Broken

Nine years of marriage. 4 years of infertility treatments. 10+ assisted cycles. Two beautiful IVF babies.

A surprise positive pregnancy test in a Starbucks bathroom.

Possibly the happiest I've ever been in my life.

8 weeks later, I take the pills that flush the would-be-baby from my body. There was no more heartbeat. Bye bye baby.

2 weeks later my friend from my tight knit moms board tells me she's pregnant. Along with the other friend who was 2 weeks ahead of me. Would have been two weeks ahead of me.

May 1 due date means I would have been 37 weeks next week. G-man came just over 37 weeks.

I'm 40 now. I know there are likely no more babies. Watching my friends get ready to welcome their babies. A boy for the mom of two girls. A girl for the mom that already has one of each.

My #2 is 30 months. He could have been a big brother if life was fair. My mom might have had a granddaughter.

 I always thought I'd have three kids. Things just don't always go how you thought.

I love my boys. I know I'm lucky.

But my heart still grieves.

It's just not fair.

Oh blech

I am sicker than I remember being with any of my previous pregnancies. I know I was queasy but not sick with G-man. I remember being really nauseous with the twin pregnancy. I don't remember if I actually puked.

Yesterday I actually puked.

We were on vacation all week. I definitely felt queasy on and off. Trying to keep eating because that seems to help a bit. (Methinks I'll be gaining more than 28 pounds this time...) Yesterday we were headed home. I felt so awful in the car to the airport.... We got there and I told III he had to take care of the returning the car... then I booked it to the bathroom for a good old pregnancy puke. Awesome.

I'm nervous to go back to school. Not sure how to handle any potential puking... My room is not near anyone else's and I'm not supposed to leave the kids on their own. I had III buy me a bunch of things to try help with the nausea. Hopefully something is a winner.

The only other symptom I've had is a little dizziness and some fatigue. The tiredness isn't as bad as it was with G. The one that has me a little nervous is that my boobs don't hurt at all. That was the big one last time...

My ultrasound is at 9am on Monday. I'll be 7w6d. I have been very Zen about it. But if it's bad... that'll be bad. :( There is no reason to think it will be bad except that I've had bad before... And if it's NOT bad, then I have my first OB appointment on Wednesday. It's a brand new OB and she's going on maternity leave herself for 6 weeks, so she wanted to see me before she leaves.

So keep your fingers crossed for me. Please, please, please let there be a little raspberry with a flicker.

So far so good....

Beta #2 was 100.4 and beta #3 was 317.2!!!! Ultrasound coming up last week of March. This is always the hardest part for me, especially because of my history. But I'm going to try to stay hopeful and positive...

IVF #5

Just after G-man's first birthday, we decided we wanted to do another cycle and try for another baby. However, with the move, that meant we had to find a new clinic. In spite of my heaps of research I did trying to find the best place, we hate our new clinic. The communication is awful, the staff has NO compassion, and III ended up having an altercation (verbal, not physical) with the front desk staff that resulted in an asinine meeting with our doctor- which he chose to schedule immediately after my transfer. So, yeah there's that.

But anyway...

Though we sought them out in September, between the testing they wanted to do, their closing over the holidays, and again that lack of communication, this cycle didn't start until February.

CD 1 was February 7. They had me on the follistem pen and menopur. They also used ganirelix (I think) instead of lupron and PIO rather than endometrin.

I had my ER on the 19th and they got 11 eggs. 10 were mature, but only 7 made it to day 3. They ended up testing 5 (not sure what happened to the other two... again, their communication is pretty sucky) and 2 were normal. So we transferred 2 grade A blasts on 2/17.

I took an HPT 8dp5dt and it was very, very faint. I took another the morning of my beta, this past Wednesday, and it was again really faint. I went in for my beta and (more miscommunication) didn't hear the results until Thursday morning... 38.6. Positive but so very low, especially after getting a + on Monday... I expected it would be at least 50 since, supposedly, the test I use detects at 25. 

I just got back from my second blood draw. 12dp5dt... So I'm waiting and hoping for at least a 60. I took another HPT last night (torturing myself?) and it was still positive, but also still very light. I know that the "darkness" of the line isn't really SUPPOSED to matter, but... well, you all know how it goes.

So keeping all my fingers, toes, legs, etc crossed for a doubling beta. I figure 60 is a 72hr double so higher than that would be even better. 

On the shitty chance that this cycle doesn't work, we are not returning to this clinic. We have talked about going back to our old clinic for the cycle, though it means traveling. But we'd have to wait until the summer, and I'm not sure I'm that patient... so I guess we'll find out what happens with today's beta and go from there.

Oh, hi.

Don't know if anyone out there will read these, as I've not updated in so long that I didn't even know how to use the "new" blogger... lol. But we've started a new cycle, and I've found myself coming back to my blog to check info from my previous cycles. So I'm going to do some blogging about this cycle, mostly to help me keep track of what's going on.

BUT in case there is anyone still out there...

• we're still in our new city, and bought a house this past summer. I don't like it here and feel like I may never settle in. III doesn't really like his job, so that doesn't help. We do have a lovely house, though, with a huge yard for the dogs and G-man
• G-man is... amazing. Almost 19 months and a sweet, busy, funny, smart little man. As much as I want another baby, if for whatever reason it doesn't happen, we got EXTRA lucky with the one we've got
• I've been teaching part time and I don't like my school. It's not a good fit for me. I'm counting the days (98) until the summer arrives and I can be done.

So that's it in a nutshell... :)

Absent

Like many infertility bloggers, I hoped that once I got my take home baby I'd still be here to update and blog. Yeah, clearly I haven't been very good about that.

Part of it is that I now frequent another online community with other moms who have babies born around the same time as G-man- as myself, not anonymously. There are only a few of us who have dealt with IF, and I'm one of the only "hard core" infertiles. It's hard sometimes. Several are already pregnant again. Most of them as "oops" pregnancies. It still really stings.

I really want to have another baby. It feels different than it did before G-man. I AM a mom. No one can take that away from me. But it doesn't mean I don't resent that fact that I can't easily plan a sibling for him.

I've been a SAHM for the last nine months, and now I'm applying to jobs in our new city. I have one definite offer and another potential offer coming either today or Monday. I really have mixed feelings about it. I'm not wired to be a SAHM. But going back to work full time is daunting, especially at a new school. Plus, if we decide to jump back into this whole process again in the hopes of adding to our family, where will that fit? Appointments and blood draws and procedures... all while trying to establish myself at a new school and balance that with being a good mom.

I don't love our new city. Often, I just want to "go home". But, it is what it is. So I'm hoping going to work will help me settle in more and get back to myself. I want to be happier. I have my moments of happiness, but I want to be more consistently happy.

OH, and G? He's awesome. A happy, easy baby. I don't know if it's ironic or fitting that I had such an easy pregnancy, delivery, and now baby after all we went through the four years before. I love this little man so much, and know that I was meant to be his mama.

Moved

I am writing this post from our new town. We made the move I'd been so dreading... it was 3 days at a residence inn, 3 days on the road, and then another 3 days at another residence inn. The dogs were beside themselves and have not yet recovered. G-man was fine. He's three months old- he doesn't really know what's going on. I'm not happy to be here. My MIL is already driving me nuts. We are renting a house and it feels like I'm living in someone else's house. I really, really miss MY house. (Which is no longer my house. The new owners closed two days ago.) I'm already lonely.

I met up with a girl I met online- I wrote about her a few months ago and how her little boy was ill. Sadly, he passed away last month. She's is an amazing woman, though, and still wants to get to know me and G-man. I have lunch plans with another woman from the same online board tomorrow, and I heard today from a mom's group. So I'm trying. I am hoping to meet up people. For the most part, I don't want to hate it here. Why would I want to be miserable? But I'll admit, there is a small part of me that feels loyal to my old town and stubborn about the feelings I had the last 17 years that "there's no place like home" (home being my old town). That teeny tiny part of me would somehow feel justified if I hate it here. But hopefully I don't, because that would make my life rough for quite a while.

G-man is doing great. He's pretty much doubled his birth weight. He is holding his head up well and "talking" to us all of the time. He grins at us and laughs in his sleep (we're still waiting for a "for real" out loud laugh). He loves his doggies and his mommy and daddy. I'm enjoying dressing him like a little man (in spite of my MIL's insistence that I have far too many clothes for him) and he's getting close to needing a hair trim, at least around his ears.

We love him to pieces and it's weird to imagine that just over three months ago he wasn't here yet.

Long time no post...

Sorry that I suck and haven't updated. The pathetic thing is that it's mainly because I've changed my main email to gmail, and so I'm always signed in as that. I have to sign out in order to update here. What a stupid excuse, huh?

With infertility, especially dealing with it for as long as we did, you spend so long trying to get pregnant, and trying to stay pregnant and just focusing on being pregnant that you almost lose sight of the ultimate goal- there's (hopefully) going to be a real live baby at the end of this!

G-man is just over 2 months old and sometimes I'm still in shock that I am his mother. I grew him in my belly. He belongs to me. My dad posted a picture of him on his own face.book account today. And I looked at the picture and still got that little shock of that's really my kid!

So, having a baby. It has it's ups and downs, and that pretty much sums up our days. I'm exhausted. But G-man has started to settle into a nighttime schedule, so not as exhausted as I was a month ago. I don't love breastfeeding. But it's been a little better over the last few weeks, and it's definitely working for G-man- his weight has increased 75% from his birthweight and almost twice as much as he was when he came home from the hospital. I miss my husband. But my favorite part of this parenting thing so far is the look III gives G-man when he comes home.

Being "an infertile" and, to be honest, especially being part of the infertility blogging community, I feel like there is a vibe out there for many people (especially those of you who are still struggling with all of your might to become parents) that those of us who have babies should be happy about it all of the time. Or even if we're not, we shouldn't mention it publicly, and especially not bloglicly.

But it's effing hard.

And I knew it would be hard. No one pretends that it's easy to be a parent, especially to an infant. That said, there is just no way to wrap your brain around just how hard it is unless you are in it. Not just "once you've been there"... but unless it's happening to you right now. (If that wasn't true, we'd have a lot more only children out there.)

But there is also was no way for me to understand, no matter how intellectually I knew it would be the case, how it would feel when my baby son looks at me as I'm talking to him and smiles into my eyes. How I'd feel almost physical pain myself when he was crying out in pain and I couldn't figure out why. How my heart would swell, as if it was going to burst, when, despite others' attempts to pacify him, he stops fussing as I take him and he snuggles his face into my neck.

It was all worth it. It is all worth it.

(But I'm still tired as hell.)

G-man's arrival

Wednesday (the 17th) I saw my OB. She told me that I was 1.5 cm dilated and over 50% effaced. She speculated that I might have the baby early. I was like “Oh really?” but didn’t really think much of it. I don’t know why, but I never really thought I’d go early. I kind of figured I’d definitely be one of those first time moms who went past 40 weeks.

I went home and took a nap, and when I woke up at around 5, I was having very regular and uncomfortable (but not yet painful) contractions. I called the OB on call, and she suspected early labor, so she suggested I wait a while. Ten minutes later, I felt like the contractions were getting more painful, and decided I’d rather go to the hospital.

On the drive to the hospital, the pain really ramped up. We arrived at labor and delivery around 7:45, and they had me fill out some forms (not fun while having contractions) and put me in triage, where they determined I was 4cm dilated. At this point, I was also starting to really hurt. They transferred me to a private delivery room.

That was about 8pm. With the next two or three contractions, I was in A LOT of pain and kind of freaking out. I think I started to have a panic attack… Luckily, the anesthesiologist came in then. He gave me a spinal and an epidural. As they kicked in, my contractions got shorter, but they were still really painful. The anesthesiologist gave me a bolus, but an hour later there was more pain again so they increased my epidural.

The OB came in to check me around 10:30pm. I was 6cm dilated and as she was checking I felt a pop as my water broke. They told us to rest as much as we could, that now we were just waiting for my cervix to finish dilating.

I had trouble sleeping because the epidural had made me itchy, but I wasn’t in pain anymore. I rested and dozed as III slept. At 2am the nurse came in and determined I was over 9cm. She told me the OB was doing an emergency c-section, and would check on my around 3:15 and that it probably would be time to push. And sure enough, she came in right at 3:15- I was completely dilated and they started me pushing. They told me it could take 2-3 hours… but then with my next two contractions both the nurse and the OB commented on how quickly it was progressing. After probably 4 rounds of contractions, they told me “Don’t push now until we tell you- we have to get our gear on.” So they put on their gowns and masks, had me push again… and there was a baby!!! (Less than 20 minutes of pushing!) III was totally dazed. It was super surreal… I looked at him and said “Oh my god. We have a baby!”

They took him to be cleaned up. They suctioned him out and he started breathing and pinked up. His eyes were wide open and he was looking around. But he wasn’t crying. In fact, he didn’t cry at all! The nurses seemed puzzled but not concerned- even without the crying, everything else was good and he scored a 7 on his first apgar. He was 6lbs 6oz with a full head of black hair!

He’s now 11 days old, and sometimes it still feels surreal. I finally have a baby. MY BABY. Which, as most of you know, comes with a whole new set of worries. But I am finally a mommy. And III is a daddy.

In fact, he most amazing thing is seeing him with III. A friend said “Are you surprised at how much you love him?” and I told her, no, but I am in awe of how much III does. I have never seen my husband so enamored and happy. He carries him around and talks to him and sings to him. At 4 days old little G-man already knew his daddy’s voice and would look for him when he hears it. My heart could burst from the love.

Welcome to our little G-man. It took a lot of work and tears to get you here, but you were well worth the wait. xo

37w6d...

...is what I'd be today.

But the baby arrived on Thursday! Surprise!!!

I never thought I'd go early, but I guess we can't predict! Everyone is doing great, but we're all pooped. He's conked out in his bouncy chair, so I'm going to take a nap. I promise to be back as soon as I can to share the whole story. :)

All about me?

Since early to mid 2nd trimester, I've been participating on an online pregnancy message board that is organized by birth month. There are good things and bad things about those online communities, but in this case I've actually made a few good connections with other women- one who is currently a neighbor of mine, who I have hung out with a few times. Two others live in the city where we will be moving! It's nice to have made some connections there with women who will have babies (both boys as well!) the same age as mine.

One of the women is in the hospital with her little one now... long story short, they learned during the second trimester that their baby had some birth defects. At the time, there was some concern that they would be severe enough that the pregnancy would not be successful- there was even talk of terminating. As she progressed into 3rd trimester, the doctors began to feel that, even though he would need surgery and extra attention when he was born, her baby had a good chance at coming out of everything fine.

For various reasons, they induced her this weekend. (at around 37w.) It was not a very successful induction, and they ended up having to do a c/s- her baby was born and it was discovered that he has some additional concerning issues. I don't know the specifics, because all of these updates have come from a few other women on the message board who are in touch with her by text. There has been no news since this morning.

I'm having a hard time thinking about anything but her and her baby. I know that I tend to be almost overly empathetic- I get wrapped up in the stories of people I don't even know. In this case, I've gotten to know her a bit through the internet, but have never met her. In some ways, it feels kind of crazy how concerned I am for her and her little boy.

Though, if I'm being totally honest (and what is an anonymous blog for if not to be totally honest) there is a part of me that is concerned for me in this situation. (Ugh. It makes me cringe to even type that. Like it's all about me!!!) I really like everything I've learned about this woman, and we have quite a lot in common. It's been one of the few things I've been looking forward to with our move- getting to meet her and anticipating spending time together. If something terrible happens with her son, I know that won't happen. I couldn't blame her- how could she watch my son grow and thrive when hers didn't. That would be hard to do with someone with whom you had an established friendship, not to mention someone from the internet who you've never met. So there is a part of me that is worried about what this means to our potential friendship.

I know that even without that I'd be feeling very concerned for her. I know because it's been true with other women on the message board, and even blogs I've read for the first time only after reading about it on LFCA. But it makes me feel kind of ashamed that I even am bringing my petty concerns into the situation, even in my own head.

Send out some thoughts and prayers for my message board friend and her little boy, please! I know that no matter what happens, I'm going to be fine and find great friends in my new city. But no one should have to go through this with their sweet baby, and I really am wishing for a quick and full recovery for her son.

What's going on

As I mentioned in a previous post, there's something big going on with us. It's kind of making me miserable, which kind of pisses me off. Why can't I just have a short time when things are easy and perfect???

If you've been with me a while, you may have read the background in this post. We did spend last summer in City B, and with the one year anniversary of his transplant coming up, III's dad is doing really well. But III still hates it here and he still misses his family and friends.

Because the economy has been so bad, III had told me that it would probably be a year, or even two or three before we even had the option of being transferred. Which was completely fine with me.

Mid-June, on a Wednesday morning, III told me that he recently found out that a transfer may be more imminent. Because of the baby, we talked about potentially taking his name off of the list for a transfer temporarily... that would have given us at least 6 months to a year before it came up.

Later that day, before we could do anything, he got the call that the transfer was approved. And we had to give a yes or a no by noon the next day.

That was a bad day.

If we had turned down the transfer, we would not be offered another for at least two years. If we took the transfer, and then changed our mind, we would not be offered another for at least four years. III decided it was time to "shit or get off the pot", as they say. He said if we didn't do it now, we'd never do it, so two years of four years wasn't going to make any difference.

So he accepted. And we've been seeing our therapist weekly since then hashing it out. We were supposed to be spending that time exploring the pros and cons of both staying and going, but that's never really what happened. It basically turned into operation get-me-to-agree-to-city-B.

At our last appointment, our therapist asked how I felt about the whole thing. I told her "I'm not thrilled, but I just don't feel like I have a choice."

So in mid-November we're moving. We're leaving this city I love. The city where I felt at home the first minute my plane touched down almost seventeen years ago. The city where I've developed my own 'family'. The city I know the ins and outs of. Where I have educated over one thousand children. Where all my connections are. We're leaving the home we made together- our first marital home. The little insulated life we have created here.

We're moving. To a city where I know nearly no one- and absolutely no one who is not somehow already connected to my husband. Where my in-laws, who mean well but drive me crazy and just don't get me, live. Where they will have constant expectations about and input into our lives.

I fully understand the benefits of this move for our family. I understand how this is going to be good for our baby. But when I asked III to make me a "pros" list of what benefits there are for me- just me as an individual- he couldn't even come up with one.

I know I'll be okay. I am an extrovert who makes friends easily. I'm having a baby, which will be an automatic "in" to making new connections. I'm not one to sit on my butt and mope and feel isolated and sorry for myself. But I'm devastated to be leaving my home.

Our house goes on the market next week. They are having an open house on Sunday. The realtor sent a "stager" in this week. She spent both days packing up all of our 'clutter' and moving our furniture around. I ended both days in tears, and now I'm living in a space I hate. This is not my home. I am not comfortable in my own house. I can only hope it sells quickly to someone who is willing to wait to move in until November so that we can put it back the way it belongs.

So that's what's going on. The fear and sadness that is hanging over my head as I try to prepare for the most joyous experience in my life.

I know it will be okay. I just wish it wasn't happening right now.