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.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
I'm the Fat Lady Singing
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.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Ambiguity Has Put on Weight
"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.
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.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Annie and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Pregnancy
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?
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?
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Absurdity of Motherhood Advice Writing
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
See, I Told You I Could Post More Than Two Days in a Row!
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...
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...
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Sick to My Stomach
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...
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...
Monday, May 12, 2008
Holy Moly Hallmark Moment (Maybe...)
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...
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...
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Chimerical Pregnancy
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.
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.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Six Flags
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!
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Wonder Mama
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!
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!
Friday, February 15, 2008
Body after Baby?: Don’t Make Me Crazy
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?
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?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Helloo
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!
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!
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Thyroid Autoimmunity and Miscarriage
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.
"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.
Monday, June 26, 2006
The Voice of the Turtle
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.
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.
Monday, May 15, 2006
If a Tree Grows in the Forest…
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
All Is Well for Now
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
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.
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.
Monday, December 12, 2005
I made it through in two pieces
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
The Olympic Hurling Team
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.
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