the bed." "Daddy took my shelf." Wow, such loss, such longing, such nostalgia and such clear memories at two.

I wanted to comfort him in the face of all this change. I said, "let's get Freddie." You've had Freddie since you were a tiny little baby," I said as he nuzzled his favorite stuffed dog. "You've always loved Freddie." But he was on to me. "Mommy, Freddie no bark," he said. "Freddie no make a noise," he said pressing futilely at the electronic insert that used to making a barking sound when pressed. "Wow," I said, "Freddie did used to bark, and you have a really good memory. You remember what he sounded like when he barked, right?" "Yes," he said, sounding miserable, already learning the lesson that you can't go home again, not even when you're two and rocking in your mother's arms.

"Well, and you have blankie, right?" I asked, suddenly grateful for the continued presence of the disgraceful unraveling rag I used to swaddle him in. "Do you remember how I used to wrap you up in blankie?" I asked him. By the end I had taken to wrapping him loosely toga-style around his chest, just to give him the suggestion of a swaddle. He tensed and didn't answer me. "Should we wrap you up in blankie, tonight?" I asked him. "No!" he declared. "OK," I said, and we finished our book. Then I lay him down on his big-boy bed and wrapped him toga-style in his blankie. The silly phrases I used to repeat like a mantra and haven't used in a year came back to me: "I'm gonna wrap you up in blankie, in blankie, blankie, blankie. Blankie makes you feel totally safe, totally, secure. I love you son, oh yes I do, I love you to bitsy bitsy bits." He greeted the old game with gales of giggles. And then, with more rocking and singing, he slowly drifted into sleep.

Failure

2008-10-21T14:53:00.004-04:00

I am one of the youngest looking 35-year olds you'll ever see, five feet tall with a cute round face and big baby eyes. I see the signs of my own aging clearly in my face, the ever deepening under-eye shadows that are the curse of the sallow-skinned, the frown-lined brow calling out for Botox. But apparently what everyone else sees when they look at me me is a totally exhausted and very grumpy sixteen-year old inexplicably decked out in Eileen Fisher.

I was carded last week. When I laughed and told the waiter I was old enough to be highly flattered, he shrugged only half apologetically and said, "listen we have to card anyone under 30." When I told him I'll be 36 next month, he looked genuinely flabbergasted.

As a working woman, I have mostly found my exaggerated youthfulness to be a serious annoyance. Whatever one may say about the cult of youth in this country, the fact remains that age equates with experience and competence for most people. Look young and they may proposition you at the corner bar, but they won't promote you to the corner office.

With an outer appearance that makes everyone assume I'm much younger than I am, I was totally unprepared to be given news so terrible it has taken my breath away. Flattened me bodily. I appear to have entered perimenopause at the age of 35.

From the beginning of my fertility struggles, back in 2003 at the tender age of 30, I have always had one thing on my side. "Don't worry, you're still so young," everyone told me. And so my secret fear has been losing the one straight arrow in my quiver, the ability to conceive with relative ease and to produce genetically sound embryos. As an archer, I've been working with a broken bow, a body almost unable to shoot straight and send a baby out into the world. Four dead embryos. Four missed miscarriages. One live birth. Hitting the target that one lucky time meant everything, of course. It meant a child. And it meant that if I could only manage the strength of arm, if I could only muster the will to try again, I could seize another arrow from the quiver and I might, just might, score the pot shot that would bring another child. Now I have only broken sticks and shreds of feathers, dreams in dust.

When I didn't conceive last month, I went to Dr. Cookie Pie and said: "Let's do day three blood work." She said, "Are you kidding me? You're absolutely fine." I said, "I'm an information junkie. I'm about to turn 36. Let's just do it and see where we stand." I'd had a couple, that is two, episodes of night sweats over the last 4 months, and it had given me a little nagging worry. I wanted to reassure myself. And I thought that if my FSH had edged over 9, it might be time to think about IVF, to freeze some embryos from 35-year-old eggs, to give myself a fighting chance to carry to term with a viable embryo.

To my utter shock and grief, my FSH cam back at 15.5. Cookie Pie, always the optimist observed that my LH was 4.5 (when it would typically also be elevated with elevated FSH) and insisted that it must be a lab error. They ran it again and the numbers came back 16.5 and 5. They ran them yet again, and they came back 17.8 and 6. Cookie Pie will not believe it and says we'll try again next month with a different lab. Maybe it is a false alarm. But I feel devastated. These are the numbers of premature ovarian failure, numbers so bad no IVF clinic would even touch me.

The first thing I did, after hanging up the phone with Dr. Cookie Pie, was consult Dr. Google about premature menopause, whence I quickly discovered that it's associated with, you guessed it, hypothyroidism. And that information makes me feel enraged. Because no one, no one, not one person ever mentioned this fact to me. No one ever said, you had better try to conceive again the very instant you give birth cause your days are numbered. On the contrary, everyone spouted platitudes about primed pumps. Somehow, in all my googling on Hashimoto's, I never came across that little factoid. Or maybe I believed the hype about how I'm actually 16.

I am soo sad I am moving through my days in an utter fog. Tears come unbidden whenever I let my mind wander, and so I mostly try to pretend this is happening to someone else. I've told no one but my husband and my mother, but I have the oddest sensation walking down the street that everyone can sense I'm barren, that I'm a walking black hole.

Only here, in the safe virtual world of my fellow infertiles on the internet, can I stand to take this news out and run my fingers lightly over it. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your comments last week. It means so much to know I am not utterly alone at a time when I feel so forsaken.

FSH.
Further Surprise of Hashimoto's.
Fantastically Shitty Hormones.
Failed Second-child Hopes.
Fucking Sorry History.

Insult to Injury

2008-10-14T15:01:00.005-04:00

When I was a primary infertile, a big part of my pain stemmed from a feeling of arrested development, that there was a key life stage that I was ready, willing, but inexplicably unable to enter. Watching all the fertile folk rolling by me as I trudged the path to parenthood was so dispiriting.

I always thought that the pain of secondary infertility could be no where near as severe. And in the beginning, it really wasn't. But, as the months go by and Turtle grows bigger and bigger while the cradle stays empty, the pain begins to deepen. And what I mostly feel is that I am so worn down and weary now.

It's like the first time you go for a run and you really overdo it and come home sore, you think--wow that was tough. But actually, you don't know the half of it. Because the moment you're really going to face a world of pain is on day two, when you hit the trail again with muscles already worn down from the first run. Oh, at first you'll think, this is great. It feels *soo* good to get moving again, to stretch out all the muscles that tightened over night. But a few miles out you'll realize that you've pushed yourself beyond endurance. It's then that you want to curl up on the side of the trail and die a peaceful death under a drift of brown leaves. And if, somehow, you will yourself to live, you then have to face the fact that only putting one foot in front of the other can ever bring you home again.

Right now, a summer chemical pregnancy (Maria and the Girls both scored, as it turned out...) followed by two months of disappointing negatives has me clutching my side and kicking at leaves...

Emotional Immunities

2008-07-31T17:30:00.005-04:00

If I confess that I'm achingly homesick for the little boy asleep in the next room, will you tell me to sit up straight and think of the children in Sudan, or Zimbabwe, (or in Newark NJ, for that matter)? That's about the response that Judith Warner got when she devoted an entire NYT column to the theme of missing her girls at camp. And I'm sure that Judith and I deserve the scorn.

The thing is this. My husband and I leave tomorrow morning for a romantic weekend for two. (The hotel describes our room as a "bridal suite." Ahem. Not a lot that's bridal about yours truly, the lady who's been around the block and up the duff 5 times now. But I digress.) We have never left Turtle overnight before and I'm already feeling bereft. Stomach tied in knots, chest-heaving sighs, bereft.

I know that billions have done this before me. I know that strong marriages make strong families. I know that we'll have a a great time lounging by the water. I know that I should have better manners than to complain about such a problem in public in the blogosphere. But there you have it. I miss Turtle terribly and we haven't even left yet.

In fact, I am feeling rather resentful of my parents for tricking me into letting them take away my child. I literally just got into a "discussion" with my mother over how early they'll promise to get him back on Sunday. If you knew how utterly unsentimental about children I am in general, how ambivalent I was about motherhood in the first place, you'd be better able to understand my own bafflement at the emotions my psyche comes up with.

Why do you think it is that things can hurt so acutely, that, by any rational standard, are actually phenomenal privileges (see spending weekend in pampered relaxation in first world country)? My latest theory is that it must be a kind of emotional allergy.

One leading hypothesis on the rise of allergies in the West is that our bored immune systems are going hay wire. Engineered to fight off typhus, plague, and long winters without fruit, our bodies just don't know what to do in the sanitized world of handi-wipes, antibiotics, and 24 hour supermarkets. So our bodies turn inward and come up with lovely counter-campaigns (like my immune system's brilliant idea to attack my thyroid). Maybe emotions work the same way.

Maybe we are all born with the emotional range to make it through wars and floods and famine. Yet, because most of us cosseted Westerners just don't have much immediate experience with woolly mammoths, we operate most of the time in emotional overdrive. Our feelings are left to cycle through the intense highs and lows that would make lots of sense in tougher conditions, but sound ridiculous applied to the problems of the middle-brow American.

Sorry to go all philosophical on you. But when you're on the verge of a mini break-down over a mini-break, it does get you thinking...

Girls: 1, Maria: 0

2008-07-29T17:30:00.002-04:00

Probably not the brightest idea to compare pregnancy hopes to a tragic romance in the first place...Off to comment on the blogs of all the fabulous IComLeavWe folks!

My West Side Story

2008-07-24T21:06:00.000-04:00

With apologies to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim...

MARIA

I feel sleepy
Oh so sleepy
I feel sleepy and hungry and gay
And so pregnant
That hope is on the rise today

I have spotting
Light pink spotting
And the cramping, the peeing, oy vey!
I feel pregnant
Yes my boobs are very sore today.

See the pretty girl in that mirror there?
Who can that deluded girl be?
What’s the cycle day?
Number 24!
Could be PMS…
Still she hopes for more!

I feel hopeful
But so frightened
Could be puking, then crying oh boy
Cause I’ve been
Just a little pregnant before!

GIRLS
Have you met my good friend Maria
The craziest girl on the block?
You'll know her the minute you see her
She's the one who is in an advanced state of shock

She thinks she's knocked up
She thinks she's in Spain
She isn't knocked up
She's merely insane

It must be the heat
Or some rare disease
Or too much to eat
I mean come on please

Her doctor said no
Yet she says go!
This is not all
That smart as you know!

Once calm and cool,
Waiting resigned.
Now she wants a peestick
She’s out of her mind!

I Heart IComLeavWe

2008-07-21T18:00:00.003-04:00

Wow, comments! From cool interesting women. My second try at blogging, like my second try at baby making, did not exactly get off to an auspicious start. But the IComLeavWe is a fine fine thing. And I hope it bodes well generally.

Now, I sat down here 5 hours ago when Turtle was napping with full intentions of writing a long post, having actually forgotten all about IComLeavWe. But then I saw all the great comments. And I remembered! After browsing many blogs; and leaving my required comments; and getting dinner for Turtle (which we ate picnic style on the floor in the living-room air-conditioning); and doing bath-books-bed with Turtle; and eating myself; and doing some more blog browsing, I am now wiped and brain dead.

But I do have a question. Why do you think the media is playing up motherhood so much right now? I was alive and sentient in the 80's and I feel quite sure that no one knew a damn thing about Goldie Hawn's cute little baby Kate until said Kate was grown and ready to be a movie star herself. Why do we hear so much about celebrity pregnancies now? Why the obsessive focus on motherhood? Even if you try to tune out pop culture, I bet you can name the crazy baby names of at least a dozen celebrity kids.

The reason I ask is this: how am I supposed to discern my own genuine desires for motherhood from the Pavlovian marketing of motherhood that I see around me every day? I mean, I think I do want another child. I think I want a sibling for Turtle. But can I or any other American consumer with a pulse honestly say it's not at least a little bit about the Pottery Barn kids?

Secondary Infertility to the Second Power

2008-07-17T17:26:00.006-04:00

Do these entries seem stale to you? Have I lost my edge as a blogger, however dull that edge already was? Is there a recycled, refried, retread quality to my thoughts?

Maybe the worst part of this most recent miscarriage is its awful "back to the future" quality. For many sufferers of secondary infertility, the first child arrives without incident and then the sudden onset of fertility problems comes as a nasty shock. It has happened to several of my friends and I truly understand what a brutal experience it is.

Yet. What I'm going through as a second-time infertility sufferer is different and carries its own particular pain. I am not for a moment going to compare my plight to that of someone in the midst of primary infertility. "One is better than none" cannot begin to sum up the joy that Turtle brings me. Still, I am going to dare to compare myself to regular secondary infertility sufferers and say that I have secondary infertility squared. Secondary Infertility to the Second Power, if you will.

Here's the thing: I emerged from primary infertility sadder but wiser. I had learned patience. I had gained perspective. To get those things, I worked really really hard, in typical type-A fashion.

I started a blog. Joining a community of women on the world wide web made me feel cared for and competent at a time when neither feeling came often. I wrote lots of angry essays and lots of sad ones and more than a few sentimental ones. I also managed a few that were actually funny, if you like gallows humor, and I'm such a compulsive good girl by nature that I'd never spent much time trying to make anyone laugh before (wouldn't be proper). I liked finding that side of myself.

I went into therapy for a little while. I joined a support group. I rebuilt relationships with family members that needed attention. I read countless medical journals, web pages, and women's magazines and I honestly thought that I'd discovered a reason for my miscarriages in the form of inadequate thyroid hormone. I marveled that anything good could come out of the experience, but in the end I felt like a stronger more resilient person, someone who'd learned a little more humanity and humility, someone who knew how to be deeply grateful for motherhood and how to treasure every moment of my son's all too fleeting babyhood.

I coped. I achieved closure.

And god damn it, the closed door has swung back open again. I don't wanna cope. I don't wanna think up clever new ways to say how much infertility sucks. I don't want to teach myself all over again not be jealous and spiteful of pregnant women. Especially not pregnant women I care about. Like my amazing sister in-law. This woman threw me a beautiful shower for Turtle 3 years into her own infertility hell. She even hand-crocheted him a blanket. NO matter. Now, another two years later she has enraged me by making it through her first nausea-free trimester with twins after her first IVF. What kind of person would feel nothing but coiling snakes of jealousy towards someone as deserving as her? I don't want to be that person. I hate myself for being that person. But can I just ask, how DARE she hopscotch right past me to have 2 kids at once, all the while glowing and proclaiming that pregnancy has made her feel the healthiest she has ever felt? How have I slid back to this bad place?

I feel as if I've graduated from from high school only to be ordered to go back to ninth grade detention, with that really nasty math teacher with the saggy two-shades too-dark pantyhose glaring over her glasses at me. How the HELL do I get out of here. Do I really have to take Algebra I again and fight those nasty rumors started by the popular girls? Do I really have to get my heart broken again by one feckless teenage boy after another? Are you gonna make me apply to college again? I been here. I done that. And I am soo, soo, sick of it...I just wanna get on with my life.

I'm a recurrent miscarriage relapser. I'm back on the sauce folks and this time the binge is gonna be ugly.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

2008-07-16T17:52:00.007-04:00

After much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth...after getting through the fourth anniversary of the due date of my first lost child with a new fourth loss to mourn...after much websurfing and downloading of information on hyperemesis for my family...I decided to try again. Now! I just decided I want one more child and I want to get a pregnancy over with as soon as possible, both because I am sick of this life-in-limbo stage and because I am afraid of my rapidly advancing "maternal age." The husband and I had long talks and agreed that I would be entitled to perfect princess treatment for the duration of any pregnancy (the man, though lovely, does not play nurse well naturally). Dr. Cookie Pie said she'd give me an HCG shot right away, just to speed things along. And the final deciding factor was that, by rare chance, I have no work projects scheduled for August, meaning I'd be unusually free to languish in bed vomiting. Sounds like a plan, right?

I went in to Dr. Cookie Pie to get the shot on Monday, but she wasn't totally happy with the look of my uterine lining. She also said I wasn't ready to trigger, that the follicle needed another couple of days. Come back Wednesday, and you'll be good to go she promised. This actually meant postponing my departure for a business trip from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning in order to be present for the neccessary conjugal event. (No joke that declining fertility with age is correlated with decreasing frequency of sex!) But no problem, I have my priorities straight. I rearranged things so I could be here through Friday morning. In the meantime, Dr. Cookie Pie said we should check my estrogen levels, and promised to have the results STAT. I did notice that she added an HCG level on the lab order, and you'd think this would have rung a bell, but it really didn't.

So imagine my surprise when she called me personally at home at 7 AM this morning to tell me that my HCG is still hovering at 8 from the LAST pregnancy and that I shouldn't waste a trip to her office. It was, really, an extraordinary kindness on her part. And how impressive that she essentially called this from her first 3-second glance at my uterine lining on ultrasound. There's a reason why I call her the smart cookie sweetie pie. But all I heard was, sorry, honey, you're still a very little bit pregnant.

Not only did I lose the last baby, I can't have the next baby, cause my body has still not accepted the facts. I believe it was Anne Lamott who said if you want God to laugh, you should tell her your plans...

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

2008-07-07T16:48:00.003-04:00

When Dr. Cookie Pie called me with the test results the week before last, she said, "I'm sorry, I have bad news." My heart leaped in my throat and I thought, "oh, no, please not a chromosomal abnormality." When she said the chromosomes were normal, I heaved a sigh of relief. I am strangely grateful to have had another unexplained loss. This is the faceless devil I know.

If I'd had a chromosomal loss, I'd have a whole new set of worries now about declining egg quality, about the prospects of ever having another living child. Yes, I still feel a savage anger, but also, somehow a perverse pride. My little Crumps (that's embryos so small they measure not from head to toe but only from crown to rump) are perfect little Crumps. The fault lies with my body, not my progeny.

I don't know how, but I bonded with this little one. My husband claimed to have a lucky feeling that the baby would be a girl, but I was certain beyond certain he was another boy. And I wanted him too.

The day this wished-for son was conceived (we did an HCG trigger shot, so I was very conscious of and optimistic about conception) I accidentally prepared an entire dinner made of foods beginning with the letter "P"— grilled pork tenderloin with peaches, spring peas, and new potatoes. I had planned the menu around spring foods, purposefully wanting to celebrate birth and renewal. But I never meant to pick all "P's." It seemed so funny and so fated when it turned out that I was *P*regnant. I decided that, though I've never nicknamed an embryo before, I'd call this one by a "P" name and picked "Peeper" for the little spring frogs that seemed to be singing my joy.

Last weekend I went outside after dark, walked down to the frog pond and screamed the loudest most furious primal scream that I could. And the singing frogs went silent. Soon after it began to drizzle; they never made another peep that night. It was an eery moment, one that made me feel, somehow, as though the galaxy had noted my grief and despair.

I know I am a lucky, lucky woman, a woman whose father's house has many rooms. It's just that here in the birthing room the ceiling has fallen in and I'm choking on plaster dust, and the furniture is in ruins, and I don't know whether to try to clean up or whether I'd better just scuttle on off down the corridor into the darkness.

My Newest PIN Number

2008-06-28T08:54:00.002-04:00

Dr. Cookie Pie called with news yesterday. We are back in the bleak no-man's land of utterly unexplained pregnancy loss. My latest miscarriage was of another genetically perfect male. This means that I have conceived and carried five boys in a row, only one of which (one of whom?) lived to be born...only one of which lived to become a who. A little boy whose small warm body is my only shield against looming despair. Gravida 5, Para 1 as the good docs like to say. It feels right now as though my whole identity can be summed up this way: 5_46XY.

Swiped from behind by the Claw of Fate

2008-06-20T14:28:00.006-04:00

To anyone who's still here reading, hi and thank you. I am doing OK, but only OK. Plunging back into infertility and loss after believing I'd somehow tamed the beast is deeply painful to me. Many moments, many days even, I think I'm fine, only to be brought up short by some unexpected reminder: today a cheery email about a friend's new pregnancy, yesterday finally facing the task of picking up from the dry-cleaner the maternity shirts I'd sent out a few weeks ago in burst of optimism. Then I'm reminded that repression of emotion and elimination of emotion are not actually one and the same.

Mostly I've coped by throwing myself into work and burrowing my nose in Turtle's curls. It should be enough and I want it to be enough, a career I care about and a great kid I adore. But a lot of times, those dark-hours-in-the-middle-of-the-night times, it's not enough. And I don't really know what to do about that unwelcome, uncomfortable fact.

The truth is that I thought this last pregnancy was going to kill me. I had an official diagnosis of hyperemesis (which Zofran made a dent in only for a day) and I was soo miserable with the nausea that suicide or abortion were suddenly *almost* seeming like viable, rational options. Pregnancy bloating notwithstanding, I actually managed to lose six percent of my body weight in three weeks. So I really never, never want to be pregnant ever, ever again. I get a bit panicky at the mere thought of going back to that bad place, spewing acid through my mouth and nose every few hours around the clock, unable to keep anything down, unable to stand up I'm so dehydrated, unable to summon the will to live.

And yet I want another kid.

Not only do I have a job I love and a kid I love, but both of these incredibly important things suffer terribly when I'm pregnant. Pregnancy is truly the very hardest thing I've ever done. I find it completely incapacitating. There's so much that I'm good at, so much that brings me joy in life. Pregnancy simply seems not to be my thing.

And yet I want another kid.

If you're still reading at this point, you're probably shrieking, "why don't you just adopt for the love of God?" And I'm thinking about it. But my husband really, really does not want to adopt. And he really, really, really wants another kid. Several more kids if the truth be told. And the fact is that my fourth pregnancy produced an adorable child, a child so sweet, so sensitive, so silly, so funny, that I walk around fearing fate will snatch him from me because no one deserves to be this lucky. How could I not want another kid?

And so the loss of this latest pregnancy leaves me spent. Agreeing to get pregnant this last time took all the courage I have because every pregnancy, frankly, has been as bad as this one was. With no baby to show for it, I just feel like I can't face another. I'm fresh out of courage. I am flailing with rageful impotence at the unfairness of the world, cracking my whip at the empty air as that wily beast infertility snarls at me, taunting me just out of reach.

Have I mentioned that the no-heart-beat sonogram was on my 1/2 birthday? That I am 35 and a half years old? That I really don't have time to take a "wait and see" attitude?

But I get up everyday and try to be OK.

I'm the Fat Lady Singing

2008-06-04T11:51:00.002-04:00

Well, it's well and truly over. I had a D&C yesterday. (The embryo still measured 6 weeks 1 day, with no heartbeat.) We'll see what the cytology results are... I was so, so, so ill through the very end that my feelings are as much of relief at my release from misery as of grief at my return to the world of loss. Not sure what getting back to normal will mean for me now...emotionally or physically. How many of these pounds are simple bloat and how soon will they go away? Have I mentioned that I think I may be finished with this circus? Thank God, truly, for Turtle.

The Ambiguity Has Put on Weight

2008-05-29T12:08:00.006-04:00

"The clarity is devastating. But where is the ambiguity? Over
there in a box...But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the
box? No, there isn't room, the ambiguity has put on weight."

--Literary criticism, courtesy of Monty Python.
--Big fat crowding-out-the-truth ambiguity, courtesy of Dr. Cookie Pie
--Box, courtesy the ultrasound machine

So, I went in for another scan today. Because I'm crampy and anxious and I wanted to get the bad news over with. And, the embryo is still measuring 6 weeks 1 day, which, for those of you keeping score at home, is unchanged from 2 days ago. Oh, and there was no heartbeat. The clarity is devastating. But, Dr. Cookie Pie feels the embryo "just looks bigger." No, she doesn't mean edema (the swelling of the fluid-clogged embryo beginning to break down). Edemic embryos start to look black, she says, and mine looks white. The ambiguity is over there in a box. And she thinks the fetal pole is easier to see. And she sees an endothelial lining that could be a sign of the creation of cardiac tissue. But is the truth in the box? Dr. Cookie Pie has tentatively scheduled me for a D&C for Tuesday. The ambiguity has put on weight.

Annie and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Pregnancy

2008-05-28T09:28:00.003-04:00

Hi all. I've been too busy puking to post. In fact, I felt so low I started a post detailing each and every time and place I've puked, all the ridiculous embarrassing disgusting episodes of the last 14 days. Lucky for you I had to stop to vomit again in the middle of drafting and lost the post.

By the time I rolled into the RE yesterday at 6 weeks 4 days for the Great Big Wonderful Find-the-Heart-Beat Sonogram I was so faint and dizzy with dehydration I could hardly stand. And, guess what? Embryo measuring 6 weeks 1 day. No Fetal Heart Beat. The Hoped-for Happy Little Embryo is instead Undeniably, Non-Viably, Dead, Gone and Demised.

Dr. Cookie Pie, being her usual sunny self, is not willing to call it over till I hit 7 weeks on Friday, but she held out little hope. This looks an awful lot like the missed miscarriages of pregnancies 1, 2, and 3. She did give me a nice prescription for Zofran which is how I can now manage to sit here trying for gallows humor.

I feel, sad. Sad, sad, sad. I feel sad that my body is sooo bad at this pregnancy thing. I simply cannot state strongly enough how much I loathe pregnancy nausea. The sickness makes me feel trapped like some doomed donor character in a Kazuo Ishiguro dystopia. I feel my body becomes literally enslaved. It makes me want to die. The nausea was so bad this time I simply did not now how I could possibly endure another ten weeks of it. Much as I wish for Turtle to have a sibling, I just do not know that I can face this again.

My family can hardly believe this negativity. Buck up, good cause, stiff spine, stiff upper lip, rose and thorns ya know, soldier on, shoulder to the grindstone, tally ho, heave ho, who cares? But this is my fifth pregnancy and I think I am finally hitting the fucking wall. In just ten days Turtle learned to run away sobbing at the sight of me vomiting. Who needs it? I want to enjoy a happy life with the kid I have.

Who knows what a longer perspective will make me feel, but this is the place I find myself in right now. I hope to make it to a D&C to find out if this is another mysterious loss or if this one may be chromosomal (since I am now, oh joy, 35). If this *isn't* chromosomal, I'd say the thyroid-hormone replacement theory is shot to hell because I was *very* well supplemented this time.

Well, then. Carry on. Sally forth, why don't ye?

The Absurdity of Motherhood Advice Writing

2008-05-15T19:24:00.005-04:00

This is going to be a quicky, but I wanted to set down something I've been thinking about. No woman writer has any valid basis whatsoever for commenting on whether mothers ought to work or stay home.

One of media commentators' favorite pastimes is to report on how Shocked, Shocked they are to see well-educated women opting out of the workforce. Sundry recent writers have addressed the topic, in books from The Feminine Mistake to The Ten Year Nap. And then, of course, there are the ACK's of the world (my acronym for a certain anti-feminist public figure soo irritating and opportunistic I won't dignify her with an actual reference to her name: hint her initials form the sound Ack!) who opine not only that all women should stay home but also that all women could afford to do so if they weren't too selfish to stop buying Blahniks.

In actuality, the life of the writing woman is entirely unlike almost any other kind of working life. By definition, writing is flexible and forgiving work. You can do your thinking and mental drafting anywhere. You can stop and start your sentences at will. The act of formulating thoughts in writing gives unequaled opportunity for self-expression. So whether it's mothers who write about how women shouldn't work (duh, what do they think they're doing themselves as they write?) or mothers who write about how women should work (while basing their judgment on their own enjoyment of the most flexible and fulfilling possible working conditions) none of the mothers writing professionally on whether motherhood and work can successfully combine has even an ounce of credibility to comment on the question.

This, I think, is why I was so wholly unprepared for how transforming and transcendent I would find motherhood. I used to read the anti-feminist sell-outs, the women laughing all the way to the bank as they earn top dollar telling other women to get out of the workforce, and think: no way could they possibly have anything valid to say. I used to read the feminists who affirmed that a having a child doesn't mean losing your mind and I would bow deeply as I said "amen." But the simple truth is that having a child so expands your heart that the mind can, in fact, begin to seem less all-important than it once did.

I think that having professional skills, the security of one's own income, and adult contacts outside the home are things all women deserve. But I also think that the drive to nurture a child is so deep, so elemental, that denying its force has seriously undermined feminism. I think what most women want are the flexible meaningful kinds of work that all the authors of motherhood manifestos quietly take for granted.

Whether it's anti-feminists critiquing working mothers or feminists exhorting them, too many advice writers seem to think that mothers in the workforce will, by definition, act as men. News flash: few of us want to be men. And I think it's time to stop pretending that the male work model is the one by which mothers should succeed or fail.

What we really need to advocate for now are not so much women's rights as mothers' rights: mothers' rights to do meaningful remunerative work in limited and flexible hours; mothers' rights to retrain and reenter the workforce without stigma after years or months devoted primarily to family care. A childless (and especially a single, childless) woman is the equal of or even the better of any man anywhere. But a mother is another creature altogether and it's time to admit this fundamental fact.

See, I Told You I Could Post More Than Two Days in a Row!

2008-05-14T18:51:00.007-04:00

Hi. My ultrasound today was pleasantly uneventful. We saw a sac, so there is definitely a uterine pregnancy going on here. It dated shy of 5 weeks, which is quite accurate, and there you go. Not a lot else to say, though to my amusement Dr. Cookie-Pie praised my great big corpus luteum (baby's got balls). On the one hand, this is good news as everything looks much more "text book" than things started out with Turtle. On the other hand, nothing means much at this point because my 3 losses started text book and took till between 7 and 12 weeks to go south. The one thing I will say is that I am already feeling seriously queasy, and this *is* a departure for me. It almost defies imagination to think that I'm going to feel this way (and much, much worse) for another TWELVE weeks if I'm LUCKY. It's enough to turn this neurological Buddist (thank you David Brooks*) into a biblical fundamentalist. Nothing but the commission of original sin could possibly justify this torture...

On another note, I want to say a word of welcome and encouragement to all the people who find their way to this site looking for answers on miscarriage and thyroid. I am humbled reading the referral info on my site meter. I hope you will find some solace in reading about a success story, but I know that I really never did get inspiration from anyone else's luck. I always just thought that the bitch in question hadn't been set up for the kind of hard-core suffering I was surviving. Lovely, I know, but infertility can make even a natural Pollyanna like me into a cynic. All I'm saying now is that my main hesitation in continuing this blog at all is the possibility that my complaints about nausea etc. will irritate the ovaries right out of some infertile woman who stumbles here looking for something resembling useful medical information and finds only my ramblings.

To the person who googled "infertility story Turtle," you made me cry. I guess one person more evolved than I am *has* taken a little bit of pleasure from hearing about Turtle and I'm very grateful to know it.

Please let me know if you come if you need support or if there's anything in particular you just wish I would not say. If you want to reach me, comment don't email. I am so behind on email for work that I am not checking blog email at all, even as I fantasize that maybe Get Up Grrl is desperately trying to contact me in the hope I'll agree to proofread her memoirs...

I guess that's a wrap then. I feel both optimistic and non-committal at the moment. Dr. Cookie-Pie, who exudes enthusiasm at all times, said to me today, "oh my gosh, are you just soo nervous?" And I was like "hunh?" She'd had to practically wake me from a snooze on the exam table, that's how tired I am. Elevated TSH does wonders for combating anxiety/ inducing stupor, I'll say that for it...

*This is, incredibly, the SECOND time I've liked something Brooks had to say, the other time being the being the occasion of his publishing a thoughtful piece on Obama a while back--before McBush nabbed the Republican nom and Brooks went back to being reflexively partisan...

Sick to My Stomach

2008-05-13T18:22:00.003-04:00

Just read the bad news over at Finslippy. I feel so terrible for Alice. And, lets be honest, so terrible for myself. Sick to my stomach and I'm not even nauseous yet. I don't know how anyone gets up the courage to try again after a loss except by means of the sheer fact that there is no other way forward but forward.

Still, as I sat down to type this Turtle came running up to me and said "Book!" "Are you going to read a book?" I asked him and he said "Yes!" then climbed up on my bed where he has been entertaining himself by flipping pages and singing "Hoppy to, Hoppy to." His birthday is next week and we have been priming him with many rounds of "Happy Birthday to You," which he is tickled to try singing himself. As I listen to him, I think I should be singing "Happy to Have You." And so I know that whatever happens with this new pregnancy, I am already one very lucky woman.

"Mommy read" means it's time for me to go, but I do plan to try to be a bit more regular with the updates. First ultrasound tomorrow. I suppose we're just hoping to see a sac this early on...

Holy Moly Hallmark Moment (Maybe...)

2008-05-12T16:33:00.004-04:00

Well, this time I am well and truly knocked up. (So says my blood test today, 16 days post ovulation). I am thrilled, but, like anyone with a long history of losses, also so apprehensive to be back walking the cliff's edge once again. The sunset views are supposed to be beautiful from here, but dusk is still hours away and in the meantime I'm afraid to look down.

Once an infertile, always an infertile, in mind if not also in body. I've come to realize that for the "type A" personality (which, let's face it, describes a disproportionate percentage of us older would-be mothers who've been focused on career etc. for years before trying to conceive) the hardest thing about infertility is the total loss of control. We all cope in different ways, but I think at base what we want is some element of influence over our fates. For some it might be prayer or lucky charms, for some it might be medical data and scientific theory. I've dabbled in all of those.

But more than anything, it now hits me, that my own chief coping mechanism is the comforting belief that I'm highly (almost magically) attuned to my body. It feels important to me to be intimately, intuitively aware of my own innards. Last night, lying awake at 3 AM and wondering what that cramp meant and whether my insomnia was stress-related or the sign that my thyroid levels are already out of wack (Thyroid, said today's labs, but you guessed that, didn't you?), I had the absurd thought that I wish I could google my own body, just have a search engine that would allow me to surf the interbodynet and generate data about all the relevant chemical levels and associated activities of my reproductive parts.

You know, I still think I actually did conceive in that March cycle. I didn't come back to write about it here, but I had a *very* heavy period that month (and oddly long at 9 days instead of my usual 4-5). Then, in the April cycle I didn't spend even one hot second thinking I was pregnant. Never so much as contemplated peeing on a stick. I just felt completely different. And I wasn't pregnant. And when my period came, it was moderate and normal.

So when Thalia, who is a lovely and supportive blogfriend from way back, logged in to tell me that I was in fact crazy with all my chimerical theories (or that's how I read it anyway) I retreated away from my newfound pledge to blog. I didn't realize why her well-meaning scientific facts bothered me so much at the time, but I now see that she unintentionally threatened my favorite coping mechanism. In truth, I probably can't divine my own body-status but I'm at least getting better at understanding my psyche, one step at a time!

So, the "scientific data" says that my HCG level is "very good." Dr. Cookie-Pie didn't specify and I didn't ask. We sweated over the early numbers so much last time I feel determined not to fall into that particular trap again. My progesterone was an unassisted 39, so even though I supplemented with Turtle, we're doing nothing in that category for now. Meanwhile, the dang TSH snuck up from 1.5 to 3.2. Should be under 2 and is the suspected culprit in my prior losses, so we've upped my synthroid dosage post-haste. Now I wish I had upped it as soon as I ovulated, but at the time I was afraid that if I didn't conceive this month I'd become hyper-thryroid and interfere with next month's ovulation. At any rate, my recollection is that it was at around 4.5 at the time of the Great Halloween Surprise of 2005, so I'm trying not to panic.

Anyway I'm too tired to panic. But I'm not yet at all nauseous (I never am at the very start). So I am free to just feel sleepily, dreamily, happy. I was pretty sure yesterday, Mother's Day, that I was pregnant. And I realized it was the happiest I've ever felt about a pregnancy. The very first time I became pregnant (FIVE years ago) I was so scared at the thought of becoming a mother that I hardly managed to enjoy the news before the whole pregnancy ended abruptly at seven weeks. The three times after that, I was always happy to conceive but also terrified of miscarriage. Now, though I remain highly aware of all the ways things could go very wrong for me, I have beautiful living proof in Turtle of the way they could go very right. So, for just this little moment, I'm very happy. Almost hallmarky if you must know...

Chimerical Pregnancy

2008-03-13T21:58:00.002-04:00

Well, shockingly, I'm officially not pregnant. Aunt Flo arrived 3 days late, but carrying lots of luggage.

Three days late you say? Maybe you had the shortest possible chemical pregnancy (defined as a "pregnancy" that creates measurable levels of HCG, but never a visible embryonic sac--much less, of course, a baby). Nope. I tested on the day my period was due, with the most sensitive possible test, and--nada. Not even an evaporation line.

Oh, well, call it a hysterical pregnancy then, you say. No products of conception in that womb. Nothing by the products of your imagination.

But. I refuse to believe this either. There are certain very clear signs of pregnancy for me, and I had them. For example, I have a major issue with a food allergy in ordinary times, that disappears completely when I'm pregnant. Got accidentally exposed to my allergen (gluten) seven days after ovulation and had *no reaction* of any kind. Also experienced marked dizziness, breast soreness, red meat cravings, and assorted other personal telltale signs. Then, nine days after ovulation, all symptoms vanished. Poof. And then the black depressive PMS symptoms kicked in. So I knew it was time to abandon all hope.

On reflection, I honestly think that we did conceive a doomed mutant, the product of our feverish (but hardly hot) sex. Clever little monster wisely decided not to implant and my body rapidly adjusted accordingly. So, I'm inventing a new term: chimerical pregnancy.

Don't you dare call me crazy.

Six Flags

2008-03-08T17:32:00.002-05:00

Welcome to the amusement park. I have such horrendous PMS, there is no possible way I can be pregnant. One of the odd things that I have noticed since weaning Turtle 6 months ago is that my postpartum PMS is much worse than it ever was before. Among other lovely symptoms, I have incredibly vivid nightmares for several days before my period arrives. So, I am now as sure that I am not pregnant as I was certain a few days ago that I am. Let the infertillercoaster ride begin!

Wonder Mama

2008-03-05T19:52:00.001-05:00

OK, this is embarrassing. I seriously did not mean to resume this blog and then fall silent for three weeks. In my defense, I must tell you that I have been heroically fighting the plague and am typing this post with blackened stumps.

OK. Not exactly, but we did have back-to-back bouts of flu for two and a half successive weeks: fevers, chills, copious gobs of mucous expectorated by one and all. The second round was beautifully timed to coincide with ovulation.

I don’t know about you, but the husband and I are not so good at hot sex in fevered conditions. There was a time, back in our twenties, when we actually thought this was a fun idea. Now, not so much. I would say that the spirit was willing though the flesh was weak, but even that would not be strictly true. Having survived three miscarriages, we were just the teensiest bit leery of what high temps might do to denature his boys; the prospect of falling pregnant with a doomed mutant lacked a certain sex appeal. So, ahem, we were challenged.

But, the plentiful mucous was not only at the bronchial end. Eventually we gave it a go. I am now completely convinced (7dpo) that I am pregnant. You might think that having actually been pregnant 4 times in my life, and having believed myself pregnant about 40 times in my life, that I would know better. The last time I was this sure this early I turned out to have a UTI. But still, I’m sure. Go ahead and call me hysterical.

Now, I know that I promised to deliver my deep thoughts on the total life-transformations of motherhood, but the truth is that I’m in a rush. (And I have to pee, nudge, nudge, wink, wink!) So for the moment let me say this:

It’s true that bearing a child is not exactly going to turn an ugly duckling into a swan. But to dwell on that misses the whole point of the transformation. The transition from childless woman to mother can’t be described by comparing one bird to another. It’s more like the difference between fish and fowl. I honestly feel that in becoming a mother, I’ve found my wings.

Quite literally, I feel like a different person. The change is shocking to me. Always before, I’ve been a model of consistency. I went through the so-called changes of adolescence with little more than a grumpy shrug. While some of my friends went to bed one night as sweet quiet bookworms and woke up the next day as hair-sprayed boy toys with cigarettes in their lockers, I pretty much slept with a finger marking the spot in my book and went right back to reading in the morning.

But having a baby, well, I’ve been punch drunk since the moment he was born, so in love with him, so focused on home even as I still go out to work, it has been more than a little disorienting. I really think that brain chemistry must change profoundly in motherhood. And I don’t think we’ve even begun to take rational stock of what this means for women personally or for society as a whole. I’ve been bit by the spider and I’ll never be simple Peter Parker again. But damn, does it feel good to soar.

If you surf on by and find me, I'd love to hear your best/worst two-week-wait story. Simple good wishes also gratefully accepted!

Body after Baby?: Don’t Make Me Crazy

2008-02-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

True, everyone warns you your life will never be the same after you’ve had a baby. But no one explains that you will never be the same after baby. The women’s magazines put a lot of energy into guilting you into working up the energy to get the old “you” back. You’re supposed to crunch your way back into your skinny jeans, light a candle for your old sex life, and demonstrate how mastering the mother’s ability to multi-task has made you more productive than ever at the office. To all this I say, in unison with my toddler, Bbbppth! We splurt raspberries in your direction as respectfully as possible.
Let’s start with the “get your body back” thing. I think I can hold myself up as a near-best-case scenario here—and the picture ain’t pretty. Small to begin with, I did not gain undue weight in my pregnancy. Then I delivered 5 weeks early. (Tip to Hollywood actresses: want to avoid stretch marks? Try for a preemie!) Twenty months after dear baby’s birth, I am not only pre-pregnancy weight, I am even pre-my-first-miscarriage weight. This means that in addition to losing the breast-feeding bonus insurance fat and the pregnancy pounds, I also shed the infertility anxiety inches and the miscarriage misery fat. However. Nothing is where it used to be. Nothing.
You show me a woman who sits ramrod correct in an office meeting when she should be slumping sideways from getting just three non-consecutive hours of sleep with a teething toddler, and I’ll show you the woman who’s trying not to let her post-pregnancy belly flesh flop down over her waistband. Go ahead, lose the fat. You can’t lose the skin. One long fluttery curtain of it now seems to cloak your torso from shoulder to groin. Your only hope is to square your shoulders, sit up straight, and hold still. Once the skin sheet stops swaying, it may look almost smooth. But don’t count on it.
Frankly, the skin has taken a new look at life and decided to relax. No more uptight attitude for it. Post-baby, the skin likes to hang loose. In fact, that skin has found such a comfortable lounge seat on your abdomen that it’s never gonna straighten up again, no matter how cute the cabana boy. You might as well pour yourself a drink.
This brings me to the breasts. You’re going to need GPS to locate these things once you finish nursing. Even if, like me, you start small, expand to clown-like proportions, then ultimately end smaller than you started, you won’t know where to find them. You’ve heard of phantom limb syndrome? It’s when amputees can still feel their missing arm or leg long after losing it. Try phantom boob syndrome. The sensations in your nipples are literally not in the right place relative to your chest cavity. And those are the fine points. The breasts themselves, well they, like the rest of your flesh, will retire to southern climes to spend their golden years. The day (a month or two after you stop nursing) that you realize that the old pre-pregnancy small-cup bra will fit just fine if you simply lengthen the straps out a few inches, well, that is the day that you really meet the new you.
Oh the breasts. It beats me, really, why saggy breasts can’t be sexy. After all, these things have proven that they can do their thing. They really can keep an infant alive and well and passed out in a sucking stupor. (Much more impressive, I think, than doing the same for a man). For some reason, however, the firm uppity breasts of the untried and untested seem generally preferred. I think it betrays a certain lack of sophistication in the public at large. In fact, I would like to argue that blown tulips are far more sensuous than tightly closed buds. Won’t somebody buy this bouquet?

Helloo

2008-02-12T16:02:00.000-05:00

I am restarting this blog on a pure whim, but I've never really lost the habit of reading infertility blogs. I still miss Getup Grrl (who doesn't?) and I still read Tertia, Julie, Julia, Karen, Mare et al. regularly. Apparently when they diagnosed me in my last pregnancy with Strep B they meant Strep Blogger. Might as well admit that I am a lifetime carrier of the blogging virus and just get on with it!

So, today is cycle day one and that as much as anything has sent me to surfing the net this afternoon instead of working. I almost feel that I cannot bear to plunge back into the swamp of conception worries, miscarriage fears, premature birth nightmares, etc. without the lifeline of a blog. Whether any readers will find me again remains to be seen...

I've had a hard time deciding to have a second child. Writing academic non-fiction is my day job and I've just finished my first book (the need to get it off my desk was a big reason I stopped blogging in the first place). Now, needing to get going on a second book project and a second baby at the very same time makes me feel as though I'm facing double-trouble.

But, you probably want to hear a little about the first baby? Turtle is terrific, just as sweet and easy-going now at 20 months as he was when he was born. I like to joke that he's the strong but silent type. He's not talking yet but loves to throw his weight around, climbing on top of all the furniture, pushing his crib and highchair around, and otherwise rearranging the place on a daily basis. He loves music, loves to dance, and is a major tease. We haven't taught him any signs (though I'm beginning to think about it) but he has mastered a few all on his own: waving hello, blowing kisses, and winking flirtatiously are his specialties.

In a real sense I have no business devoting any writing energy to a blog. But I'm hoping that doing so will create new synergy rather than drain my productive energy. Let's generate!

Thyroid Autoimmunity and Miscarriage

2006-07-19T12:49:00.000-04:00

Mark F Prummel and Wilmar M Wiersinga, "Thyroid Autoimmunity and Miscarriage," European Journal of Endocrinology (2004) 150: 751-755

"Abstract

To ascertain the strength of the association between thyroid autoimmunity and miscarriage…A CLEAR ASSOCIATION BETWEEN THE PRESENCE OF THYROID ANTIBODIES AND MISCARRIAGE WAS FOUND…This associaion may be explained by a heightened autoimmune state affecting the fetal allograft, of which thyroid antibodies are just a marker. Alternatively, the association can be partly explained by the slightly higher age of women with antibodies compared with those without…A THIRD POSSIBILITY IS MILD THYROID FAILURE, as thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels in antibody-positive but euthyroid women are higher than antibody negative women…"

Treatment Recommendations:

"It is possible that the association between thyroid antibodies and miscarriage has to be explained by a general increase in autoimmunity against the fetal allograft. If this were to be the case, there are almost no theraputic interventions to offer these women. The two other explanations, i.e. MILD THYROID FAILURE or the TPO antibodies themselves DO HOLD PROMISE FOR SUCCESSFUL INTERVENTION. The higher TSH values in antibody positive women warrent a randomized clinical trial to evaluate the effect of T4 substitution therapy AIMING AT TSH VALUES BETWEEN 0.4 AND 2.0 mU/L." *

* Emphasis in ALL CAPS is mine, not the authors'.

Folks, I am one person, not a randomized clinical trial. But I would just like you all to know that I tested positive for thyroid antibodies before my first pregnancy and was diagnosed as "euthyroid," that is as having subclinical thyroid disease. Yet my TSH levels were never monitored carefully until my 4th pregnancy. With each of my 3 losses, by the time my TSH was tested it had already climbed to anywhere between 6 and 10 mU/L.

Not that I'm the slightest bit bitter or angry at all the doctors who claimed my thyroid disease was way too mild to be the explanation for my 3 losses. But I beg you, if you're having recurrent miscarriages:

1-GET TESTED for THYROID ANTIBODIES. Do NOT just let them test your TSH. Lots of docs are too conservative and think anything under 5 is fine. Some even say anything under 10. SO FIND OUT IF YOU HAVE THYROID ANTIBODIES.

2-If you test positive for antibodies & are diagnosed with mild hypothyroidism, please, please, please know how important it is to keep that TSH UNDER 2 from the very beginning of the pregnancy.

3- "T4 substitution therapy," the cure for this disease, involves nothing more than taking 1 tiny pill a day to "substitute" synthetic thyroid hormone for the body's deficit. Give your body the hormone it needs and TSH (the hormone that stimulates the body to make thyroid hormone) falls to safe levels. Keep a close eye on those levels because your body's needs can fluctuate very rapidly. Repeat: keep TSH under 2. Voila. Wait 9 months and enjoy your baby.

I love my Turtle soo much, but I will never stop wishing those first three could have stayed with me. This is such a ridiculously easy thing to fix, it's amost incomprehensible that I went through such suffering before it was addressed at my stubborn insistence.

The Voice of the Turtle

2006-06-26T16:52:00.000-04:00

My due date was today. But because the apparent cosmic purpose of my years of infertility was to make me forget about clocks, calendars, and stopwatches, let go of the last illusion of control created by the industrial revolution, and bow instead before nature's timescale, I am neither in the hospital, nor in labor, nor anywhere near giving birth.

On the contrary, I am the exhausted, ecstatic mother of a one-month old. Yes, my little trick-or-treater decided to arrive a month early. And, continuing my temporal rehabilitation, the baby has decided to sleep all day and eat all night, so that, although the computer claims it’s 5 PM, I am sitting here with a nice glass of orange juice and a bowl of granola, rubbing the dust from my eyes, while my sleeping baby coos occasionally beside me.

I thought I owed it to you all to let you know how the story starts. I still cannot say what I will make of this blog. I have really really been helped by the process of reading and writing blogs. At the same time, it has taken time from my life and my work that I certainly can’t afford in an industrial sense, and maybe shouldn’t give at all…

But at the very least, I wanted to offer a vision of myself and the baby as we ride off into the sunrise together. We live in an age too cynical for happy endings. But I have to say that this has been an extraordinarily happy beginning.

I was prepared for sleep deprivation, colic, baby blues, post-partum depression. I had primed myself with the understanding that motherhood is not all it's cracked up to be, that the joys of maternity have been gravely exaggerated by right-wing fanatics who want women out of the boardroom and trapped in boredom.

I was utterly unprepared for the sheer primal joy of holding the warm weight of a living child against the gaping, aching hole infertility had carved in my chest. I did not count on the sense of awed wonder of holding close a little body that I created and carried in my own, of leaning down to breath in the golden, baked-hay scent of baby skin, of brushing my cheek against silken baby hair, of gazing into my own baby’s face and loving every pimply, rashy inch of pink skin, of laughing with delight at every fart and burp. A baby is a feast for the senses, a salve for the wounded soul. I did not know that love could feel like this. I’ve been blindsided by joy. And I wish, really, that time could just stop right here.

"For, lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

P.S. A bit about my treatment: I never received any medical explanation for my unexplained recurrent miscarriages. This successful pregnancy occurred without treatment of any kind.* Except. When I first began trying to conceive more than three years ago, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, an autoimmune thyroid disease. I personally believe (and there are European studies to back up this possibility) that under treatment of my thyroid disease with inadequate levels of thyroid hormone replacement could be the explanation for my earlier losses. With this pregnancy I insisted on WEEKLY testing of my thyroid levels through the end of the first trimester (unheard of frequency in endocrinology circles, but Dr. Cookie-Pie, my RE, was at a loss for anything else to do and agreed to humor me) and found I needed to increase my thyroid hormone dose regularly, until I reached a dosage about 1/3 greater than before the pregnancy. (Once my TSH levels seemed to stabilize, I tested once/month for the rest of the pregnancy.) My doctors *do not* believe that this explains the success of this pregnancy. They say vague things like, "your body finally figured it out." But I think that *I* finally figured it out and I want to offer up this shred of a possible explanation to any other recurrent miscarriers who might be able to use it...

*You may recall the use of a little supplementary progesterone, true. But this was the first pregnancy in which there was any indication I might need it. My hormone levels have always been fine; we did it as a precaution this time due to the spotting, which I now think was caused by 1- the rough internal exam I was given on 10/31, before we knew there was a heartbeat and 2- the baby aspirin that I was briefly on initially (on my RE's advice on the off chance that it would help, despite the fact that a hematology consult turned up no evidence of a clotting disorder). In other words the unnecessary aspirin cancels out the unnecessary progesterone, meaning that this pregnancy needed nothing but synthroid.

If a Tree Grows in the Forest…

2006-05-15T19:21:00.000-04:00

After 5 months without posting, I do not know if there is still anyone out there who would hear it if a tree fell in my forest. But I can’t resist making a joyful noise today to say that—on the contrary—the tree is growing very well indeed.

I am now exactly 34 weeks pregnant. At my OB appointment this morning, my doctor told me that if I were to go into labor now, they would do nothing to stop it. While the baby is not yet technically “term,” he is developed enough that he would not just survive but thrive if born now. Wow.

Afterwards, on the street, I ran into my RE, Dr. Cookie-Pie, the first time I’ve seen her since early December. She was thrilled at the sight of me, but actually kept repeating, “I can’t believe it.” She said, “as soon as we get this baby delivered we’re going to have to send you on the speakers’ circuit to give inspirational lectures to all the women who are on the brink of giving up hope.” It was a little disconcerting to have my main medical support person regarding this pregnancy as something close to miraculous, but at the same time it validated my own ongoing sense of pleasurable disbelief.

Once the nausea wore off completely (at about week 16) I began what, at least from the outside, seems to be an entirely normal and complication-free pregnancy. And though I have mostly spent it holding my breath, nothing of note has occurred. Even my moods, always so mercurial, have been remarkably stable.

It is just now hitting me that the long longing may at last be nearing an end. While I will always think of myself as infertile, I may soon be stripped of the title “Her Barreness” on account of having a babe in arms.

I feel filled now with hopes and fears: hopes for a new life of love and a new sense of grounding, fears about labor and delivery, about the possibility of post-partum depression, or even just garden-variety psychic disorientation. I’m afraid of the fact that life will never be the same, and afraid even of the fact that I may not wish it could be. I can’t wait to meet the little person I carry in my body, but I am anxious about getting to know the person I myself am about to become.

So, in this time of transition, I find myself filled with the urge to reach out to all those who helped me to get to this point. So many wonderful flesh and blood friends have stepped up to share this time of joyful anticipation. But it’s the virtual folk out there in the ether who were there with me through so many truly dark days. I want you to know how grateful I will always be for that fellowship and how often I think of you all, vivid characters in a story we wrote together.

If you’re still struggling, please know that while nature may be maddeningly inefficient, (and when it comes to human emotion horribly indifferent) you can also always count on what Kahlil Gibran called “life’s longing for itself.” You may remember a piece I wrote last spring about the doomed maple saplings springing up all over the lawn. What I didn’t mention then is that a few also took root in an abandoned flowerpot. They sprouted there for a month or more until finally the summer heat withered them away. I never watered them, much less transplanted them. I was angry at empty symbols and unwilling to lavish care on mere plants when my own womb remained a dry and desolate place. So imagine my bemused surprise this past weekend, when I uncovered those same pots under a pile of dead leaves and found growing there some very sturdy-stemmed maple saplings. Somehow, it seems, the roots had survived when the first year’s leaves died.

I don’t know what exactly my plans are, if any, for the continuation of this blog. But I wanted to leave a note for any old friends who might happen by, just to say thanks, I’m still here, and I’m almost in the clear.

All Is Well for Now

2005-12-20T14:59:00.000-05:00

Hi all. Well, my nuchal results came back fine. I am relieved. I don't actually know how good my chances are now, since I'll probably never know why I've been subject to serial miscarriage. But this feels like some kind of stopping place. So, I think this may be my last entry for a long while. I want to leave you, and my lost babes, with the essay below.

Memorializing the Immaterial

2005-12-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

One of the most difficult aspects of miscarriage is the intangible nature of the loss. There are no dead to keen over, no bodies to ritually wash and wrap, no graves to visit. For those of us without other children, there’s no societal name for our new half-substantiated status: would-be mothers of unformed spirits. Wives who lose husbands become widows. Why is there no such word for mothers without children, much less for the almost-mothers of the unborn?

Last summer, after three losses, I found myself struggling for ways to make the miscarriages real. I felt so marked, so forever altered. And yet, apart from a few extra pounds here or there (more the result of post-pregnancy comfort eating than anything else), there was no evidence whatsoever of the passage of events that had passed through my body. I found myself wishing for some public sign of my frustrated motherhood.

I’ve never been one to consider a tattoo, not even the paint-on kind most kids apply sometime between elementary school and junior high. I never wanted to deface my skin; I never wanted to endure self-inflicted pain. And yet, after each miscarriage, it seemed my pain was so easily effaced, as invisible as each lost baby’s face. I began to fantasize about the possibility of acquiring tiny tattoos, perhaps three little hearts in a line on my forearm, one for each embryo gone. Or maybe a black line of numbers, each corresponding to a different cancelled due date. Eventually, I realized that my hands did bear scars, tiny stigmata, from insertion of IV lines for the D&C’s. Even though these small brown bumps look like age spots, I treasure them. They are marks of my age, of the losses I’ve lived through.

My husband and I decided, after some discussion, that we simply were not the type to hold a religious service, to read poetry in public, to make donations in memory of children we had never met. Still, I sought some way to remember babies I never knew, to honor those I never held. And so, one particular summer morning, on the second anniversary of my first due date, I asked my husband to go with me on a ritual walk, a two-person funeral procession for three invisible babies.

We were spending a week’s vacation in the woods and had noticed a sign a couple of miles from the cabin where we were staying that pointed out a local historic graveyard. There was no church in the vicinity, just the sheltering shadow of the mountain hovering over a sloping field. It seemed a place that was naturally sanctified without being formally holy, just the spot for the kind of half-formed ceremony we so deeply needed.

We set out early in the morning and I began collecting wildflowers as we went. It was high summer and flowers fringed the roadside: Daisies and Black-Eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s Lace and wild Day Lillies, pink Sweet-Pea, purple Clover, Golden Rod and many more varieties I could not label. The orange lillies with their tender freckled petals cut me to the quick, destined for lives that would last only one day, whether I picked them or left them in peace.

Though my husband resisted the idea at first, it soon gave focus and purpose to our walk. We agreed to pick three of each kind of flower we found. Then he, as eager as I, spotted one new variety after another to add to our ever-growing armful. When we arrived at the graveyard at last, we were laden with wild brambling bouquets full of unfamiliar blooms, perfect to mark the loss of much-loved, unknown, unnamed children.

Wind ruffled the trees, insects buzzed, and the grass around the graves gave off a brown baked smell. We began to look around at the worn stones of the time-softened old tombs and found none that dated after 1900 or so. I was not sure where I wanted to leave our bouquets, or even whether it might not be best to scatter them again on the homeward walk. My husband wandered out of sight behind a tree and I felt eerily, achingly alone. I wished suddenly for a prayer or a poem or an incantation and felt voiceless in the morning breeze.

Suddenly, my husband called out to me. He had found a trio of graves, memorials to three children from a single family who had each died within a week of the other back in the 1870’s. Three small stones, huddled together, leaned uncertainly towards the earth, each thinner and shorter by far than those that heralded the passing of the town’s patriarchs. I looked around for escort stones, larger markers for adult family members bearing the same last name. But there seemed to be none. Instead, the children lay alone there, most likely forgotten for a century or more.

I wondered what despair had attended their burials and whether their parents had left the hard life of the mountainside soon thereafter, in search of more fertile fields. How could their mother, whoever she was, ever have found the strength to go on? What other choice did she have? My husband and I looked at each other, our eyes filled with tears, and then we gently, silently, lowered our armloads onto the ground.

I made it through in two pieces

2005-12-12T18:02:00.000-05:00

Well, today I am 12 weeks pregnant. As I understand it, this means I have officially entered the second trimester. This seems to me almost miraculous. I have to say, I never, never imagined being one of those infertility bloggers who irritatingly turned into a pregnancy blogger. (No offense intended. Expectant mothers--of the adopting and the gestating kind--and actual moms are some of my favorite bloggers. But come on, you know what it's like to be a hardcore infertile & watch all these softcore ladies get to leave hell behind.)

I am still having a hard time working up much enthusiasm for pregnancy itself. Zofran, alas, worked only for a few days. Then its powers seemed to wear off. Then it seemed to actually BE a nausea trigger. So, no more of that. I'm back on the vomit 3 or 4 times a day plan. Does kind of sap the will to live.

Still, I am so grateful just to still be pregnant. I thought this morning, " Wow-- I made it through to the second trimester in one piece." And then the snarky half of my brain, getting ready to puke again, said "you call THIS one piece?!" And then I realized, "hey there's a baby in here, so heck, two pieces is about the best you could hope for." So here I am.

Nuchal results are next week. If those are OK, I may really start to believe.

The Olympic Hurling Team

2005-12-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

It turns out that if you practice hard and get really, really at good vomiting, you win a prize. It's called Zofran. Sweet, sweet little strawberry marshmallow tab of relief. I will spare you poetic descriptions of my puke. (Though I will just say, that if in desperation you were turn to Gatorade in your futile attempts to rehydrate, you would not want to pick the Berry-Tropical Punch flavor. Because, were you to throw it back up, it would look like something was slaughtered in your toilet.) Right now, I am lying low, loving the Zofran.

Curiouser and Curiouser

2005-11-29T11:45:00.000-05:00

Well, folks, I am still pregnant. I must say I can hardly believe it and I feel almost giddy with relief. I took myself out for a big egg-on-a-bagel sandwich afterwards (because I am queasy unless I am eating or unless I have just thrown up, a spectacular event that occurs 2 to 3 times a day) and as I sat there in the window of the Dunkin Donuts listening to canned Christmas carols, I thought my heart would just well over. The fetus (it's now a fetus!) measured 10 weeks 2 days, just perfect and was 3.6 cm crown to rump. I am floored to realize that that's about an inch and a half. I know you will laugh, but I can hardly believe that there's a miniature person that big lodged inside my body. Somehow, I've continued to think of this baby as a few hundred cells-- cute on the ultrasound, sure, but still way too small to see with the naked eye. I go for a nuchal translucency screening next week. That too will be an emotional event. With my second pregnancy, I was only getting standard once-a-month monitoring. We had a heartbeat at 8 weeks, then I went till 12 1/2 weeks, when the ultrasound at the nuchal screen revealed that fetal demise had occurred at around 9 weeks... Even my RE seemed in disbelief today, "But, but, we haven't done anything differently," she said. She's transferring me to my regular OB, but made me promise to call her the minute my appointment is over next week. I think she too mistrusts this strange change of luck and wonders how long it can last. So hang onto your hats, folks.

Thank you so much for your fabulous comments. They made me laugh and cry by turns. Maya likes how "clean" my blog is. Is she referring to the utter absence of links or illustrations of any kind (the result of my technical incompetence)? Or does she mean that there's nary a mention of sex (that would be due to the tragic imposition of "pelvic rest," a medical order that has my husband and me feeling like frustrated fifteen-year olds!)? To Jeanne and Lisa, and all the other hopefuls waiting on tenterhooks, you know I know exactly how you feel. V's Herbie: you're female! I was never sure. Glad to know more about you & to have a reader from the cool coast. Also glad to know I'm being read by a few true-blue folks from the true North--Anne and JMW. To Lisa P. and Sonya, I feel such solidarity with my fellow recurrent miscarriers. To think that my attempt to heal myself is making things a little better for anyone else really means the world to me. Thalia, I know just what you mean about "finding a real home." Thanks to all of you for the safe haven.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

2005-11-26T14:28:00.000-05:00

Hi, everyone. Just checking in. I’m not feeling very articulate. Mostly I am vomiting and sleeping. And holding my breath for next Tuesday. I have to say, I have no script at all for what it would mean to be an actual pregnant person, someone for whom the puking and napping ends with entrance into the second trimester, rather than thanks to all the nice anti-nausea meds they give you with the D&C. At the same time, ever since I went NPO to my appointment last week, I’ve stopped being on every-single-second high alert for the miscarriage. If I do have one now, it’s really going to take my breath away. I don’t know how to go forward without believing it could work. I feel like if I don’t think positive, I’ll blame myself later for somehow contributing to disaster. But, at the same time, optimism itself seems frightening and foolhardy. Mostly I wish I could just just stay asleep till this is over, one way or the other.

Help me pass the time here people. Tell me something about you. Tell me anything you’d like. Below are a few suggestions of things I’d like to know:

1. How did you find the world of IF blogs? What was the first blog you read? What was your situation at the time that you found it?

2. How did you find my blog specifically? What do you like about it? What would you change?

3. Are you currently trying to have a child? Why or why not? Has the decision been a difficult one? What factors have you considered? If you’re trying, how long have you been at it? If it’s been a while, do you think of yourself as infertile?

4. Where are you located? How old are you? Be as vague or specific as you like on those…

5. Feel free to ask me questions in return. I would love to hear from you, even if you usually “just lurk.”

The Third Thanksgiving

2005-11-22T14:43:00.000-05:00

Well, I have to tell you, I could not have been more nervous than I was this morning. In fact, I was so overwrought I called my husband at work and asked him if he thought I could still count as NPO today even though I had a few sips of water upon waking. For anyone reading this who has not had the pleasure of multiple D&C's, "NPO" means "nil per os," or "nothing by mouth," the condition you have to be in if you're going to undergo anesthesia. He wasn't sure, but didn't think that the water would count against me. So even though I was ravenous with hunger/ tipsy with nausea, I went to my ultrasound appointment this morning on an empty stomach. Just, you know, to be prepared.

And in fact, to break out a better-loved acronym, NBHHY. The baby measured 9 weeks 1 day with a continued strong heartbeat. There was some concern about the rate of uterine expansion as well as an on-the-shorter-side cervix. I may need to go back for another scan in a few days, because the cervix at any rate could be supported with cerclage if necessary. (Not sure if “cerclage” is spelled right; spell-check suggests “corkage” as an alternative, which I suppose does get the point across!) Still, all things considered, it was the best scan I could have hoped for, certainly the best scan I personally have ever seen at 9 weeks.

The best part was seeing the "baby" (all 2 millimeters or so) moving in there. It seemed to be head butting the uterine wall, or maybe even kissing it-- to me it looked like a gentle motion. It was a wild, wild sight, something I've never been able to see before. I'm feeling teary just writing about it. The fact remains that I may not have much longer with this baby. And I really am near the end of my rope pregnancy and miscarriage wise. So I'm doing the best I can to appreciate what I have.

Amazing, but this is the third Thanksgiving in a row that I will spend pregnant. In spite of everything, I do feel grateful right now. And I plan to be TPO (that would be Turkey Per Os) come Thursday.

As I give thanks this year, I will be thinking of all of you lovely loyal friends in the computer, strangers who have given so much of yourselves and helped me so much in the last months and years. I tend to find both Christmas and Easter, with their child-centered traditions and their origins in fertility festivals, incredibly depressing. But Thanksgiving is one holiday that infertility hasn't ruined for me (yet). I hope it will be a good one for all of you, no matter where you are on the road to parenthood.

Well...

2005-11-22T08:35:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning with new spotting (haven't had any since Friday 11/11). My appointment is in a few hours. God only knows what this portends.

Puking, Freaking, Not So Much Coping

2005-11-18T18:28:00.000-05:00

'Nuff said...

Takes a Lickin' and Keeps on Tickin'

2005-11-15T12:29:00.000-05:00

First of all, you guys are great. I cannot tell you how much it means to me to know you're out there pulling for me, especially now as I open the window of time in which my prior losses have occurred. I swear this blog and all your comments are some of the main things keeping me semi-sane.

So, today's checkup was basically good. The embryo has grown an amazing 11 days worth in seven days and is therefore now measuring one day ahead: 8 weeks, 2 days today. The heartbeat is a little on the high side, but still within range: 178 beats/min. Meanwhile, there was evidence of a new (but now inactive) uterine bleed, which could be the source of the panic-inducing spotting I had late last week.

In most cases, a heartbeat at 8 weeks is a very good sign. But what you really need to know, to understand the extent of my hope, anxiety, and dread, is that with my last 2 losses I had a heartbeat at 8 weeks. And in fact, by eerie coincidence, in my most most recent loss, the last time I saw the heartbeat was at--you guessed it-- exactly 8 weeks and 2 days (at which point the embryo was also one day ahead). By 9 weeks 1 day, it was gone. Soo, I really don't know just how I'm going to get through the next week.

Queasy, Grumpy, and Sleepy

2005-11-14T19:16:00.000-05:00

Kath very kindly asks how I'm doing. Well, aside from the visit by the three pregnancy stooges, aside from the minor little matter of the abnormal pap smear result (remember that Halloween pap?) and aside from the sudden onset of cramping and spotting on Friday (which resolved as quickly as it arrived), I've been just dandy. I have my weekly ultrasound appointment (the sole perk of being a habitual you-know-what) tomorrow and I promise to report back.

Chants, Charms, and Talismans

2005-11-09T17:10:00.000-05:00

I'm carrying around a cobalt blue plastic Turkish God's Eye keychain in my purse right now. I'm not Turkish. Or Muslim. I'm a bit alarmed by the kitschy commodification of religion. Still, I keep the God's Eye in my change purse compartment. And I reach in and run my fingers over it every time I feel spooked by the looming specter of another miscarriage.

Modern medicine pretends to be rationally based, empirically sound, and scientifically certain. But the experience of undergoing unexplained recurrent miscarriage can easily lead to a crisis of doubt. When you’ve been through a fathomless series of blood-draws and surgical procedures, medical histories and physical examinations, to check out the possibility of hormonal imbalances, clotting disorders, autoimmune issues, infection factors, genetic abnormalities, and anatomical anomalies, come back negative for everything, and come up with nothing, you can reach a point where making wishes every time a clock shows quadruple digits seems like a sound treatment strategy.

People started offering me “lucky objects” as soon as they heard about my first miscarriage. One girlhood friend of mine packaged up a beaded amber bracelet said to promote fertility through the power of crystal healing. Someone had given it to her after she had a miscarriage; to send it to me she’d had to steal it out of her three-year old’s jewelry box. Clearly the bracelet conferred powerful properties.

I wore it for a single afternoon. Then I decided I couldn’t stand the way it marked me as an infertility convict, sentenced to walk the streets with my prisoner ID bracelet on prominent display. So I took it off and left it on my nightstand, where I could gaze at it respectfully, every now and then.

At the amber bracelet stage I still thought that a couple of quick medical tests would soon set me straight. In the early days of miscarriage your main focus is on solving the problem, moving forward, and forgetting the unfortunate incident as quickly as possible. And I had more than just M.D.s on my side. I had the amazing positive prophesies of everyone I met. Everyone who looked at me just “knew,” just “had a feeling,” that the next pregnancy was going to be a good one.

With the second miscarriage, the magic materials started pouring in. There was the amaryllis bulb my grandmother gave me to force into bloom on a sunny winter windowsill, sure symbol of renewal and the promise of spring. Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France victory loomed large in the popular mind at that time and everyone from my doctor to the guy at the deli counter was sporting those “Live Strong” bracelets. I received three from various well-wishers.

I have to say, though, that I couldn’t quite see the point. The babies were the ones that needed help living strong and frankly those yellow rubber rings were much too big for the average embryo. In fact, they were much too big for me to wear round my petite wrists. So the ‘Live Strong” bracelets (which really look like they could be put to better use binding together a bunch of broccoli) were left to languish beside the amber beads.

After the third miscarriage, most people just began to shake their heads. They seemed to be saying, “the dark death force of your womb is too much for our minor white magic. Go and seek your future elsewhere.”

It’s just at this point that I myself, having pretty well run through the available arsenal of academically approved medical options, began to understand just how hard it is to force a flower to bloom. It gradually began to seem to me that magic might be the best thing to add to my apothecary. Still, it wasn’t until I was out shopping and spied a tiny wooden pair of antique children’s shoe forms (suitable for a cobbler to use in draping leather to shape a miniature boot) that I just couldn’t put down, that it hit me. I realized I had made the leap into the realm of magical thinking. At the time I claimed I was purchasing the shoe forms as a gift for a friend who is a new mother—what a unique and special memento! But, in fact, I couldn’t stop caressing those wooden forms in my hand. I walked through the store rubbing the slightly rough surface of the raised old wood grain against the ticklish part of my palm. And I clutched them all the way home in the car. By then I knew that they were for me. I decided to display them high on a door frame over my head, the symbol of both a goal out reach and of a doorway I’m determined to pass through.

So, when a Turkish friend of my mother’s--master of the mysterious meanings to be found in the swirled dregs of coffee grounds, a woman who claims to have foretold the plane crash that would have killed her sister had she not missed the flight--pressed the keychain into my hand and said with a confident, conspiratorial nod, “take this,” I did. Now more than ever, I’m counting on its wonderous spiritual powers.

Let me hear your stories. What magic materials have people forced on you? What have you found for yourself? Do you discard these things as fast as you get them? Is there one that you'd swear, in spite of good sense, really does work?

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

2005-11-08T18:09:00.000-05:00

Well, I went for another sonogram today and the news is still not bad. The embryo is still behind by dates, but it has grown a week in a week. Meanwhile, the spotting has stopped. So, as Getup Grrl used to say, NBHHY: Nothing Bad Has Happened Yet.

This is actually where I expected to be six months ago, the reason I started this blog. I never expected the months of frustration trying to conceive much less the insane roller-coaster start of this pregnancy. All of my prior pregnancies have started smoothly with textbook numbers; all of my losses have been between 8 and 12 weeks. So I wanted this blog to get me through the waiting period, from the first sight of the heartbeat through (hopefully through) the end of the first trimester.

I'm just 7 weeks 1 day today. So, you see, we're really just getting started here.

And another thing: I wrote my "in love" piece tongue firmly in cheek, though most of you seem to have taken it straight. In fact, I AM trying to bond with this baby, something I have never tried to do before. It seems so hokey. The thing is that much as I deeply want a child I have mostly hated being pregnant. But I am trying to "appreciate" it this time. Because, one way or another, I'm not going to be playing this game too much longer. As I may have mentioned, my "wall" grows ever higher; cradling a living child is becoming much more important to me than carrying one.

That said, I am trying to enter whole-heartedly into this unlikely pregnancy, even though getting my hopes up only gives me further to fall. I hope you'll all stick with me now. Because this is the really hard part. Thanks.

Baby Bigelow: Uterine Gigolo

2005-11-03T18:48:00.000-05:00

I am in the midst of an intense love affair with a babe who everyone tells me is no good. It began, of course, nearly three weeks ago on the Sunday night when I first saw that flash of pink--such a romantic color. Everyone said, "Watch out, this love is not for real." But I have been caught in a whirlwind romance ever since.

You know you're smitten when you can't get the love songs out of your head. Here I am still humming the Zodiacs to myself, begging this baby to stay.

The doctors all said, "This one's no good. Better hide your heart girl." They said I'd be left flat, that they could already hear the sound of the door slamming. I believed them completely, but I still could not stop myself from dreaming. Morning after morning alone, I kept listening for that knock on the door.

This week, it came. On Monday, the babe showed up in style. We were together again, and I had a beautiful heart-shaped bouquet to make up for all the lonely nights.

But the sweet love of reunion turns sour the fastest. By Wednesday the babe was again threatening to take off. As I bled with sorrow, the doctors said, "What did we tell you? We said this wasn't the one." Out of sympathy they sent me off to Bigelow Chemists, the oldest "apothecary" in New York City, where (for $75 cash and a winning smile) you can still get your progesterone suppositories custom-mixed to order within the hour. [www.bigelowchemists.com]

And that, my friends, is how Baby Bigelow got his name. No one thinks he'll stick around. But for now he's still here and I'm still crazy in love.

Never in My WILDEST Dreams...

2005-10-31T16:55:00.000-05:00

Notice anything funky with the blog banner, anyone? Yes. I am here with a Halloween report of the most insane example of trick-or-treat ever.

I went to a new RE today, for my 8 millionth second-opinion appointment. When I scheduled it back in JUNE, I was irritated that there were no available appointments till Ocotber, but figured, "oh what the hell, I'll probably still be infertile by then." I was a teensy bit spooked that the day they offered was Halloween, and I even joked about it with the receptionist; she had no sense of humor and said something like, "well if you don't take that slot, she can't see you till 2008." So, I took the appointment and I went today.

The new RE was very nice. We had a long chat about what my problem might be, yada, yada. She was concerned about the size of my uterus and wanted to measure it. I said, you know this chemical pregnancy I'm having right now is really dragging out. I'd love it if you could give me some sense of where I am with that, while you're checking out everything else.

SO she gave me a physical, including a breast exam and a pap, poked around at my cervix, took a few uterine measurements through the speculum and then fired up the old ultrasound to confirm the manual measurements...whereupon there was not just a clear gestational sac but a HEARTBEAT!!!! And, a super-stat beta reveals that my HCG levels have done something like quadruple daily since last week. They're not perfect, but thery're literally 10 times higher than they were, rather than only 3.5 (which is what you;d expect from betas taken 7 days apart.)

We are in certified miracle territory here people. No one knows quite what to think. But my pulse is racing and I am, for the moment, beside myself with anxious delight. Happy Halloween Everyone.

Please Continue to Hold...

2005-10-27T17:13:00.000-04:00

A Brief Dialog Between Anne and the Representatives of Uncooperative Uterus Incorporated

"Ring Ring, Ring Ring...

A: Hello?

UU Inc: Hello! And welcome to Uncooperative Uterus Incorporated. Thank you for your call.

A: Um, hello? Is this a recording?

UU Inc: Your call is very important to us. We here at Uncooperative Uterus Incorporated know how to squeeze out a woman's dreams. We remain dedicated to providing you with the same high level of quality and service you've come to expect.

A: Some quality! Hello? Could I please get someone live on the line?

UU Inc: Please continue to wait. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. To access our automated menu, please choose one of the following options. To request the onset of menses, please press 1. To register a complaint about unproductive cramping, please press 2. To report an absence of spotting, please press 3. To speak to a service provider, please stay on the line. Or press * for more options.

A:!#@%!!! Sigh. *

UU Inc: Due to unusual call volume, we are unable to process your request for a miscarriage at this time. Please try your call again later."

Yeah, ain't nothin happinin here, unless you count the onset of depression as an indication that my HCG levels are finally getting the idea and starting to drop. Anyway, thanks so much to all of you for holding me in your thoughts. *Please* continue to hold!

Get Out Your Haz Mat Gear

2005-10-25T09:17:00.000-04:00

Well, the beta is back. Although it is higher than last week, it is so very low that this is without question a bio-chemical pregnancy, nothing more. The doc is not even worried about an ectopic with numbers this low. Soo, now I just have to wait for my body to catch on and start cramping again. I am thinking about having a bio-chemical hazard symbol tattooed across my abdomen. There's something kind of snazzy about those trefoil circles, doncha' think? It could be a good look with a croptop and the right pair of low-rise jeans (as soon as I loose the pudgy bloat from my "well vascularized" uterus, of course). I also might order a few hazmat placards to post on the apartment door in lieu of Halloween decorations. They sell a nice selection at: http://www.unzco.com/storefront/placards/hazmat.html#6

P.S. You will note that I have already updated my banner to say 4 miscarriages instead of 3. A bit premature, I know, since I have not yet actualy undergone the miscarriage. And, of course, there are those who would disagree about whether or not this quick one even "counts." But hell, I'm counting it. The bed post has been notched this last week. And there ain't no way to glue those wood shavings back on.

New Topic: Ectopic?

2005-10-24T14:57:00.000-04:00

Hi. Well, first of all, I don't really have any news. My RE put me on ectopic watch based on last Wednesday's numbers (i.e. go home, rest lots, drink plenty of fluids, take your baby aspirin just in case we get a miracle, and call me the very second you have any pain). We agreed not to do another beta till today cause at 4 weeks 2 days, 4 weeks 3 days, etc. it was only driving me nuts without really telling us anything. And basically, I didn't feel symptoms of much of anything at all, positive or negative, all weekend.

Soo... I just had another ultrasound and apparently my ovaries look normal, my uterus looks well vascularized and "very pregnant," and we have no visible sac or anything else in there. I won't have new (hopefully more informative beta results until late tonight). Basically, we don't know what the hell is going on and I am very glad I spent the weekend sleeping. Dr. Cookie Pie (see 4/2/05) actually told me this afternoon, "I want you to go home and chant, 'I am not having an ectopic. I am not having an ectopic.' Chant it over and over." So those are my new lyrics...Anyone suggest an appropriate tune?

Thank you so much for your comments. I've stayed off the net completely since my last posting, so I got to come and find all your comments at once this afternoon. If there is any silver lining whatsoever in all of this, it's having stumbled into this amazing community of women. I wish you all many fluffy pillows and long naps. In the meantime, having called in sick to work today, I'm off to take another one myself.

Sharpening the Knife: Updated

2005-10-18T18:58:00.000-04:00

Looks like it will soon be time to carve another notch in my bedpost. Today's beta was just 90, whereas it should have been something more like 110. The slow-rising beta, as we all know, is an ominous sign. At this point the number is too high to call this a plain old chemical pregnancy. So it looks like I'll soon be able to boast about my fourth miscarriage. Another upside: I may lose this one before I have the chance to get good and ill... The real twist of the knife, though, is that this ultra-early miscarriage is NOT following my usual pattern of strong early betas then loss after heartbeat at 8 weeks. What that means is that this coming loss will probably be the result of the same suspected uterine scarring to blame for my recent conception problems (for which I would have undergone dx this month if I hadn't conceived) rather than relating to whatever the hell is my basic problem. It is all just so discouraging.

Henry! Fetch me a baby! (There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza...)

Another lousy beta today (Wed.). Going to take some "cave time." See you next week...

Now Playing on the Inner Ipod

2005-10-18T10:06:00.000-04:00

My subconscious has a sound track. And it's tuned to all baby all the time. Have you ever noticed HOW many love songs refer to the beloved as "baby"? Talk about wishing baby was here? About losing sleep over wanting baby? It's staggering, really. There's the Four Top's, "Baby I Need Your Lovin'," sample lyrics:

"Baby I need your lovin'
Baby I need your lovin'
Although you're never near
Your voice I often hear
Another day, another night
I long to hold you tight
'Cause I'm so lonely
Baby, I need your lovin'
I got to have all your lovin'
Baby, I need your lovin'
Got to have all your lovin'
Some say it's a sign of weakness
For a MOM to beg
Then weak I'd rather be
If it means havin' you to keep
'Cause lately I've been losin' sleep
Baby, I need your lovin'..."

Just change that one little word "man" to "mom" and you're all set. Then there's the great and incredibly apt "Be My Baby," by the Ronettes:

"So won't you, please, BE MY BE MY BABY
be my little. baby MY ONE AND ONLY BABY
Say you'll be my darlin', BE MY BE MY BABY
be my baby now. MY ONE AND ONLY BABY
Wha-oh-oh-oh.

I'll make you happy, baby, just wait and see.
For every kiss you give me I'll give you three..."

That last one was featured on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, a veritable treasure trove of baby-themed love songs (cause, remember, the main character's name was "Baby"). Bruce Channel's "Hey Baby" isn't half-bad:

"C'mon baby, give me a whirl
I want to know if you'll be my girl
Hey, hey hey baby!
I want to know if you'll be my girl
Hey, hey hey hey hey, baby
C'mon, baby now....."

Sing it as "I want to know if I can be your girl" and it really does say it all. I especially like the wail on the "come on baby no-ow-ow."

Also from that score, the Zodiac's "Stay" is working really well for me this morning. They don't actually SAY the word "baby" on this one, but I think the mention of how mommy and daddy are feeling clearly implies that the "you" being addressed in the song is none other than a modest embryo considering the question of whether to stay and implant:

"(Stay)
A-a-a-a-ah, just a little bit longer
(Please)
Please, please, please, please
Tell me you're going to
Now, how your daddy don't mind
And your mommy don't mind
If we have another dance
Yeah, just one more
One more time
Oh, won't you stay
Just a little bit longer
Please let me hear
You say that you will
Say you will "

So, the beta was 75 at 15 days post-o (17 days post HCG shot). Not horrible but not terribly reassuring. The progesterone was a comfortable 25. But since I'm cramping and ever so faintly spotting this number doesn't mean as much as it should. (My husband, who at first didn't think I was pregnant because the first First Response I took had *such* a light pink line now declares that the spotting is an even lighter pink and says he doesn't understand when I got so good at squinting. But I know what I know, ya know?)

So I went for another beta today. It's too soon, of course, to know whether it's doubling properly. But if it falls, we can pretty sure that this little embie hates the Zodiacs and really wishes I had better taste in music...

I will report the new numbers when I have them. In the meantime, I would be very grateful for any additional musical selections you may wish to suggest for the Recurrent Miscarriers Mental Playlist.

Cue that Cheesy 70's Song

2005-10-17T06:00:00.000-04:00

Here I am
At 6 o'clock in the morning
Still thinking about you
It's still hard
At 6 o'clock in the morning
To sleep without you
And I know that it might
Seem to late for love
All I know

I need you now
More than words can say
I need you now
I've got to find a way,
I need you now
Before I lose my mind I need you now

Here I am
Im looking out my window
Im dreaming about you
Can't let go
At 6 o'clock in the morning
I feel you inside me
And I know that it might
Seem to late for love
For love

But I need you now...

You will not be surprised to learn that I have in fact been awake since 3 AM, tossing and turning and waiting for it to be late enough to pee on another stick with "first morning urine" instead of that weak late-afternoon stuff. Right now, right this moment, before anything has had time to go wrong, before I start feeling horribly ill, is the very best moment of pregnancy. I want the chance to tell these few cells, "I'm dreaming about you."

But this song is also for you my readers or what's left of you anyway... Because I really really am going to need you now. Thank you so much to Susie and Pixie and Kath who already found and commented on the post I made less than 12 hours ago.

I know that for many many people struggling with infertility, the quest for two pink lines is an end in itself. They think (and often rightly so) that if they could just get that second line they'd be home free. I hate to think that this news of mine could be paining anyone because I know all to well how even the internet can seem part of the great conspiracy to make you feel like everyone is pregnant but you.

I can only stress that I am *not* home free: under house arrest is more like it. Like Julie, who found at the hard way that there IS such a thing as being "a little pregnant," or Jill, who has been knocked up only to get knocked down, I too have learned through bitter experience that "almost only counts in horseshoes and hand gr*nades." I started this blog as a way to face the stark probability of another loss with enough courage and determination to try again anyway. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.

So I hope you’ll be willing to be here with me through this time. Till this point, I have held off from posting a lot just as a way to try to control my own obsessive need to think about pregnancy every minute of every day (a hobby that was seriously eating away both my personal and professional life). Now though, I can promise you lots and lots of posts in the days to come (though I can’t promise little mini-essays anymore, cause I’m way too over the edge for that already now). Apparently, emotional support is a key predictor of pregnancy success after multiple miscarriages and that is the reason I’ll be here spilling every day.

What I can’t promise is to be cheery or dreamy. That song there was one of last servings of soft cheese I’ll be having for a very long time. This is not a bunnies-and-butterflies moment in my life. It’s more a close your eyes and jump off the cliff screaming and hope to hell the water below is deep enough to save you kind of moment. I hope you’ll all be there when the time comes to wade in and help pull me to shore.

One Small Step for Anne...One Giant Step for Anne's Kind?

2005-10-16T19:31:00.000-04:00

I'm almost trembling too much to type. I have a very very very faint second pink line. I will let you know more as I know more. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I've been too down to post much lately. Feeling cautiously happy just now, though.

All in All It's Just Another Brick in the Wall

2005-09-29T18:02:00.000-04:00

A while back in the IF blog world, there was a discussion about "hitting the wall" with infertility*, about reaching the point where you suddenly feel that the obstacles you're up against are too much, that you just can't push through life as an infertile person any longer. At the time, I could not yet really imagine ever hitting the wall. If there was a wall in my future, it seemed so far away as to blend into the horizon. All I could think about was the next pregnancy attempt, the new treatment plan, what would make things work next month.

Now, I think that while there may be one dramatic moment when you realize you're up against an insurmountable wall, the wall itself does not appear all at once. It's not an obstacle that you slam into unexpectedly, smacked breathless with loss. No, I think the wall is built brick by brick. Getting my period last month, maybe didn't deserve the degree of sympathy you lovely people sent my way. That wasn't a wall slamming down in front of me. It was just one more brick being set in the mortar. Still I felt really anxious and sad, the way listening to The Wall makes you feel. So I thank everyone who came to sing along with me.

I feel the wall rising slowly, defining the boudaries of my garden. At first, when I saw those bricks being laid down, they seemed more like the start of a walkway than a wall. I thought, early on, that the delays in our family plans were just that, pauses that would ultimately make my path more sure. Like many an "ambivalent infertile," I started this process scared out of my wits about what motherhood would mean for my life, and my sense of self. If a few delays served to give me time to find my way, then I was ready to follow the yellow brick road.

Now, after nearly two and a half years of this, with my 33rd birthday coming up soon, that yellow walkway has definitely been built up into a red brick wall. It's still not insurmountable. In places it's only just waist high. I can still hop up and sit down on it, dangle my legs over it, and imagine jumping down from that perch to a future where the biological children we hope to have are wandering dreamily through a field. But it gets harder day by day to hoist myself up.

The other night, I dreamt that a friend had written me a letter, enclosing some old photos of my husband and me. And the friend said, "Look how happy you two were a few years ago when these photos were taken. That's who you're supposed to be. Those are the people who want to be parents. Isn't it time to stop all this struggle to bear biological children and start living family life? I really think you should adopt." In the dream, I was not entirely sure this friend was right, but it felt good to have someone offer the option. In real life, my parents are vocally opposed to the idea of adoption. And I have one friend who has actually lectured me about not being "selfish" and "impatient" and giving up to soon. (I know, I know, I should send the Barren Bitch Brigade** to beat her up.) My husband is open to adoption in theory, but says he's far from feeling ready to take that step. He's a quite a bit taller than I am; I guess he's not yet finding it hard to hop on top of the wall.

Of course my dream family originally involved biological children. I'm an utterly ordinary person and I expected to become a mother in the ordinary way. My wish was not so much to reproduce myself, as to witness the strange alchemy by which my husband and I could blend together to form a new being. We've been a couple for nearly half our lives now: a long time to imagine that magical twining, love made flesh. Still, I think that what I want more than anything is the small things, to read books, run baths, run errands, play tag. I want to meet my husband’s eyes across the dinner table as we laugh at something our child said or did. And I don't think DNA enters much into that.

So have I "hit the wall?" I don't think so. Not yet. Still the education of this Infertile continues, brick by brick.

*Thanks to the wonders of Google and the fact that the ever-fabulous Julie has kept her entire archives intact, you can still read that discussion:
http://www.alittlepregnant.com/alittlepregnant/2004/08/the_wall.html

**The phrase "BBB" was created by Get Up Grrl, back in the day when the very best IF stuff was being written.

What Fresh Hell Is This?

2005-09-22T22:37:00.000-04:00

With apologies to Dorothy Parker, I have to say I'm fresh out witty wry-humored ways to say that INFERTILITY SUCKS. As you might suppose, due to the remarkable prognostic powers of chocolate, I was not the least bit surprised to greet my period yesterday. However. I was not the least bit pleased, either.

So. The new plan, made in consultation with Dr. Smart-Cookie Sweetie-Pie (my RE) is to do a monitored cycle this month, starting with Day 3 bloodwork tomorrow, including an ultrasound to check out the old follicles, *maybe* a trigger shot of HCG, more blood draws and hormone checks around day 21, etc.

It feels scary to admit that I am now no longer even a glamorous bohemian recurrent miscarrier who finds it fun to sleep on the streets so long as the weather is warm. No. I've gone down another rung to the point where I'm such a sad bag lady, there's nothing left in my bag and little hope of putting anything in there any time soon. In short, I feel farther than ever from the day when I'll hold a live baby in my arms.

And I feel seriously annoyed that my total type-A super-good-girl determination to relax all summer long did *not* result in a pregnancy. I drank wine in a foreign country, people. Result? Zip, zilch, nada. That there is conclusive clincal proof that the people who tell you to just relax should go f*ck themselves. So. I am going on record as one tense unhappy not pregnant person.

Behold the autumn of my discontent. Happy equinox everyone.

P.S. Would YOU take a trigger shot of HCG in my circumstances? Multiples are very low on my to-do list...

Mmm...Chocolate!

2005-09-16T09:10:00.000-04:00

It’s that time again. Cycle day 23 ( but only post-O day 7) and all 500 square feet of my little corner of Manhattan are dizzily wondering whether I may be pregnant. And I do mean dizzily. Cause damn if those supplemental progesterone pills aren’t good for a mighty impressive case of the bedspins. Should you happen to wake up in the middle of the night, worrying, say, about whether progesterone supplementation is really a good idea, you will soon find yourself lying awake with your head spinning—literally and figuratively.

As I mentioned over at Thalia’s, we have gotten to the point that even my husband has started to monitor my pee frequency. “Gee,” he’ll say slyly and casually, glancing over the morning paper for a bored 2.2 nanoseconds as I do my usual, damn-I-slept-in-again morning dash around, “Gee didn’t I hear you get up a few times last night?” Translated this means, “You are under professional surveillance. My beeper went off at precisely 0300 hours last night indicating that you tripped the new digital volumetric urine analyzer I surreptitiously installed under the toilet seat.” To which I reply, “Um, maybe, I can’t really remember right now. I’m going to be late for work.” Which, translated means, “Would you STOP it, you moron, the progesterone that is making me pee is synthetic. Or it comes from a horse. Or something. Anyway, it does not originate in my body. It is being secreted by my stomach, not my ovaries. This sign and symptom seeking is pointless.” Then I self-righteously huff off into the bathroom to check if my nipples feel sore one last time before I leave. Even the dog has gotten into the act. This morning I caught him sniffing my crotch. His thoughts need no translation: “Mmm! Horsey!”

So, after evading the husband and the dog, and surmounting my own addled ineptitude, it’s a serious relief to let the apartment door slam behind me and head for the elevator. If the elevator’s empty when I get on (and it often is cause I live on a high floor), I’ve found the cozy windowless cabin to be an excellent spot for a quick nip at the nipples just to, you know, see if the old buttons are more or less sore than they were two and a half minutes ago in the bathroom. It turns out that this diagnostic procedure can actually be performed in any empty elevator. So, say, if you find yourself rushing from meeting to meeting all day with no time even to pee (which you don’t need to do in any case, the effects of the previous night’s progesterone pill having fully worn off by mid-morning), you can give yourself quick checks without even stepping into the ladies room. I’m sure I am the delight of security-camera men all over Manhattan.

The one early pregnancy sign that I have actually found most accurate I am going to have to patent. The test is both uncannily accurate and sinfully fun to perform. It’s called the HDCT Test, the “How Does Chocolate Taste?” Test. As a certified chocoholic, I regard pre-menstrual chocolate consumption as a basic human right, medically indicated for all cases of PMS. As a pregnant person, however, I find I develop an almost immediate aversion to chocolate—and unfortunately to sweets generally—during the earliest weeks of the pregnancy. This aversion is then followed by many others until I find myself with my head in the toilet hourly, usually sometime in week six. So, long before I start peeing on sticks, I start opening foil wrappers, and, let me tell you, the chocolate test has yet to let me down. Survey says, I am not pregnant again this month. But I will report back with the “scientific” results when they’re in.

Joining the Miscarriage Masons

2005-09-07T19:33:00.000-04:00

Two friends of mine IRL have had miscarriages in the last 2 weeks. Each called me within the hour of getting the bad news. One, a veteran at this, was already off getting her nails done at the time. The other, a newbie, called sobbing into her cell phone from the clinic parking lot. I was both touched and deeply saddened to be the one they both thought to call first. Apparently, after 3 miscarriages, I have passed the apprenticeship and fellowship stages and am now considered a Grand Master in the Masonic Order of Miscarriage.*

So, I propose a cyber sororal lodge for Miscarriage Masons. Instead of the “Square and Compass” logo we can adopt the “Wand and Speculum.” You can’t apply for membership to this secret society, you can only be selected. While I wish it didn’t fall to me to be the one to initiate friends into the mysteries of the miscarriage ritual--the secret signs, the code words, the lore handed down through the ages--as a Master Mason I offer herewith a primer for those unfortunate enough to be tapped to join:

Spotting never symbolizes anything good. Beware of medical codes. Don’t believe them when they claim that the only reason they can’t find a heartbeat is because the crappy old ultrasound machine is no good and they’re just sending you for a “confirmation” ultrasound at the better clinic. Those people are not “on the level.” There are no crappy old ultrasound machines. Mention of the COUM is code for “you’re fucked, your baby’s dead, but please wait and do your crying in someone else’s office.” As for Masonic regalia, buy some pretty yoga pants to wear to the D&C. Miscarriage masonry ritual dictates passing the first awful hours after the D&C viewing as many mindless videos as you can before falling asleep. Finally, be aware that Masonic miscarriage tradition calls for a hormonal plunge following a loss, so be prepared for the resultant despair and depression.

The Miscarriage Masons is one secret society no one ever wants to be able to join. Membership in the Miscarriage Freemasons will not make you feel free. But it will make you highly sensitive to the pain of your fellow members. So, when you meet a sister, make the secret sign and hug her hard.

Many thanks to all of you who "flashed the sign" on reading my last post. It makes me feel a bit better to think I'm helping others to feel a bit better too.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry

Quieting the Inner Track Coach

2005-08-22T16:50:00.000-04:00

A Real Long Letter for My 25th Post:

First off, many many thanks for all the kind and encouraging comments. I do so appreciate knowing there are people out there who “get it.”

Mostly, I have been OK. I had an appointment with a new endocrinologist this month—I’ll call her Dr. Down to Earth. She basically said to me, “Look this is going to happen for you. It’s just a matter of when.” I did my usual sort of sensitive-yet-tough act: sniffle quickly, square the shoulders, and then bravely--yet obviously--pretend to be fine. I said, “Oh I’m sure I’ll conceive again if I’m patient enough. It’s the making it to term part I can’t quite seem to master.”

She fixed me with a vintage no-nonsense, stop-feeling-sorry-for-yourself, cut-the-crap, and lose-the-attitude look and said, “Noo, I mean having a *child* is going to happen for you.” To which I just cocked an eyebrow. Like, what lady, you selling bridges here? We all know my body is crap and my luck is worse. And she said, “I won’t do anything awful like tell you to relax--though it obviously can’t hurt. But you just have to trust that this is going to happen. Your body is still trying to figure things out.” I must have perked up a bit then, because she repeated that line. “Your body’s figuring it out. Once your body does, it will happen. I promise.” Then she almost ruined it by telling me she had a “feeling” about me and she was good about knowing these things. I mean sheesh. If I had a baby for every damn person who “just had a good feeling”…

But I like the idea of my body earnestly, honestly, trying to figure things out. Poor dopey body, I know it means well. And truth to tell, I have been a slow starter when it comes to most things in my life. Why should my body be different from my psyche? I like the idea of telling my Inner Track Coach to take a chill pill, put DOWN the effing stop watch, stop yelling for me to “Use those arms!” (Use those ovaries!? Use that ute!?), and let the body do some untimed trail runs.

Mostly, that’s what I’ve been doing. No racing, no timing, no treadmills, no tracks, just enjoying the outdoors. Except I haven’t truly been running at all. In response to my claim that I just didn’t know whether to exercise or not, cause I keep gaining weight, yet I don’t want to interfere with implantation and I love to run, but how can I run and keep down my heartbeat and… Dr. Down to Earth said, “You know *walking* has been shown to be a totally gentle, highly effective form of exercise.” So, I’ve been walking gently with my body and with myself these days and mostly it has been good.

Gotta admit I had a slight relapse this past weekend, though, when I unexpectedly ran into an old "friend," her husband, and their *brand new* baby. I’m not in touch with the woman, had no idea they’d even been expecting, much less that they’d be at this party. She was one of those people who sort of overlapped with my social circle years ago, but to whom I was never close. She was always, always so self-satisfied and sure, the kind of person who tells stories about how she *always* gets what she wants. It's not that I actually care what she thinks. But, because, she always seems out to prove how great she is, it just really rubbed raw to see her have something that I really want.

I did my very best to smile pretty and coo at the right times. Still, why not me? Why? Why her and not me? And does she know about my problem? Was she rubbing in it? Were we conversing in code when she bragged about her new book--and how she just, you know, feels like the mother of all creation?

In dire need of something, I went to church on Sunday morning (a pretty rare thing for me). The minister’s sermon was about the character-building purpose of suffering. Going all folksy and contemporary on us, the minister brought up the example of the many failures of Abraham Lincoln. (I guess Lincoln seems accesible and contemporary when your other main example is about 2,000 years old and has the advantage of being the son of God.) Most people telling the story of Lincoln’s heartbreaks, setbacks, personal and professional losses (a string of failures that, according to Professor Google, may be largely urban legend anyway) take the moral of the story to be that you should never give up cause something great may be just around the corner. The minister’s point, by contrast, was that Lincoln’s failures were not something that he had to overcome, but rather something that he had to understand, to endure, and to integrate into his character. Only someone who had already lived through suffering could ever have had the strength to lead the country through the Civil War.

In fact, the minister pointed out, Americans are rather peculiar in their assumption that life is there to be enjoyed and that each person’s goal should be to get through her days as comfortably numb as practically possible. On the contrary, growth comes from struggle, from hard-won grace.

It was just the reinforcement of Dr. Down to Earth’s message that I needed. So, I am going to try to remember to be kind to my body, to myself, and to others and to remember that before the invention of comfort there was suffering and salvation. I am going to try to believe not only that I will eventually become a mother, but also that all these miscarriages, and these seemingly senseless hurts and delays, will prove to be the very things needed make me into the mother I am meant to be. If ever there was an endurance trial, infertility is it. There's no use trying to sprint. The only thing to do is to take it slow and try to remember to breath deeply.

Results of the BOSP Test: "Ooooohhhh, No!"

2005-07-29T18:20:00.001-04:00

We’re on a bit of a dictionary kick over here at Let’s Generate. If we can’t procreate, damned if we can’t create some new vocabulary. Herewith, some new words for your edification:

Primary Infertility: When your primary waking thoughts, your main nocturnal dreams circle infinitely, futilely around the apparently impossible dream of having a child.

Secondary Infertility: When, following one successful conception and gestation, all you want is a second, or some other “higher order multiple,” child, and yet your desires are treated as insubstantial, inconsequential by friends, family, physicians, and fate alike.

Tertiary Anfertility: When your name is Anne and, following a series of fast conceptions and even quicker miscarriages, you suddenly find you are no longer even able to conceive.

Seriously folks. I conceived my first baby in 1 try, lost it at 8 weeks, the second in 2 tries, lost it at 12 weeks, the third in 1 try, lost it at 9 weeks. My problem heretofore has been staying, not getting pregnant. So four months of failure in a row now has me ready to lose my mind. I realize this is relatively little time in the annals of infertility. But you have to realize that what I’ve been steeling myself against is the heartbreak of my next miscarriage. The heartbreak of not even being able to conceive introduces a whole new brand of torment.

THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME

2005-07-27T15:13:00.000-04:00

The Best Kind of Congress (the other kind is busy getting ready to eff up the Supreme Court)

2005-07-20T23:47:00.001-04:00

Convacation Sex n. (2005): a convocation, or meeting, of two people for the purpose of attempting conception: conducted while the parties concerned are on vacation [we ate, drank, and had lots of ~]

It was good. I'll let you know if it leads to anything.

"Happy" Fouth of July

2005-07-04T09:44:00.000-04:00

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all women are not created equal. That some are endowed by their creator with the ability to procreate while some are doomed to barren despair, and that amidst their griefs will be no new life and little happiness.

So, there I am at yet another infernal barbecue. This one really was enough to make an infertile relinquish all hope. The place was crawling with kids. My husband and I were literally the only couple there without spawn.

I felt like I was missing the season’s crucial accessory. Everyone else knew how to get a child. Several, clearly on very good terms with the Designer, had as many as three. Others had one or two, probably picked them up cheap at a sample sale somewhere. But still. I was the only one without the must-have look.

And these kids were all exceptionally adorable, beautifully behaved, beautiful looking, a sort of photo-shoot fantasy of having children. No one fought. No one spilled their juice (which in any case was the can’t-go-wrong parenting-professional choice: juice boxes of organic apple juice sipped through micro straws). They played on the swings. They pushed each other gently on slide. They sang. They got out the dress-up box and put on a very elaborate play the grow-ups were not allowed to watch. The infants smiled and cooed when they needed attention.

By the time I’d been there an hour, everyone knew my story. I felt compelled to explain myself. I felt that all those strangers needed to know that I read Vogue and Women’s Wear Daily. I *know* a single-minded focus on career is, like, so last season. I love children, really. And I deeply appreciate the value of family (an altogether different thing than so-called “family values”—don’t get me started). It’s just that my damn credit card keeps getting denied.

Must be an error with the fraud-prevention program. I swear I am an excellent credit risk. You let me have a baby and I promise I will never miss a payment. I will shower that child with love.

For now, I have only tears. Who knew a simple barbecue could make you so blue? Add the cold white shock of seeing the red of my period again this morning and there you have it: another holiday in hell.

P.S.
I am officially going to be on vacation, in the real world and in the blog world, for the next two weeks. I’ll be thinking of all of you and especially folks like Susie, and PJ, and Danae, wishing you all the best. See ya’ll when I get back.

Breaking News, Part II

2005-06-27T14:17:00.000-04:00

More news from the wild and wacky world of ovulation prediction and pregnancy test kits.

Women today have more options for pregnancy testing than ever before. Ever eager to determine what women want, kit makers introduce new varieties of test kits all the time. Now you can choose tests that give results five days before your expected period. But no rush. No pressure. They still sell the less sensitive tests too. So if you’re a masochist, you can still wait till after you’re a few days late to test.

Of course, there are lots of consumer reports articles out there you can find to go over the boring stuff, like how many milligrams of which kinds of hormone have to be present in how many milliliters of pee before a given brand of test will register results. I want to discuss more important things. Like the presentation of the results.

If you're an IF veteran, you're probably already used to looking for pink lines. After months, if not years, of straining your eyes to try to determine the relative shading of the pink lines on ovulation-prediction kits, it’ll come as a real relief to graduate to pregnancy-test kits, where the key question is HOW MANY pink lines there are. One? Sorry, please play again. Two? Snake eyes! You’re goin ta Vegas, baby.

For those partial to pink lines, First Response makes a very nice product. Anecdotal evidence suggests that testing with a kit that presents results in pink increases your likelihood of having a baby girl by an unquantifiable percentage.

For those hoping for a boy, however, allow me to suggest the use of Clear Blue Easy. True, this test is a bit less sensitive than First Response. But it does have important advantages. The best part is that the results come in *blue*! AND, there’s no need to count lines with this test. Instead, you look for a plus sign or a minus sign. Plus? Your result is positive. Minus? It’s negative. See? It’s clear. It’s easy. And it’s blue! This test goes great with the yellow and blue nursery décor favored for little boys. In fact, you’ll want to be sure to buy multiples of this kit so you can generate lots of pretty blue plus signs. Then you can buy the Pottery Barn conversion kit and use them to make Junior his own very special personalized crib mobile (fishing line not included).

Of course, the kits mentioned above can be a little confusing. With First Response you have to *count* the number of lines in order to interpret your result. Kit makers realize the strain that such counting puts on the female brain. In fact, extensive survey results reveal that, on average, an infertile woman will wait just 2.5 days post-ovulation before beginning to test for pregnancy. Yet even the most sensitive tests won’t work until 9 to 10 days post-O. Recognizing that most women can’t count as high as ten, much less tell the difference between one line or two, scientists have worked to address the problem.

Clearly, Clear Blue Easy, with its confusing mathematical symbols, does not mark much of an improvement over the one-line-versus-two-line tests. Plus signs? Minus signs? Don’t they realize that women who can’t count are only going to be further frightened by symbols for computation? What does a positive mean anyway? Good news, right! Which could mean either pregnant or not pregnant, depending on what you’re hoping for… Sheesh.

Enter the good folks at E.P.T. They call their test the EARLY Pregnancy Test, even though it can’t be used until you expect your period. Apparently they mean not that you can use their test early-—you can’t—-but that it can be used to confirm an already detected early pregnancy with Certainty. Knowing how much better women are with English than math, product developers at E.P.T. now offer the “Certainty” test. E.P. T. Certainty promises you results written in plain English, saying either “pregnant” or “not pregnant.” Now how thoughtful is that? Too bad for you, if you’re not an English speaker.

Don’t even get me started on pregnancy testing for the blind. Until now, nothing has been available for those who can’t see. But hope is on the way. Because manufacturers realize how few women with the disposable income available to waste on their products can actually read in the first place. So they are now developing a new line of pregnancy tests designed to deliver results audibly instead of visibly.

Still in the prototype stage, these new tests will work like singing telegrams. Your pee stream will activate the miniature audio speakers, making the result loud and clear. Searching around for an appropriately catchy tune, drug companies are reaching back to the glory days. Remember those service announcements that aired in the 1970’s warning children not to mistake medicine for candy? Well, now that those former children are reaching the infertile years, manufacturers have decided to resurrect the “We’re Not Candy!” jingle.

Remember ladies? It went like this:
‘We’re NOT can-dy.
Even though we look so fine and dan-dy.
When you’re sick, we come in han-dy,
BU-Ut
We’re NOT can-dy.”

Coming soon to a drugstore near you, the BOS (Blind or Stupid) Pregnancy Test:

"You're NOT preg-nant.
Even though the news makes you in-dig-nant.
IF you were, you'd feel tran-scend-ent,
BU-Ut
You're NOT preg-nant."

Damn. Now I can’t get that tune out of my head.

I Am a Fertility Goddess

2005-06-21T09:35:00.000-04:00

Well, I meant to not post for a few weeks. To try to focus on my actual life and work, not the inside of my computer. But it seems I’m addicted to the blog world. Or I miss ya’ll or something. Anyway, I managed to read about Get-up Grrl’s cat without posting, but Reprogirl’s posts tipped me over the edge. I just hadda share the latest:

See, I started feeling pregnancy symptoms on Saturday, the same day I had my first positive OPK. I had the fatigue *and* I kept having to pee a lot. I mean a LOT. And that always happens to me really early in the pregnancy. So I just went around all day peeing & peeing & thinking, wow, they really ought to improve the technology on those pregnancy tests. I mean, if my body can sense the hormonal changes this soon, there *must* be measurable amounts of chemicals in my pee. Not that I actually tested, mind you. I know those tests don't work the day of ovulation. I just walked around feeling smug and pleased with my secret, impressed with my earthy intimate knowledge of my own body.

We went to a friend's barbecue and there were infants and toddlers galore. But secure in my secret knowledge, I was fine. One idiot metrosexual with a five-month-old son in a sling actually went on and on about how it would be his first "Daddy's Day" the next day causing my highly sensitive yet wholly inarticulate husband to accidentally impale his own hand on a barbecue skewer. I almost gave my husband the good news, just to make him feel better. But I didn't want to jinx anything. Instead, I went home and had some totally unnecessary--wink, wink--conception sex, then fell into an exhausted sleep around midnight.

You can imagine my glee when I woke at 2:30 AM with the most ferocious need to pee. See, I told you! And then I peed. And the PAIN. The PAIN. It was excruciating. There was an effing barbecue skewer up my urethra. There was actual blood, people. I was up the rest of the night. And antibiotics and Pyridene notwithstanding I’ve been way too uncomfortable for sex ever since. See how well this cycle is shaping up for me?

Please, please, tell me I'm not the first person to diagnose a UTI as a pregnancy!

So, ball's in your court. What's your worst/funniest "hysterical pregnancy"* story?

*See Reprogirl June 16

Harumph

2005-06-14T12:12:00.000-04:00

The blog, she is feeling a mite bit peckish these days. Maybe it's the old age. Maybe it's the heat giving her the vapors. Maybe it's the utter lack of incident on the baby-making front. She don't rightly know. But she's going to draw the blinds and have a nice lie down with a cool compress. She'll be up and about again when she's able. Till then, she sends her regards. Do stop in and pay her a call if you're in the neighborhood, hear?

Breaking News

2005-06-07T10:04:00.000-04:00

The world of ovulation prediction tests and pregnancy tests is changing rapidly. With new scientific improvements occurring every day, there are a few key things every woman should consider before selecting a test kit.

Start by assessing your own scientific skills. Did you flunk 9th-grade biology? Tenth-grade chemistry? Do you remember what a pipette is? If not, better steer clear of the kits that come with collection cups, droppers, test trays, etc. Too many steps! Too much equipment!

We know, we know, if they'd made the real-world implications of learning to pipette clear back in high school, your whole life would be different right now. You might have stopped passing notes to your best girlfriend, asked the guy in front of you for some pipetting tips, invited him over for a study session, done your studying on the basement couch, gotten knocked up as a youngin, and never reached the stage of thirty-something, fading-fertility desperation that has you squinting bleary eyed at little pearls of yellow pee first thing in the morning, watching them tremble tremulously from the end of dropper, as you think, "drop, damn it, drop, fulfill your destiny, live up to your name, drop you damn droplet...Damn!--how many drops just fell?" Education reform now. That's all I'm sayin.

Right. So where was I? Ah yes, selecting kits. You are much much better off choosing the wand-style kits. Confusingly, these also come with cups. But no droppers. And no trays. At first you may want to ease into the transition to a new testing technique by peeing into a collecting cup like you're used to doing, then dipping the stick, then waiting for the results. Problem is, you still have to dispose of those little shot-glasses full of urine. And they don't offer you a chaser. Ick. Eventually, you will realize what a simple matter it is to just stick the damn stick into you urine stream, count to five, wait for the results. Voila. So simple. And those unused little collection cups? They make great paperclip sorting trays at the office.

With the sample collected, the hard part becomes interpreting the results. Almost all ovulation-prediction tests show results in the form of two pink lines. Your job is to decide which line is darker, the test line or the control line. If the test is darker, I mean if the control is darker, I mean if... Never mind. It doesn't really matter if you can remember which line is supposed to be darker, because just trying to determine if one of them actually is a shade darker than the other is going to drive you bananas. And, frankly, if you can read one of these things, you're pretty much already shit out of luck.

According to "Great at Any Age," the handy "guide to enjoying the best years of your life" offered on page 280 of the June 2005 issue of InStyle magazine, color vision "steadily improves until it reaches its peak in your thirties." My point? If your color vision is good enough to interpret one of those OPK's, you can go ahead and skip the damn test altogether. No need for a Day-Three FSH test. Your eggs are old. Your body has redirected its waning resources away from your ovaries and into your retinas.

Good luck, though. Once you've mastered the trick of peeing on a stick, one ovulation-prediction test is much like another. There's not a lot more to think about in choosing generic over brand. And, if you're very very lucky, you'll have many more chances to perfect your technique month after month.

I know I'll be working to hone my skills again this month...

Of Germination and Generation*

2005-06-01T14:15:00.000-04:00

It’s June and maple seedlings are sprouting all over the lawn,** piercing through the mulch in the flowerbeds, springing up through cracks in the patio. Each little sapling has only a couple of leaves, rippling flags of the tenderest, yellowest, youngest shade of green. The funny thing is that the leaves are nearly full-sized. They're nearly what you’d see on a mature tree——much like human embryos I suppose, all head and little limb. They look so foolish and yet so brave, flapping and waving from their slender four and five inch stalks.

Most of them won’t make it, I know. They’ll be nibbled bit by bit by insects or browsed whole by deer, drowned in floods or withered by drought. Many will be unceremoniously mown down with the grass. I may even rip a few from the sheltering earth myself. Oh, my heart will tear a bit along with the leaves, but the eternal quest for order in the garden must be met.

And soon the whole cycle will begin again. Every year, the old Norway maple standing sentinel in the center of the lawn sends hundreds of glittering green seedpods off on lazy, dizzy, circular flights. The silent droning of their papery propellers marks the slow passing of August afternoons.

It’s such a lovely feeling, that green forest vertigo feeling you get when lying under spreading branches and looking up, watching the helicopters sputter to the ground. And what fun, once they've fallen. When I was a child, all the neighborhood kids used to gather under the cool green, collecting pods and hanging them from our ears. Earrings for little wood nymphs.

Seeing these seedlings now, I think of the tree and its seasons. How deeply do I yearn for a child to share this sense of wonder with. Yet, so very few seeds ever sprout. And how few of those spouts grow into saplings...how few of those saplings stretch into trees. Nature is profligate with her offspring, extravagantly inefficient in her spending.

I do so hope my own three spent pods may be off flying somewhere, winging their way through the blue. So, it makes my breath catch to see the shallow-rooted seedlings now scattered about, tiny and determined, nodding and bobbing in the breeze.

*Alternate Title: On Mourning My Losses yet Being Pro-Choice

** I do in fact live in Manhattan, but I also have some country access.

P.S. For those of you still following along: it's cycle day 26 here. Progesterone suppositories notwithhstanding, I've never felt less pregnant in my life.

Honest, Officer, I Never Saw No Signs

2005-05-26T15:34:00.000-04:00

When you have your first miscarriage, you think, “Who me? Sorry, officer, but you’ve got the wrong woman. No really. Look at your profiles—we know you like those profiles—I’m much too young and cute for this to be happening. I’m only 30. And my hair is shiny.” The officer appears unmoved by the shiny hair. He probably prefers blonds. With curls. “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he says, “but we got you red handed, er, red padded, er anyway, you’re definitely having a miscarriage.” Then he writes you up a warning ticket for some Percocet and sends you on your way.

For a while you’re too stunned to get back in the car. This can’t be real you think. Eventually, the evidence around you is too great to be ignored. “Fine,” you think, “OK, fine. I had a miscarriage. But it was an accident, a slip up. Could have happened to anyone, honest, and I barely had anything to drink.” Friends and family reassure you that it happens all the time. People you hardly know come out of the woodwork to tell you about the time it happened to them. And look at them now: three kids, six step kids, from two different marriages, more grandkids and step grandkids than they can count. “Right,” you think, “I’m gonna get my life back on track. I’m gonna turn over a new leaf. No drinking. No late nights. No tuna fish.” This happened once, but it ain’t gonna happen again and that’s a promise.

When you get pulled over for your second miscarriage, the officer cocks an eyebrow. “What seems to be the problem, officer?” you ask, sure that if you just bat your lashes and visibly blink away tears, he’ll have to take pity. “Do you know what the speed is supposed to be?” he asks. You search your brain frantically, trying to remember what the normal beat per minute range is for fetal heartbeats…”Um no, officer, I don’t,” you say as innocently as possible. “Well, this one’s too slow,” he tells you. Days later, he says the words you’ve been dreading: “you’re having a miscarriage.”

You accept the news quickly this time, but what does it mean? “Are they going to put points on my license?” you ask. “Yes,” says the officer grimly, making notes on his pad, “we give you 40 points.” FORTY points? A forty percent chance of a third miscarriage? Shit. Oh, and this time there’s a fine. You’ll have to pay up front for a D&C. Oh, you can go to traffic court and protest. Maybe eve get the fine reduced. But even if health insurance covers 80%, that’s still a hefty chunk of change. Once in court, you realize your life has changed forever. The judge tells you you’re going to be on probation through your next pregnancy. Furthermore, this is going down on your permanent record.

Come the time of your third miscarriage, the officer rolls his eyes, gives his siren a quick burp, and pulls you over to the curb. “All right lady, let’s see it, open up the trunk,” he demands. You wonder if you should tell him to get a warrant, but you’re too scared to protest. He slaps you around with the nightstick, shoves his flashlight in your trunk then says, “this is going down about like I thought it would.” Shit, shit, shit, you think. I cannot get this monkey off my back. His radio crackles as he speaks into it, “this is unit 666 to base, unit 666 to base. We got ourselves an NFHB.” No Fetal Heartbeat.

This time, the judge is not amused. “Type a situation ya got here, we call it habitual spontaneous abortion,” he says. Now you’re really ashamed. Everyone knows about your nasty habit. Once you have your third miscarriage, they label you a hopeless recidivist. They lock you in the airless cell of infertility where you meet your fellow prisoners, Rage, Grief, and Disbelief. The cruelest joke of all hits when you realize your own body is site of your incarceration. “Fuck,” you think, “am I in here for life?”

Infertility (and Illumination) in Unexpected Places

2005-05-23T11:14:00.000-04:00

From time to time there are discussions in the IF blogosphere about literature that treats themes of infertility. I just came across a book that deals with the subject beautifully: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Books, 2003). The book, about a young man from Afghanistan, has little to do with infertility overall. But, midway through the book, infertility unexpectedly enters the life of a character-- as unexpectedly as it has entered many of our lives. Hosseini writes about it with such knowing detail (both medically and emotionally) that I think he must have some direct personal experience with it. I want to share one especially moving passage (but I'm blacking out the characters' names so as not to spoil the plot for anyone who wants to read the book):

"Sometimes, [with her] sleeping next to [him], [he] lay in bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And [he] could almost feel the emptines in [her] womb, like it was a living breathing thing. It had seeped into [their] marriage, that emptiness, into [their] laughs, and [their] lovemaking. And late at night, in the darkness of [their] room, [he'd] feel it rising from [her] and settling between [them]. Sleeping between [them]. Like a newborn child."

Tears filled my eyes as I read that passage and again as I transcribed it now. It captures a lot for me. Please, if you come by and read this, won't you leave me a comment and tell me about something, anything, a poem, a novel, an essay on infertility that has affected you too?

Smoke Gets in Your Eggs

2005-05-16T09:54:00.000-04:00

Haven't you always loved that old jazz standard, you know, the one with the lyrics by Bryan Ferry? The words go something like this:

They ask me how I knew
What I want to do
I of course replied
Something here inside
Cannot be denied
They said someday you´ll find
Maternal instinct's blind
When your heart´s on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes
So I chaffed them and I gaily laughed
And kept up my maternal plans
Yet today my hope has flown away
I am without my babes
Now soothing friends decry
Tears I cannot hide
So I smile and say
When Granny smokes her cigs
Smoke gets in your eggs

Wait. What? You say that's not the way you remember the lyrics? Well, you clearly have not been reading the Wall Street Journal lately. (And more power to you; their editorial page gives me hives.) But if you had accidentaly come across a copy over the weekend and just happened to turn to the May 13, 2005 "Science Journal" section, you'd have stumbled on the article:

"Grandma's Behavior While Pregnant Affects Her Grandkids' Health"
— by Sharon Begley.

Read my excerpt and weep:

"Scientists are discovering that nature...can visit the sins of the grandparents on the children... Transgenerational effects are the latest focus of a growing field called fetal programming, or the fetal origins of adult diseases. It examines how conditions in the womb shape physiology in a way that makes people more vulnerable decades later to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, immune problems, and other illnesses...Last month scientists reported that a child whose grandmother smoked while pregnant with the child's mother may have twice the risk of developing asthma as a child whose grandmother didn't flood her fetus with carcinogens. Remarkably, the risk from grandma's smoking was as great or greater than from mom's...The harmful effects of tobacco, it seems, can reach down two generations even when the intervening generation—mom—has no reason to suspect her child may be at risk...What causes the grandma effect? One suspect is DNA in the fetus's eggs (all the eggs a girl will ever have are made before birth). Chemicals in smoke might change the on-off pattern of genes in eggs, including genes of the immune system, affecting children who develop from those eggs. Men whose mother's smoked don't seem to pass on such abnormalities, probably because sperm are made after birth...When immune compromised girls become pregnant, they have less chance of having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. Score another one for the grandma effect."

Are you angry yet? Are you crying? I am. Because my grandmother (until her premature smoking-related death) smoked a good two packs a day every day of her life and all through her pregnancy with my mother, even as my then-embryonic mother was busy in utero making the egg that would one day make me. And I, despite being in overall good health and testing negative for every damn disorder that a hematologist, four reproductive endocrinologists, and a rheumatologist can think of to test me for, don't seem to have much "chance of having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby." Indeed, they tell me my best hope is probably to act as if I DO have an immune disorder, one they simply cannot find or diagnose, and go on anti-coagulation therapy in my next pregnancy.

One of the "luxuries" of suffering from UNEXPLAINED Recurrent Miscarriages is that you get to grasp at any and every possible explanation that comes your way, no matter how hazy the details. So I'm singing through angry tears this morning, "Smoke gets in your eggs."

Compass Points

2005-05-13T12:18:00.000-04:00

Thank you all so much for your comments.

I logged on today with a post already half-written in my head, knowing that I had a bit a free time to type my thoughts down. But I'm so moved by your comments that what I meant to say has flown out of my head. I think I sort of thought in the back of my mind that this might be what it would be like to blog, but I really had no idea.

On Wednesday I wrote a post about feeling lost on the path to parenthood. I didn't even realize that I was asking for help in knowing where the heck I am. I just sent a smoke signal into the ether. "Helllooo. I'm heere. Can anyone hear me? Can anyone tell me where is here?" One by one, you arrived. No one could necessarily point the way north, but each came bearing something: a magnet, a needle, a cork, a cup, the last water in the canteen.

Bugs writes a blog that I love, how great to have her say that something I wrote sums up just how she feels.

Ann moved me to tears with her recognition of my story, with its unwritten ending, and even more with her offer of her story, in which infertility has become a closed chapter. I long for the day when the last paragraph in this chapter of my life will be written.

Journeywoman's name says it all. She knows how hard this trip is.

Sarah and Alisa understand the sense of accidental sisterhood that binds infertiles. Getup Grrl has said she once thought of calling Chez Miscarriage the Miscarriage Club to capture exactly that feeling.

V's Herbie just got out of the car for a second and hopes to get right back on the road. I wish you Godspeed, but in the meantime I'm glad to have you here in the clearing.

Sol traveled through a lot of cyberspace to get here. I'd love to know where you're writing from.

Angela's metaphor about trying to retrace her steps moved me deeply. Where is the damn trail of breadcrumbs when you need it?

Each of these comments is like the strike of a needle across a magnet. And while I may not yet know the way North, I feel so heartened by the needle's feeble wiggles. Someday, somehow we'll find a path out of here.

In the meantime, the extraordinary experience of writing what I'm feeling and having perfect strangers "materialize" (etherize?!) to say, yes, they know what it's like to face in just this direction is something I'm very grateful to have.

"Compass" has so many meanings. As verb it can mean to draw an enclosing line, to measure a curve. And I wonder if it might not also be related to the word compassion. Because what I feel in having written and then gotten your responses is that I've been circled, compassed with compassion. I hope that people reading this will feel that too.

Each of you is a compass point.

I'm glad I decided to take a try at this blogging thing.

When Sartre Is Your Chauffer

2005-05-11T22:20:00.000-04:00

Dearest Readers,

With the help of the fabulous Suzie of the aptly-named Not a Habit, I recently figured out how to make links, including an all-important link to the mother of all blogrolls Julie's big list. Thanks to Julie's recent update, I am now actually included on that big list, my very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And because of that link, I have received dozens on dozens of visits today. But no comments. What gives?

Are you all ferociously shy? Bored to tears at the thought that another hapless infertile has started a blog? Just really not interested in the thoughts of this particular hapless infertile? I would really love to know YOUR thoughts.

So, I'm going to ask you a direct question and hope for some responses. Where are you on the path to parenthood? Cruising the blacktop with the hood down? Stuck in the mud? Crashed into the guard rail? What do you do to keep yourself occupied on the journey? Are you the kind who packs the car with lots of healthy snacks and classic books on tape? The kind who stops after 15 miles cause they have Nathan's at the rest stop & Nathan's sells those awesome crispy crinkled french fries with the mini pitchfork (the forks are red cause those greasy tasty fries are the devil's own food), plus that way you can pick up copies of Cosmo and People? The kind that drives all night, pees into a bottle, and coasts into each gas stop on fumes?

I am finding it a little hard to keep myself occupied on this damn road trip. We've taken so many wrong turns, the whole thing is lasting way longer than I thought it would. I've eaten through my homemade GONC (that's good old nuts and chocolate, cause who would ever waste their time on raisins). I've eaten some good, greasy fast food. I've driven in silence for grim determined hours. But we're still not there. And the road is so foggy, I can't tell if I'm getting closer, or driving in circles, or possibly heading straight for a cliff.

Objectively, I have a very nice life. But after a lot of debate and discussion, my husband and I decided we were ready to change that life. Yet, life decided to stay the same. Instead, I changed. I can't seem to get comfortable again in the life that I had, but I don't know how to get to the life I think I want. I'm on a road that seems to go nowhere and has No Exit. Eh bien, continuous. . . .

On Surviving May 8, 2005

2005-05-08T11:50:00.000-04:00

Mother’s Day

what a
Miserable Date
what a
Maddening Display
for those with
Maternal Desires
but
Much Delay

society's
Moronic Demands
inflict
Mental Depression
on
Medical Deviants
suffering
Major Dejection

still,
Misanthropic Disgust
only prevents
Mindful Deliberation
so better turn to
Mournful Daydreams
and
Maintain Determination

The Hissy Fit as a Form of Contraception

2005-05-04T10:06:00.000-04:00

A student at MIT named Gauri Nanda has recently created a novel new form of alarm clock. Known as "Clocky," it's designed to act as a robotic pet, a kind of techno Fido that barks for you to wake up and play. The clock, padded and covered in brown shag carpet, has wheels and a navigation system. Once the alarm goes off in the morning, Clocky rolls off the nightstand and then into some unknown corner. The idea is that you'll have to get out of bed and find it in order to turn it off. My husband really needs something like this.

Every single morning, my husband's alarm goes of before dawn. He's got the kind of job where you have to get up to make the donuts. But he's a heavy sleeper, ergo, he needs an alarm. And every single morning after it goes off, he hits snooze over and over. Eventually, *I* become fully awake and team up with the clock to rouse him. Sometimes I have to physically push him out of bed. By that point, I usually can't fall back to sleep. Ironically, I'm a light sleeper that needs a LOT of sleep. So, even though I have a better schedule and a much shorter commute and could potentially sleep for more than another hour after he gets up, his routine leaves me chronically sleep deprived. This causes us a fair amount of conflict. In fact, it's one of our biggest points of tension. He claims that there's no way he can get up without an alarm. I say, yes I know, but you have to get up when it goes off, not hit snooze and go back to sleep till I force you up. He says he never even consciously hears the alarm and there's nothing he can do. I say constantly disrupting my sleep is a human rights violation!!!! Weekends are the only thing that save us. Otherwise, I'm cranky and sour in the mornings, Mrs. Jack Sprat on the grapefruit diet.

So, a couple of weeks ago, a day or two after I ovulated, I had a big performance review at work and I was nervous. Really really nervous. I wanted the day to go well. I worried it wouldn't. I keep losing babies, why not lose my job while I'm at it? I was an emotional mess. So, the night before my big review, we have a little talk about how I need a good night's sleep before the big day. I, of course, toss and turn and sleep even more lightly than usual until I finally drop off for real around 3 in the morning--only to be rudely awakened again by his alarm at 5:15 AM and at 5: 24 AM and at 5:33 AM. At which point I started screaming like a banshee. I am not kidding, it was ugly. I screamed and shrieked and sobbed and screamed. I pounded the mattress with my fists. I said all sorts of angry things. For an hour. My husband could not have been more contrite, more apologetic, more placating. Eventually, he got out the door, very very late for work. I got up, went to work, sailed through my review, regained my sanity, and apologized abjectly for my behavior when we got home that night. He has gotten up BEFORE his alarm every week-day morning since, and I had almost managed to forget the incident had ever happened.

Until I peed on a stick this morning... Clearly an animal in full-on, adrenaline-pumping, fight-or-flight mode is not going to be optimally primed for reproduction. I think maybe I wasn't quite ready to try this month...

Mark Your Calendar

2005-04-30T20:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I am officially halfway through the 2-week wait. My mood is somewhere between defiantly pissed off and drearily resigned. On the one hand, why should I even care if I'm pregnant, seeing as how if I do get a BFP, it'll only mean I can count forward 5 more weeks and pencil in the date of my upcoming miscarriage in my daybook. And, on the other hand, with pre-partum depression this impressive, does it even matter if I ever get to experience the post-partum variety?

So, how soon should I start peeing on sticks? If Hallmark was the proud sponsor of my life, I’d wait until Sunday, *Mother’s Day,* to test, then present my husband with those two glorious pink lines as a token of my love. He’d blush and shyly pull out a gorgeously wrapped present, the one he bought cause he just knew in his bones we were having a baby. Cue the violins, you know how the rest of this fantasy goes…

Unfortunately, my life seems to be underwritten by a grant from the Waste Management Foundation. So I’m debating between Wednesday and Thursday. If I ovulated last Saturday, as I think I did, then using an early-prediction test, I could possibly test as early as Tuesday, four days before my expected period. Trouble is, the test is only about 60% accurate then and a false negative is only going to further mess with my head. So, it seems worth it to me to wait a few days. But how many??? And will the days pass faster if I spend most of the hours between 2 and 5 AM pondering this question?

So, Mother’s Day. Is there really any more depressing holiday on this earth? Did they make this up just to torture us infertiles? Yes, I have a mother of my own, and, yes, she’s lovely. But after just over two years of infertility and miscarriages, this is going to be my third dreadful Mother’s Day, and frankly I would just like to cut the day from the calendar. Add that to my custom order for the Infertile’s Page-a-Day. I want the one that notes the resumption of Standard Fertility Time but makes no mention whatsoever of Mother’s Day--or Father’s Day, for that matter.

Help me out here, People. We need to get creative here. The page-a-day people seem to have fallen under a glittery spell cast by baby dusters. Seriously, on offer at Amazon right now you can find:

∑ The Best of 14,000 Things to Be Happy About Page-A-Day Calendar 2005
* Cherish April 30th. You have no idea how long it will be until your next miscarriage.

∑ 365 Amazing Trivia Facts Page-A-Day Calendar 2005
* Percentage Likelihood of Miscarriage in Your Next Pregnancy after 3 Losses, No Live Births: 60%
* Percentage Likelihood of Miscarriage in Your Next Pregnancy after 4 Losses, No Live Births: 95%

∑ 365 Meditations, Reflections & Restoratives for Women Who Do Too Much Page-A-Day Calendar 2005
* Breath deeply. Visualize the baby dust. --Ack!--Cough-- Stop. Do NOT breath the baby dust!

∑ Believing In Ourselves : 2005 Day-to-Day Calendars
* The right attitude is everything. So you know it's your fault if you don't have a baby by now.

∑ Zen Page-A-Day Calendar 2005 (Page-A-Day Calendars)
* Sit straight, but comfortably, in the lotus position and chant "Waaanh!" over and over and over again.

∑ Make The Days Count : 2005 Day-to-Day Calendar
* Tick tock, tick tock. If you're over 14, you know, your fertility is declining every single day...

Thoughts about what we should include in the 365 Bitter Ironies About Infertility Page-A-Day Calendar, TM?

Venting Venti-Style

2005-04-27T19:33:00.000-04:00

So, I wandered bleary-eyed into my local coffee place this morning, and the attractive looking European man in front of me leaned confidently over the counter said, “Uh’m gun to tek eh kep uf cuffee.” He didn’t ask, “Hi, could I have a cup of coffee?” He didn’t even say, “I’d like a cup of coffee.” No, he announced in clear and melodious tones that he was Going To Take a cup of coffee, apparently whether the counter girl liked it or not. The it was my turn and I said, “Hi, um, could I please, um, have a decaf coffee, um please?” It got me thinking.

Maybe I’m going about this wanting-a-baby thing all wrong. Maybe instead of asking the gods if I could please, pretty please have a baby, or wistfully nattering on about how much I’d like one, I need to stand up and say, “I’m going to have a baby. “ Do you hear that universe? I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I’m going to have a baby. Give me one good viable pregnancy, send me a surrogate, open an adoption application, whatever. I’m not picky about whether there’s cinnamon or coco or nutmeg sprinkled on my foam, but dammit, I’m going to take a latte.

Thinking-of-England Sex

2005-04-18T21:27:00.000-04:00

Well, folks, it's cycle day 10 here, which means it is that time again already. To say that I am hopefulanxiousscaredapprehensiveexcitedoptimisticpessimistic does not begin to capture the psychological meltdown I'm heading towards as we get set to try. We had one last lovely carefree romp yesterday. Now the real work begins. Is there any drudgery more dispiriting, undignified, downright anxiety-producing, and all-out awful than conception sex after prolonged infertility and loss? From here on out, I’m going to be about as sensual as the brides told by Queen Victoria to "lie still and think of England." Except I'll be lying still and thinking of children. I will keep you posted…