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!

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!

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Curiouser and Curiouser

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

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

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Third Thanksgiving

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

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

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

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

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

Well...

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

Puking, Freaking, Not So Much Coping

'Nuff said...

Takes a Lickin' and Keeps on Tickin'

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

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

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

Queasy, Grumpy, and Sleepy

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

Chants, Charms, and Talismans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

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

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

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

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

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